Elizabeth Grant (Clavering) 

On 17 December 1745 the Jacobite Army under Charles Edward Stuart (the Young Pretender) was on its retreat back to Scotland. The Jacobite rear guard engaged Government troops under the Duke of Cumberland in a skirmish at Clifton Moor in Cumberland.

Following the skirmish, the Duke’s army captured 69 Jacobite prisoners, including eight women. The Duke of Cumberland gave orders that the prisoners be held at Albany gaol in Westmorland.

The eight women included two ladies and six regimental women. One of the ladies was Elizabeth Grant, a seamstress from Banff.Elizabeth had followed her husband to war. Unfortunately he was killed in the skirmish at Clifton Moor.

It was decided that the prisoners should be sent to York Castle. The prisoners were marched from Albany to York through the winter snows, via, Bowes, Richmond and Bedale, arriving in York on 31 December 1745. According to the Archbishop of York, Thomas Herring, the prisoners were in a very poor condition on arrival in York, many being bare footed and raggedly clothed.

The eight women, including Elizabeth Grant, were held in a separate cell in the relatively newly built York County Prison (Debtors’ Prison), there being no provision for female prisoners at York.

Following her arrival at York, Elizabeth made the acquaintance of another Jacobite prisoner at the Castle, Edmund Clavering, taken in a skirmish at Lowther Hall, the seat of Lord Lonsdale. Romance followed and the couple were married against prison regulations by a Catholic Priest, Father Rivat, also a prisoner in the Castle.

The marriage, however, was a short one. On 8 November 1746, Edmund Clavering was one of eleven prisoners from York Castle, hung at the Tyburn on York’s Knavesmire.

In March 1747 the newly widowed Elizabeth, together with the six regimental women captured with her, were among 49 prisoners from York Castle, sent to Liverpool for transportation to Antigua as indentured servants.

The prisoners boarded the transport ship The Veteran, and on 8 May 1747 they set sail for Antigua. The voyage was uneventful until a day’s sail from Antigua when The Veteran was attacked by a French privateer, The Diamant, and after a short struggle The Veteran was captured.

The Veteran and its cargo of Jacobite prisoners, was taken to Martinique, where the French authorities released all the prisoners. The British Government demanded their return, but the French refused. The French gave the released prisoners the choice of remaining in Martinique, where they would be set up in business, or of travelling in French ships to France where they would be free to live and take up businesses.

Unfortunately, there are no records as to what choice Elizabeth made, or as to her subsequent fate.

Ref:-  “Damn Rebel Bitches: Women of the ‘45” by Maggie Craig.