Nature of the new materials--Information from spies, unpublished
Stuart Papers, &c.--The chief spy--Probably known to Sir Walter
Scott--'Redgauntlet' cited--'Pickle the Spy'--His position and
services--The hidden gold of Loch Arkaig--Consequent treacheries--
Character of Pickle--Pickle's nephew--Pickle's portrait--Pickle
detected and denounced--To no purpose--Historical summary--Incognito
of Prince Charles--Plan of this work.

The latest rally of Jacobitism, with its last romance, so faded and
so tarnished, has hitherto remained obscure. The facts on which
'Waverley' is based are familiar to all the world: those on which
'Redgauntlet' rests were but imperfectly known even to Sir Walter
Scott. The story of the Forty-five is the tale of Highland loyalty:
the story of 1750-1763 is the record of Highland treachery, or rather
of the treachery of some Highlanders. That story, now for the first
time to be told, is founded on documents never hither to published,
or never previously pieced together. The Additional Manuscripts of
the British Museum, with relics of the government of Henry Pelham and
his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, have yielded their secrets, and
given the information of the spies. The Stuart Papers at Windsor
(partly published in Browne's 'History of the Highland Clans' and by
Lord Stanhope, but mainly virginal of type) fill up the interstices
in the Pelham Papers like pieces in a mosaic, and reveal the general
design. The letters of British ambassadors at Paris, Dresden,
Berlin, Hanover, Leipzig, Florence, St. Petersburg, lend colour and
coherence. The political correspondence of Frederick the Great
contributes to the effect. A trifle of information comes from the
French Foreign Office Archives; French printed 'Memoires' and
letters, neglected by previous English writers on the subject, offer
some valuable, indeed essential, hints, and illustrate Charles's