The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 3, Spring 2020 | Page 111

and Scroll 2 during the ‘45 uprising. William, Duke of Atholl, a Jacobite riding with the Prince’s army, sent a message to Charlotte, his cousin, requesting she prepare his home, Blair Castle, for the Prince’s arrival. 83 She planned dinner and dancing for Charles and his entourage. A few days later, she offered the same hospitality at her home at Lude. 84 Often overlooked, hospitality was an essential moral builder; women made significant contributions by providing a soft bed, exotic meals, and entertainment to weary, hungry men on the march. Lady Lude did not escape punishment for her part in the Jacobite rebellion. Government soldiers arrested her for treason near the end of January 1746 and imprisoned her at Blair Castle. 85 Many of the men and families she bullied into following the Prince turned evidence on her as a sort of payback. The Privy Council motioned to prosecute Lady Lude and her mother, Lady Nairne. 86 Lady Nairne’s efforts to make strong Jacobite matches for her children and grandchildren provided her with extensive contacts, which she used to plead for her daughter’s life. In this way, she wrote to her nephew, a Hanoverian supporter, James, Duke of Atholl, asking for leniency for Lady Lude, since she was “a weak, insignificant woman.” 87 Both women eluded indictment from the Hanoverian government. The tea table sisterhood showed support in a less flamboyant manner. Because parlors were not common in the mid-eighteenth-century, women gathered in their bedrooms to entertain or shared information around tea