To fully appreciate how Scotland claimed drambuie as its own, one must possess a general
James II and VII, was the last Catholic monarch in the British Isles. Portrait by Nicolas de Largillière, c 1686. Wikipedia
knowledge of what is known in Scottish/English history as the Rebellion of ’45. James II of England and Ireland (James VII of Scotland) converted to Catholicism when he succeeded his brother to the throne in 1685. The Protestant factions of government feared losing favor of the court to Catholicism because James was more inclined to accept a certain “freedom” of religion. James’s second wife, Mary of Modena, a Catholic, presented him an heir to the throne in the form of James Edward Stuart. The Protestants invited the Dutch William of Orange to invade England and set up a Protestant alliance with the Netherlands. William was married to Mary, James’s daughter by first wife Ann Hyde.
William invaded in 1688, and James fled the country to reside in France. In what is known as the Glorious Revolution of 1689, Parliament declared that James abdicated his throne by fleeing the country, and his daughter Mary became queen. She ruled with her husband, who became William III of England and Ireland (William II of Scotland). This led to a constitutional monarchy and a “Bill of Rights.”
Meanwhile, many, especially those in Scotland where the Stuarts had served as kings for centuries, still regarded James as their king. They came to be known as Jacobites. Scotland’s Catholics rose in ire after Scotland’s Parliament replaced the Episcopalian church with the Presbyterian one and with the 1692 Massacre at Glencoe.
Such feelings of anger grew steadily. With the death of Mary and later of William, Mary’s sister Anne came to the throne. However, Anne could not provide an heir and so Parliament named her cousin, George, Elector of Hanover, (George II) as her successor. George was chosen because he was a Protestant. The Jacobites thought Anne’s half-brother, James Edward Stuart, should be her successor. The Jacobites threw their support the way of the Stuart line.
Eventually, James Edward Stuart married Maria Clementina Sobeiska, godchild of Pope Clement XI. She presented her husband a son, Charles Edward Stuart, who came to be known as “Bonnie Prince Charlie.” Acting as his father’s Regent, Charles led a small force to restore his father’s claim to the English throne. He landed on the West Coast of Scotland on the island of Eriskay. In August 1745, Prince Charles Edward raised his father’s standard at Glenfinnan, beginning of the Rebellion of ’45. The most powerful clans in the Highlands supported the idea of James Stuart as king. They Jacobites fought brilliantly until they knew defeat at the hands of the Duke of Cumberland at Culloden.
Prince Charlie fled for his life. The British government place a price upon his head of £30000. However, no clansman would betray him. Prince Charlie hid with loyal clansmen, but was always on the move. At length, Flora MacDonald disguised the Prince as her maid and smuggled him onto the Isle of Skye. One of the Mackinnons (Captain John Mackinnon) of Strathaird rowed him to a safe hiding place until a French ship arrived off the West Coast and managed to transport Prince Charlie back to France in September 1746.
In gratitude, Prince Charlie presented the Mackinnon family his secret formula for his personally crafted liqueur, an dram budbeach, which means “a drink that satisfies” in Gaelic. Today we know the liqueur as “drambuie.” This recipe would have included a concentrated tincture of essential oils intended to be used to flavor spirits, likely brandy. The Mackinnons guarded the secret of the drink for more than 150 years. They made only very small quantities of the liqueur, and it was served reverently at the annual Gathering of the Clans.
In 1906, Malcolm Mackinnon emigrated from the Isle of Skye to Edinburgh, where he took employment in an established distilling house, W. Macbeth & Sons. By the age of 23 he was a junior partner. He was considered a connoisseur of Scotch whiskies. By 25, his senior partners had passed, and Malcolm found himself the sole owner of the distilling house. It was his idea to produce the family’s secret liqueur, and eventually, he persuaded the elder clansmen. The recipe was given into his trust, with a demand for secrecy.
Malcolm set to work to convert the many varied ingredients into a commercial formula. He worked alone in a cellar under Union Street. He had no utensils other than those commonly found in a kitchen. It took weeks to fill a dozen bottles of the elixir for Malcolm insisted upon creating the mixture as he had observed his family members do during his childhood.
Malcolm sold twelve cases of the mixture that first year. But the next saw an influx of orders from fellow Scotsmen, who wished to taste Scotland’s first commercially produced liqueur. In 1916, the cellarman of the House of Lords presented ®Drambuie its seal of special approbation. The legend has it that the family secret is still locked away. And supposedly, a member of the Mackinnon family are the only ones permitted to mix the formula. Four small vials of the mixture can create 1200 gallons of Drambuie.
