John Brown

Queen Victoria's Highland Servant

Raymond Lamont-Brown

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780752468990
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

A century after Queen Victoria's death, debate still rages surrounding her relationship with her gillie, John Brown. Were they ever married? What was the extraordinary hold he had over her? This biography aims to shed new light on these questions and to discover the truth behind Brown's hold on his royal employer. Following the death of Prince Albert in 1861, the Queen found solace in the companionship of John Brown, who had commenced his royal employment as a stable hand. He became "The Queen's Highland Servant" in 1865 and rose to be the most influential member of the Scottish Royal Household. While the Queen could be brusque and petulant with her servants, family and minsters, she submitted to Brown's fussy organisation of her domestic life, his bullying and familiarity without a murmur. Despite warnings of his unpopularity with her subjects by one Prime Minister, the Queen was adamant that Brown would not be sacked. The Queen's confidence was rewarded when Brown saved her from an assassination attempt, after which he was vaunted as a public hero. The author reveals the names of republicans and disaffected courtiers who related gossip about Queen Victoria and John Brown and their purported marriage and child, and identifies those who plotted to have Brown dismissed. Based on research in public, private and royal archives, as well as diaries and memoirs of those who knew Brown and interviews with his surviving relatives, this text analyses the relationship between Queen Victorian and Brown.

CHAPTER ONE

CHILD OF THE MOUNTAINS

John Brown was born at Crathienaird in Crathie parish, Aberdeenshire, on 8 December 1826, the second son of John Brown (1790–1875), a tenant farmer, and his wife Margaret Leys (1799–1876), who also came from farming stock.¹ They married at Crathie on 25 August 1825, when Margaret was five months pregnant.² John and Margaret courted and were betrothed through the old Highland custom of ‘bundling’, a practice in which the sweethearts slept together, without undressing, in the same bed or couch. According to the tradition, should the ‘bundling’ prove fruitful and the baby seemed likely to go to full term, the couple married.³ So John and Margaret Brown already had a year-old son, James, born on 15 November 1825, when John arrived.⁴

When John Brown was born his future royal employer and friend had entered her eighth year; Victoria was born on Monday 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace. Her father Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, died on 23 January 1820, just six days before his blind and insane father King George III. So little Alexandrina Victoria, the new heir to the throne, was brought up in reduced circumstances by her affectionate but impulsive and quarrelsome mother, the Duchess of Kent, the former Princess Victoria Mary Louisa, widow of Emich Karl, 2nd Prince zu Leiningen.

In 1826 Princess Victoria, along with her mother and eighteen-year-old half-sister Princess Feodore of Leiningen, made her first visit to Windsor to call on her uncle King George IV, who lived at Royal Lodge. ‘Give me your little paw’, he had said on their first meeting, and Victoria remembered him as ‘large and gouty but with a wonderful dignity and charm of manner’.⁵ The next day Victoria was out walking with her family from their apartments at Cumberland Lodge when they were overtaken by a royal phaeton in which rode the King with his sister Princess Mary, Duchess of Gloucester. ‘Pop her in’, he ordered, and to the Duchess of Kent’s no little anxiety – she feared that the monarch would kidnap her daughter – they sped away with Victoria for a visit to ‘the nicest part of Virginia Water’.⁶

Because of their straitened finances Princess Victoria’s early years at Kensington Palace were not luxurious. She remembered:

We lived in a very simple, plain manner; breakfast was at half-past eight, luncheon at half-past one, dinner at seven – to which I came generally (when it was no regular large dinner party) – eating my bread and milk out of a small silver basin. Tea was only allowed as a great treat in later years.⁷

Victoria was to remain a stickler for the exact timing of her meals when John Brown served her, but while the Princess enjoyed tea as a ‘treat’, that beverage was hardly seen at Crathienaird.

