by John Prebble
Long before December he had thought of what should be done if the chiefs did not take the oath. Although he put nothing to paper, he discussed the matter with Breadalbane, filing the advice the Earl gave him in his mind. The first dark hint of the understanding they had reached is in a letter he wrote to Breadalbane from Kensington Palace on 2 December. ‘I repent nothing of the plan….’ An instrument was needed, however, an executor of this plan, and it was to be Lieutenant-Colonel James Hamilton. By the same post Stair wrote to him, flattering him, reassuring him, and tempting him.
I am very glad you are there. And you will see that my way is not so partial, or to mind nothing but my own friends and interest. The public shall always be first with me. And therefore, though I never had the good fortune to be acquainted with you, yet you shall find me as ready to do you justice as if you were my nearest relation. You need not care that at present you are not to kiss the King's hand. He wants not a just character of you.
It was a strange letter for the Crown's great minister to write to an obscure officer of Foot, whom he had never met, but whom he was now promising preferment and recommendation to the highest power in the land. And yet Hamilton was obviously no stranger to the Master. Stair knew something about him, some past fault or omission that could be used as a lever, working the ambitious man to do all that was expected of him. Stair referred to this lightly, in one of those sentences he favoured, an expression of goodwill barbed with threat. ‘I do not consider the lapses of a single person so as to make me do harm to what I do know to be their Majesties' service.’ As for the work Hamilton might have to do, Stair was suddenly and startlingly frank: ‘It may be shortly we may have use of your garrison, for the winter time is the only season in which we are sure the Highlanders cannot escape us, nor carry their wives, bairns, and cattle to the mountains.’
He did not explain why the children of the clans had become such a danger to the King that their escape from his punishment would be regrettable. Two days later he wrote again to Hamilton, explaining more fully what was in his mind, and asking the man's help.
I see the settlement of the Highlands is obstructed by false insinuations. Some make the MacDonalds think their part is too small. Some have emulation at Breadalbane, and do stop the work for the despite against the instrument. I am satisfied these people are equally unthinking, who do not accept what's never again in their offer. And since the Government cannot oblige them, it's obliged to receive some of them to weaken and frighten the rest. The MacDonalds will fall in this net. That's the only popish clan in the kingdom, and it will be popular to take a severe course with them. Let me hear from you with the first whether you think that this is the proper season to maul them in the cold long nights… and must be in readiness by the first of January.
He wrote thus four weeks before the end of the year, with time yet for word to come from King James, for the chiefs to take the oath. He told Breadalbane that he had not changed his mind about the expediency of bringing the chiefs to submission by gentle methods, if such were possible, but he no longer believed they were. ‘The madness of these people makes me plainly see there is no reckoning with them; delenda est Carthago.’ Even if some were to take the oath by the day set they deserved no kindness and hostages should be taken from them. All must be taught a harsh and brutal lesson, and the victims of it, quite plainly, should be Clan Donald, the Gallows Herd whose deaths none but their own kinsmen would mourn.
He wrote to John Hill, telling him what was proposed, advising him to discuss it with Hamilton, and warning both men to keep their mouths tightly closed upon the subject when they were not together. The old Cromwellian made no protest against this shattering end to all his hopes. He waited, and perhaps he hoped that by Christmas none of it would be necessary.
Though Stair pursued the matter with vigour throughout December, the plan was not his. It was Breadalbane's. Whether the grey fox deliberately put it in the Master's mind one day during his summer visit to Flanders, or whether he did no more than suggest that if all else failed the clans could still be brought to submission by fire and sword, is not clear. But the plan was his, and so Stair acknowledged it by the same post as he declared that Carthage must be destroyed.
By the next I expect to hear either these people are come to your hand, or else your scheme for mauling them,* for it will not delay… Menzies, Glengarry, and all of them have written letters, and take pains to make it believed that all you did was for the interest of King James. Therefore look on, and you shall be satisfied of your revenge.
There would be no more money, said Stair savagely, to waste upon the chiefs or to entertain the vanities of their feudal lords. God alone could now say whether it might not have been wiser to use that £12,000 on soldiers' pay for ravaging the glens. But that was past. Now the Papist rebels must be rooted out.
Breadalbane was alarmed. Perhaps his ear caught an hysterical note of insanity in Stair's letters, his nose a whiff of brimstone, for he left the Highlands at once, posting furiously south. This was no time for him to put his thoughts to paper. He paused long enough in Edinburgh for a talk with his law-agent Carwhin, and to become involved in an undignified scuffle with Lord Murray at the Palace of Holyroodhouse, over the eternal debts of his cousin Glenlyon. And then on in haste to London. He kept close to Stair in Kensington Palace, and though he was welcomed cordially, though he warmed his back against the great fire in the Master's room, their relationship was changing. Breadalbane may have felt that having handed the assassin a dagger, he was no longer able to guide or avert the stroke.
On 21 December, when he was no longer expected, Major Duncan Menzies arrived in Edinburgh. He knocked at the door of Carwhin's house in the Court of the Guard and collapsed from exhaustion. He had left Paris nine days before, and had travelled from London in four. In his pocket he carried King James's discharge to the clans:
To our trusty and well-beloved General-Major Thomas Buchan, or to the Officer commanding our Forces in our ancient Kingdom of Scotland.
