64 



cathedral bells, traditionally believed to have been the last they 

 ever rang. But from a recent note in the Carlisle Patriot, by 

 "X Y Z", who has had access to the books of the dean and 

 chapter, it appears that the bells were rung on the recapture of the 

 city by the duke of Cumberland, and on many other occasions 

 down to 1763. 



Sir Walter Scott, then, committed no anachronism when he 

 described Fergus Maclvor as drawn to the scene of his execution 

 to the sound of "a muffled peal, tolled from the neighbouring 

 cathedral" {Waverky, ch. Ixix). 



It was on Saturday, October 18, 1746, that Major Donald 

 Macdonald, of Tyendrish, the original of Fergus Maclvor, with 

 eight others, was executed on Gallows Hill at Harraby (Mounsey, 

 p. 268). Referring to one of the eight, in a letter to the then 

 Lord Albemarle, written on the following Thursday, October 23, 

 Lieutenant Colonel Howard, the governor of Carlisle castle, said: 



Buchanan's body was afterwards brought into town and interred, at which 



ceremony Dr. Douglas, Mr. Graham the apothecary, Mr. Lowry, and Mr. 



Campbell of Brampton, assisted publicly ; the latter as mourner, the other 

 three as pall bearers (Lord Albemarle's Fifty Years of My Life). 



In the same letter he said: "Six others suffered last Tuesday at 

 Brampton". One can easily believe that so fascinating a prince 

 as Charles Edward had not stayed a week at Brampton without 

 attracting to his cause the sympathy of some of the inhabitants; 

 of whom "Mr. Campbell of Brampton" would seem to have been 

 a prominent representative ; and it may have been as a warning to 

 them that six of the condemned prisoners were sent from Carlisle 

 to be executed at Brampton. Those six were Col. James Innes, 

 Peter Lindsay, Ronald Macdonald, Thomas Park, Peter Taylor, 

 and Michael Delard (Mounsey, p. 268). Tradition says they were 

 hanged on the Capon Tree;* which for many years afterwards was 



* Said by Hutchinson (i. 129) to have derived this name from the capons 

 with which the judges and their retinue, on their way from Newcastle to Carlisle, 

 formerly regaled themselves under its shade. In Hutchinson's time (1794) it 

 had "apparently withstood the blasts of several hundred years". Nothing now 

 remains of it but its stump. 



