by John Prebble
There was profit enough to be got from helping new friends, in the raid which Duncan Stewart, chief of Appin, made upon Glenorchy. Stewart was the third husband of Jean Campbell,* daughter of a laird of Glenorchy, and he discovered one day that the dowry that should have gone to her second husband had never been paid. Believing that this was arguably his by rotation, he set off to collect it in cattle. With him went some Glencoe men under MacDonald of Dalness, and according to the story told in the Dewar Manuscripts the boldest and bravest of these was Big Archibald MacPhail. The Laird of Glenorchy put his people and his cattle inside the castle of Kilchurn at the end of a marshy peninsula on Loch Awe. He mounted cannon on the walls and advised the Stewarts and the MacDonalds to go home. Duncan Stewart was ready to take this advice, but his men took hold of some calves that had been locked out of the castle, and held them over a fire. The cries of the animals were answered by the lowing of cows inside the walls. MacDonald of Dalness looked at the Glencoe men and said that were there a man among them to open the castle door now, they would all see some sport. Away went Big Archibald MacPhail, through an enfilade fire from cannon and matchlock. He broke down the gate, and when the maddened cows rushed out to their calves they were driven off to Appin. MacPhail's brother asked him why he had put himself in such danger, Dalness had not meant him more than any other man. ‘When he said the word,’ replied Big Archibald, ‘and was it not the same as if he had asked me to go? It were all the same to me to be dead as to refuse the gentleman.’
All clans that were neighbours to Glencoe knew that with the right opportunity to plunder, and upon the proper appeal that should be made by one Highland gentleman to another, MacIain would be quick to aid them in their quarrels. Glencoe men fought beside Camerons and Keppoch MacDonalds in their feuds with the Mackintoshes, and they helped the Macleans in their long defensive struggle against the Earls of Argyll. By the time Red Alasdair MacDonald, Twelfth MacIain of Glencoe, had reached middle age, all men outside the narrow perimeter of his friendship considered him a pestilence and a curse, despite the handsome curl of his French moustache and the fine French silver of his drinking-cup. Nowhere was this opinion stronger than in Inveraray, the only town in the Western Highlands, the stronghold of the Campbells and the seat of the Crown's authority. Here, power was manifest in a great black castle, and wealth was apparent in the merchant shipping on Loch Fyne. Here was a Tolbooth gaol, and a Court House in which the Earl of Argyll sat as Justiciar for the kingdom. Here was Gallows Hill where robbers, reivers and murderers were hanged after one arm had been torn from its socket and impaled on a pike. Here adulterers were whipped and witches were scourged by the Mercat Cross, drunkards were fined £10 Scots if they were gentlemen, and twenty shillings if they were not. Here were lodging-houses and inns, a school of sorts and places of worship. Inveraray was a sea-gate to France, Spain and the Low Countries, but no MacDonald of Glencoe would go there alone of his own free will.
When members of his clan were summoned to appear before the Court at Inveraray, MacIain ignored the call if he thought it safe to do so. When he obeyed it, on one occasion at least, he tried to outwit the Campbell justices. The Justiciary Records of Argyll show that in October 1673, Donald MacRankin from Achtriachtan stood before Justice Ayre, the Laird of Aberuchil, and the aweful figure of the ninth Earl of Argyll, charged with impersonating John Dow Beg MacDonald of Achnacone, his fellow clansman. John Dow was wanted in Inveraray for some unstated offence against the peace, but it would seem that being considered too valuable a man to MacIain he had been kept at home, and that Donald MacRankin, obviously of lesser worth, had been sent to take his place and punishment. The Earl and his justices, not having MacIain's elastic interpretation of individual responsibility, ordered that MacRankin ‘be scourged through the town by the hangman, and his tongue to be bored by a hot iron at the Mercat Cross on Wednesday next, the twenty-ninth instant, by ten hours in the forenoon, in example of others to commit the like’. In their absence, fines of 800 marks were imposed on old MacIain, John MacDonald the tacksman of Achtriachtan, and John MacAllan in Laroch, all three of whom, in the Court's opinion, were responsible for the impudent attempt to deceive.
