Glencoe

by John Prebble

  Glenlyon left his family and his descendants an obligation they found unredeemable, and which they called ‘the curse of Glencoe’. It may have been this that made many of them devoted Jacobites, and others the zealous supporters of the Hanoverian kings, as if only by such selfless service could they repay or justify the greatest debt of Glenlyon's life.

  John Campbell, his heir, took five hundred Breadalbane men to the Jacobite Army in 1715, and led them on a raid into Argyll. There he was opposed by Campbell levies under Fonab, his father's last friend. They decided that, whatever the cause, Campbell should not fight Campbell, and they shook hands and led their men away. At Sheriffmuir, John and his regiment were brigaded with the MacDonalds, and no man remarked upon this strange alliance except Black Alasdair of Glengarry who looked sourly at Glenlyon. ‘Your father deprived us of an arm,’ he said, with more spite than accuracy, for there were a hundred or more Glencoe men in his brigade. ‘Of that I'm guiltless,’ said John Campbell, ‘and the only rivalry I have with a MacDonald is to prove which of us will fight best today.’ Glengarry took his arm and asked to be accepted as a brother. MacDonald and Campbell charged together.

  After the failure of the 'Fifteen, John Campbell went into exile, until the influence of the 2nd Duke of Argyll and the 2nd Earl of Breadalbane secured him a pardon. He worked hard to pay some of his father's debts, and to regain a little of the land his family had once held in Glen Lyon. In 1745, when he was seventy, he risked all he had by declaring once more for the Stuarts. His eldest son, John, was a captain of the Black Watch who had fought for King George at Fontenoy and would not turn against that allegiance. His youngest son, his ‘darling boy Archie’ who was fifteen, took the Glen Lyon tenants to Charles Edward. After Culloden, the Laird hid in the woods behind Chesthill, and the exposure and the privation killed him. There had been nothing like his funeral since the wake given for his redoubtable grandmother, Jean Campbell.

  The next Laird, John of the Black Watch, was known as An Coirneal Dubh, the Black Colonel. He was a brave, dour man who rarely smiled, and who said he should have been killed in battle many times, ‘but the curse of Glencoe is a spell upon me, and I must dree my weird’. Unmarried, he gave his life to the Army, and what prize money he won in the West Indies toward the re-purchase of land in Glen Lyon. Late in his life, it is said, when he was an officer of Marines, he was given the responsibility for carrying out a macabre sentence upon some deserters. They were to be led out for execution, and only at the last moment were they to be told that they had been reprieved. When Campbell pulled the reprieve from his pocket, his handkerchief fell to the ground. The firing-party took this as the customary signal and fired. John Campbell looked at the dead men and cried, ‘It is the curse of Glencoe!’ He resigned his commission and died soon after in 1784. The story may be true, but in such Highland tales there is always a strong wish to put a proper end to capricious misadventure.

  Colonel John Campbell and his childless brothers, Archie and David, were the last of their direct line, and with them died the Campbells of Glenlyon.

  The Earl of Argyll's Regiment earned King William's admiration in the only possible way, by dying for him. In July 1693, the men of Cowal, Lorn and Kilbride fought their first battle. They marched upon the French redoubts of Dottignies at the head of Ramsay's Scots Brigade, and in their van was Thomas Drummond's company of grenadiers. They marched firmly, and at a steady pace with muskets shouldered. The summer heat was bitter, and the cross-fire unceasing. When they reached the parapet of the Pont David redoubt only a few of the grenadiers were left, and the other companies of Argyll's, including Glenlyon's, passed through them and took the position. They had fought, and beaten, thirty times their own number. That night they joined their English comrades in burning the houses of Dottignies, and they destroyed the nearby village of Evergnies. They raped women and terrorized children. They robbed a church, and they burnt it while it was still full of frightened peasants. The doorway was choked with charred bodies.

  So great had been the Regiment's losses on the grass slopes below the redoubts that it was not sent into action again for two years. It fought before Namur and then joined the garrison of Dixemude under Major-General Ellenberg, a Dane who had little taste for his orders, and he surrendered to the French as soon as he could. The officers of the Argyll Regiment broke their swords, and the soldiers tore their colours from the staffs and burned them. On the day that the Scots Parliament demanded the return of Duncanson, Glenlyon and others, they were marching out of Dixemude in angry submission. They were shortly released under truce, but for Duncanson, who was now the lieutenant-colonel, the surrender had been a disaster. Ten days before, he had redressed the regiment in new uniforms, and much of the clothing and equipment was taken by the French with the regimental treasury. More than £1,000 was owing to John Michaels, a clothier of Edinburgh, and when Duncanson returned to Scotland, Michaels had him committed to the Tolbooth for debt. He was still in prison in 1697, when the Argyll Regiment was disbanded, ‘in a miserable condition and petitioning the Privy Council for his release’. He was finally bought out, by Argyll one would like to believe, and he went back to the Army. He was shot down at the siege of Valencia de Alcantara eight years later, a colonel of his own regiment.