In all, the Brown family of Crathienaird increased to eleven children: nine boys and two girls. The eldest son, James, emigrated to Australia; on his return he became a shepherd on the Balmoral estate and married Helen Stewart (1824–1904). After John came Francis (b. 1828), who died aged three, and then Anne (1830–67). Charles (b. 1831), Margaret (b. 1834) and a second child named Francis (b. 1839) all died in the typhoid epidemic that swept through this part of Deeside in the winter of 1849. They were buried together at Crathie churchyard and John Brown raised a stone to them years later.⁸

Donald, the sixth child, was born on 9 September 1832. He went on to become a porter at Windsor Castle and Keeper of the Queen’s Lodge, Osborne. William, the eighth, was born on 18 March 1835 and was gifted the tenancy of the farm of Tomidhu by Queen Victoria; he married Elizabeth Paterson (1838–1900) in 1869 and died at Torridoes, Crathie, in 1906. Hugh Brown was born on 21 December 1838 and emigrated to New Zealand; on his return he became Keeper of Her Majesty’s Kennels at Windsor and Extra Highland Attendant after his brother John’s death. Hugh was succeeded in this position by his nephew William. Hugh Brown married Jessie McHardy (1840–1914) in 1863 and died at the East Approach Lodge, Balmoral, in 1896. Queen Victoria insisted that nothing be made of the fact that the main cause of his death was alcoholism.⁹ The last sibling of John Brown was born on 6 September 1841 and christened Archibald Anderson Brown; he became valet to Prince Leopold and thence Page of the Royal Presence. He died in 1912.¹⁰

The Browns of Crathienaird had originated within the Highland clan grouping of Lamont (Gaelic, MacLaomainn). A clan of great antiquity, the Lamonts owned considerable parcels of territory in Argyllshire, but owing to the encroachment of the Campbells of Argyll and other clansmen, their territories were confined mainly to Cowal, that large district of Argyll which includes lands between Loch Fyne and the boundary with Perthshire; of this area John Lamont became ‘Bailie’ in 1456.¹¹ At Toward Castle, in South Cowal, north-east of Rothesay, Sir John Lamont of Inveryne entertained Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1563.

During the seventeenth-century outbreaks of civil war in Scotland, the Campbell chiefs ravaged the lands of the Lamonts and destroyed their main bases at the castles of Toward and Ascog on the Isle of Bute, and in 1646 they treacherously massacred two hundred Lamont leaders at Dunoon. When Toward Castle was sacked the principal clan residence became Ardlamont, near the Kyles of Bute and Loch Fyne, and the dispersed clansfolk became connected by marriage to many titled families of Scotland. John Lamont, 19th Chief of the Clan Lamont, commanded the Gordon Highlanders at Corunna in 1809.

As the Lamont clansmen scattered from their foes, the rapacious Campbells of Loudoun, they adopted new disguising names, Black, White and Brown being popular. They settled in safe havens, such as those in south-west Scotland. John Brown’s forebears, though, are likely to have been among the clansmen who settled in the Highland area of Strathspey, that broad lower valley of the River Spey just the other side of the Cairngorm Mountains from Crathie. Some time in the early eighteenth century John Brown’s immediate forebears moved from Strathspey to become tenants of the Ogilvys, Earls of Airlie, who lived at Cortachy Castle, Angus. The Browns now farmed Ogilvy land in the neighbourhood of the old handweaving town of Kirriemuir.

The Ogilvys were descendants of the ancient Earls of Angus. They were Royalists and Jacobites who engaged actively in Scotland’s civil wars and the Jacobite Risings of 1715 and 1745. During the latter rising John Brown’s great-grandfather and his brothers joined the Forfarshire Regiment led by David Ogilvy, 5th Lord Airlie (the son of John, 4th Earl of Airlie), in support of the Jacobite leader Charles Edward Stewart. He had landed in Scotland in order to help win the throne of Great Britain from the Hanoverian succession for his father, Prince James Francis Edward Stewart (whom the Jacobites dubbed King James VIII & III). Consequently the Browns were with David Ogilvy at the Battle of Culloden in April 1746 when Prince Charles Edward Stewart’s cousin, Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, vanquished the Jacobite army. Along with the whole Clan Ogilvy, David Ogilvy was attained and fled to France; he would not return until he was pardoned in 1783.

