Lady Grange (1679–1745) was the wife of James Erskine, Lord Grange, a Scottish lawyer with Jacobite sympathies. After 25 years of marriage and nine children, the Granges separated acrimoniously. When Lady Grange produced letters that she claimed were evidence of his treasonable plottings against the Hanoverian government in London, her husband had her kidnapped from her home in Edinburgh on the night of 22 January 1732. She was incarcerated in various remote locations on the western seaboard of Scotland, including the Monach Isles, Skye and the distant islands of St Kilda. Lady Grange's father was convicted of murder when she was about 10 years old and she is known to have had a violent temper; initially her absence seems to have caused little comment. No action was ever taken on her behalf by any of her children, the eldest of whom would have been in their early twenties when she was abducted. News of her plight eventually reached Edinburgh however, and an unsuccessful rescue attempt was undertaken by her lawyer, Thomas Hope of Rankeillor. She died in captivity, after being effectively imprisoned for 13 years. Her life has been remembered in poetry, prose and a play. (Full article...)
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