  Thomas Drummond survived the French fire that destroyed many of his grenadiers before the redoubts at Dottignies, and he left the Army when the regiment was disbanded. He joined the Company of Scotland Trading with Africa and the Indies (his brother, Robert, was one of its sea-captains) and he sailed with the first settlers the Company sent to Darien on the isthmus of Panama. A member of the Council there, he quarrelled with and intrigued against other councillors until they finally imprisoned him. He was released by Campbell of Fonab, who had been sent from Edinburgh to bring some order into the unhappy, disease-ridden colony. Whatever else might be said about Drummond, his courage was never questioned, and he behaved with resolution and bravery throughout the miserable history of the Darien Settlement.

  Though they had been the victims, the MacDonalds of Glencoe were less outraged by the massacre than some who used it as a weapon in their political vendettas. Violence and bloody murder are part of the history of the Gael, and there were more terrible slaughters committed by one clan upon another. Raid and reprisal were a way of life, and the MacDonalds must have been aware that one day they might have to pay for their joyous rape of Breadalbane and Argyll. They returned to their valley and they walked with caution. They received no reparation, and to add to their suffering they were threatened with the quartering of soldiers if they did not pay £300 in tax owing to the Government. John MacDonald appealed against this cess. To its credit, the Privy Council promptly discharged the Glencoe men from all arrears since ‘the unhappie Murder’.

  Slowly the people flourished, and the old temptations were again strong, though the world was changing. In 1697 they were accused of giving shelter and support to a broken man called Dugal Ban MacKellar, who had cut a traveller's throat with his dirk and robbed him of £800 Scots. He was taken from the valley and hanged. Two years later, two Glencoe men called John MacDonald Mhic Allan and Angus MacAlasdair Mhic Allan, decided to collect an old debt from the Campbells. With three other men from Cameron country, they went down into Lorn and stole cattle, meal, geese, herring-nets, clothes and furniture. They entered Campbell homes and shouted noisy threats, waving ‘drawn swords and bended pistols’. Only one of them was caught, a Cameron, and he was hanged on the Doom Tree of Inveraray.

  The Glencoe men were out in the Rebellion of 'Fifteen, a hundred swordsmen under Alasdair Og, and there is no evidence that he or they refused to fight beside the son of the man who had killed their kinsmen. In 1745, the clan again joined the hapless Stuarts, sending as many men as had once gathered behind Mac-Ian the Twelfth at Dalcomera. They were led by John MacDonald's son, who had been carried from the massacre by his nurse. It was said that during the advance on Edinburgh the Glencoe men asked for the honour of protecti
ng the Earl of Stair's house against pillage and burning. The story is probably the product of the nineteenth-century romanticism that anaesthetized the terrible hurt of the clearances and evictions, no more true, perhaps, than the Black Colonel's curse of Glencoe.* It does not sound like the men whose fathers and grandfathers burned Achallader, stripped Glen Lyon, laid Kilbride waste, and emptied the byres and kitchens of Rosneath.

  The little clan stood on the left wing of the Jacobite Army at Culloden with others of its name, with the MacDonalds of Clanranald, of Keppoch and of Glengarry. Some died there, under grapeshot and sabre, others were driven into the hills by the harrying that followed the Rebellion, and once more their homes were burnt and their cattle taken. What the red soldiers began in February 1692, sheep finished one hundred and fifty years later, and the people of John of the Heather were gone from the Valley of the Dogs.

  John Hill continued to serve the King at Inverlochy until he was beyond age and use. Now that there was no great need of the garrison, the Government was even less inclined to maintain it, and Hill fretted unhappily about broken palisades, crumbling earthworks and rotting wood. The foundations slipped, and he had no carts to carry fresh materials, all that had to be brought was carried by men's hands alone. The comparison between this weakening fort and his own body could not have eluded him. The memory of the massacre was always in his mind, and he was distressed when he heard that Hamilton proposed to publish a pamphlet in Holland, putting all the blame on him. He paid the doubts of his conscience with generous concern for the MacDonalds and other Lochaber clans, protesting on their behalf when the Tax Collectors were arrogant and pressing. ‘The imprudent way which the Collectors take,’ he said, ‘alienates the hearts of many from the Government, when a little forbearance would do much better.’ His letters were often written for him by a clerk now, but his tired hand could still put a plain and bold signature at their foot.

