THE FINÉ OR CLAN IN SCOTLAND.
[Sidenote: Clanship in the Highlands.]
Those influences which led to the _Tuath_ with its _Toisech_ passing
over into the Thanage and the Thane in the eastern districts were less
felt in the more mountainous regions of the north and west, where the
power of the Crown was comparatively weak, and more nominal than real,
and here the tribe went through a different process. While the large
districts continued to be ruled by their _Mormaers_ and the _Mortuath_,
and the Province existed intact, there was little of external influence
to affect the social organisation of their Celtic population; but the
same internal modification which led to the development of the sept or
clan from the tribe was no doubt silently at work, and when the break-up
of the great provinces and the alienation of the lands of the tribe to
feudal lords removed the veil, the clan appears exhibiting in the main
the characteristics of the Irish sept. The clan organisation was in the
main limited to that part of modern Scotland known as the Highlands and
Islands, where the mountainous and rugged character of the former and
the comparative inaccessibility of the latter led to the preservation of
a population of pure Gaelic lineage, speaking a Gaelic dialect. Here the
introduction, by marriage or royal grant, of feudal overlords with
apparently feudal holdings was purely nominal. It led to nothing like
the Teutonic colonisation which characterised the Lowlands, and neither
affected the Gaelic population nor the institution of clanship among
them.
[Sidenote: The Highland line.]
The boundary line which separated the Highlands from the Lowlands, and
known as the Highland Line, was in the main an imaginary line separating
the Gaelic-speaking people from those using the Teutonic dialect, but it
likewise coincides in part with the natural boundaries formed by those
physical features of the country which have influenced the relative
position of the Gaelic and Teutonic-speaking portion of the population
respectively. The southern part of this boundary coincides with the
great barrier formed by the mountain range of the Grampians, and where
this range is intersected by rivers which take their rise in the
interior of the highland region, and flow through this range to the
eastern sea, in deep ravines or narrow glens, with high mountains on
each side, were narrow passes which formed the entrances into the
Highlands, and were easily defended, rendering the country almost
inaccessible, while similar passes characterise the northern portion of
the line where it crosses the great rivers.
The Highland Line may be said at its southern end to commence at Loch
Lomond, in the earldom of Lennox, where the Pass of Balmaha between the
lake and the commencement of the mountain region leads into the district
of which this lake is the centre. The line then enters the earldom of
Menteith, and crosses the Forth, here called the _Avon dubh_, at
Aberfoil, and proceeds from thence to Callander, where the pass on the
north side of Loch Vennachar leads into the district formerly called
Strathgartney, and the Pass of Leny forms the entrance to Strathire and
to the district of Balquhidder. From Callander the line follows the
range of the Grampians, through the earldom of Stratherne, and crosses
the river Earn at Crieff, and the Almond at Findoch, where passes lead
to the upper part of the Vale of the Earn and to Glenalmond
respectively. From thence it follows the line of the Grampians to
Dunkeld, where the King’s Pass forms the entrance to Strathtay, and
through the district of Stormont in Gowry to Blairgowrie, where the
passes lead into the district of Strathardell. From thence it follows
the line of the Grampians till it crosses the Isla north-west of Alyth,
and enters the earldom of Angus, where the minor range of hills forming
the east side of Glenisla coincides with the line till it reaches the
great chain of the Mounth, or backbone of the Grampians, at Cairn
Bannoch. There it enters the earldom of Mar, and proceeds along the west
side of Glenmuich to the Dee at Ballater, where the Pass of Ballater
leads into the districts of Strathdee and the Forest of Braemar. North
of these districts it includes likewise the district of Strathdon,
crossing the river Don at Boat of Forbes, whence it proceeds to the
river Spey at Craigellachie, including the district of Strathavon, and
here a pass leads into the district of Strathspey, and separating the
mountain region of the earldom of Moray from the level plains forming
the southern seaboard of the Moray Firth, it terminates at the mouth of
the river Nairn, which flows through the town of Nairn, and formerly
separated the Gaelic-speaking people on its left bank from the lowland
population on the right. The Highland Line thus intersects the old
earldoms of Lennox, Menteith, Stratherne, Gowry, Angus, Mar, Buchan, and
Moray, which represented the older great Celtic tribes or _Mortuath_,
governed by their _Ri Mortuath_ or _Mormaers_, and the portion of each
earldom included in the Highland Line consisted of that part which
retained its Gaelic population intact, while the rest of it became more
or less colonised by foreign settlers.
[Sidenote: Break-up of the Celtic earldoms.]
The earldoms of Atholl, Ross, and Sutherland were entirely comprehended
within the Highland Line, as well as the great district of
_Arregaithel_, or Argyll, in its most extended sense, reaching from the
Clyde to Lochbroom, and a similar line drawn from the Ord of Caithness
to Brinsness on the west side of Thurso Bay separated the Gaelic
population in the more mountainous part of the ancient province of
Cathanesia, which from an early period had passed into the possession of
the Norwegian earls of Orkney, from the Teutonic settlers in the eastern
and more level plains. As long as the native race of the _Mormaers_
remained, though assuming the new character of earls, the connection
between them and the Gaelic population of the earldom remained
unimpaired; but when, by marriage or otherwise, the earldom passed into
foreign hands, the Gaelic population became the subjects of a foreign
overlord, the greater tribe became broken up, and they emerged from it
in the form of clans or broken tribes.
[Sidenote: Moray.]
The first of these great Celtic tribes to break up was that which formed
the great earldom, or rather petty kingdom, of Moray. Here we find a
family making their appearance in the eleventh century in the Irish
Annals as _Mormaers_ of Moray, and occasionally bearing the title of
_Ri_ or king. This line of Celtic kings or _Mormaers_ terminated with
Maelsnechtan, son of that Lulach mac Gillcomgan who succeeded Macbeth as
king of Scotland for three months. He appears as _Ri_ or king of Moray
in 1086, and after him Angus, the grandson of Lulach by his daughter,
bears the title of earl of Moray, and by his defeat and death in the
beginning of the reign of David the First the line of the ancient kings
or _Mormaers_ of Moray comes to an end, but the tribe appears to have
been still held so far together by their support of the claims of the
family of MacHeth to the earldom of Moray, whose founder Wymund asserted
himself to be the son of Angus, and of that of MacWilliam who claimed to
be the nearer line of the royal family to the throne of Scotland; and it
was not till the year 1222 that the pretensions of these two families
were finally extinguished by Alexander the Second.
[Sidenote: Buchan.]
About the same period the line of the Celtic Mormaers or earls of Buchan
had come to an end. The Book of Deer furnishes us with a tolerably
complete list of these Mormaers, from Bede the Pict in the sixth century
to Colban, earl of Buchan, in the reign of David the First; and we can
see from the history of the last four that they followed in the main the
Pictish law of succession, which preferred daughters to sons after
brothers. Donald, son of Ruadri, appears as _Mormaer_ of Buchan in the
reign of Malcolm the Second. He is followed by Donald, son of
MacDubhacain, who is succeeded by his brother Cainneach. The next
_Mormaer_ mentioned was his son Gartnait, but he appears to have derived
his right through his wife Ete, daughter of Gillamithil. He appears with
the title of earl in the reign of Alexander the First, and his daughter
Eva carries the earldom to her husband Colban. He is followed by his son
Roger, and he by his son Fergus, whose only daughter Margaret carried
the earldom to William Cumyn, who became in his right earl of Buchan,
and by Alexander the Second was made guardian of the earldom of Moray in
1222. Six years after, the districts of Badenoch and Lochaber were
conferred upon his son Walter Cumyn, on the rebellion, defeat, and death
of a certain Gillespic, by whom they had apparently been forfeited.
[Sidenote: Atholl.]
The same reign of Alexander the Second witnessed the termination of the
line of the Celtic earls of Atholl and Angus. The former earldom appears
to have been an appanage of the family from whom sprang the kings of the
race of Duncan, the son of Crinan, and its earls were descended from his
younger son, a younger brother of Malcolm Ceannmor.[406] The last of
this line was Henry, earl of Atholl, who died before 1215, and the
earldom passed to the eldest of two sisters, Isabella and Forflissa, who
married Thomas, earl of Galloway. On the death of his son Patrick in
1242 he was succeeded by his aunt Forflissa, the other sister, who
married David de Hastings, and by his daughter it was carried to the
Strathbolgie family, a branch of the earls of Fife.[407] But while the
earldom passed into the hands of a succession of foreign earls, a family
bearing the title of De Atholia continued to possess a great part of the
earldom, and were probably the descendants of the older Celtic earls.