As with hundreds of other clansmen who survived the slaughter at Culloden, the Browns returned to their tenancy in Angus to ‘lie low’. For years though, Hanoverian government troops harassed the clansmen, burning and pillaging their homes. The Browns, who suffered similar difficulties, decided to seek a more peaceful area in which to rebuild their shattered lives.

In the 1770s John Brown’s grandfather, Donald Brown (c. 1750–1827), who married Janet Shaw (c. 1751–1836) of Badenoch, left Angus and took the road north through the Capel Mounth Pass to take up a new tenancy at Rhinachat, a small part of the Monaltrie estates of the Farquharsons of Invercauld, an estate in the Dee Valley about 11⁄2 miles from Braemar.¹² There they raised their family, which included six sons, one of whom, ‘Old’ John, was John Brown’s father. He became a prominent character at Crathie.¹³

Deriving its name from the Gaelic word Creathach (brushwood), Crathie lies on the main road from Braemar to Ballater and is situated about a mile from the modern Balmoral Castle.¹⁴ The hamlet of Crathie grew out of an early Scottish ecclesiastical site. In his historical notes the Revd Ronald Henderson Gunn Rudge, Minister of Crathie from 1964 to 1971, opined:

The story of the Christian Church in Crathie goes back through the long years to the misty records of the 6th century when the Celtic or Brithonic Saints, St Colin and St Monire, brought the Christian Gospel north into Deeside. A famous pool in the River Dee, near Balmoral Castle, is known as Polmanaire – “the pool of St Monire” – so called because in this pool the Saint of old is said to have baptised his Christian converts.

The earliest Chapels are reputed to have been erected at The Lebhall (on the north Deeside Road); at Balmore (in Aberarder Glen); and at the Mains of Abergeldie (on the south Deeside Road). In the 15th century a new Church was built beside the River Dee, where the ruins can still be seen in the old Churchyard. This was the centre of worship until 1804, when it was replaced by a larger, but austere, Church built on the site of the present Church – dedicated in 1895. It was in the 1804 Church that Queen Victoria [and the Brown family] worshipped during the greater part of Her Majesty’s residence at Balmoral Castle. The Queen laid the foundation stone of the new building on 11 September 1893, and two years later was present at its dedication.¹⁵

The area around Crathie is very hilly, with the principal peaks being Lochnagar, Cairntoul and Ben Macdhui. Their presence gave rise to the gossiping Lord Clarendon referring to John Brown, unkindly, as a ‘Child of the Mountains’.

When Old John Brown settled into his tenancy at Crathienaird, the area had already been substantially improved by the ‘model landlord’ Colonel Francis Farquharson, who himself had fought in the Jacobite Army.¹⁶ He introduced new agricultural methods, repaired old buildings and established new ones, built roads and bridges, and even developed the four mineral springs which had been known since the thirteenth century at Pannanich in the nearby united parish of Glenmuick, Tullich and Glengairn.¹⁷

The house at Crathienaird where John Brown was born has now vanished. In his day Crathienaird was a clachan (hamlet) of some eighteen heather-thatched houses built of mud and unhewn stone. Each was a two-roomed cottage built in the Highland style of ‘but and ben’; in some of the poorer households the inhabitants shared their dwelling with their cattle.¹⁸ Within, the floors were of hardened earth which became damp and muddy in winter. The large Brown family slept in a series of traditional ‘box beds’, which were curtained off or shut off with doors. The younger members of big families generally slept around the peat-burning hearth, wrapped in blankets or plaids. For light the house had small unopening windows with four to six panes of glass. Quite often, on leaving such a ‘bothy’ (house) for a new job, the family would take the windows with them as personal property. The focal point of the Brown’s main living area was the hearth, with its cooking pots supported on a ‘swee’ (a movable iron bracket) over the fire; a cauldron of water was kept permanently heated on a three-legged trivet. Light from the fire supplemented the oil-burning cruises (boat-shaped rush-wick lamps). In 1831, when John Brown was five years old, the family moved to larger accommodation at The Bush Farm, Crathie, where he spent his childhood days.¹⁹

Around this time the Duchess of Kent was giving attention to her daughter’s education. In 1824, when Victoria was five, she had been transferred from the care of her nurse Mrs Brock to her German governess Fräulein Louise Lehzen, whom King George IV had appointed a Hanoverian baroness in 1827. Yet it was now time for Victoria to move on from nursery stories to a proper education. Towards this end the duchess consulted Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London, and John Kaye, Bishop of Lincoln, about the current state of the princess’s education and how it should be developed. The result was a recommendation for her to continue with the tutorship of the evangelistic clergyman Revd George Davys, whose languages and history lessons were now supplemented by a music teacher, a singing master, a dancing instructor and a drawing master.

