Glencoe
Page 34
Saint Fillan, 23
Saint Mundus, 23, 221
St Gerard, Cam at, 144
St Germain-en-Laye, 85, 116, 138, 146, 150, 155, 234n.
St James's Palace, 67
Samhain, Feast of, 31, 75
Scotland, 9, 77, 83, 84, 85, 89, 91, 110, 111, 115, 122, 134, 143, 152, 164, 173, 176, 180, 230, 231, 232, 244, 255–6
Scots Brigade, 86, 88, 260
Scott, James, Duke of Monmouth, 64, 88, 158
Scott, Sir Walter, 111n., 262n.
Sheriffmuir, Battle of, 257, 259
Sidlaws 42
Signal Rock (G), 21, 27, 211, 221
Sinclair, Clan, 127–8, 129–30, 190
Sinclair, George, 6th Earl of Caithness, 128
Sinclair of Keiss, George, 129, 130
Sinclair of Telstan, John, 141
Skye, 23, 49, 58, 69, 119
Sron a’ Chlachain, Fight on, 50, 74, 126
Stair, Viscount, Master of, see Dalrymple
Steinkirk Battle of, 235, 237
STEWART, CLAN: of Appin, 25, 45, 46–7, 55, 65–6, 70, 71, 74, 121, 124, 137, 140–41, 159, 175, 224, 225, 237
of A thole, 46, 47
of Ballachulish, 23, 40, 67
of Balquhidder, 46, 47
of Garth, 186
of Strathgarry, 46, 47
Stewart of Appin, Duncan (7th), 159 Duncan (8th), 55, 188
Robert (9th), 70, 95, 102, 140, 176, 224, 237
Stewart of Ardshiel, John, 95,101, 164, 176
Stewart of Ballechan, Patrick, 190
Stewart of Garth, General David, 262n.
Stewart, Sir James, 240–41, 243
Stirling, 50, 107, 205; city of, 61, 156, 158, 162, 219, 241
Strathdon, 93
Strathspey, 35, 41, 42, 93
Strone (G), 242
Stuart, Royal House of, 48, 72, 83, 85–6, 114, 130, 141, 259
Stuart, Prince Charles Edward, 242, 259
Stuart Ludovick, Duke of Lennox, 46
Superiorities, Feudal, 108, 144–5
Swallow, transport, 148n.
Swift, Jonathan, 230
Tacksmen, 27, 29, 36–7, 41, 101, 121, 151, 230
Tarbat, Viscount, see MacKenzie
Tenison, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, 239, 252
Test Act, The, 61
Tillotson, John, Archbishop of Canterbury, 230, 252
Tiree, 70
Torbay, 67, 85, 110, 139
Treshnish, Isles of, 164
Tulla, Water of, 75
Tweeddale, Earl and Marquis of, see Hay
Uist, North, 225
Uist, South, 23, 69, 179
Union, Treaty of (see also Parliaments), 114, 116, 255
Valencia de Alcantara, Siege of, 261
Wapping, 179
Warfare, Clan, 48–50, 69, 129
Waterford, 102
Waterloo, 249,
Whitehall Palace, 115–16, 249, 255
WILLIAM III, 16, 17, 18, 19, 67–8, 71, 73, 76, passim 81–91, 98, 100, 102, 108, 109, 110, 115, 116–17, 119, 120, 121–2, 131, 132, 133, 134, passim 137–43, 147–55, 157, 158, 159, 161, 163, 165, 170, 174, 175, 183, 192, 203, 223, 224, 227, 229–39, 236, passim 237–51, 254, 256, 260; accepts Crown of Scotland, 114–16,
offers pardon to chiefs, 144–5;
signs order for massacre, 176–80;
proposal to transport MacDonalds, 232–3;
orders Enquiry, 236;
his decision on Stair, 252–3
Wishart, Capt. George, 156
Witt, Cornelius de, and John de, 180, 250
Worcester, Battle of, 34, 39
Wren, Sir Christopher, 174, 176
York, Duke of, see James II
* Sixteen hundred years later traces of these trenches were said to be visible on the slope of Sgòr nam Fionnaidh, and they may still be there beneath the timber.
