during which time Carolina's parents were married at Versailles, in 1755. The government eventually allowed the family's kinsmen to buy back part of the Gask estate, and the couple returned to Scotland two years before Carolina's birth. Her parents were cousins, both grandchildren of Lord Nairne, who had commanded the second line of the Jacobite army at the Battle of Prestonpans in 1745. Although he was sentenced to death the following year, he managed to escape to France, where he remained in exile until his death in 1770. The upbringing of Carolina and her siblings reflected their father's Jacobite allegiance, and their everyday lives were filled with reminders that he considered the Stewarts to be the rightful heirs to the throne. A governess was employed to ensure that the girls had a 'full education including music and art', and that they did not speak in a broad Scots dialect, as their father considered it unladylike. General tuition was provided by a local minister – the children's prayer books had the Hanoverian sovereign's names obscured by those of the Stewarts – and music and dance teachers were also engaged. Delicate as a child, Carolina gradually developed into a genteel young woman, much admired by fashionable families; she was well educated, able to paint and an accomplished musician familiar with traditional songs. As a teenager, Carolina was betrothed to William Murray Nairne, another of Lord Nairne's grandchildren, who became the 5th Lord Nairne in 1824. Born in Ireland to a Jacobite family from Perthshire whose lands had also been forfeited, he regularly visited Gask. It was only after he was promoted to the position of assistant inspector-general at a Scottish barracks that the pair were married on 2 June 1806. The couple settled in Edinburgh, where their only son, also named William Murray Nairne (1808–1837), was born two years later. He was a sickly child and, following her husband's death in 1830, Lady Nairne lived with her son in Ireland and on the continent. The change in climate was not as beneficial to his health as had been hoped; he died in Brussels in December 1837. Nairne returned to Gask in 1843, but following a stroke her health deteriorated; she died on 26 October 1845 and was buried in the family chapel. Songwriting Nairne began writing songs shortly after her father's death in 1792. She was a contemporary of the best-known Scottish