Victoria was a quick if somewhat unwilling pupil, but she had a flair for languages and drawing. Her love of riding made her an accomplished horsewoman, and she terrified the ladies-in-waiting with fast gallops through Windsor Park. Victoria’s destiny, however, was beckoning: on Saturday 26 June 1830 King George IV died and was succeeded by his brother Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence, as King William IV. In the shadow of the throne which was now destined to be hers, Princess Victoria developed a distinct character and temperament. As Arthur Benson and Viscount Esher were to remark:

She was high-spirited and wilful but devotedly affectionate, and almost typically feminine. She had a strong sense of duty and dignity, and strong personal prejudices. Confident, in a sense, as she was, she had the feminine instinct strongly developed of dependence upon some manly adviser. She was full of high spirits, and enjoyed excitement and life to the full. She liked the stir of London, was fond of dancing, or concerts, plays and operas, and devoted to open-air exercise.²⁰

Herein were clues that were to make her an enthusiast for Scots outdoor pursuits and the devoted friend years later of the red-headed lad who ranged over the hills at Crathie. Yet there was more in her character that would bind her to John Brown. She hated change; she looked upon herself as a ‘deserted child’ (after her father’s death); she was blisteringly truthful, admitting to ‘fearless straight forwardness’, and Lord Melbourne was to comment that she was ‘the honestest person I have ever known’. Further she showed firm loyalty to friends; her trust once given was not withdrawn. And her ‘nervous shyness’ made her cling to the people she knew and liked; as she said herself: ‘I am terribly shy and nervous and always was so.’ These traits of truthfulness, honesty and loyalty were all recognisable too in John Brown’s developing character. Open-air activities, especially, were to be an important factor in John Brown’s upbringing, for his education had a much more practical aspect than Princess Victoria’s.

John Brown attended a few raithes²¹ at Crathie school. Crathie’s first parish schoolmaster had been appointed in 1710, but his post had fallen out of use.²² By 1719 a charity school had been set up by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge²³ and this was one of the thousand parish schools still extant at the time of the Scottish (Education) Act of 1803. At Crathie it cost the Brown family 3s 6p per quarter for a high standard of primary education. At school the Brown children learned the Gaelic language in parallel with English.²⁴

On John Brown

‘John Brown stands out as a striking figure of a man in my boyhood memories. Often as I was playing with other children on the green slopes in the Castle grounds Queen Victoria would come along in her chair drawn by a pony.

‘A groom sometimes attended the pony, but by the Queen’s side there always seemed to be John Brown with his rich Scots brogue. The Queen would always smile and say a few words to us, then pat the head of the nearest. On several occasions that was me. John Brown might also say “Good-day” but he was just a little too stern to get really friendly with us.

‘Wherever the Queen went, in the castle grounds or about the rooms, John Brown was always at her side. When he died the Queen had a two-foot high brass plate erected in memory of her “true and faithful” servant in the Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore. But when King Edward came to the Throne he had the plate removed, and I never heard what happened to it. Everyone about the Royal house knew that the Prince of Wales disliked John Brown.

‘Brown was popular with the servants at Windsor, although they went in awe of him. He was just in settling disputes and obtained for them many little extra comforts and privileges.’

H.L.F. Gale,
son of a Queen’s Messenger at Windsor Castle

Most of John Brown’s education was conducted out of school. He learned the arts of deerstalking, fish spearing, rowing, swimming, shooting, and riding the Highland breed of ponies known as garrons, which were used for rough hill work. He learned how to walk the mountains, climbing and tackling gradients at speed. He became an expert on the flora and fau...