The Gaelic population of the whole of the north-western portion of
Atholl, bounded on the east by the river Garry, and on the south by the
Tummel, remained intact under them, but the possession of the great
western territory of the _abthanrie_ of Dull by the Crown led to the
introduction of a foreign element among the landholders of the rest of
the earldom, and much of the land passed permanently into the possession
of the families of Menzies and Stewart, while the Celtic character of
the whole earldom was notwithstanding preserved.
[Sidenote: Angus.]
The same reign saw also the extinction of the old Celtic earls of Angus.
The Pictish Chronicle furnishes us with the names of three of its
Mormaers—Dubucan, son of Indrechtaig, who died about 935, and
Maelbrigdi, son of Dubucan, and this name again occurs in the ‘Dufugan
Comes’ who appears among the seven earls in the reign of Alexander the
First, and was no doubt earl of Angus. After him we have a succession of
four earls from father to son, viz., Gillebride, Gilchrist, Duncan, and
Malcolm; and Matilda, the daughter and heiress of the last earl, carried
the earldom by marriage first to John Comyn, who died in 1242, and then
to the Norman family of De Umphraville. The family of Ogilvie, who
retained possession of a considerable portion of the earldom, appear to
have been the male descendants of these old Celtic earls, and they
likewise gave a line of earls to Caithness, who possessed, with the
title of earl, one half of the land of the earldom. Of the land of the
earldom of Angus the district of Glenisla was alone included within the
Highland Line and preserved its Gaelic population.
[Sidenote: Menteith and Stratherne.]
The beginning of the reign of Alexander the Third saw the termination
too of the line of the old Celtic earls of Menteith. No mention of the
_Mormaers_ of this _Mortuath_ has been preserved, and the first earl,
Gilchrist, appears in the reign of Malcolm the Fourth. He was succeeded
by Murethac, who was followed by two brothers, both bearing the name of
Maurice, between whom there was a contention for the earldom in 1213,
which ended in the elder Maurice resigning the earldom to his brother
and retaining some of the lands for his life;[408] but Earl Maurice left
two daughters only, the eldest of whom married Walter Cumyn, and the
younger Walter Stewart, and carried the earldom to these families. The
western and more mountainous part of this earldom, consisting mainly of
the districts of Strathgartney and Strathire, retained its Gaelic
population. Of the early _Mormaers_ of the _Mortuath_ of Stratherne we
have no mention, but the line of its Celtic earls continued unbroken
till the reign of David the Second, when the forfeiture of one
interposed for a time a Norman baron, and the succession terminated in
co-heiresses, when the earldom came into the Crown, and was re-granted
to one of the Royal Stewarts; the western districts within the Highland
Line retained their Gaelic inhabitants.
[Sidenote: Mar.]
The only other of the frontier earldoms intersected by the Highland Line
was that of Mar, and here, like Buchan, we are on historic ground, for a
_Mormaer_ of Mar—Donald mac Emin mac Cainech—is recorded in a nearly
contemporary document as having been present at the battle of Clontarff
in Ireland, fought in the year 1014;[409] and Ruadri, _Mormaer_ of Mar,
who is mentioned in the Book of Deer, appears among the seven earls in
the reign of Alexander the First as ‘Rothri Comes.’ The line of the
Celtic earls of Mar continued till the reign of Robert the Second, when
it was carried by an heiress into the Douglas family, and afterwards to
one of the Stewarts, by whom it was resigned to the Crown. A great part
of the territory of the Celtic earls was at an early period carried off
from them by the family of De Lundin or Durward, who claimed the earldom
as representing the earls through a female, and were thus compensated,
but this part consisted of Lowland districts, and the Highland districts
of Strathdee, Braemar, and Strathdon constituted the ‘comitatus’ or
demesne of the Celtic earls, and preserved their Gaelic population.
[Sidenote: Ross.]
The history of the _Mortuath_ or earldom of Ross is peculiar, and became
eventually connected with that of the Lords of the Isles. Of the early
Celtic _Mormaers_ we have no record, and the supposed connection of
Macbeth with Ross as its _Mormaer_, which originated with George
Chalmers, has no historic foundation. He was, as we have seen, _Mormaer_
of Moray. The name of Gillandres appears in Wyntoun as one of the earls
who besieged Malcolm the Fourth in Perth in the year 1160; and the
Gaelic name of the old Rosses as _Clanghillandres_ seems to connect him
with this earldom, but it must have been immediately after in the Crown,
for the same Malcolm undoubtedly gave it to Malcolm MacHeth, who appears
as its earl, but was soon after expelled. It was afterwards bestowed by
William the Lion upon a foreigner, the Count of Holland; but his
successor, Alexander the Second, created Ferchard Macintaggart, the heir
of a line of lay abbots of Applecross, earl of Ross, who thus united the
extensive possessions of that monastery in North Argyll to the earldom,
and from him the later earls are descended. It became for a time broken
up, when an heiress carried the earldom to Walter de Lesly, and
afterwards to Alexander Stewart, earl of Buchan, but it reverted through
her daughter and heiress to the line of the Celtic Lords of the Isles.
[Sidenote: The _Gallgaidheal_ and their lords.]
But while the eastern and central tribes became broken up by the
termination of the line of the Celtic earls of the respective great
districts or _Mortuaths_, and thus either reverting to the Crown or
passing by marriage to Norman barons, those of the western seaboard and
of the Isles were held together for a longer period, and remained intact
till towards the end of the fifteenth century. These Gaelic inhabitants
of the Western Isles had been, as early as the ninth century, brought
under the rule of the Danes and Norwegians, and the latter had in the
eleventh century extended their sway over the western districts of the
highlands and over Galloway. These Gael were termed _Gallgaidheal_, the
word _Gall_ or foreigner being applied to both Danes and Norwegians,
both from being under their rule and from their having been in some
degree assimilated to their manners and become connected with them by
intermarriage; but the word _Gallgaidheal_ as a geographical term became
limited to the district of Galloway, which derived its name from them.
The Islands became known as _Innsigall_, or the islands of the
strangers, and western districts of the Highlands as _Airer_ or _Oirir
Gaidheal_, the coast land of the Gael, from whence the name of Argyll is
derived. Two Celtic chiefs, as we have seen, succeeded at the same time
in driving the Norwegians out from the mainland of Scotland, and
Somerled, establishing himself as king over the whole of the extensive
district known by the name of Ergadia or _Oirirgaidheal_, extending from
the Clyde to Lochbroom, and had likewise wrested from the Norwegian
kings of the Isles the southern half of them lying to the south of the
promontory of Ardnamurchan, over which his descendants ruled with almost
regal sway, while Fergus founded a line of Celtic lords of Galloway.
Somerled left three sons—Dubhgal or Dugald, Reginald, and Angus, among
whom his dominions were divided. Dubhgal received the district of Lorn,
extending from Lochleven to the Point of Ashnish, and also that of
Morvern; Reginald obtained the districts of Kintyre and Cowall, and the
islands which Somerled had possessed were divided between them, Dubhgal
having Mull and the small islands adjacent to it, and Reginald the
important island of Isla, with those in the Firth of Clyde. Angus’s
possessions appear to have lain north of the others, but a struggle
seems to have taken place between him and Reginald, which resulted in
Angus being slain with his three sons in 1210 by the sons of Reginald.
Soon after, the conquest of the great district of Argyll by Alexander
the Second took place, and the descendants of Somerled appear to have
been among the lords who were confirmed in their possessions by that
monarch, but their possessions in the Isles were still held of the
Norwegians till the cession of the Isles in the reign of Alexander the
Third. Reginald had left two sons, Donald and Ruaidri or Roderick, the
former succeeding his father in Kintyre and Isla, and the latter
obtaining Bute and Arran, and likewise the possessions which had been
wrested from Angus, and consisted mainly of the district extending from
Ardnamurchan to Glenelg, and known by the name of Garmoran; while the
district of Lochaber, which had been forfeited, passed into the
possession of the Cumyns. The descendants of Dugald and Reginald thus
shared the possessions of Somerled between them, and we find the heads
of the respective families—Alexander, son of Eogan, son of Duncan, son
of Dubhgal, Angus Mor son of Donald, and Allan son of Roderic—appearing
at the Scottish parliament in 1284, when the crown was settled on the
Maiden of Norway; but the families having taken opposite sides in the
war of succession—the head of the line of Dubhgal, John of Lorn,
supporting the cause of Baliol, and the head of the line of Reginald
that of Bruce—the latter became the predominant family. Angus Og, son of
Angus Mor, the head of the family who had supported Bruce, received from
him when established on the throne the lands of Morvern, Ardnamurchan,
and Lochaber, with the islands which had belonged to the Lords of Lorn.
