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MACDONNELL (or MACDONELL), ALESTAIR (...

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Originally appearing in Volume V17, Page 213 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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MACDONNELL (or MACDONELL), ALESTAIR (i.e. Alexander) RUADH (c. 1725-1761)  , chief of Glengarry, a Scottish Jacobite who has been identified by Andrew Lang as the secret agent "
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Pickle," who acted as a spy on Prince Charles
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Edward after 1750 . The
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family were a branch of the clan Macdonald, but spelt their name Macdonnell or Macdonell . His
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father was John, 12th chief of Glengarry, a violent and brutal man, who is said to have starred his first wife, Alestair's
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mother, to
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death on an island in the Hebrides . Alestair ran away to France while a mere boy in 1738, and there entered the Royal Scots, a regiment in the French service . In 1743 he commanded a
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company in it, and in 1744 was sent to Scotland as a Jacobite agent . In
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January 1745 he was sent back with messages, and was in France when Prince Charles Edward landed in Scotland .
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Late in 1745 he was captured at sea while bringing a picquet of the Royal Scots to help the prince . He remained a prisoner in the Tower for twenty-two months, and when released went abroad . In 1744 his father had made a transfer to him of the family estates, which were ruined . Alestair, who still affected to be a Jacobite, lived for a time in
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great poverty . In 1749 he was in .
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London, and there is good reason to believe that he then offered his services as a spy to the
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British government, with which he communicated under the name of Pickle .

His

information enabled British ministers to keep a close watch on the prince and on the Jacobite conspiracies . Though he was denounced by a Mrs Cameron, whose
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husband he betrayed to death in 1752, he never lost the confidence of the Jacobite leaders . On the death of his father, in 1754, he succeeded to the estates, and proved himself a greedy
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land-lord . He died on the 23rd of December 1761 . See Andrew Lang, Pickle the Spy (1897) and The Companions of Pickle (1898) .

End of Article: MACDONNELL (or MACDONELL), ALESTAIR (i.e. Alexander) RUADH (c. 1725-1761)
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