Archibald Cameron of Locheil

Archibald Cameron of Lochiel (1707–7 June 1753) was a doctor and prominent leader in the Jacobite uprising of 1745. On 7 June 1753, at Tower Hill, he was the last Jacobite to be executed for high treason.

Archibald Cameron was born in 1707, the sixth child (and third surviving son) of John Cameron, the 18th Lochiel by his wife Isabel née Campbell.

Cameron's father ("The Lochiel") had participated in the failed 1715 Jacobite Rebellion and, as a result, became an exile, living first in Paris and then Boulogne and not returning to Scotland until November 1745. Cameron's elder brother was Donald Cameron of Lochiel (the Clan Cameron chief in the absence of their father), known in Jacobite history as "The Gentle Lochiel".

Cameron initially attended Glasgow University to read law, before studying medicine instead at Edinburgh University; he completed further studies at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Leiden in Holland. He subsequently returned to the Scottish Highlands, married his Lochaber cousin, Jean Cameron, and fathered seven children.

When Charles Edward Stuart ("Bonnie Prince Charlie") first arrived in Scotland, Cameron was despatched by his brother to Loch nan Uamh to communicate the futility of the enterprise and persuade the Prince to return to France. However, Prince Charles persuaded him otherwise and soon the Camerons joined him in armed revolt. In late August 1745, Archibald Cameron first saw action, helping to lead a fairly futile attack on Ruthven Barracks. In the campaign that followed, Cameron seems to have been promoted to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in his brother's clan regiment. (although the Newgate Calendar's hagiography portrays him as being a pacificist by nature, refusing to offer more than his surgical skills in the cause - this is likely to be an exaggeration since Cameron was slightly wounded in action at the Battle of Falkirk in January 1746; subsequently he is recorded as having administered surgery on his brother after he was seriously wounded at the Battle of Culloden (suffering two broken ankles and other injuries). Defeat at that battle ended the Jacobite hopes and both brothers and their father became fugitives running from the English Redcoats.

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