These lands and islands, with Kintyre and Isla, were confirmed to his
son John by David the Second, who likewise confirmed to Reginald son of
Roderic, the lands of Garmoran, with the small islands north of
Ardnamurchan and the southern half of the Long Island; but Reginald
having been slain in a quarrel with the earl of Ross at Perth in 1346,
his possessions passed with his sister Amie by marriage to John the son
of Angus,[410] and thus this latter family became known as the powerful
Lords of the Isles, ruling over the territories of the Macdonalds of
Isla and Kintyre, the MacRuaries of Garmoran and the North Isles, and a
great part of those which had belonged to the Lords of Lorn. Their
position was still further strengthened by the marriage of John, Lord of
the Isles, with the daughter of Robert, High Steward of Scotland, for
which connection he had apparently repudiated his first wife Amie; and
when the line of the Lords of Lorn of the race of Dubhgal came to an
end, and the lordship of Lorn passed to the Stewarts of Innermeath by
marriage with the daughter and heiress of John, Lord of Lorn, before
1388, the Lords of the Isles were left without a rival in their rule of
the Gaelic population of Argyll and the Isles. John, Lord of the Isles,
had by his first marriage with Amie MacRuarie, three sons, John,
Godfrey, and Ranald; and by his second marriage with the Lady Margaret
Stewart likewise three sons, Donald, John, and Alexander; and when
Robert the High Steward succeeded to the throne in 1370, his influence
led to an arrangement by which the children of the Lord of the Isles by
his second marriage, who were the king’s grandsons, were to be preferred
to the children of the first marriage in the succession to the Isles,
while the possessions of the MacRuarie family, which he had inherited
through his first wife, were to be secured to the first family as the
price of their acquiescence. Accordingly, in the first year of his
reign, King Robert confirms to John, Lord of the Isles, the territory on
the mainland and the Isles which had belonged to Alan, son of Roderic,
and in the following year confirms a grant by the Lord of the Isles of
these possessions to his son Reginald, the youngest of the three
brothers, who appears to have agreed to the arrangement, the eldest son,
John, having predeceased his father, and the second, Godfrey, having
apparently refused to surrender his rights; and a few years later
charters are granted to the Lord of the Isles and to the heirs of his
marriage with Margaret, the king’s daughter, of the island of Colonsay
with its pertinents, and the lands of Lochaber, Kintyre, and one half of
Knapdale. On the death of the Lord of the Isles in 1380, Reginald
fulfilled his engagement by causing Donald to be recognised as Lord of
the Isles, and having him inaugurated by the usual Celtic solemnities as
such; while Godfrey appears to have for a time maintained his right to
his mother’s inheritance, which, however, was soon extinguished by the
failure of heirs-male.
Donald thus appears to have entered peaceably into possession of the
lordship of the Isles, and his marriage with Margaret, daughter of
Walter Lesly, earl of Ross, added a claim to that earldom on the death
of her brother Alexander, earl of Ross, who left an only daughter who
became a nun. This claim being contested by the Regent Duke of Albany,
who had obtained a renunciation from the nun, led to the great battle of
Harlaw, where the whole force of the Western Highlands and Isles, as
well as those of the earldom, was pitted against the Government; and
though the issue of the battle was doubtful, the Lord of the Isles
maintained his possession of the earldom, and his title as Earl of Ross
was eventually admitted, and he was succeeded in 1420 by his son
Alexander, as Earl of Ross and Lord of the Isles. The position of the
Lords of the Isles, as virtually independent rulers of nearly the whole
of the Highlands with the Isles, was now so powerful, that their
authority and that of the Crown came into constant collision, and it is
necessary, for our purpose, that the leading incidents should be shortly
stated. On the accession of James the First in 1424, he appears to have
strengthened his party against the family of the Regent Albany by
confirming the widow of the Lord of the Isles, and her son Alexander, in
the earldom of Ross; and the latter, as Lord of the Isles and Master of
the earldom of Ross, sat upon the jury which condemned Murdoch, Duke of
Albany, and his father-in-law, the Earl of Lennox, to death; but after
his object was attained, this vigorous monarch seemed to feel the
necessity of bringing the Highlands more under his control. The mode by
which he endeavoured to accomplish this was characteristic. He summoned,
in 1427, a Parliament to meet at Inverness, at which the Highland chiefs
were invited to attend, and as soon as they obeyed his summons, arrested
them to the number of fifty and committed them to prison. The
chroniclers enumerate among them—Alexander, Lord of the Isles, and his
mother the Countess of Ross; Angus Duff with his four sons, leader of
four thousand men of Strathnaver; Kenneth More with his son-in-law,
leader of two thousand men; John Ross, William Lesly, Angus of Moray,
and Mackmahon, leaders of two thousand men each; and he put to death
Alexander Makreury of Garmoran, leader of a thousand men, and John
Makarthur, a great chief among them, and likewise leader of a thousand
men, who were beheaded. The rest were sent to various prisons, where,
after a time, some were put to death and others liberated.[411] Among
those who were liberated were the Lord of the Isles and his mother, and
he seems to have lost no time in endeavouring to revenge himself, for in
1429 he summoned all his vassals in Ross and the Isles, and advanced
against the town of Inverness, which he burnt to the ground after he had
wasted the crown lands; but on the appearance of the royal army, with
King James at its head, he retreated to Lochaber, where the king
followed him, and the Lord of the Isles having been deserted by part of
his troops, he was attacked and defeated, and eventually surrendered
himself unconditionally to the king, when he was imprisoned in Tantallon
Castle, and his mother was also arrested and confined at Inchcolm, in
the Firth of Forth. Along with the earl of Ross, we find in prison
Lachlane M‘Gillane, Torkill M‘Nell, Tarlan MacArchir, and Duncan
Persoun.[412]
The imprisonment of the earl of Ross and his mother led to an
insurrection in the west, when the Highlanders under Donald Balloch, a
cousin of the earl, defeated the royal troops, under the earls of Mar
and Caithness, at Inverlochy in Lochaber in 1431, when the former was
killed; but on the appearance of the king himself with additional
forces, Donald Balloch fled to Ireland, and the other chiefs made their
submission. In consequence of this insurrection, the king appears to
have seen the policy of setting the earl of Ross at liberty and
attaching him to his service by conferring upon him the important office
of Justiciar of Scotland north of the Forth, an office which he held
during the minority of James the Second. He appears, however, to have
entered into a league with the earls of Douglas and Crawford, in 1455,
for the dethronement of that monarch, but died in 1449 before any overt
attempt had been made to carry it into effect. Alexander, earl of Ross,
like his grandfather, seems to have formed one potent alliance with the
Lowland nobility by his marriage with Elizabeth Seton, daughter of
Alexander, Lord of Gordon and Huntly, while he had—either before or
after—added to his possessions by marriage with daughters of Highland
chiefs. By his countess Elizabeth he had John, who succeeded him as Earl
of Ross and Lord of the Isles. By the daughter of Giollapadraig, the
last of the lay abbots of Applecross, and known to tradition as the Red
Priest, with whom he obtained the lands of Lochalsh, Lochcarron, and
others, he had a son Hugh, to whom he gave the lands of Sleat in Skye;
and by a daughter of _Mac Dubhshithe_ or Macphee, of Lochaber, he had
Celestine or Gilleaspic, to whom he gave the lands of Lochalsh. During
the reign of James the Second, John, earl of Ross, was occasionally at
variance with the Crown, and at other times on good terms with the king,
and under his influence was married to the daughter of Sir James
Livingston; but soon after that king’s death, he entered into a league
with the earl of Douglas and King Edward the Fourth of England for the
conquest and partition of Scotland, in 1462, and immediately raised the
standard of revolt. Having assembled a large force, he made himself
master of the castle of Inverness, and proclaimed himself supreme over
the sheriffdoms of Inverness and Nairn, which then embraced the whole of
the north of Scotland over which he placed his natural son Angus as
lieutenant. In consequence of this act, and of the treaty with England
coming to light, he was summoned at his castle of Dingwall to appear
before a Parliament in Edinburgh to answer to various charges of
treason, and failing to attend, sentence of forfeiture was pronounced
against him in 1475. In order to carry this sentence into effect, an
expedition consisting both of a fleet and land force was sent against
him under the command of the earls of Crawford and Atholl, and this led
to his suing for pardon through the medium of the earl of Huntly, and he
eventually surrendered himself to the royal mercy. He was restored to
his forfeited estates, which he immediately resigned to the Crown. The
earldom of Ross was annexed to the Crown, and the rest of his estates,
with the exception of Kintyre and Knapdale, were regranted to him by
royal charter, and he was created a baron banrent and peer of Parliament
by the title of Lord of the Isles, with remainder to his two natural
sons, Angus and John. The old Celtic lordship of the Isles was thus
converted into a feudal barony in 1476.