There are less flamboyant versions of how the liqueur came about including a French officer presenting the recipe to John Mackinnon rather than Prince Charlie. Others say it was a personal physician who discovered a box of tinctures when the prince fled Culloden. Some tales of have the Mackinnons presenting the formula to John Ross, the owner of the Broadfront Hotel on the Isle of Skye, and Ross’s son James used the elixir to flavor whisky. James Ross registered the trademark in 1893. The story goes that James’s son, John, became friends with Malcolm Mackinnon, and that Malcolm was from a different faction of the Mackinnons than was Captain John Mackinnon. [For more details of the “real” story of how Malcolm became the owner of ®Drambuie, see the link below on the “History of Drambuie.” I am more of a fanciful nature. LOL!]
Resources:
Harriet Smith in 1996’s Emma
rcy in Death Comes to Pemberley
ets, as well as Mr. Bennet in Lost in Austen and Mr. Rushworth in 1999’s Mansfield Park
November 18
November 25
Rand Wheatly, reclusive would-be timber baron, shelters a woman on the run. Now she’s gone again. Can he save her and himself as well?
John Fletcher
Nicholas Breton
According to 
Morris was previously a London merchant with an aristocratic clientele. He took advantage of the demand for “Russian mode” cigarettes initiated by British soldiers returning from the Crimean War to Victorian London. Morris hired on a group of expert “rollers” imported from Russia, Turkey, and Egypt. These workers turned out expensive brands: Philip Morris Cambridge, Oxford Blues, and Ovals, and they were snapped up the populace. These workers were some of the best in London, and they could turn out some 3000 cigarettes in a typical 10-hours’ day. 
American stockholders bought the firm in 1919, and the image created by Philip Morris in that first shop on Bond Street was a major sale point. The company grew in the competitive tobacco industry. 
Happy October Birthday to some of our favorite actors, who took on roles in an Austen-inspired film. 
October 3 – Lena Headey
October 4 – Alicia Silverstone
October 27 – Joanna Scanlan
October 28 – Matt Smith
October 29 – Paul Daneman
To this gifting tradition, we might add the legend of St. Nicholas, the bishop of Myra (beginning in the 4th Century). The St. Nicholas legend says the the priest bestowed gifts upon the poor throughout Asia Minor. The images of “Santa Claus” and of “Christmas stockings” can be traced to St. Nicholas’s life’s work. The anniversary of St. Nicholas’s death (December 6) was often marked during the Middle Ages with the bestowing of gifts on children.
On December 25, 1067, William the Conqueror donated a large sum of money to the Pope. This act planted the seed for change in Eastern Europe and later England and America. In Germany, many chose to give gifts to friends and neighbors anonymously. The Dutch did something similar, but they made it into a “treasure hunt” with written clues to where the gifts were located. The Danes were the first to wrap presents. They would put a small box into a larger one and then another one, etc., etc.
“Robert Southwell was born around 1561 at Horsham St. Faith, Norfolk, the youngest son and fifth child in a family of eight. The Southwells, a county family that had prospered from the dissolution of the monasteries, formed part of a network of wealthy, interrelated families that included the Wriothsleys, Howards, Bacons, and Cecils as well as recusants such as Vaux, Arden, and Copley. Southwell was a studious boy whose father liked to call him ‘Father Robert.’ In 1576 Southwell, like many other boys of his class, was sent overseas to be educated in the Jesuit school at Douai. He would not see England again for ten years. Between the ages of fifteen and seventeen he became convinced of his vocation to a religious life, and in 1578 he was admitted to the noviceship at Rome, where he embarked upon his formation as a Jesuit. In 1581 he transferred from the Roman to the English College, where he became tutor and perfect of studies. He was ordained in 1584 and was sent on the English mission in 1586, landing secretly with his fellow Jesuit Henry Garnet somewhere between Dover and Folkestone in early July. He was about twenty-five years old. 
“His earliest works, dating from his Roman years, are Latin poems preserved at Stonyhurst. Brian Oxley has shown that these youthful poems share the mature Southwell’s habits of thought as well as the verbal artistry found in his English work: “Southwell’s sense of the artifice of holy things, and indeed, of the holiness of artifice, is central to his life and work.” The Latin poems are evidence of a strong, probably irresistible vocation as a writer and poet. 
