Kidnapped: Rachel Chiesely's abduction after she threatened to expose her husband as a Jacobite saw her hidden on St Kilda – Susan Morrison

Rachel Chiesely’s life as a member of the comfortable class was over. No more fashionable clothes, good food and cosy lodgings at Niddrys Wynd just off Edinburgh’s High Street. She never saw Edinburgh, or her children, again. She was dragged from Highland hidey holes to lonely desolate farms, and finally ended up on the island of St Kilda. There was no hope of help from her husband, or of him coughing up a ransom. For one thing, the marriage had soured, spectacularly.

It hadn’t always been bad. Young Rachel was regarded as something of a ‘wild beauty’, and there were at least nine children. By the night of the kidnap, however, Lord and Lady Grange were most definitely de-coupled. Rachel wasn’t even living at home, but in a suite of rooms next door. And there was another salient reason why no help could be expected. James Erskine himself was the kidnap gang’s paymaster.

Why Lord Grange took such desperate action to hide his wife is still a matter of debate. It was a dangerous move for a man of some repute like James. He was a successful lawyer and tipped to go far. But there were whispers of a secret life.

There were his infidelities for a start. Rumours of James playing around got back to Lady Grange, a woman known to have a temper so explosive even her children feared her. When Rachel discovered that James really was being unfaithful, she blew. She threatened to expose the other secret in the life of Lord Grange. One weapon was a letter belonging to James, which she said proved him complicit in that most heinous crime, treason.

James had reason to be afraid. Despite his solid career in the law, there were sneaking suspicions that he might harbour Jacobite sympathies, and this at a time when the fear of a Stuart rising was very real. After all, they had tried it in the past and the Young Pretender was sabre-rattling in France. There were those in Scotland plotting his return.

James did have dealings with Jacobites. He was on good terms with many. And some helped kidnap his wife. But he was a pragmatist and doing very well in Hanoverian Scotland. Proof of a dalliance with followers of the Stuarts could put a stop to all of that. His angry wife had to be silenced. His Jacobite friends probably thought so, too. His Presbyterian conscience probably wouldn’t have permitted out-and-out murder, so kidnap and exile were his best options.

Astonishingly, in the years following the snatch-and-grab raid, few people seem to have been that bothered about Rachel Chiesely. Not even her children. There was a story put about of her death, but James wasn’t questioned that closely. It’s almost as though they were glad to see the back of her.

Polite society of the time didn’t much care for wild, angry and outspoken women. And Rachel had another reason to be side-eyed by Edinburgh’s great and good. Her father had been executed for murder.

Rachel herself was the child of a deeply unhappy marriage. Her mother, Margaret Nicholson, had taken her father, John Chiesley, to court. They were to separate and Margaret wanted money to bring up the children. The judge, Sir George Lockhart of Carnwath, was sympathetic and awarded Margaret 1,700 merks.

John Chiesley went ballistic. Seems to have been a family trait. He told Sir George he would kill him, but the prevailing attitude seems to have been a bit of a shrug. You get the feeling John Chiesley was known for his temper. After the Easter Sunday service on March 31, 1689, at St Giles, Sir George left the cathedral and started towards his home on Old Bank Close. John Chiesley had also been in the congregation and fell in behind Sir George.

Right outside the judge's home, John Chiesley raised his pistol and fired into Sir George’s back. Lady Lockhart heard the shot from inside and rushed to the window. Sir George died instantly. John Chiesely was apprehended on the spot. He wasn’t particularly penitent, announcing “I am not wont to do things by halves, and now I have taught the president how to do justice.”

They tortured him to find out if he had any co-conspirators, and then moved on to the remarkably speedy trial. Well, he had literally been caught holding a smoking gun. Guilty was the only verdict possible and death the only sentence considered. Sir George Lockhart had been a popular man, and the execution was a statement of anger. John Chiesley was dragged on a hurdle to the Mercat Cross. The hand that lifted the gun was hacked off whilst he was alive. Then he was hanged, the pistol on a rope around his neck. The corpse dangled in chains from a gibbet between Leith and Edinburgh.

They had a reputation, those Chiesleys. Rachel managed to get letters off St Kilda in 1738, but they took two long years to reach her lawyers, who mounted a rescue attempt. It was too late. By 1741, she’d been moved again to Skye. In 1745, the year Charles Edward Stuart really did turn up to try to get his throne back, she had died. Perhaps Rachel really did know something dangerous after all. If she did, she paid a terrible price for it.