It is probable, though impossible to prove now, that John Dow MacDonald of Achnacone was wanted for his part in a-bloody crime charged against Glencoe. Within six months, MacIain himself was a prisoner in Inveraray on this charge, shackled by Campbells and thrown into the Tolbooth. How he came there, whether he surrendered or was dragged from his glen by armed men, is not known, and all the information there is can be found in a letter from the Privy Council and a single sheet of undated paper in the archives of Inveraray Castle.
Toward the end of his lifetime one of the most damning accusations made against MacIain was that he slaughtered some of his own clansmen, from caprice or for rebellion. The evidence which may support the charge is that sheet of paper at Inveraray. It is written in the nervous, angular hand of the ninth Earl of Argyll, disjointed notes set down one spring morning, in the Court House, perhaps, or in a room of his castle as witnesses were brought before him:
John M'Donald son to John Dow M'Allan Roury was killed in the pursuit by Angus M'Donald cousin germane to M'Ean in the morning John M'Donald son to Alexander M'Donald brother to M'Alan Rory was taken out of the house after it was fired and killed after dinner in cold blood and stabbed and cut to pieces.
The principal murderers were: John M'Donald in Achaterachane… to M'Ean
Archibald M'D cousin germane to M'Ean
Alexander M'D another cousin germane
John M'D another cousin germane
Jo M'D brother to Achaterachane
Ar. M'Do of Achatriachtans family with some others besides common people about twenty
James Campbell of and his friends and several others saw
Robert M'Ewen the first man killed
Ar. M'd
John Campbell Alan Cameron
For such crimes laid against MacIain, his kinsmen and his people, he could have been hanged from the great tree on Gallows Hill, or sent to Edinburgh for more public but equally effective dispatch. Never before had a Glencoe chief been held by the Campbells, and it must have seemed to them that nothing could now save the impenitent old rogue from just punishment. But something did. In April, when the snowline was retreating up Bidean nam Bian, when the Coe was in spate and the valley was preparing for the Beltane Feast, MacIain the Twelfth was back in his house at Carnoch. Across the water on Skye Sir James MacDonald of Sleat, who was now held responsible for Glencoe's behaviour under the General Band, received an angry letter from Edinburgh:
It being represented to H.M. Privy Council that Alexander M'Donald in Polvig* in Glencoe being committed prisoner in the Tolbooth of Inveraray by order of the Earl of Argyle, as justitiar in these bounds, for certain crimes, he had broken prison and made his escape; and since he and John M'Donald in Auchtriatin, with diverse of their peoples, have committed several murders and depredations whereby the country in these parts is like to be casten loose and exposed to the rapine and violence of these persons; and the Council considering that by your bands you are obliged for the peaceable deportment of the foresaid persons and to present them before the Council when they should be called for, whereupon you might be summarily charged to produce them, yet the Council has thought fit only at this time to recommend to you as you would prevent further trouble to yourself, to concur with and assist such as shall be appointed by the Earl of Argyle to apprehend them, and that your care and diligence in this will be answerable to the obligation that lies on you is expected by the Council.
How MacIain, in his sixth decade, was able to break out of a stout prison in the heart of Campbell country remains an exasperating mystery, like too much of his people's story. There does not seem to have been any attempt to retake him by force from Glencoe. Despite the Privy Council's peremptory order, Sir James MacDonald did little, not liking, perhaps, the suggestion that he should deliver one of his own name to the
hangman. The Earl of Argyll was suddenly busy that summer with a more pressing matter, and one that needed all his wits and swordsmen: his open war with the Macleans of Duart, a savage affair of slaughter and plunder that was to last six years, cost both sides more than £250,000 Scots, and ended with much of Maclean land in the hands of the Campbells. For the next few years MacIain trod gently, though he did give the Macleans some help when asked. He stayed at home, like most MacDonalds, when the Highland Host went down to the Lowlands in 1678. This was no foray but an army of 4,500 clan levies from Atholl, Perth, Breadalbane and Moray, called up by the King's Ministers and quartered on the western shires of the Lowlands. It was hoped that their wild presence and arrogant readiness for war would persuade the Covenanting Presbyterians to accept Episcopacy with all its religious and civil obligations. It was as if several thousand Afghan hillmen were to be billeted in Sussex.
