William Maxwell, Earl of Nithsdale, had been sentenced to death for his role in the 1715 Jacobite rising. His wife Winifred travelled from Scotland, bribed her way into the Tower, and dressed him in borrowed women's clothes and rouge, walking him past guards as a visiting servant. He escaped to France and lived out his life in Rome, while she became a Jacobite legend.
The plan was audacious in its simplicity. Winifred Maxwell arranged for several women to visit her husband's cell in succession, each wearing extra layers of clothing, so that guards grew accustomed to a bustle of skirts coming and going. On the final visit, one of the women left behind a set of clothes, rouge, and a wig. William Maxwell, disguised as 'Mrs. Betty', walked out arm in arm with his wife's companion, weeping theatrically into a handkerchief to hide his face and beard.
Winifred herself stayed behind briefly, speaking aloud to an empty room as if in conversation with her husband, to fool the guard outside the door before slipping out herself. The escape worked. William reached the Venetian ambassador's residence, then fled to the Continent, eventually settling in Rome under the protection of the exiled Stuart court.
The story became one of the most celebrated escape tales of the Jacobite era, retold in ballads and later by Walter Scott. Winifred's own account, written years later for her children, remains a vivid firsthand record of eighteenth-century prison security — and of how easily it could be undone by a determined wife and a change of clothes.