* James Philip of Almerieclose, the author, in Latin, of the Grameid. The translation is by the Rev. Alexander D. Murdoch in the Scottish History Society's edition of 1888. In this is also recorded John Forbes's defiant stand at Ruthven, see p. 16.
* The Dewar MSS are in the archives of Inveraray Castle. The first volume, in English and edited by the Rev. John MacKechnie, has now been published by William MacLellan, Glasgow.
* James I of England after the union of the kingdoms in 1603.
* For the relationship between this remarkable woman and the Campbells of Glenorchy and Glenlyon, the Stewarts of Appin and the MacDonalds of Glencoe, see pages 188–9 and the Genealogy.
* MacIain is frequently described in contemporary records as being of Polvig, or Polveig in Glencoe. It was the site of his house on the north bank of the River Coe. The word comes from the Gaelic Poll à mhig, the hollow of the whey.
* Soume – the number of sheep or cattle grazed on a particular pasture.
* The first of the Independent Companies of Highlanders raised by the British Government, and thus a forerunner of the 42nd Regiment, Royal Highlanders, The Black Watch.
* But Walter Scott thought enough of the story to use it in The Bride of Lammermoor.
* Hence the designation of the Glenorchy and Breadalbane chiefs MacCailein 'ic Dhonnachaidh, son of Colin son of Duncan.
* Two hundred years later one of his descendants came forward to claim the disputed titles of Breadalbane.
* Earlier than similar proposals made in 1738 by Duncan Forbes, fifth of Culloden. Earlier, too, than William Pitt the Elder who told Parliament in 1766: ‘It is my boast that I called forth and drew into your service a hardy and intrepid race of men who conquered for you in every part of the world.’ But the scheme needed the willingness of the chiefs to deliver their people into the service of what had until then been considered an alien Government and an alien race.
*The belief that Breadalbane pocketed some of the indemnity money persisted for two centuries. There is no evidence that it ever left that chest in London, and the story does less than credit to the man's intelligence. It was not money he wanted, and what he wanted he would not have got had he taken it.
* One hundred and fifty years later the ‘idleness’ of the Highlander and the need to ‘improve’ his land were used as righteous arguments to justify his removal by force from his land. When that was done the improvers replaced men with profitable herds of Cheviot sheep.
* The ‘lapse’ to which Stair frequently referred may have occurred two years earlier. In April 1689, Cunningham's Regiment (9th Foot) and Richards's Regiment (17th Foot) sailed from Liverpool in the frigate Swallow to reinforce the Irish Protestant garrison of Londonderry, then under bitter siege by James II. Its Governor, Robert Lundy, told Cunningham that since the city must soon surrender it would be unwise to land more soldiers for its defence. The people of Londonderry, who did not agree, begged Cunningham to stay, but he decided to take Lundy's advice. Supported by Richards, and by some of the officers of both regiments, he ordered the captain of the Swallow to take him and his troops back to Liverpool. Both Cunningham and Richards were later cashiered, and their officers were held in public contempt as cowards. If Hamilton were one of them, his military career would have been seriously affected.
* My italics, J. P.
* It was thus the first regular Highland Regiment raised by the British Crown, fifty years before the formation of the 42nd Regiment, The Black Watch.
* Sheriff of Argyll.
* Ardkinglas's letter has not survived. This extract appears in paraphrase in the Report of the Commission of Enquiry.
* To the bloodshirsty regret of Iain Lom, William and Mary escaped from this fire in their night-clothes. The Bard of Keppoch said that it was a pity that only a few of William's supporters had been roasted alive.
* Scolding.
* In the printed Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the Massacre of Glencoe (published in London by B. Bragg, 1703) this place-name appears as Letrickweel. In an abstract of this letter from the Stair Collection, published in The Highland Papers (Glasgow,
1844) it is given as Keppoch Well. But a study of the manuscript of the Report in the Public Record Office (from which Bragg took his version), makes it clear that the place is meant to be Letrick only, and that well is an adverb used elliptically for ‘well-placed’. Where Letrick was is not easy to determine. It has been assumed that Keppanach was meant, since this was and is a township on the north side of Ballachulish ferry. But there is no evidence of any troops there at the time Stair wrote this. I am indebted to Sir William Arbuckle for a more likely explanation. On a seventeenth-century map of the area Letre Rouaga is a point on the south side of the Loch Creran ferry, where MacIain was taken by Argyll's men on his way to Inveraray. Thus ‘Argyll's detachment’ may be Drummond's grenadiers. However, perhaps the point is academic only.
