The Chevalier was now preparing to come to the rendezvous at Glenphinan the 18 of Agust, and accordingly arrived there the 17th in the evening with only three companys of Clanronalds followers. The next day Locheil joined him with seven hundred and fifty men besides double officers, and M^cdonald of Keppoch arrived in the afternoon with his regiment consisting of about three hundred. In less than an hour after the whole were drawn up, and the Royal Standart display'd by the D. of A[thole] when the Chevalier made them a short but very pathetick speech. Importing that it would be no purpose to declaim upon the justice of his father's title to the throne to people who, had they not been convinced of it, would not have appeared in his behalf, but that he esteemed it as much his duty to endeavour to procure their welfare and happiness as they did to assert his right, that it was chiefly with that view that he had landed in a part of the Island where he knew he should find a number of brave gentlemen fired with the "noble example of their predecessors, and jealous of their own and their country's honour, to join with him in so glorious an enterprise, with whose assistance and the protection of a just God who never fails to avenge the cause of the injured, he did not doubt of bringing the affair to a happy issue...."

Everything now being prepared for the Chevalier's departure, upon the 21st he moved from the place of rendezvous to the head of Locheil, about nine miles from Fort William, and as the difficulty of finding horses and the badness of the roads in this country were equally unsurmountable, of twenty large swevel guns he made twelve be buried in a bog about a mile from the place where he first erected his standard. He had no sooner arrived at the above mentioned place than he received intelligence of G[eneral] C[ope] having moved north ward and at the same time had a copy of the proclamation sent which had been ishued by order of the Lords Justices, affixing thirty thousand pound upon his head....

Upon seeing it he was heard to say that tho it was true that a reward had been likewise set upon his father's head in the year 1715, that yet he imagined that in proportion as the world grew in politeness they had done so in humanity, that it were unjust to call the ancients rude and savage etc., when no example could be given of their taking so mean and unmanly a way to get rid of their enemy. That he should have been far from ever thinking of such a device to exterminate the E[lector]s family did his success depend upon it, but at the same time he could not in justice to him self get[85] by offering the same reward in his turn. Tho if he could allow himself to think that any of his friends could be so abandoned as to be guilty of so execrable a deed for the sum proposed, that he would alter the sum to thirty pound instead of thirty thousand, and then ordered a proclamation of the same nature to be drawn, which was signed and published two days after.