Nearly 280 years ago, according to legend, an assassin attempted to kill Prince Charlie (full name Bonnie Prince Charlie), who led the failed Scottish uprising against the English crown in 1745. The discovery of a musket ball hole piercing the wall of a bedroom inside a historic site in Scotland provides concrete evidence that the assassination attempt actually occurred.
Painting of Prince Charlie by Louis Gabriel Blanchet (1738). (Photo: Robert Alexander).
This latest discovery was made by volunteers involved in the conservation work at Bannockburn House, a historic residence located between Glasgow and Edinburgh, where Prince Charlie once stayed. They were informed by a relative of an old butler about a secret panel beneath the “intricate plaster” depicting an image of a mermaid. From this account, the volunteers found a hole, seemingly a remnant of an assassination attempt on Bonnie Prince Charlie.
Close-up of the bullet hole through one of the walls inside the house during the 1745 uprising. (Photo: Mark Ferguson)
The failed assassination occurred during the Jacobite uprising of 1745 (also known as the Jacobite Rebellion), in which Prince Charlie (officially Charles Edward Stuart) fought to reclaim the throne of his Catholic grandfather, who had been deposed by his Protestant son-in-law during the Glorious Revolution of 1688. However, the uprising failed, and Stuart subsequently fled to France.
According to oral traditions surrounding this incident, it is said that an unnamed assassin shot a bullet through the bedroom window [on the ground floor], narrowly missing the sleeping Bonnie Prince Charlie, with the bullet lodging into the wall above his head.