Angus was soon after married to a daughter of the earl of Argyll, by
whom he had a son Donald Dubh, but was treacherously slain in 1490 at
Inverness by an Irish harper. The repeated attempts which had been made
to recover the earldom of Ross, and other acts committed in name of the
aged Lord of the Isles, led to his being again forfeited and deprived of
his titles and estates in a Parliament held at Edinburgh in May 1493, on
which he retired to the monastery of Paisley, and died there in 1498,
and was interred in the tomb of his royal ancestor King Robert the
Second. Although several attempts were made after his death by the
western chiefs to raise up his grandson Donald Dubh and his nephew
Donald Gallda, the son of Celestine, as Lords of the Isles, this was the
final termination of the dynasty of the Celtic Lords of the Isles, which
practically ceased to exist in 1476 at his first forfeiture, and the
Gaelic population, which had been kept together by the power and
authority of their great chiefs, became now broken up.[413]
[Sidenote: Lennox.]
The line of the Celtic earls of Lennox had come to an end during the
life of Alexander, earl of Ross, when Duncan, earl of Lennox, was
executed in 1425, and the earldom passed into the hands of the Stewarts.
[Sidenote: The _Toshachdoracht_.]
The fifteenth century thus saw the last of the great Celtic tribes
broken up; but while this process of disintegration from external
influence had thus overtaken the greater tribes or _Mortuath_ one after
another, their extinction as leading features in the Celtic tribal
organisation did not disclose the lesser tribes or _Tuaths_ in their
entirety. They, too, had been undergoing a process of internal change
similar to that which had affected the Irish tribes and led to the
development of the septs or clans, gradually severed more and more from
the parent tribe, till the bond of union between them became impaired,
and all tradition of their earlier existence as members of a larger
organisation became lost. But while the original tribe had ceased thus
to exist in that part of the country which retained its Gaelic
population, as an actual element in its social organisation, it left an
evidence of its previous existence in the lesser districts into which
the larger territories were divided, and which still remained as a
geographical feature; where an officer bearing the name and some of the
functions of the ancient _Toisech_ of the _Tuath_ is still found in
connection with some of them. This was the _Toshachdoracht_ or office of
_Toschachdoir_, which was considered equivalent to Coroner. It was
rendered in Latin by _capitalis legis_, and signified in English,
principal of law. Thus, in that part of the great district of Argyll
which formed the original kingdom of Dalriada, we find the districts of
Cowall, Kintyre in its largest sense, and Lorn, obviously representing
the ancient _Tuaths_ into which the population of the kingdom had been
divided, and we likewise find Archibald, Master of Argyll, granting in
1550 to Campbell of Ardkinlas the office of Coroner, _alias
Thoshisdoir_, viz., _Tosheochdorachtie_ of the lands of Cowall, from
Claychin Toskycht to the Points of Toward and Ardlawmonth.[414] In 1539
Alane M‘Lane was appointed by King James V. _Toschachdoir_ of all
Kintyre, from the Mull to Altasynach;[415] and the same king appointed,
in 1542, Neill mac Neill to the same office.[416] In 1455, John, Earl of
Ross and Lord of the Isles, confirms to Neill mac Neill a grant made by
his father, Alexander, Earl of Ross and Lord of the Isles, to Torquel
M‘Neill, constable of the castle of Swyffin, the father of Neill, of the
office called _Toshachdeora_ of the lands of Knapdale.[417] In 1447 we
find Sir Duncan Campbell as king’s lieutenant within the parts of
Argyll, granting to Reginald Malcolmson, of Craignish, the offices of
Steward, _Tosachdoir_, and Mair of the whole land of Craignish, and the
office of _Tosachdoir_, _ex parte regis_, within the same bounds; when
the heir was under age, to be held by his tutor, with consent of his
clan, viz., the Clandowil Cragniche.[418] In 1572, Archibald, Earl of
Argyll, grants to Colin Campbell of Barbrek certain lands with the
coronership of the lands and baronies of Glenurquhay, the two Lochaws,
Glenaray, Glenshyro, Ardskeodnich, Melfort, and Barbrek, that is, of the
district forming the central part of Argyll between Lorn and
Lochfyne.[419] In another grant, it is termed the office of
_Tosheadorach_ of the lands lying west of Lochfyne.[420] That part of
the great district of Argyll which pertained to the earldom of Moray
contained the lesser districts of Lochaber, Morvaren, Ardnamurchan, and
Garmoran, and here too we find the Lord of the Isles granting, in 1456,
to his esquire Somerled, son of John, son of Somerled, for life, and to
his eldest son for five years after his death, a _davach_ of his lands
of Gleneves, with the office commonly called _Tocheachdeora_ of all his
lands of Lochaber, and he seems to have derived from it the name of
_Toche_ or _Toshach_, as in 1553 or 1554 the same lands of Gleneves are
granted to his grandson, here called Donald Macallaster Mic Toche.[421]
There is no trace of the office of _Toschachdor_, under this name, in
connection with the more eastern districts of Moray, but there is no
reason to doubt that such districts as Badenoch, Strathspey,
Strathdearn, Strathnairn, Stratherrich, and the Aird, represented what
had formerly been tribe territories or _Tuaths_, and the same may be
predicated of similar districts in the northern earldoms. In Atholl, as
we have seen, the thanages appear even though within the Highland Line,
but here we find the office of _Toschachdor_ in connection with one
district in Breadalbane which was adjacent to one of these thanages, for
among the lands of the earldom of Breadalbane we find the thanage of
Cranach, with the office of _Toshachdoiraship_ of Ardtholony,[422] and
the office likewise appears in Lennox, where Malcolm, earl of Lennox,
grants to Patrick de Lindsay the office of _Tosheagor_ of Lennox.[423]
We find a trace of it, too, in Galloway, where the office of coroner
between the rivers Dee and Nith and the _Toshachdoracht_ of Nithsdale
appear to be the same.[424]
[Sidenote: First appearance of clans.]
But while the more ancient tribal forms had thus undergone a process of
change and modification similar to that which characterised the Irish
tribe, and left merely its shadow behind it in the geographical district
and the function of the _Toshachdoracht_, it is in the reign of David
the First that the sept or clan first appears as a distinct and
prominent feature in the social organisation of the Gaelic population,
and owing to the light thrown upon the ancient state of the earldom of
Buchan as a Celtic _Mortuath_ by the Book of Deer only. During the
period of the _Mormaers_ of Buchan prior to Garnait and Colban, who were
_Mormaers_ or earls in the reign of David, we find the _Toisechs_
mentioned generally as concurring in grants of land; but in the time of
these two _Mormaers_ a grant of land is made by Comgill mac Caennaig,
_Tosech_ of Clan Canan; and Colban, _Mormaer_ of Buchan, and Eva,
daughter of Garnait his wife, and Donnachach mac Sithig, _Toisech_ of
Clan Morgan, mortmained all the previous offerings to God, Drostan,
Columcille, and Peter, that is, to the monastery of Deer, and this grant
is witnessed, among others, by the two sons of the _Toisech_. The
_Toisech_ of the _Tuath_ had thus by this time acquired a sufficient
_Deis_ to form a sept of his kin and dependants, of which he now appears
as the head, but the clans in this district only show themselves to
disappear at once before the advancing colonisation of the eastern
districts by a Teutonic population.
[Sidenote: Clan Macduff and its privileges.]