JAMES R. Right trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. We are informed of the state of our subjects in the Highlands, and of the condition that you and our other officers there are in, as well by our trusty and well-beloved Sir George Barclay, brigadier of our Forces, as by our trusty and well-beloved Major Duncan Menzies: And therefore we have thought fit hereby to authorize you to give leave to our said subjects and officers who have hitherto behaved themselves so loyally in our cause to do what may be most for their own and your safety. For doing whereof this shall be your warrant. Saint Germain this 12th day of December, 1691, in the seventh year of our reign.
The weak, irresolute man, hoping for miracles, had let three months pass before making this decision. He was deeply in debt to the clans. As Duke of York, he had been responsible for harsh, penal measures against them. As King, he had asked them to defend him and die for him. As an exile, he had kept them to their oath and they had honoured it as best they could. When he finally released them, there were nineteen days only before the expiry of the time set by William. James must have known that, in winter, even so determined a courier as Menzies could not reach Edin-burgh in less than nine days. It could be another week before the news reached Lochaber, and longer still before each of the chiefs could be told of the discharge. It was impossible for all of them to take the oath before the end of the year.
The responsibility for the Massacre of Glencoe has in the past been attributed to Stair, to Breadalbane, to William, and to all three. But much of it must also be borne by James the Second of England and Seventh of Scotland.
Duncan Menzies left Carwhin's house on the morning of 22 December. His strength was now gone, and he could travel no farther than his home in Perthshire, four miles from Dunkeld. From there, two or three days later, he sent messengers into Lochaber. In Edinburgh, Campbell of Carwhin wrote at once to Breadalbane's chamberlain, asking Barcaldine to inform the Argyllshire clans. It was all that could be done. Three days before the end of the
year, Menzies's messenger reached Ewen Cameron at Achnacarry. Lochiel set out at once for Inveraray where, before a Campbell Sheriff in a Campbell town, he would take the oath to William and be the first to break the ice after all. He gave John Hill the news as he passed by Fort William, and the old man must have thanked God for this mercy, praying that all the malignants would be able to make their peace in time. Although there is no evidence of this, as Lochiel passed over the ferry at Ballachulish he probably sent word to MacIain, urging him to lose no time.
Since the middle of the month marching men had been moving northward in red columns from Perth and Stirling, Dundee and Aberdeen, Blair and Inveraray. On 15 December, the Master of Stair had put the Army in motion. Livingstone's dragoons closed the passes from Stirling and Dunkeld. Sir James Lesley was told to send seven companies of his regiment from Perth to Inverness, where they would be joined by six more from Colonel John Buchan's Regiment in Aberdeen. All the Independent Companies of the Williamite clans were mobilized. Fifty Mackays were ordered from Badenoch to Inverness, with a hundred men of Atholl under Captain George Wish art and Captain Archibald Murray. To Fort William was sent Captain Robert Lumsden's company from Blair, and Captain George Murray's from Finlarig. To sweeten the reluctance of these Highland militiamen. and to hearten the spirits of the regulars, £800 was distributed against arrears of pay.
Eight hundred men of the Earl of Argyll's Regiment were at Inveraray. On 29 December, half of them marched out under Major Robert Duncanson. ‘Where they design, I know not,’ said Campbell of Barcaldine, reporting the news to Carwhin in Edinburgh.
‘I will be a true, faithful, and obedient soldier’
ON the twenty-second day of April 1689, the Estates of the Kingdom of Scotland accepted the tenth Earl of Argyll's offer to raise a regiment of his clansmen as foot-soldiers in the service of King William and Queen Mary. This the Estates said they were pleased to do because of their special trust and confidence in the fidelity, courage, and good conduct of the said Earl. Any anxious reasons he may have had for demonstrating his new loyalty so extravagantly were not considered relevant to the warrant. It was not a moment for examining men's motives too closely, but two months later he was formally restored to the titles and lands which James II had taken from his family four years before.
Six hundred men were to be enlisted from the glens of Lorn, Cowal, Knapdale and Argyll, mustered in ten companies, officered by Campbell gentry and their sons, and placed on the Scottish establishment of the King's Army for use when, where, and how His Majesty thought fit.* No other Highland chief, and no Lowland laird brought William of Orange so valuable and so welcome a gift. The Campbells were not rustics who had to be given the will as well as the training to fight. Though their military conceit had suffered bitterly at Inverlochy forty years before, when the MacDonalds cut them down and their chief deserted them in his black galley, they were still the most formidable force of the clans, and the six hundred men needed for the new regiment were less than a fifth of their fighting-strength.
