One
of my favourite walks around Edinburgh is down the Innocent Railway path, round
to Duddingston and then back up Duddingston Low Road and into Holyrood Park. When I do that walk, I usually have a rest and
a sit down in the Kirkyard of Duddingston Kirk.
It is a place oozing with history and usually a quiet place to sit and
contemplate whatever one feels like contemplating.
At
the entrance to the Kirkyard is the tower like structure of the gatehouse,
which was built in the age of the body snatchers for the guards who protected
the corpses of the newly buried from being stolen.
On
the opposite wall from the gatehouse is a rather insidious instrument used by
the church to control and punish its flock, the jougs. The jougs are an iron collar that could be
padlocked and are fixed to a chain on the wall.
These were used for minor offences; you know the type of thing, drinking,
dancing, enjoying yourself, wearing clothes that were a bit revealing, as in
showing a bit of ankle, gossiping, farting on a Sunday, and the like. The offender would be chained up during the
hour before the morning service so that they would face the humiliation of the
congregation passing them on their way into the church.
In
the kirkyard itself, there are many interesting looking and rather gothic
gravestones, and those buried beneath no doubt had many interesting stories to
tell of their lives and adventures, all of which are now in the main forgotten.
There
is though, one that discreetly commemorates a scandalous tragedy that was
reported widely in the newspapers of the time.
This memorial stone was originally commissioned by Captain John Haldane in
honour of his grandfather Patrick Haldane, the 16th Laird of Gleneagles,
who served as the Solicitor General for Scotland and as the MP for Perth. He
had died in Duddingston in 1769. On the
stone there is also the depiction of a ship going down in a stormy sea. This was added later by the executors of Captain
John Haldane’s estate to commemorate the events surrounding his death.
John
Haldane was born in 1748 and was one of the two illegitimate sons of George
Haldane. John worked his way up through
the East India Company and was eventually promoted to Captain on several of
their ships. He was not very successful
in his role as Captain and suffered a series of misfortunes. The first ship he captained was seized shortly
after leaving port, by French and Spanish forces. John Haldane and his crew were taken as
prisoners and they and the ship were taken to the port of Cadiz. There they languished for several months
before being released. On his return, the
Company gave him a second ship to captain, which caught fire on its arrival in Bombay
and was completely destroyed. After this
disaster Haldane no doubt felt quite low, but things in India soon picked up
for him, as he met and became the lover of the glamorous and beautiful actress
and singer, Ann Cargill.
Ann
Cargill, born Ann Brown, was known as much for her love affairs as she was for
her acting and was a pretty big celebrity in her day. In 1771, when she was around twelve years old,
she had made her debut at Covent Garden, and such was her popularity that she
was soon commanding high fees for her appearances. Later she gained much fame for her roles as Clara
in The Duenna by Sheridan and Polly Peachum in The Beggars Opera
by John Gay. She also played MacHeath in
The Beggars Opera, in a version in which all the male characters were
played by women and all the female characters by men.
When
details of Ann’s many love affairs began to appear in the press, her father saw
this as an embarrassment to him and her family, and having never approved of
her career in the theatre, decided to end it and take control over her and her
life. In order to do this, he obtained a
court order to detain her, but on learning of what he had done, she hid from
him. He made various attempts to get
hold of her and take her into his custody, but she always managed to avoid him
or escape from him. On one occasion he took
hold of her as she left her carriage to go into the theatre she was performing
in. However, she and her companion
raised such a fuss that onlookers and eventually the other performers in the
theatre crowded around, took her from her father and carried her into the
theatre.
.jpg "Detail of portrait of Ann Brown (Cargill) in the role of Miranda. Painted by Johann Zoffany")
In
1780, Ann eloped with a Mr R Cargill and married him in Edinburgh before
returning to London and then touring England in various theatre
productions. The marriage to Cargill did
not last long and in 1782 Ann took up with a Mr Rumbold and left for India with
him. In India she found great success and another new lover, one dashing young
captain from an aristocratic family, yup you guessed it, John Haldane. Things
were lovely and rosy for both of them, and it seems that Ann became pregnant
with, and gave birth to, their child.
The proud parents’ happiness in India was not to last long though. In December 1783, the directors of the East
India Company, being a bunch of old fuddy duddies, decided that they didn’t
want the scandalous Ann Cargill around, and at a meeting agreed that ‘the pure
shores of India should not be invaded by an actress.’ Ann was then ordered to leave the country.
This she did, aboard the ship that Haldane was now captain of, the Nancy.
The
voyage home on the Nancy was quite uneventful until the ship was just
off the coast from the Scilly Isles, where it hit a terrible storm. The ship was forced into some rocks and began
to sink. Captain Haldane, along with Ann
Cargill and a few passengers and crew, managed to get into one of the lifeboats
on the ship and tried to row to safety.
The storm was too strong for them though and their boat was thrown against
rocks at the small island of Rosevear and smashed. Those on board were cast into the raging sea,
where they all drowned.
A
few days later many of the bodies were recovered when they washed up on the
shore at Rosevear. These included the
bodies of John Haldane and Ann Cargill. Held
tightly in Ann’s arms was the body of her and Haldane’s young child. Ann, John Haldane, and their child were all buried
at the Old Town Church on St Mary's, in the Scilly Isles.
In
the early nineteenth century, during construction of the lighthouse that now
stands on Bishop Rock the workmen were stationed on Rosevear. It is said that while there, they were
haunted by the ghostly voices of those who had died when their ships were sunk
on the nearby rocks. One of the voices
they often heard was that of Ann Cargill gently singing lullabies, as if
holding a sleeping child in her arms.
I
left the Skulferatu that accompanied me on my walk, in a hole in the monument that
commemorates Patrick Haldane, John Haldane and Ann Cargill.
The
coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are –
Latitude
55.94126
Longitude
-3.149253
what3words:
regime.limit.inform
I
used the following sources for information on Duddingston Kirkyard, John
Haldane and Ann Cargill
Bygone Church Life in Scotland
William Andrews
1899
Patrick Haldane
A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800
by Philip H. Highfill, Jr., Kalman A. Burnim, Edward A. Langhans
1975
Oxford Journal - Saturday 13 March 1784
Reading Mercury - Monday 15 March 1784
Wreck of the East India Company Packet NANCY Isles
of Scilly in 1784
Ed Cumming
2019