In the same reign we find a Gaelic sept or clan appearing where we might
least expect to find it, viz., in the province of Fife and Fothriff,
where the Clan Macduff figures from an early period in both the mythic
and the real history of Scotland, and has acquired a fictitious
importance from the supposed connection of its founders with the usurper
Macbeth, from which the privileges known as the law of the Clan Macduff
were supposed to be derived. The well-known tale of how Macduff was
Thane of Fife in the reign of Macbeth, how he incurred the resentment of
the usurper and fled to England from his wrath, how his wife and
children were slaughtered, and how he brought back Malcolm, the son of
King Duncan whom Macbeth had slain, and how he killed Macbeth in the
battle which placed Malcolm on the throne, first appears in the
Chronicle of John of Fordun,[425] but he does not notice the privileges
supposed to be conferred upon him and his descendants. These first
appear in an addition made to the Chronicle by his interpolator Bower,
the abbot of Inchcolm. According to him, after Malcolm was crowned,
Macduff, thane of Fife, came to him, and requested and obtained three
privileges, in reward for his faithful service, for himself and his
successors, lords or thanes of Fife:—First, that they should place the
king in his royal seat or chair on his coronation day; second, that they
should lead the vanguard in every battle in which the royal standard was
unfurled; third, that they, and every one of their kin, on the occasion
of any sudden and unpremeditated homicide, should enjoy the privilege of
the law of Macduff, the gentry on paying twenty-four marks as kinbot,
and the commonalty on paying twelve marks receiving a plenary
remission.[426] Wyntoun gives the same account of the three privileges,
but adds—
‘Off this lawch are thre capytale;
That is the Blak Prest off Weddale,
The Thayne off Fyffe, and the thryd syne
Quha ewyre be Lord of Abbyrnethyne.’[427]
Sir John Skene, however, attaches the third privilege to the Croce of
the Clan Macduff which divides Stratherne from Fife, as a privilege and
liberty of girth in such sort that when any manslayer, being within the
ninth degree of kin and blood to Macduff, sometime earl of Fife, came to
that cross and gave nine cows and a colpindach, or year-old cow, he was
free of the slaughter committed by him, and quotes a charter by David
the Second to William Ramsay of the earldom of Fife, with the law called
Clan Macduff.[428] The existence of this privilege is so far confirmed
that in a Parliament of King Robert the Second, held in 1384, in which
certain laws were enacted regarding _Katheranes_, the earl of Fife
agreed that as ‘principal of law of Clan Macduff’ (_capitalis legis de
Clen m’Duffe_), he would cause them to be observed within his
bounds;[429] and in the fragmentary code of laws it is enacted that the
_duellum_, or wager of battle, may be remitted in three instances, the
second being ‘by the law of the Clan Macduff for the slaughter of one of
the kin, if the kin of the other party can come in the place of combat
when the appealer is proven, and his lance.’[430] We thus see that when
the line of the Celtic Earls of Fife, the hereditary _Toshachs_ of the
tribe, failed, they were replaced by the _Capitalis legis_, ‘Capytale of
lawch,’ or _Toshachdor_, the principal being the alien Earl, to whom
Wyntoun joins the priest of Wedale, a parsonage belonging to St.
Andrews, and the Lord of Abernethy, the descendant of the old abbots of
the monastery of that name. Hector Boece pushes the origin of the clan
as far back as the reign of Kenneth MacAlpin, the founder of the
Scottish dynasty, who, according to that veracious chronicler, appointed
governors of the different provinces, that of Fife being a certain Fifus
Duffus.
There were of course no thanes of Fife at any time. The first appearance
of the name on record is in the reign of David the First, when
Gillemichel Macduff witnesses an early charter of that monarch to the
monks of Dunfermline, along with five earls, one of whom is Constantine,
earl of Fife, and he certainly is the same person who witnesses the
foundation charter of Holyrood shortly after as ‘Gillemichel Comes,’ and
had thus become earl of Fife.
The demesne of the earls of Fife of this race appears to have consisted
of the parishes of Cupar, Kilmany, Reres, and Cameron in Fife, and those
of Strathmiglo and Auchtermuchty in Fothriff,[431] near which Macduff’s
Cross was situated, but whether this sept were the remains of the old
Celtic inhabitants of the province, or a Gaelic clan introduced into it
when its chief was made earl, it is difficult to say, but it is not
impossible that it may have been a northern clan who followed Macbeth
when the southern districts were subjected to his rule, and that there
may be some foundation for the legend that the founder of the clan had
rebelled against him, and adopted the cause of Malcolm Ceannmor, and so
maintained his position. The fact that the race from whom the _Mormaers_
of Moray derived their origin is termed in one of the Irish Genealogical
MSS. Clan Duff, and the earls of Fife undoubtedly possessed from an
early period large possessions in the north, including the district of
Strathavon,[432] lends some probability to this supposition. The
privileges of the clan, however, stand on a different footing. From the
earliest period the territory of Fife comes prominently forward as the
leading province of Scotland, and its earls occupied the first place
among the seven earls of Scotland. The first two privileges of placing
the king on the Coronation Stone, and of heading the van in the army,
were probably attached to the province of Fife, and not to any
particular tribe from which its earls might have been derived, while on
the other hand the third seems derived from the institution connected
with the ancient _Finé_, by which the kin formed a class of seventeen
persons, consisting of the _Geilfiné_, _Deirbhfiné_, _Indfiné_, and
_Iarfiné_, and the nine degrees of kindred of the Clan Macduff
correspond to the first two, which consisted of nine persons, traces of
which can also be found in the Welsh Laws.
Whilst the sept or clan thus makes its appearance in these few instances
beyond the Highland Line, it no doubt had already assumed an equally
distinct form within that boundary; but whatever may have been the
condition of the clans in the more inaccessible region of the Highlands,
history throws little light upon their existence till they emerge beyond
it towards the end of the fourteenth century.
[Sidenote: Description of Highlanders—1363-1383.]
Fordun, who concludes his Chronicle immediately before the first
appearance of a Highland clan beyond the Highland Line, gives the
following description of the inhabitants of the Highlands:—‘The
Highlanders and people of the Islands are,’ he says, ‘a savage and
untamed nation, rude and independent, given to rapine, ease-loving, of a
docile and warm disposition, comely in person but unsightly in dress,
hostile to the Anglic people and language, and, owing to diversity of
speech, even to their own nation, and exceedingly cruel. They are,
however, faithful and obedient to their king and country, and easily
made to submit to law, if properly governed.’[433] This is a picture
drawn by one who had no friendly feeling towards them, but the good
qualities with which he credits them, of being of a docile and warm
disposition, and faithful and obedient to their king and country, read
as strangely to us when their subsequent history is taken into account,
as Fordun’s opinion that the dress is unsightly hardly corresponds with
modern taste. At the time he wrote, however, he was warranted in what he
said, for from the time when Alexander the Second finally suppressed the
rebellion of the people of Moray, and conquered Argyll in the early part
of his reign, to his own day, they had not broken out beyond their
mountain barrier, and these early rebellions arose from their adherence
to a family which they believed had a rightful claim to the throne, just
as those of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the result of
their attachment to the cause of the Stewarts.
[Sidenote: Raid into Angus in 1391.]
This state of quiescence was not destined, however, to continue long,
and within eight years after the death of the chronicler the irruptions
of the Highlanders into the low country were renewed, and they now
appear in the form of separate septs or clans. Robert the Second had, in
the first year of his reign, granted the lands of Badenoch, which had
been forfeited by the Cumyns, to his fourth son, Alexander, who, from
his fierce disposition, became known as the Wolf of Badenoch, and some
years after he obtained grants of the lands of Strathavon, which had
belonged to the earls of Fife, and of Abernethy in Strathtay. Alexander
had no family by his wife Eupham, countess of Ross, but a number of
illegitimate sons; and Bower tells us that in 1391 the Caterans, as he
calls them, invaded the Braes of Angus with Duncan Stewart, one of his
sons, at their head, and were encountered by Walter Ogilvy, sheriff of
Angus, with such of the barons of Angus and their followers as he could
hastily summon, at a place called by him Glenbrereth, where the sheriff
was slain with sixty of his followers.[434] Wyntoun gives a very graphic
account of this raid, which he places in the subsequent year, when he
says, ‘There arose a great discord between Sir David of Lindsay, son of
Glenesk, and the Highlandmen, and that in consequence of the former
sending a secret spy into the Highlands, a great company of Highlandmen,
to the number of three hundred and more, came suddenly into Angus under
three chieftains, Thomas, Patrick, and Gibbon, whose surname was
Duncanson, and encountered the sheriff at Gasklune, in the Stormont,
where the latter was slain.’[435] It is unnecessary to enter into the
particulars of the conflict, striking though the details are, but we
have more certain information as to the leaders of the Highlanders in a
Brief issued by King Robert the Third at a general council held at Perth
on the 26th March 1392, and addressed to the sheriff and bailiffs of
Aberdeen, directing them to put to the horn as outlaws the following
persons, guilty of the slaughter of Walter de Ogilvy, Walter de Lichton,
and others of the king’s lieges:—viz., Duncan and Robert Stewarts,
Patrick and Thomas Duncansons, Robert de Athale, Andrew Macnayr, Duncan
Bryceson, Angus Macnayr, and John Ayson junior, and all others their
adherents; and as taking part with them in the slaughter, Slurach and
his brothers, with the whole Clanqwhevil, William Mowat, John de Cowts,
Donald de Cowts, with their adherents; David de Rose, Alexander
M‘Kintalyhur, John M‘Kintalyhur, Adam Rolson, John Rolson, with their
adherents; Duncan Neteraulde, John Mathyson, with their adherents;
Morgownde Ruryson and Michael Mathowson, with their adherents.[436] They
thus formed six groups. The first group who were directly implicated,
with the exception of the Stewarts, belong to Athole; the Duncansons,
with Robert de Athale, were the heads of the Clan Donnachie, descended
from the old earls who possessed the north-western district bordering
upon that of Badenoch; the Macnairs possessed Foss in Strathtummel, and
the Aysons, Tullimet in Strathtay. The other five were art and part. The
first were Slurach and his brothers, who with their followers formed a
clan termed the Clanqwhevil. This is the first appearance of a distinct
clan in the Highlands. The second group of the Mowats and Cowts belonged
to Buchan, of which Alexander Stewart was earl; and the third of David
de Rose and his followers, must have come from Strathnairn, where the
Roses were situated. These groups were, therefore, probably dependants
of the Wolf of Badenoch, and the cause of this raid seems to have arisen
from this, that Sir David de Lindsay had inherited Glenesk in Angus and
the district of Strathnairn from his mother, one of the daughters and
co-heirs of Sir John Stirling of Glenesk, while another of the daughters
had married Robert de Atholia. His possession of Strathnairn would bring
him into contact with the Wolf of Badenoch and the northern clans, and a
quarrel regarding the succession probably brought the Clan Donnachie
into the field.
