Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mackintosh, William
MACKINTOSH, WILLIAM (1662–1743), of Borlum, Inverness-shire, brigadier in the Pretender's service, eldest of the five sons of William Mackintosh, laird of Borlum, and his wife Mary, daughter of Duncan Baillie, was born in 1662. The Mackintoshes of Borlum were descended from Lachlan Mor, sixteenth chief of Mackintosh, who married Agnes Mackenzie of Kintail. They appear at one time to have been wealthy, as in the valuation-roll of the sheriffdom of Inverness-shire in 1644 the lands of Borlum, in Dores parish, are set down at 666l. 13s. 4d. Scots, and those of Benchar and Raits (now Belleville House), also held by the family, in Kingussie parish, at 500l. Scots, considerable sums in those days. William the younger of Borlum was entered at King's College, Aberdeen, at the are of ten (Fasti Aberdon. p. 491). In the degree-book for 1677 his name stands first (ib. p. 528). It has been suggested that he studied at Oxford, but he did not matriculate, and his name is not in Foster's 'Alumni Oxonienses.' According to his own statement (Essay on Improving Lands, &c.), he was intimately acquainted with the Hon. Robert Boyle [q. v.], while the latter was living near Oxford, and he married into the old Oxfordshire family of Reade of Ipsden House. He is also stated to have been in the military service of James II before the revolution, and to have acquired distinction in the French army. His name does not appear in King James's 'Army Lists' after the revolution. Probably he returned from the continent about the close of the seventeenth century, as in 1698 he is named in a commission of ire and sword granted to the chief of Mackintosh against the Macdonalds of Keppoch (Reg. Sec. Condi. Acta, 22 Feb. 1698), and also as a commissioner of supply for Inverness-shire. He was then residing at Raits (see Ordnance Gaz. of Scotland, under 'Alvie'), and set the example of planting. The 'Statistical Account of Scotland' mentions a fine row of elms planted by him along the old military road at Kingussie. In 1714 he took a very active and prominent part in the Jacobite rising that followed the accession of George I. A letter, dated 24 Sept. 1714, preserved among the Duke of Montrose's papers, states that 'Mr. William Mackintosh of Borlum, who is come in March from Bar-le-Duc (the residence of the Pretender), is traversing the country from east to west, and hath persuaded the laird of Mackintosh [Lachlan Mackintosh, d. 1731] to join the Pretender's cause.' On 6 Sept. 1715 the Earl of Mar [see Erskine, John, sixth or eleventh Earl of Mar] raised the Pretender's standard in Braemar. On 13 Sept. the Mackintosh, supported by his kinsman of Borlum, 'conveened his men, as was given out, to review them, but in the evening he marched streight to Inverness, where he came by sunrising with colours flying, and after he had made himself master of what arms and ammunition he could find, and some little money that belonged to the publick, proceeded to proclaim the Pretender king' (Lord Lovat's account, given at the end of Patten's Hist, of the Rebellion). The chief of Mackintosh and his kinsman 'Borlum,' as he was called, although his father, the laird, was still alive, joined Mar on 6 Oct. 1715 at Perth. The Mackintoshes, seven hundred strong, were formed into a regiment of thirteen companies. Patten (ib. ed. 1717) gives the names of the thirty-two officers, twenty-seven of whom were from the Clan Chattan (Mackintosh). Mackintosh the younger of Borlum was made a brigadier-general, and was despatched with six regiments to assist the Jacobites on the border and in the north of England. Hastening from Perth to the lowlands, 'Borlum' evaded the king's troops sent to intercept them, crossed the Firth of Forth with a large following in open boats, and seized Leith. Thence, carrying everything before him, he marched onwards to the border, to join the rebel forces in Northumberland, under General Forster [see Forster, Thomas, 1675-1738]. The united forces marched into Lancashire, but the enterprise collapsed in a surrender at discretion to the king s forces under General Carpenter [see Carpenter, George, Lord Carpenter] at Preston, 16 Nov. 1715. Lord Derwentwater and Mackintosh were given up as hostages. Mackintosh at first refused to answer for the highlanders, saying they were men of desperate fortunes, and adding, 'I am an old soldier myself, and know well what a surrender at discretion means;' but as Carpenter threatened to treat all alike as rebels, he gave way. Mackintosh, one of his sons, and other prisoners, were sent to London, and were confined in Newgate. Mackintosh and General Forster, who was a fellow-prisoner, are said to have often quarrelled about the military conduct of the expedition, and their angry discussions afforded amusement to the frequenters of the corridors and common-room of the prison, to which the public were admitted. On 4 May 1716, 'Borlum,' his son, and several of their fellow-prisoners attacked the turnkeys and sentinels and made their escape, the two Mackintoshes getting away to France. A handbill issued by the corporation of London, offering 200l. for his recapture, to which the government added a further reward of 1,000l., describes him as 'a tall, raw-boned man, about sixty, fair-complexioned, beetle-browed, grey-eyed, speaking with a broad. Scotch accent.' (A copy of the handbill is in the British Museum.) Mackintosh, who is stated on doubtful authority to have returned to Scotland after his father's death, in the same year, was implicated in the abortive attempt at a rising in 1719, and was afterwards a fugitive. Captured in the wilds of Caithness, he was sent as a state prisoner to Edinburgh Castle, where he ended his days, 7 Jan. 1748, at the age of eighty. The period of his incaceration is variously stated at from fifteen to twenty-five years.
Mackintosh marriea Mary, daughter by his second wife of Edward Keade of Ipsden House, Oxfordshire, and maid of honour to Mary of Modena [q. v.], by whom he had two sons, Lachlan and Shaw, and three daughters. Shaw afterwards sold the feu-rights of Borlum.
While a prisoner at Edinburgh, Mackintosh wrote 'An Essay on Ways and Means of Enclosing, Fallowing, and Planting Lands in Scotland, and that in sixteen years at farthest,' which was printed in Edinburgh in 1729. In it he discusses the formation of schools of agriculture, which he says was suggested by Robert Boyle. He also published 'An Essay on the Husbandry of Scotland,' 1732 (cf. Donaldsow, Agricultural Biog.) By some writers Mackintosh is represented as a rough-handed soldier of the Dalyell of Binns type, but by others as a polite and cultivated gentleman. The Master of Sinclair, in what Burton styles his 'Malignant Memoirs,' and other writers disparage
his military pretensions and gird at his poverty ; but nis sagacity, foresight, and enterprise certainly indicate fitness for command. Robert Chambers relates that in his childhood at Peebles, in the first years of the present century, one of the rough pastimes of the school-children was to natter with stones a much-defaced effigy, called 'Borlum,' which was built into the walls of a ruined church in the neighbourhood. His name thus survived as a popular bugbear.[Memoir of Mackintosh of Borlum in Celtic Mag. 1877 ; Hist. Memoirs of the House and Clan of Mackintosh by A. M. Shaw, 1880; Notes and Queries, 7th ser. ii. 80; Whalley's Hist. of the Old County Regiment of Lancashire Militia, pp. 9-27; Doran's London in Jacobite Times (in which 'Borlum' is wrongly called Borland); Chambers's Journal, 6 April 1878.]