WHEN Bonnie Prince Charlie went on the run after being defeated at Culloden, he took very few possessions with him.
After hiding in the heather to escape the aftermath of the battle, the Prince was helped over the sea to Skye by Flora MacDonald who was rewarded for her efforts by being given one of his few treasured possessions – a cutlery set.
The knife, fork and spoon then enjoyed a colourful history, but the collection now appears to have gone missing.
Fraser Campbell, managing director of the company that runs the Royal Overseas League at 100 Princes Street in Edinburgh, is leading the search for the historic cutlery as he wants to put them on display at the club, which has connections to the collection.
The cutlery had been with Bonnie Prince Charlie when he led the ill-fated Jacobite Rising of 1745/46 but, after the defeat and his escape to Skye, it appears he gave them to Flora MacDonald.
She was subsequently imprisoned for her part in the Prince's escape, but was released under general amnesty in 1747.
All the evidence suggests she gave the set to the family she went to stay with in London on her release, but eventually it turned up in 100 Princes Street courtesy of Jacobite supporter Lady Mary Clerk of Penicuik, who lived at 100 Princes Street.
Later, according to Chambers' Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities, published in 1869, the cutlery set was presented to George IV on his visit to Edinburgh in 1822.
The King had been fascinated by the Prince's story and had "expressed a wish to possess some relic of the 'unfortunate Chevalier', as he called him".
So Lady Penicuik got her friend Sir Walter Scott to present the cutlery to him "... which the King received with marked gratification". However, it is then the trail goes cold.
Mr Campbell said: "We took over the Royal Overseas League in 100 Princes Street, a year past April. It is a stunning building.
"We started doing a bit of research into who lived there and we came up with the fascinating character of Lady Penicuik who used to entertain Sir Walter Scott at the address.
"Somewhere along the line she was given a canteen of cutlery, which had been used by the Prince himself.
"We now have a historian working on it. He thought it could have been joined up with a canteen of cutlery in the National Museum of Scotland, but I have since looked at it and it doesn't look anything like the one we are after.
"It does seem a sad state of affairs that it was given to a king, but nobody knows where it is now."
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