[Sidenote: Combat of two clans on North Inch of Perth in 1396.]
The Wolf of Badenoch died in 1394, and two years after, the only
Highland clan hitherto mentioned with that designation, came more
prominently into the foreground in the very remarkable combat which took
place on the North Inch of Perth in the year 1396, and from its
peculiarity seems to have attracted general notice, as well as given
rise to a controversy with regard to the actors in it, for which it is
difficult to provide any satisfactory solution.
The account given by the chroniclers of this remarkable combat differs
somewhat as to the details. The earliest account of it is probably that
given by Wyntoun, who wrote his Chronicle between 1420 and 1424, or only
about twenty-five years after the event. He says that the combat took
place at Saint Johnstoun or Perth between sixty men, thirty against
thirty, who belonged to two clans who had been at variance in old feud
in which their fore elders were slain. He names the clans Clahynnhe (or
Clan) Qwhewyl, and Clachiny (or Clan) Ha, and that their chieftains were
Scha Ferqwhareisone and Christy Johnesone; that they fought within
barriers with bow and axe, knife and sword; but that who had the best of
it he could not say, and that fifty or more were slain, and but few
escaped with life.[437]
Bower, who wrote nearly twenty-five years later, gives further details.
He says that a great part of the north beyond the Grampians had been
disturbed by two turbulent caterans and their followers:—Scheabeg and
his kin, who were called Clan Kay, and Cristi Johnson, and his, called
Clanquhele, who could by no treaty or arrangement be brought to peace,
nor could they be brought under subjection to the government, upon which
David de Lyndesay of Crawford, and Thomas earl of Moray, interposed and
treated between them, so that they agreed to settle their quarrel before
the king at Perth, by a combat between thirty chosen men of their kin on
each side, armed only with their swords, bows and arrows, and without
their plaids or other arms. The combat took place on the North Inch of
Perth, in presence of the king, the governor, and a great multitude, on
the Monday before Saint Michael’s day, when, of the sixty, all were
slain except one on the part of the Clan Kay and eleven on the other
part. He adds that as they were entering within the barrier, one of the
number dashed into the river and escaped by swimming across, on which
one of the spectators offered to supply his place for half a mark, on
condition that if he survived he was to be maintained during the rest of
his life, which was agreed to. The result was that the north was for
many years after at peace, and there was no further outbreak of the
caterans.[438] The material difference between Bower’s account and
Wyntoun’s is, that he reverses the connection of the chiefs with the
clans, and adds the detail of the numbers slain on both sides, and the
aid of the volunteer.
The next account is given by Maurice Buchanan, in the Book of
Pluscarden, who wrote in 1461, and differs very much from that of Bower.
He connects this event with the raid into Angus five years previously,
and implies that the same parties were concerned in both, but he does
not name the clans. This was so far the case, that the Clan Qwhele took
part in both. He says that in 1391 so great a contention had arisen
among the wild Scots (_silvestres Scottos_), that their whole country
was disturbed by it, and, on that account, the king finding himself
unable to restore peace, arranged, in a council of the magnates of the
kingdom, that their two principal captains, with their best and most
valiant friends, amounting on each side to thirty men, should fight in
an enclosed field after the manner of judicial combatants (_more
duellancium_),[439] with swords only, cross bows having each three
arrows only, and this before the king on a certain day on the North Inch
of Perth; and this, by the intervention of the earl of Crawford and
other nobles, was agreed upon and carried out, when all on both sides
were slain except seven, five on the one side and two on the other
escaping alive, of which two one escaped by flying to the river and
escaping across it, and the other being taken was pardoned with the
consent of the other party, though some say that he was hung. In the
beginning of the conflict one of the number of one party disappeared and
could not be found, on which one of the spectators, who happened to
belong to the same clan (_parentela_) and was hostile to the other
party, agreed to supply his place for forty shillings, fought most
valiantly, and escaped with his life.[440] As the writer of this account
was himself a Highlander, this is most probably the account given of the
combat on the Highland side, while that of Bower was the account
reported in the Lowlands; and the former has more appearance of being
the correct account, and agrees better with that of Wyntoun, who could
not tell which party gained. It also indicates that the conflict was of
the nature of a judicial wager of battle, which is also probably the
true view; for if the contention between the clans was a mere ordinary
feud, it is difficult to see how this combat should have been the means
of restoring peace, but if the dispute related to some difference as to
some question of right or privilege which both claimed, it is quite
intelligible that it should have been settled by judicial combat before
the king.
The only other early notice of this event is in a short chronicle
contained in the Chartulary of Moray, which states that the combat took
place on the 28th day of September at Perth before the king and the
nobles of Scotland, because he found it impossible to establish peace
between two clans (_parentelas_) called the Clan Kay and the Clan
Qwhwle, whence there were daily slaughtering attacks committed by them.
Thirty men on each side without armour, but with bows, swords, and
dirks, met in conflict, when all on the side of the Clan Kay were slain
except one, and of the other party ten survived.[441]
[Sidenote: The Clan Chattan and Clan Cameron.]
If this event was connected with the raid of Angus which preceded it,
the events which followed may likewise tend to throw light upon the
actors in this strange combat. When the royal forces attacked Alexander,
Lord of the Isles, in 1429, and put him to flight in Lochaber, the
chroniclers tell us, that at the sight of the royal standard, he was
deserted by two tribes, who submitted to the royal authority. They are
termed by Bower the Clan Katan and Clan Cameron, and by Maurice
Buchanan, more correctly, the _Clan de Guyllequhatan_ and _Clan
Cameron_. This was on the eve of St. John the Baptist’s day, that is, on
the 23d of June, and on the following Palm Sunday, which is on the 20th
day of the following month of March, we are told by the chroniclers that
the Clan Chattan attacked the Clan Cameron when assembled in a certain
church, to which they set fire and destroyed nearly the whole clan.
Although the Clan Chattan are here said, in general terms, to have
deserted the Lord of the Isles, it appears that a part of the clan still
adhered to his cause, for after his restoration to liberty, we find him
in 1443 granting a charter to Malcolm MacIntosh of the forty merk lands
of Keppoch and others in the lordship of Lochaber, and in 1447 he
confers upon him the office of bailie or steward of the lordship of
Lochaber.[442] This Malcolm, who is called in the second charter his
cousin, was related to the Lord of the Isles through his mother, who was
a daughter of his grandfather Angus, Lord of the Isles, and was thus
probably led to adhere to him. The same lands are confirmed to his son
Duncan MacIntosh in 1466, by John, Lord of the Isles,[443] and in this
charter he is termed Captain of Clan Chattan, which is the first
appearance of this designation.
Neither were the Clan Cameron entirely destroyed, for we find Alan, son
of Donald Duff, appearing in 1472 as Captain of the Clan Cameron, and in
1492, Alexander of the Isles, Lord of Lochalsh and Lochiel, grants the
lands of Lochiel to Ewen, son of Alan, son of Donald, Captain of Clan
Cameron. It would thus appear that a part only of these two clans had
deserted the Lord of the Isles in 1429, and a part adhered to him, that
the conflict on Palm Sunday was between the former part of these clans,
and that the leaders of those who adhered to the Lord of the Isles
became afterwards recognised as captains of the respective clans. It
further appears that there was, within no distant time after the
conflict on the North Inch of Perth, a bitter feud between the two clans
who had deserted the Lord of the Isles, and there are indications that
this was merely the renewal of an older quarrel, for both clans
undoubtedly contested the right to the lands of Glenlui and Locharkaig
in Lochaber, to which William MacIntosh received a charter from the Lord
of the Isles in 1336, while they unquestionably afterwards formed a part
of the territory possessed by the Camerons.
By the later historians one of the clans who fought on the North Inch of
Perth, and who were termed by the earlier chroniclers _Clan Qwhele_, are
identified with the Clan Chattan,[444] and that this identification is
well founded, so far as regards that part of the clan which adhered to
the royal cause, while that in the part of the Clan Cameron who followed
the same course, and were nearly entirely destroyed on Palm Sunday, we
may recognise their opponents the Clan Kay, is not without much
probability.