* For October 1691. At that time Glenlyon's junior officers were Lieutenant John Millan and Ensign John Campbell. See Appendix.
*The authority for Matheson's presence in Glencoe at this time is a story preserved in the Dornie Manuscripts. He was known as the Bhard Mhathanach, the Matheson Bard. The most famous Gaelic poem on the Massacre of Glencoe has been credited to the Bhard Mhucanach, the Muck Bard, who is believed to have been a Glencoe poet living, for no known reason, on the Isle of MucArgvll'sk. This poem was first printed in 1776 from an original manuscript now lost. In a paper delivered to the Gaelic Society of Inverness in 1952 (see Bibliography) the late Professor Angus Matheson suggested that Mhucanach may in fact have been a misrepresentation of the Irish script for Mhathanach, and that Murdoch Matheson was the author. The poem itself seems to support this, and in the absence of any information to prove the existence of a MacDonald Muck Bard, I have accepted Professor Matheson's suggestion.
* From the text of Duncanson's order it is evident that Hamilton meant Captain Campbell, and there seems to be no reason, other than haste perhaps, why he should have made this mistake in rank. The ‘avenues’ he spoke of are Gleann an Fiodh behind Laroch, Gleann Leac na Muidhe, and possibly Lairig Gartain.
* Unless it were with Hamilton's knowledge and consent. In this context it is interesting to consider the Deputy-Governor's uncertainty about his own punctuality: ‘By seven o'clock… I will endeavour to be with the party from this place.’ Was Hamilton also hoping that the slaughter would be over before he arrived? In fair-ness, however, it must be said that he had more than twenty miles to march, against Duncanson's three, and in increasingly bad weather.
* Published by Charles Leslie, a non-jurant Jacobite minister. See page 231.
* That Inverrigan and members of his household were bound hand and foot was later sworn by witnesses. This must have happened long before five o'clock. The house was Glenlyon's headquarters and if he had not immobilized his host and the servants they would have given a warning to the rest of the glen.
* She is believed to have been Eiblin MacDonald, daughter of the tacksman of Achtriachtan. She and John had a young son of two, Alasdair, who later led the clan in the Rebellion of 1745. He was carried by a nurse this night, wrapped in a plaid. A story long remembered said she took the boy to Glenmoriston, but this is hard to believe. Glenmoriston is fifty miles to the north, up the Great Glen, and the nurse would have had to pass the garrison and the patrols of Fort William.
* The story has a sequel, of course. Many years later the soldier was travelling homeward through Appin, and he stopped at a cottage for the night. About the fire he talked of his soldiering, and when he was asked to name the most terrible thing he had seen he said it was the Massacre of Glencoe. As he slept, his host said, ‘I'll make an end to him in the morning’. At breakfast the soldier was again asked to tell of Glencoe, and he told the story of the child, at which his host held up a hand from which the little finger was missing. They parted as friends.
* An Answer to a Book intituled the State of the Protestants in Ireland under the late King James's Governments. The book in question had been written by William King, an ardent Whig and the Bishop of Derry.
* Once there, however, MacLean changed his mind and joined King James at Saint-Germain.
* This pediment can still be seen in the wall of the MacDonald vault on Eilean Munde.
* His son, the second Earl of Albemarle, became Commander-in-Chief in Scotland after the failure of the last Jacobite Rebellion in 1746, during a period of harsh repression unequalled in British history.
* It first appeared in Howell's State Trials in 1810 and later in General David Stewart of Garth's Sketches of the Highlanders, published in 1822. Stewart and Walter Scott, with their imitators, created a Highlander who was an amalgam of Knight Templar and Paladin.
* Toward the end of the seventeenth century, the Keppoch and Glengarry branches of Clan Donald began to spell their name Mac Donell. For simplicity's sake, I have used the one spelling of MacDonald throughout this book.