It is against the professional backdrop that Francis Brodie and Cicel Grant decided to forge a life together.  The couple had probably been acquainted with each other for a number of years before they married, as they were second cousins.   Both Francis and Cicel’s fathers were successful attorneys and would have wished their children to marry someone that would meet or exceed their own accomplishments. From the Grant family perspective, Francis was quite the catch. The young suitor had built a successful wright business and had studies architecture under William Adam. From the Brodie perspective, Francis was marrying into a landed family with the added benefit of Cicel’s father being a member of the Merchant’s Guild. The business connections Cicel’s father brought to the Francis would only enhance his business interests and therefore the comfort of his daughter.

The marriage also strengthened the bonds between the Grant and Brodie families. A long and proud lineage, the Brodies claim their origins are rooted as far back at the Picts. The majority of Clan Brodie records were burned when Brodie Castle was burned by Clan Gordon in 1645. What we do know of the Brodie Clan before that date are through scant land records and legends. We do know that Robert the Bruce gave a charter confirming Brodie lands Morayshire and Nairnshire.  Part of those lands appear to have been holdings of the Knights Templar that were given to the Brodies after the order was suppressed in 1307.  There’s even a Clan Brodie legend that places events in Shakespeare’s Macbeth on Brodie lands. The “blasted heath,” where Macbeth and Banquo first met the three witches, is supposedly not far from Brodie Castle.

On paper the match between Francis and Cicel seemed to be destine for a long and happy union when the couple married in 1740. Like most of the faithful in those days, the marriage was recorded in Francis and Cicel’s brand new family Bible.

Edinburgh, the 20th October 1740, We the above Francis Brodie and Cicel Grant was maried in Her Father's house by the Reverend Mr. Wallace, Minister in Edg. before these witnesses, viz., our two fathers, John, Joseph, and Hellen Brodie's my Brother's and Sister, Ludovick Allexander, and Jean Grant's her Brother's and Sister, and John Grant, Writer to the Signet, my Uncle and her Cousin.

Like clockwork, our newlyweds’ first child William came along in the first year of their marriage. The note of William’s birth were literally cut out in the Brodie family Bible after William’s fall from grace. The only surviving record of William’s birth comes from the Edinburgh city birth registry that read:

Monday, 28th September, 1741. To Francis Brodie, wright, burgress, and Cicel Grant, his spouse, a son named William. Witnesses—William Grant, writer in Edinburgh, and Ludovick Brodie, Writer to the Signet. Born the same day.

No matter what the future Francis and Cicel had dreamed of at William’s birth, it likely didn’t match the reality that was to come. Financially speaking the Brodies wanted for nothing. Francis’ business was flush and he added a number of properties to his family’s portfolio. Tenants in buildings off the Horse Wynd, near World’s End Close, and a stone’s throw from Parliament would all pay their rent to Francis Brodie.  The Brodie’s bounty would end in the financial realm. Growing their family would be the insurmountable problem facing the couple. Cicel would bear eleven children for Francis. Only four of these children would survive into adulthood—William, his brother Francis, and sisters Jean and Jacobina. Jean and Jacobina’s stories will appear later in this text, but no records exist for what became of brother Francis. The accounts of the children’s deaths are in the timeline to this text and are a grim reminder of the fragility of life in the 18th century. As horrible as it must be to lose a child in his/her infancy, two of William’s sisters died in their teenage years. Margret succumbed to “linguring illness” at the age of nineteen in 1776 and her sister Cicel passed of the same mystery illness at the age of fourteen in 1768.  The family Bible accounts indicate that both girls were in poor health the majority of their lives and would have needed some level of care from the entire family.

Imagine living in that house of constant sorrows. It would be difficult for these factors not to have effected William’s development. While we have no records of what William was like as a child, we can piece together a likely scenario of his childhood. Throughout the majority of William’s formative years, his mother was either pregnant or grieving the loss of another child. William’s mother Cicel was likely intensely overprotective of her firstborn child. If one combines the usual first time mother trepidation, the constant fear that she might lose yet another child, and the pressure preserve Francis’ heir apparent all the factors are present for William’s every move being scrutinized by his mother. Every cough and skint knee of William’s could have been a major crisis for Cicel. A young William would have no concept of why his mother constantly kept an eye on him or why her reactions might have bordered on the extreme. For a child growing up in these conditions, privacy would be at a premium and obfuscating anything that might give his mother cause to worry would have been high on a child’s list of priorities. Equally as likely was that Cicel paid little attention to young William in favor of caring for newborns. In either case, a youthful Deacon Brodie is likely to have had some psychological issues associated with growing up that manifested later in life.

This scenario would have been exacerbated if Cicel was prone to mood swings. Many pregnant women are sensitive to pre and postpartum hormonal changes that can effect one’s behavior. If Cicel was given to such reactions to hormonal changes on top of any depression for her lost children, her living children might have felt the need to “take care” of their mother. The Brodie children might have gone to great lengths to please their mother feeling that by doing so they would somehow mitigate their mother’s blue times. William may have even become part of a codependent cycle with his mother.