  Year by year more of his men were taken from him, and he had no strength to object. He looked down the length of his years and they were many. He was at last given a knighthood, but the honour was empty in his loneliness. ‘I think you begin to forget me,’ he chided Duncan Forbes, ‘or to think I live too long, for it's once in a small age that I can have the favour of a line from you. But so you be well and happy, it makes me so too.’

  His regiment was disbanded at Whitsuntide 1698, and he was relieved of the Governorship and discharged with half-pay of £168 a year as a Colonel and Captain of Foot. He was replaced by a brigadier.

  He died somewhere in England, and in death Glencoe may also have been seen in his face.

  ARGYLL, GLENORCHY, GLENLYON AND GLENCOE

  APPENDIX

  PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

  BARCLAY, Sir George, Jacobite agent. Went to France in August 1691, with Menzies of Fornooth to persuade James II to release the chiefs from their oath. Involved in an assassination plot against William III, 1696.

  CAMERON of Lochiel, Sir Ewen (1629–1719). Chief of Clan Cameron. Jacobite leader with powerful influence in the Highlands. Submitted to William within the time set. Friend of John Hill, cousin to Breadalbane.

  CAMPBELL of Barcaldine, Alexander. Chamberlain to the Earl of Breadalbane. Offered to secure the Glencoe men remission and restitution if they exonerated the Earl.

  CAMPBELL, Archibald, 10th Earl and 1st Duke of Argyll (d. 1703). Colonel of the Argyll Regiment which he raised from his own people. Accompanied William to England, offered him the Crown of Scotland, secured the return of the titles and estates forfeited by his father, Chief of Clan Campbell.

  CAMPBELL of Ardkinglass, Sir Colin. Sheriff of Argyll before whom MacIain took the oath in January 1692. His property was ravaged by the Locaber Men in the Atholl Raid, 1685.

  CAMPBELL of Carwhin, Colin. Writer to the Signet in Edin-burgh. Law agent for the Earl of Breadalbane.

  CAMPBELL of Dressalch, Colin. Writer to the Signet and Sheriff-Clerk of Argyll. In Edinburgh in January 1692, and was sent the certificate of submission containing MacIain's name. May have scored it out.

  CAMPBELL, Sir John, 11th Laird of Glenorchy, 1st Earl of Breadalbane (1635–1716). ‘Grey John.’ Submitted to William 1689 and offered to treat with the Rebel chiefs after Killiecrankie. Met them at Achallader in June 1691. Signed Private Articles with them. Probably gave Stair the idea for the massacre, but his full involvement is unlikely. Imprisoned by the Scots Parliament and released on William's order. Halfheartedly joined the Jacobite Rising of 1715. A cousin of Campbell of Glenlyon.

  CAMPBELL of Glenlyon, Robert (1632–96). 5th Laird of Glenlyon. Captain of the Earl of Argyll's Regiment, and commander of the two companies sent to Glencoe in February 1692. A bankrupt and a drunkard. His lands raided by the Glencoe and Keppoch MacDonalds. Condemned by the Commission of Inquiry. Died at Bruges.

  DALRYMPLE, Sir James, 1st Viscount Stair (1619–95). Lawyer and statesman. Supporter of the Covenanters, driven into exile by the hostility of Dundee and the Duke of York (later James II. Returned with William, created Privy Councillor and Viscount. Father of

  DALRYMPLE, Sir John, 2nd Viscount Stair, 1st Earl of Stair (1648–1707). The Master of Stair.' Advocate. Suffered under the hostility of Dundee and James II. Offered the Crown of Scotland with Argyll to William 1689. Lord Advocate. Joint Secretary with Melville, sole Secretary 1691–2. Responsible for the massacre of the MacDonalds. Accused of excess by the Scots Parliament, 1695, resigned his office. One of the principal supporters of the Act of Union, 1707.

  DRUMMOND, Captain Thomas, commander of the grenadier company of Argyll's Regiment, and present with it in Glencoe on the morning of the massacre. A Tayside man. Condemned by the Commission and Parliament in 1695. Served bravely with his company in Flanders.