Archibald Campbell, tenth Earl of Argyll and fifteenth Mac-Cailein Mor of Clan Campbell, had learnt an important lesson from the misfortunes of his father and grandfather, and he was determined that wherever he went in life he would not arrive at the steps of the scaffold on which they had died. He had more cunning and less scruples than either of them, and was agreeably amoral where they were chillingly virtuous. For much of his life his family's earldom and property had been forfeit to the Crown, and he decided that high-principled intransigence was not likely to regain or hold them. When his father raised one half of Clan Campbell for Monmouth in 1685, he was ready to raise the other half for James II and bring his father to justice. He then offered to become a Catholic if James would restore the titles and estates that had been taken away with his father's head. This too material an approach to spiritual matters only caused offence, and he left hurriedly for Holland. He returned with William in 1688, once more a good Protestant. A bold-eyed man, with a loose, sensual mouth, he was quick-witted and open-handed, enjoying horses and women with equal pleasure. When he and his wife had properly secured the succession of his line, they parted, and kept as much of the country as they could between them. His last and favourite mistress was Peggy Alison, who called him ‘Ma Mion’, and for her sake he patiently endured her quarrelsome family of brothers and cousins. He was never happy when separated from her. ‘I am in a thousand fears when I am any time without hearing from you. I wish I could put my Peggy in my pocket as she is already in my heart…’
From Edinburgh in June 1689, he wrote less sentimentally to each gentleman of his clan. ‘Loving Cousin, Their Majesties' Privy Council has ordered us to cause raise six hundred men… That this may be better effectuate, we ordered Sir Colin Campbell of Ardkinglas * to go from this to meet you at Inveraray upon Thursday, the 12th day of this instant, for appointing these men to be raised. We entreat you fail not to come there at that time.’ Clan Campbell responded loyally. The first eight companies were mustered at Perth in August, and five more were enrolled during the following two years at Crieff, Stirling, Cardross and Drumakill. By July 1691, the regiment was complete to the normal establishment, and stronger than had been originally intended: 780 men formed into twelve battalion companies and one company of grenadiers. Its first lieutenant-colonel was Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, an old soldier of the Dutch wars and head of one of the leading families in Argyll. In 1691 he was succeeded by Robert Jackson, a Lowlander who had come to England with William as a captain of dragoons in a regiment commanded by a kinsman of Argyll's wife. Similarly, the regiment's first major was shortly replaced by Robert Duncanson, a tough, professional soldier from Fassokie in Stirlingshire whose family had long been adherents of the Argyll Campbells. It was by the energy and relentless discipline of Jackson and Duncanson that the clansmen were drilled into a red-coated line regiment as good as any in William's Dutch or English army.
The company officers were almost all Campbell gentry, landowners and tacksmen of Argyll or their sons. James Campbell of Ardkinglas, brother of the Sheriff, commanded one of the senior battalion companies. There were three Campbells of Barbreck with captains' commissions, and others of Kames, Allengrange and Airds. Vassals or allies of Argyll, like Bannatyne of Kames, Lamont of Lamont, and MacAulay of Ardincaple, also sent one or more of their sons to be captains, lieutenants or ensigns. The last two companies mustered, at Stirling in April 1691, were Captain Thomas Drummond's grenadiers and a battalion company which Argyll gave to the importunate Robert Campbell of Glenlyon. Now aged fifty-nine, Glenlyon was the oldest officer in the regiment, and the only Campbell from Breadalbane who held a commission. Grey John sourly disapproved of the appointment.
At one time or another, the families of all these officers had been robbed and maltreated, their lands despoiled by the men of Glencoe and Keppoch. They had suffered bitterly in the Atholl Raid, losing kinsmen and tenants to the rope or the transports, and most of them had some particular and unforgiving reason for hating all or any of the Jacobite clans. Thus they hoped for revenge as well as glory. It was the belief of young John Campbell of Airds, for example, that by his service in the regiment his family would regain Castle Stalker, the square black keep on the coast of Appin which the Stewarts had occupied since the gathering at Dalcomera. Who had a proper right to it, however, was arguable. Eighty years earlier, a Campbell of Airds had persuaded a Stewart of Appin (understandably called Baothaire, the sillyheaded) to give it up in exchange for an eight-oared boat. Since the bargain had been made during a night of heavy drinking, the Stewarts had never regarded it as valid, and they had put their blue and yellow standard back above the castle walls as soon as they could, and dared the Campbells to take it down.
In the beginning the companies were raised in the old manner of the clan levy, each captain bringing sixty of his own people. Argyll's company, commanded by a captain-lieutenant, was raised from his tenants about Inveraray. Auchinbreck's was wholly recruited o
n his lands in Knapdale, the Barbreck brothers' from Kilbride. Ardkinglas's men were drawn from his brother's estates on Loch Fyne, and MacAulay, Lamont and Bannatyne brought sixty each from their own clans. The names of these private men endure on the fading Muster Rolls, the common names of Argyll: Campbell, MacCallum, MacDiarmid, MacKissock and MacKellar, MacIvor, MacUre and MacNichol. Later companies, raised in Cowal and Rosneath, contained some Lowland men, but the great majority were Campbell clansmen, and they too had hard memories of the Atholl Raid, the burning, the killing, and the robbing by Macleans, Stewarts and MacDonalds. Each company Roll was drawn up with scrupulous care every quarter, as ordered by the Muster Master in Edinburgh, and against each man's name was written his trade and his place of origin. Though some were listed as drovers, masons, or smiths, most were described as having ‘no trade’.