The Clan Chattan in later times consisted of sixteen septs, who followed
MacIntosh as captain of the clan, but did not recognise him as one of
the race, and regarded MacPherson of Cluny, head of the sept called
_Clan Vuireach_, as the male representative of the founder of the clan.
The first of the MacIntoshes who appears with the title of Captain of
Clan Chattan is Duncan MacIntosh, the son of Malcolm, in 1400 and in
1466, and he was probably placed by the Lord of the Isles over that part
of the clan who adhered to him. Eight of the septs forming the later
Clan Chattan may be put aside as having been affiliated to the clan
subsequently to the year 1429, as well as the family of MacIntosh,
descended from Malcolm. The remainder represent the clan as it existed
before that date. It consisted of an older sept of MacIntoshes, who
possessed lands in Badenoch, the principal of which was Rothiemurchus,
and appears to have claimed those of Glenlui and Locharkaig in Lochaber.
The eight septs who then formed the Clan Chattan proper were the _Clan
Vuirich_ or MacPhersons, and the _Clan Day_ or Davidsons, who were
called the old Clan Chattan, and six stranger septs, who took protection
from the clan. These were the _Clan Vic Ghillevray_ or MacGillivrays,
the _Clan Vean_ or MacBeans, the _Clan Vic Govies_, the _Clan Tarrel_,
the _Clan Cheanduy_, and the _Sliochd Gowchruim_ or Smiths. The _Clan
Vic Govies_, however, were a branch of the Clan Cameron, and the
_Sliochd Gowchruim_ were believed to be descendants of the person who
supplied the place of the missing member of the clan at the combat on
the North Inch of Perth, and who was said to have been a smith.
The Clan Cameron, on the other hand, consisted of four septs. These were
the _Clan Gillanfhaigh_ or Gillonie, or Camerons of Invermalie and
Strone, the _Clan Soirlie_, or Camerons of Glenevis, the _Clan Vic
Mhartain_, or MacMartins of Letterfinlay, and the Camerons of Lochiel.
The latter were the sept whose head became Captain of Clan Cameron and
adhered to the Lord of the Isles, while the three former represented the
part of the clan who seceded from him in 1429. Besides these there were
dependent septs, the chief of which were the _Clan Vic Gilveil_ or
M‘Millans, and these were believed to be of the race of Clan Chattan.
The connection between the two clans is thus apparent. Now there are
preserved genealogies of both clans in their earlier forms, written not
long after the year 1429. One is termed the ‘Genealogy of the Clan an
Toisig, that is, the Clan Gillachattan,’ and gives it in two separate
lines. The first represented the older MacIntoshes. The second is
deduced from Gillachattan Mor, the eponymus of the clan. His
great-grandson Muireach, from whom the Clan Vuireach takes its name, has
a son Domnall or Donald, called _in Caimgilla_, and this word when
aspirated would form the name Kevil or _Quhevil_.[445] The chief seat of
this branch of the clan can also be ascertained, for Alexander, Lord of
the Isles and Earl of Ross, confirms a charter granted by William, earl
of Ross, in 1338 of the lands of Dalnafert and Kinrorayth or Kinrara,
under reservation of one acre of ground near the Stychan of the town of
Dalnavert, where was situated the manor of the late Scayth, son of
Ferchard,[446] and we find a ‘_Tsead_, son of Ferquhar’ in the Genealogy
at the same period. Moreover the grandson of this Scayth was _Disiab_ or
Shaw, who thus was contemporary with the Shaw who fought in 1396. The
gravestone said to mark the grave of Shaw _Corshiacloch_, or
buck-toothed, whom tradition declares to be the Shaw who led the clan at
the combat, was, according to Shaw, still to be seen in the adjacent
church of Rothiemurchus. He is also said to have married the daughter of
Kenneth Macvuireach, ancestor of the Macpherson of Cluny, and in him and
his father-in-law we may probably recognise the ‘Kenethus Mor with his
son-in-law, leader of two thousand men,’ who were arrested by James the
First at his Parliament at Inverness in 1427.[447] With regard to the
Clan Cameron, the invariable tradition is that the head of the
MacGillonies or _MacGillaanaigh_ led the clan who fought with the Clan
Chattan during the long feud between them, and the old Genealogy terms
the Cameron’s _Clan Maelanfhaigh_, or the race of the servant of the
prophet, and deduces them from a common ancestor the _Clan Maelanfhaigh_
and the _Clan Camshron_, and as the epithet _an Caimgilla_, when
aspirated, would become _Kevil_, so the word _Fhaigh_ in its aspirated
form would be represented by the _Hay_ of the chroniclers.[448]
John Major probably gives the clew to the whole transaction, when he
tells us that ‘these two clans’—the Clan Chattan and Clan Cameron, which
we have seen had a certain connection through their dependent septs,
‘were of one blood, having but little in lordships, but following one
head of their race as principal with their kinsmen and dependants.’[449]
He is apparently describing their position before these dissensions
broke out between them, and his description refers us back to the period
when the two clans formed one tribe, possessing the district of Lochaber
as their _Tuath_ or country, where the lands in dispute—Glenlui and
Locharkaig—were probably the official demesne of the old _Toisech_ or
head of the tribe.
[Sidenote: The Chief and the Kinsmen.]
The clans are here described as consisting of two divisions: The one of
the Kinsmen, or those of the blood of the sept; the other of the
dependants or subordinate septs, who might be of different race. The
former clan are well defined in the Gartmore MS., written in the year
1747. The writer says that ‘the property of these Highlands belongs to a
great many different persons, who are more or less considerable in
proportion to the extent of their estates, and to the command of men
that live upon them, or follow them, on account of this clanship, out of
the estates of others. These lands are set by the landlord during
pleasure, or a short tack, to people whom they call goodmen (_Duine
Uasail_), and who are of a superior station to the commonalty. These are
generally the sons, brothers, cousins, or nearest relations of the
landlord (or chief). This, by means of a small portion, and the
liberality of their relations, they are able to stock, and which they,
their children and grandchildren, possess at an easy rent, till a nearer
descendant be again preferred to it. As the propinquity removes, they
become less considered, till at last they degenerate to be of the common
people, unless some accidental acquisition of wealth supports them above
their station. As this hath been an ancient custom, most of the farmers
and cottars are of the name and clan of the proprietor.’ This exactly
describes the Irish _Finé_ in its restricted sense, where the immediate
kin of the _Ceannfiné_ or chief consists of seventeen persons, forming
the _Duthach Finé_, from whence they pass by degrees into the _Duthaign
Daine_ or commonalty of the _Finé_ or sept.
[Sidenote: The native-men.]
The dependent septs, on the other hand, represent the _Fuidhir_ of the
Irish tribal system. Their position will be best understood by the Bonds
of Manrent or Manred, which came to be taken by the chiefs from their
dependants when the relation constituted by usage and traditional custom
was relaxed by time, or when a new relationship was constituted at a
later period. Thus in a bond by a sept of M‘Gillikeyr to John Campbell
of Glenurchy, in 1547, he declares that they have chosen him of their
own free motive to their chief to be their protector in all great
actions, as a chief does in the countries of the Highlands, and shall
have lands of him in assedation; and when any of them deceases shall
leave to him and his heirs ‘ane cawlpe of kenkynie,’ as is used in the
countries about. Again, in a bond by Duncan M‘Olcallum and others of the
Clan Teir to Colyne Campbell of Glenurchay in 1556, they state that in
consequence of the slaughter of Johne M‘Gillenlay, foster-brother of Sir
Colyne Campbell of Glenurchay, their predecessor, for sythment and
recompence of said slaughter, had delivered to him one of the principal
committers of it called John Roy M‘Ynteir, to be punished at his will;
and moreover had elected and taken him and his heirs for their chiefs
and masters, and given to him their calps, which calps the said Colyne,
Sir Duncan Campbell of Glenurchay, his son that deceased at Flodden
(1513), and all other lairds of Glenurchay had since taken up; and the
said Clan Teir of new ratify the bond in favour of Colyne, now of
Glenurchay. Again, we find in 1559 Archibald, earl of Argyll,
transferring to his cousin Colyne Campbell of Glenurchay and his
heirs-male the manrent, homage, and service which his predecessors and
he had and has of the ‘haill kyn and surname of the Clanlaurane and
their posteritie,’ together with the uptaking of their calps, providing
the said Colyne obtain their consent thereto.[450]
It is unnecessary to quote more of these bonds, which are usually in the
same terms; and we may conclude with the following taken from ‘ane list
of the native-men of Craignish.’ In 1592 Malcolme Moir Makesaig and his
sons appeared at Barrichbyan, and gave to their well-beloved Ronald
Campbell McEan VcDonald of Barrichbyan and his heirs their bond of
manred and calpis for ever, and shall follow and obey him and his heirs
in whatever place he and his foresaids transport themselves in the
country or without; and shall obey them as native-men ought and should
do to their chief; and Ronald obliges himself and his heirs to be a good
chief and master to them as his native-men, and to give to them their
duty that they and their succession of men and women ought to have after
calpis, conform to the use of the country. In 1595 similar agreements
were made by other small septs, and in a bond of manrent granted by
Gillicallum McDonchie VcIntyre VcCoshen to Ranald Campbell of
Barrechebyan in 1612, in which he states, ‘Forasmuch as I understand of
gude memorie that the surname of Clanntyre VcCoshen wer of auld
native-men, servandis and dependaris to the house and surename of
Clandule Cregnis, _alias_ Campbellis in Cregnis, and willing of my
dewtie to renew the band and service of my sadis forbearis war of auld,
and dewtie to the sadis house and surename, and acknowledging Rannald
Campbell of Barrichbyan to be of the samin house and surname,’ he
becomes bound, for himself and all others descended of his body, ‘to be
leill, trew, and of auld, native-men in all lawlieness and subjection to
the said Rannald and his airis-male for ever, and that according as my
predecessors were in use of befoir, and as ony native-men are in use in
Argyll, in special sall serve be sea and land the said Rannald, etc.;
and in token to uplift from me at my decease the second but aucht that I
sall have at the time foresaid in name of calp, to wit, ane hors, meir,
or mart;’ and ‘providing alwayis the said Rannald and his airis do the
dewtie of ane chief or maister to me and my airis male and female, as
use is; attour I grant me, as use is, to haif gotten at the making
heirof ane guid and sufficient sword, ressavit and deliverit be the said
Rannald to remane as ane memoriall taikin of this my band of
manrent.’[451]
[Sidenote: Fosterage.]
