Bonnie Prince Charlie Bookmark

A good few years ago a friend of ours came across a rather tattered, leather bound book containing 163 pages of closely written manuscript entitled 'Poems on Several Subjects' by a Thomas Smith of London and dated 1746.
What was  even more intriguing than the book itself was a long narrow scrap of paper sandwiched between its pages with the following written in spidery writing:
"From our own Bonnie Prince Charlie, Ford 1745. to be kept in the family for ever and aye. God bless him"
Underneath that was a lock of brown hair carefully sewn onto a felt purple heart which was then pinned to the narrow 'bookmark'.
The major poem in the book was a lengthy tirade against Bonnie Prince Charlie and the 'traitors' who rose up with him against the English . . . but what was that very personal remembrance of the Prince doing in such a book? Perhaps the loquacious  Mr Smith was a closet Jacobite?

As an evocative reminder of those Jacobite times we've reproduced that ancient 'bookmark' and now offer it to you in laminated form.