  DUNCANSON of Fassokie, Major Robert (d. 1705). Member of a Stirlingshire family, adherents of the Campbells of Argyll. A major in the Argyll Regiment, 1691, and its lieutenant-colonel 1695–8. Took four hundred of his men to Fort William, December 1691, and planned the details of the massacre with James Hamilton. Issued Glenlyon's order on 12 February. Prosecution demanded by Parliament, 1695. Killed at the siege of Valencia de Alcantara.

  ELLIOTT, Sir Gilbert, Lord Minto (1651–1718). Writer to the Signet and judge. Helped to organize the Argyll Rising in 1685, was condemned to death but pardoned. Clerk to the Privy Council, 1692, and refused to accept MacIain's name on the certificate sent by Campbell of Ardkinglas.

  FORBES of Culloden, Duncan, 3rd Laird (1644?-1704), supporter of the Revolution. His lands ravaged by the Jacobites 1689. M.P. for Nairn county. A friend and ally of John Hill during the latter's second Governorship of Inverlochy.

  FORBES of Culloden, John, 2nd Laird (fl. 1650–88), M.P. and Provost of Inverness. Supporter of the Commonwealth. Befriended John Hill during the latter's first Governorship of Inverlochy.

  FORBES of Culloden, Major John, brother of the 3rd Laird. Captain in the Independent Company of Grants in 1689, resisted Dundee at Ruthven. Posted to Hill's Regiment at Fort William. Carried dispatches from Edinburgh to Inverlochy. Marched to Glencoe with Hamilton, 13 February 1692. Gave evidence at the Inquiry. Later lieutenant-colonel of Maitland's Regiment and Strathnaver's. Acquired the property of Pitten-crieff in Fife. Hill's ‘dear child’.

  HAMILTON Lieutenant-Colonel James. Second-in-command of Hill's Regiment, and Deputy-Governor of Fort William, 1691–5. Origins unknown, could have been Irish. In Stair's confidence and used by him to plan and execute the massacre. Prosecution demanded by Parliament, but fled to Flanders.

  HAY, John, 2nd Earl and 1st Marquis of Tweeddale (1626–97). Lord Chancellor of Scotland. Supported the Revolution, and then plotted against William, imprisoned but released upon confession. As High Commissioner, led the Inquiry into the Massacre of Glencoe. Signed the pass by which Hamilton escaped to Flanders.

  HILL, Colonel Sir John. Governor of Inverlochy 1656–60 and 1690–8. A soldier of the Commonwealth. Constable of Belfast 1688. Sent to the Highlands in 1690 to pacify the Rebels. A fr
iend of the clans. Signed Hamilton's order for the massacre. Exonerated by the Commission of Inquiry. Retired 1698.

  JOHNSTON of Warriston, James (1655–1737). ‘Secretary Johnston.’ Son of Archibald, Lord Warriston, who was hanged after the Restoration. Exiled, studied law at Utrecht. Returned to Scotland to prepare the way for William's invasion. An enemy of Stair with whom he was Joint Secretary of State for Scotland 1692–5. Sole Secretary 1695–6. Helped to bring down Stair by supporting demand for an Inquiry into the Massacre.

  JOHNSTONE, William, 3rd Earl and 1st Marquis of Annandale (d. 1721). Nominally supported the Revolution, later joined The Club and was imprisoned for plotting against William. Fully confessed and was released. Created extraordinary Lord of Session, 1693, and a Lord of the Treasury. Pensioned for his services on the Commission of Inquiry.

  LESLIE, Charles (1650–1722), non-juror and controversialist. Son of the Bishop of Raphoe, deprived of his curacy when he refused to take the oath to William. Pamphleteer. Published one of the first accounts of the massacre, 1692, and later Gallienus Redivivus, 1695. Interviewed Argyll soldiers at Brentford.

  LIVINGSTONE, Sir Thomas, 1st Viscount of Teviot (1652-1711). Born in Holland, came to England with William. Commanded Government troops at Cromdale. Later Commander-in-Chief. Transmitted Stair's orders to Hamilton.

  MACDONALD of Achnacone. Tacksman of Glencoe, brother of MacDonald of Achtriachtan. Escaped from massacre when about to be shot.

  MACDONALD of Inverrigan. Tacksman of Glencoe. Killed by Glenlyon who was his guest. He had a letter of protection from Colonel Hill.

  MACDONALD of Glencoe, Alasdair (MacIain), 12th Chief of Clan Iain Abrach (1630?–92). Also known as The Red. Educated in France, brought his clan out for Dundee in 1689. Took the oath five days late before Sir Colin Campbell of Ardkinglas in Inveraray. Killed at his bedside, perhaps by Lieutenant Lindsay.