Another feature in the relation between the chief and his kinsmen with
their dependent septs was the custom of fosterage which prevailed among
the Highland clans as it characterised the Irish tribes. The written
contracts of fosterage, which, like the bonds of manrent, superseded the
unwritten usage during the transition period when the older Celtic law
was losing its influence, and when it became necessary for the chiefs to
secure their ancient privileges from passing away under the pressure of
other influences, will afford us the best means of ascertaining the true
nature of this custom. We may refer to the terms of a few of those which
have been preserved. In 1510 we have an obligation by Johne M‘Neill
Vreik in Stronferna, and Gregoure his brother, to receive Coleyne
Campbell, lawful third son to Coleyne Campbell, the eldest son and heir
of Sir Duncan Campbell of Glenurquhay, knight, in fostering, and to give
him a bairn’s part of gear; and giving to the said Sir Duncan and his
heirs their bonds of _Manrent_ and _Calps_, that is, the best aucht in
their houses the times of their decease; the said Sir Duncan and Coleyne
his son being bound to defend the said John and Gregour in the lands of
Stronferna, and the rest of the _rowmis_ they possess, as law will.[452]
Again, in 1580, there is a contract between Duncane Campbell, fiar of
Glenurquhay, and his native servant Gillecreist Makdonchy Duff V^cNokerd
and Katherine Neyn Douill Vekconchy his spouse, in which the latter bind
themselves to take in fostering Duncane Campbell, son to the said
Duncane, to be sustained by them in meat, drink, and nourishment till he
be sent to the schools with the advice of friends, and to sustain him at
the schools with reasonable support, the said father and foster-father
giving between them of _Makhelve_ goods in donation to the said bairn at
Beltane thereafter, the value of two hundred merks of ky and two horses
or two mares worth forty merks; these goods, with their increase, to
pertain to the said bairn as his own chance bears him to, but their milk
to pertain to the said foster-father and mother so long as they sustain
the said bairn, and until he be sent to the schools, except so much of
the milk as will pay the mails of pasture-lands for the said cattle,
which the said foster-father is bound to find for them upon Lochaw, and
until such be got he finding for them the half of the lands of
Auchakynnay, etc.[453]
The next contract in date, which we shall quote, takes us to the Western
Isles. It is a contract in 1612, by which Sir Roderick Macleod of
Dunvegan gives his son Norman to John, son of the son of Kenneth, to
foster; and it is a very remarkable document, for it is written in
Gaelic in the Irish character of the time. The conditions are, that if
John dies first the child is to remain with the widow, but the
guardianship with John’s brother Angus, who is to have the entire charge
of the child if the widow marries again; and Sir Roderick is to have a
son’s share of the stock (the bairn’s part of the other contracts)
during the life of himself and his heir and the foster-child, along with
John’s heirs. The stock (_Sealbh_) which is to be put into possession of
the foster-child is four mares given by the foster-father, and other
four mares by the father Sir Roderick, along with three which he
promised him when he took him to his bosom. The charge and keeping of
the seven mares given by the father to be with the foster-father, in
order to put them to increase for his foster-son; and the care and
keeping of the four mares given by the foster-father to be with the
father, to put them to increase for him in like manner. Among the
witnesses to this contract are the ministers of Duirinish and
Bracadale.[454] The last we shall notice is as late as the year 1665,
and is a contract betwixt George Campbell of Airds in Argyllshire and
Donald Dow M‘Ewin in Ardmastill and Roiss N’Odochardie his wife, by
which George Campbell gives in fostering to Donald Dow and his wife,
Isobell Campbell, his lawful daughter, for the space of seven years from
next Beltane, and gives to her as M‘Heliff (_Shealbh_) two new-calved
kyne with a calf and a year-old stirk, a two-year-old quey at Beltane
next, and another two-year-old quey at Beltane 1667; and Donald Dow and
his spouse give to their foster-child two farrow kyne, with a stirk and
a two-year-old quey at Beltane, and another two-year-old quey at Beltane
1667. The whole of their cattle with their increase to be in the custody
of the foster-father and mother during these seven years, the milk to
belong to the foster-father and the increase of the cattle to the
foster-child; but the father is to grass the yeald kyne yearly, if the
foster-father have not sufficient pasturage for them. In addition to
this, the foster-father and his spouse give the foster-child a bairn’s
part and portion of their whole goods and gear which shall belong to
them at their decease, as if she was their own lawful child.[455]
[Sidenote: The Clan and its Members.]
While the clan, viewed as a single community, thus consisted of the
chief, with his kinsmen to a certain limited degree of relationship; the
commonalty who were of the same blood, who all bore the same name, and
his dependants, consisting of subordinate septs of native-men, who did
not claim to be of the blood of the chief, but were either probably
descended from the more ancient occupiers of the soil, or were broken
men from other clans, who had taken protection from him, the influence
of the acquisition of the right of property in land, which had
originally developed the septs out of the tribe, likewise tended to make
smaller septs within the clan. Those kinsmen of the chief who acquired
the property of their land founded families, in which the land became
hereditary, and which thus became the centres of a new organisation
within the clan. The most influential of these was that of the oldest
cadet in the family which had been longest separated from the main stem,
and usually presented the appearance of a rival house little less
powerful than that of the chief. There is perhaps no better description
of the form which the clan ultimately assumed, and of the spirit which
animated its members, than that given by an acute observer in the early
part of last century.[456] ‘The Highlanders,’ he says, ‘are divided into
tribes or clans, under chiefs or chieftains, as they are called in the
laws of Scotland; and each clan again divided into branches from the
main stock, who have chieftains over them. These are subdivided into
smaller branches of fifty or sixty men, who deduce their original from
their particular chieftains, and rely upon them as their more immediate
protectors and defenders. The ordinary Highlanders esteem it the most
sublime degree of virtue to love their chief and pay him a blind
obedience, although it be in opposition to the government, the laws of
the kingdom, or even to the law of God. Next to this love of their chief
is that of the particular branch from whence they sprang, and, in a
third degree, to those of the whole clan or name, whom they will assist,
right or wrong, against those of any other tribe with which they are at
variance. They likewise owe goodwill to such clans as they esteem to be
their particular well-wishers; and, lastly, they have an adherence one
to another as Highlanders in opposition to the people of the Low
Country, whom they despise as inferior to them in courage, and believe
they have a right to plunder them whenever it is in their power. This
last arises from a tradition that the Lowlands, in old times, were the
possession of their ancestors. The chief exercises an arbitrary
authority over his vassals, determines all differences and disputes that
happen among them, and levies taxes upon extraordinary occasions, such
as the marriage of a daughter, building a house, or some pretence for
his support and the honour of the name. This power of the chiefs is not
supported by interest as they are landlords, but as lineally descended
from the old patriarchs or fathers of the families.’