290 CAPTURE OP COLONEL HENRY KER OF GRADEN 



Peninsula, and, on leaving the King of Spain's service, returned 

 home to Scotland,^ about the same period, nominally to tend 

 their ancestral acres, but more perhaps to watch in secret 

 for the landing • of Prince Charles. Colonel Bower, now 

 well advanced in years, although mounting the white cockade, 

 apparently took no very active part in the rising. Indeed, 

 it was afterwards pled in his defence that he had only shaken 

 hands with the Prince at the Salutation Inn, in Perth. 



The glens of Forfarshire were now botching with Jacobites, 

 among whom were Rattray of Ranagulzion, Sir James Kinloch 

 and his two brothers, Count Mirobel, the French engineer, 

 and Lord Ogilvy, while Chevalier Johnstone lurked in a 

 shepherd's bothy up Glen Prosen. As the Duke of Cumber- 

 land's troops were scouring the country all day, Henry Ker 

 and his cousin were ^^ obliged to skulk'' among the hills, only 

 at nightfall creeping down to the mansion-house at 

 Kincaldrum, Bower's usual residence, in order to secure rest, 

 and provisions for the morrow. This lasted for about three 

 weeks, apparently till the night of 6th May, when a 

 "disobliged servant of the name of Proctor having given 

 information," the house was suddenly surrounded by a detach- 

 ment of Hessian dragoons. What followed may best be 

 described in the words of an eye-witness : — 



"The first of their operations was to hamstring all the cows, 

 cattle, and horses they could lay their hands on, even the little 

 Shetland pony did not escape. On entering the house they 

 amnsed themselves slashing the family pictures with their sabres. 

 All the windows on the lower storey had what they call upright 

 iron stantions. Colonel Ker hearing the uproar betook himself, for 

 the purpose of escaping, to one of the windows where he knew 

 there was a false stantion. On getting out he found two soldiers 

 placed, who immediately made him a prisoner." 



For the barbaric treatment meted out to Colonel Bower, whom 

 the Hessians found concealed in a hole behind an ^^ old black 

 cabonate," and which hastened his death a few days later at 



^Alexander Bower returned from Spain in 1744. 