The use of Highlanders for this dragonnade was the decision of the Duke of Lauderdale, President of the Privy Council and the bullying dictator of Scotland. In his youth he had been a commissioner for the Solemn League and Covenant, whereby most Lowlanders declared their determination to extirpate Popery and Prelacy in the united kingdoms, but he was now a bitter opponent of its present adherents. He believed that their conventicles were armed camps, that their preachers were plotting rebellion. Since one of them told a congregation that ‘Kings, nobles and prelates are the murderers of Christ’, Lauderdale's fear was not entirely a nightmare. He gave the clans virtual freedom to do as they wished among the Whigs of the West, but though they looted at will, and frightened old women into a decline, they killed no one. The only fatality reported was one of the Host itself, a MacGregor from Breadalbane who was beaten to death by a mob on his way home. The Highlanders stole everything they could carry, and any stock they could drive, going back to the hills after a month laden like pedlars with pots, pans, girdles and fire-irons, clothing, furniture and furnishings. Physically unharmed, the Lowlanders watched them go with hateful derision, though they kept their smiles behind their hands until the clans were out of sight. A young student of St Andrews, William Cleland, wrote ‘A Mock Poem upon the Expedition of the Highland Host’ into which he put his countrymen's ridicule of the clan gentry ‘who led the van and drove the rear…
With brogues, trews, and pirnie plaids,
With good blue bonnets on their heads;
Which on the one side had a flipe,
Adorned with a tobacco pipe.
With dirk, and snap-work, and snuff-mill,
A bag which they with onions fill,
And as their strict observers say,
A tup-horn filled with usquebay.
A slashed out coat beneath her plaids,
A targe of timber, nails and hides;
With a long two-handed sword,
As good's the country can afford.
Had they not need of bulk and bones,
Who fights with all these arms at once,
It's marvellous how in such weather,
O'er hill and hop they came together,
How in such storms they came so far,
The reason is they're smeared with tar,
Which doth defend them heel and neck,
Just as it does their sheep protect.
But least ye doubt that this is true,
They're just the colour of tarr'd wool.’
Ten years later, William Cleland showed himself as courageous in arms against the Highlanders as he was merciless in his doggerel.
When the Host was withdrawn, the western lairds examined the reckoning. Their financial losses were high, and because the raid had taken place in winter the suffering of their people was severe. In most shires the Highlanders had ‘pillaged, plundered, thieved and robbed night and day, even the Lord's day they regarded as little as any other’. The value of the property they had taken and the damage they had done in Ayrshire alone was estimated at £200,000 Scots. They began to plunder Kilmarnock on the Sunday before they left, despite their officers' protests, and were only bought off at last by large sums of money collected by the citizens. As they passed Stirling on their way home, wrote one Covenanter, ‘every man drew his sword to show the world they had returned as conquerors from their enemy's land, but they might as well have shown the pots, pans, girdles, shoes, and other bodily and household furniture with which they were loaded’. He said that the Earls of Airlie and Strathmore, who had led their levies, ‘sent home money not in purses, but in bags and great quantities’.
Lowlanders never forgot the Highland Host. Their old fear of Gaeldom was now strengthened by hatred and contempt. They became indifferent to any punitive measure, however savage, that was used against the clans, and this indifference lasted for two centuries until the mountains were empty of men. And fourteen years after the quartering of the Host, the MacDonalds of Glencoe were to be the victims of one great western laird who never allowed himself to forget it.
