The extraordinary Jacobite journal written on a deck of playing cards

Written on the eight of diamonds is the most extraordinary diary entry.

The pack of cards, which is almost 280 years old, belonged to Captain Felix O’Neil, an Irish Jacobite officer who fought at Culloden with a French regiment and who attended to Prince Charles Edward Stuart in his subsequent escape from Scotland.

The officer used the deck to record key events of the 1745 rising, with his full journal beginning on the night before Culloden and ending with preparations for the Prince’s flight from Scotland after meeting Flora MacDonald.

The playing card journal has recently been named as one of ‘20 Treasures’ by the Scotland Council on Archives after it was nominated by the National Library of Scotland, which has held the diary since the early 1970s.

On the eight of diamonds, O’Neil wrote of events around April 26, 1746, when the Prince arrived at Knoydart after waiting at Fort Augustus to meet his defeated troops. No one turned up, according to the full account.

The entry on the playing card said: “I joined him the next day and gave him an account of the little appearance there was of assembling his troops. Upon which he wrote circular letters to all the Chieftains.”

The eight of diamonds is one of six cards making up the journal. The ten of diamonds appears on the front cover, with the ace of hearts on the back.

In announcing its 20 Treasures, the Scottish Council on Archives said: “The playing card journal has itself become part of the myth and legend of the Jacobite rebellion – a document possibly written in haste and secrecy using what meagre resources were to hand to record a poignant moment in the nation’s history.”

A page from the journal of the Jacobite officer, written on the eight of diamonds. PIC: National Library of Scotland.

It is known O’Neil wrote a fuller diary, with several copies available in 1747. A version then appeared in the Lyon in Mourning, the collection of Jacobite papers collected by the Reverend Robert Forbes, Bishop of Ross and Caithness.

In the Lyon in Mourning, the captain’s diary begins on April 15, 1746, the night before Culloden, when Jacobites marched to Nairn to surprise the Duke of Cumberland's troops and “lit several fires in the mountains”.

In the full account, he wrote of leaving the mainland with the Prince and a captain in an open fishing rock before wrecking off North Uist in a storm.

He said: “With the greatest difficulty we saved our lives. At our landing we were in the most melancholy of situations, knowing nobody and wanting the common necessities of life.”

After weeks on the run, which included a 22-day stay in the mountains of South Uist, the captain writes of meeting in “good fortune” MacDonald, who he previously knew.

O’Neil was captured in mid-July, with a separate account claiming he was stripped naked and threatened with a racking machine if he didn’t disclose the whereabouts of the prince. He was taken to Edinburgh Castle where he remained until February 1747, when he was returned to France in a prisoner exchange.

A spokesperson for the National Library of Scotland said: “Presumably O’Neil wanted to record the events while they were fresh in his mind, so he supposedly composed his account of the rebellion, along with an account of Culloden, on the front and back of the playing cards.”