Like many aspects of William Brodie’s tale, we only have scraps of information to posit why William Brodie felt the need to carry on a double life. One piece of evidence somewhat supports at least some of the aforementioned theory. Cicel Brodie died on 22 September 1777, just six days shy of William’s thirty-fifth birthday. Upon Cicel’s death, Francis Brodie wrote this about her in the family Bible:

She was a Chaste and dutifull Wife, and besides a great many good Qualities, she was equalled by few in the prudent and skillfull management of Her House and Family, was Religious without ostentation, Charitable and good to all, and is buried in the above place (two double paces west of the narrow road opposite to Harleys Tomb) where a great number of my and her Relations lyes interred : and there is no doubt she now enjoys Celestial happiness

It would seem that Brodie salved the loss of his mother by taking on two mistresses, Anne Grant and Jean Watt. As far as polite Edinburgh society was concerned, Brodie never married, nor did family or friends know of Brodie’s dalliances. Brodie kept up his streak of secrecy by hiding the existence of Grant and Watt from each other as well. Of his two mistresses, it appears that Brodie’s relationship with Grant was the longest standing and most meaningful to Brodie. While both women would bear five children between them for Brodie, Anne Grant would have the honor of bearing Brodie’s firstborn—a daughter named Cecill.  The fact that William named his first daughter after his mother indicates that William held a fondness for his mother. The alternate spelling of the name may indicate William had hoped that his daughter would take his mother’s best attributes and discard all of her flaws.

Perhaps more telling of William and Anne Grant’s relationship are the names of their two other children—William and Jean. William Brodie obviously felt connected enough with Anne to have named his first son with her after himself and the second daughter after his sister Jean.  Watt’s children were named Frank and a second son whose name we do not know. One of the few references we have for Brodie speaking of his relationship and children is a letter he wrote after fleeing Edinburgh. In a letter written to an unknown recipient Brodie is neither favorable to Jean Watt, nor her children.

What has become of Jean Watt? She is a devil and a whore.  I can form no opinion of Frank or his young brother; but pray write me how they are disposed of.

The “by-the-way let me know how the kids are doing” tone of Brodie’s interrogatory shows the deference that we might expect out of a man who keeps two illicit households. Conversely in the same letter, William shows concern for his children with Grant.

Pray write me what is become of Anne Grant, and how is her children disposed of. Cecill is a sensible, clever girl, considering the little opportunity she has had of improving. My dear little Willie will be, if I can judge, a brave and hardy boy. Jean is her mother's picture, and too young to form any opinion of.

In other letters during Brodie’s time on the run he urges his brother-in-law to make arraignments for Grant’s children to ease their mother’s burden at raising the children in Brodie’s absence. It’s fairly obvious that Brodie considered his relationship with Anne Grant as something of a surrogate “wife” while Jean Watt filled the role of mistress in this dysfunctional play.

In digging further into Brodie’s relationships, the birth of William’s first daughter, Cecill, also gives us some more insight into William’s psyche. Creech’s account of William Brodie’s trial and execution mentions that the Friday before William was hung, Cecill came to visit her father in the Tolbooth. Creech describes Cecill as “a fine girl of about ten years of age.”  If Cecill were nine or ten years old, this would mean that she was conceived sometime after the death of Brodie’s mother in 1777. Could this mean that the trigger point for William’s dual lifestyle was the death of his mother? Without the watchful eye of a doting mother and free of his obligations to care for her, a thirty-five-year-old William was now left up to his own devices. William would find many distractions in the vices of Edinburgh’s Closes as a way to repress the grief felt for his departed mother.

William gives us a clue that he felt this way in an unaddressed letter found in his belongings at the time of his capture. These statements were written at the foot of a page of text and appear to be a wistful afterthought to the main body of the letter. William writes, “I often went in a retregard. I have been all my life in a reteregard motion.”  Throughout William’s letters it becomes apparent that he wouldn’t have come home with any spelling bee trophies, so the word William uses as “reteregard” is likely a misspelling for “retrograde.” William’s sentiment here indicates that his life has been somewhat backward. The previous statement would make perfect sense if William were thrust into roles of responsibility at an early age and later in life he was able to display the wild abandon his youth had never afforded him. If the care of a constantly grief-stricken mother were not responsibility enough, certainly William would have felt pressures from his father, Francis.

By all contemporary accounts, Francis Brodie had built a thriving wright’s business in Edinburgh, and no doubt wanted to pass that legacy along to his eldest son. The younger Brodie wasn’t that interested in becoming a wright and would have rather been sent to sea with the British Navy, but that dream would never be realized.  The Leith docks are a few miles from Brodies Close and a boy enamored of the sea would have gone to watch the ships every chance he could. Francis Brodie certainly possessed the political connections and funds to secure William a birth as a midshipman. To have been a successful British naval officer, William would have had to have been sent to sea by the age of ten at the very latest. It’s doubtful that Cicel would have allowed her wee bairn into the world at such a tender age. William would later lament to a fellow prisoner in the Tolbooth that it was his lack of physical strength to become a sailor.  The statement has the ring of a mother wishing her son to stay at home and a father who needed to pass his business along to his eldest son. One can almost hear the litany of brush offs from Francis and Cicel when William brought up the topic of the sea.