The intoxicating days of the Highland Host, when authority seemed to sanction reiving and blackmail, had their inevitable effect. Feud and foray, slaughter and reprisal increased. And in 1681 the iron hand of the Campbells was suddenly lifted. The ninth Earl of Argyll, who had objected to the raising of the Host, now opposed the Test Act which barred Covenanter and Catholic from civil, military or ecclesiastical office. The Earl fumbled his way through a prevaricating acceptance of the Test, and then, with lonely courage, refused it entirely. He was tried for treason and condemned to death, but his step-daughter took him out of Edinburgh Castle in the unlikely guise of her page, and he escaped to Holland.
The clans, however, had no opportunity yet to profit from the fall of Mac-Cailein-Mor. In the spring of that year Charles 11 had sent his brother James, Duke of York, to Edinburgh for the second time as High Commissioner, with the particular duty of pacifying the Highlands. As a Catholic, James had his own problems of religion, and he may have felt that the English were merely getting him out of the way while they decided whether he should or should not succeed his brother. He proceeded against the clans with a harsh lack of sympathy, and it would be impossible to believe that any of them, certainly the MacDonalds, were ready to die for him eight years later, were it not for the fact that their loyalty was less to him than to their own way of life.
Some of the most powerful barons in Scotland sat in Holyrood House with the Duke of York as members of the Commission for Pacifying the Highlands, and until his disgrace the Earl of Argyll was naturally one of them. In the King's name they drew up new measures for enforcing the Law in the mountains and isles, declaring that a large part of the kingdom was now ‘subject to the incursions, depredations and the barbarous cruelty of thieves, sorners and broken men’ from those parts. A proclamation of intent was ordered to be printed and published at market crosses throughout the country, and read in parish churches after divine service on the Sabbath. It said that soldiers of the standing forces would be stationed throughout the Highlands and maintained by cattle and corn taken from disaffected men. Landlords and baillies would be held responsible for the peaceable conduct of their dependants. All landlords and chiefs were ordered to appear before the Privy Council in Edinburgh on the second Thursday of July, 1681, and there sign a bond promising to ‘exhibit and produce before His Majesty's Privy Council, or the Justices, any of my men, tenants, servants, indwellers upon my lands, or any person of my name, descended of my family who shall commit murder, deforcement of messengers, reif, theft, depredations, open and avowed fire-raisings upon deadly feuds, or any other deeds contrary to the Acts of Parliament’.
The list of the chiefs and lairds whose presence was demanded in Edinburgh for the signing of this bond is a long roll-call of Highland gentry, names and titles like the brassy blare of trumpets, and included among them were MacDonald of Glencoe, of Achtriachtan, Achnacone, Brecklet and Laroch. Had MacIain been at home it is possible that he would have ignored the proclamation, as many did, but he was in Edinburgh that July on some private business fo
r MacDonald of Sleat, having first obtained the Privy Council's promise that he would not be arrested for the ‘slaughters’ charged against him, or for his insolent escape from the Inverary Tolbooth seven years before. It is impossible to believe that he would have been allowed to leave Edinburgh without first putting his name to the bond.
The new measures were only as strong as the garrisons set up to enforce them, and these do not seem to have frightened the clans. Eight months later John Murray, commander of a small detachment at Inverlochy, complained bitterly that he and his men had been ‘cruelly beaten, wounded and robbed of their clothes, and His Majesty's arms taken from them, hardly escaping with their lives, and brought to the extremity of starving in their wounds before they could get any relief’. The offenders were not ordinary men but Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, the chief of his clan, his brother, his uncle, his kinsmen and their followers. Charles II amiably called Lochiel ‘the king of thieves’, and had knighted him the year before, but the Council was outraged. It sent a herald in a flaming tabard to the Mercat Cross of Inverness and the castle at Inverlochy, there ‘by sound of trumpet to command and charge [the Camerons] to appear before the Council’. Lochiel tolerantly sent his brother, and a few of his kinsmen, promising their good behaviour against a fine of 1,000 merks, but he did not think it within his dignity to go himself.
The MacDonalds also broke out. Keppoch resumed his interminable feud with the Mackintoshes, and when he refused to withdraw from the land he had taken from them, Letters of Fire and Sword were issued against him and his allies. But, for the moment, nobody felt inclined to execute them.
