In a “Sermon for the Times,” the Rev. Richard Hibbs of the Episcopal
Church, Edinburgh, referring to these evictions, says:--“Take first,
the awful proof how far in oppression men can go--men highly educated
and largely gifted in every way--property, talents, all; for the most
part indeed, they are so-called noblemen. What, then, are they doing
in the Highland districts, according to the testimony of a learned
professor in this city? Why, depopulating those districts in order
to make room for red deer. And how? By buying off the cottars, and
giving them money to emigrate? Not at all, but by starving them out;
by rendering them absolutely incapable of procuring subsistence for
themselves and families; for they first take away from them their
apportionments of poor lands, although they may have paid their rents;
and if that don’t suffice to eradicate from their hearts that love
of the soil on which they have been born and bred--a love which the
great Proprietor of all has manifestly implanted in our nature--why,
then, these inhuman landlords, who are far more merciful to their very
beasts, take away from these poor cottars the very roofs above their
defenceless heads, and expose them, worn down with age and destitute of
everything, to the inclemencies of a northern sky; and this, forsooth,
because they must have plenty room for their dogs and deer. For
plentiful instances of the most wanton barbarities under this head we
need only point to the Knoydart evictions. Here were perpetrated such
enormities as might well have caused the very sun to hide his face at
noon-day.” Macleod, referring to this sermon, says:--
“It has been intimated to me by an individual who heard this discourse
on the first occasion that the statements referring to the Highland
landlords have been controverted. I was well aware, long before the
receipt of this intimation, that some defence had appeared; and here I
can truly say, that none would have rejoiced more than myself to find
that a complete vindication had been made. But, unhappily, the case is
far otherwise. In order to be fully acquainted with all that had passed
on the subject, I have put myself during the week in communication
with the learned professor to whose letter, which appeared some months
ago in the _Times_, I referred. From him I learn that none of his
statements were invalidated--nay, not even impugned; and he adds, that
to do this was simply impossible, as he had been at great pains to
verify the facts. All that could be called in question was the theory
that he had based upon those facts--namely, that evictions were made
for the purpose of making room for more deer. This, of course, was open
to contradiction on the part of those landlords who had not openly
avowed their object in evicting the poor Highland families. As to
the evictions themselves--and this was the main point--no attempt at
contradiction was made.”
In addition to all that the benevolent Professor [Black] has made known
to the world under this head, who has not heard of “The Massacre of
the Rosses,” and the clearing of the glens? “I hold in my hand,” Mr.
Hibbs continued, “a little work thus entitled, which has passed into
the second edition. The author, Mr. Donald Ross--a gentleman whom
all who feel sympathy for the downtrodden and oppressed must highly
esteem. What a humiliating picture of the barbarity and cruelty of
fallen humanity does this little book present! The reader, utterly
appalled by its horrifying statements, finds it difficult to retain
the recollection that he is perusing the history of his own times, and
country too. He would fain yield himself to the tempting illusion that
the ruthless atrocities which are depicted were enacted in a fabulous
period, in ages long past; or at all events, if it be contemporaneous
history, that the scene of such heart-rending cruelties, the
perpetrators of which were regardless alike of the innocency of infancy
and the helplessness of old age, is some far distant, and as yet not
merely unchristianized, but wholly savage and uncivilized region of our
globe. But alas! it is Scotland, in the latter half of the nineteenth
century, of which he treats. One feature of the heart-harrowing case
is the shocking and barbarous cruelty that was practised on this
occasion upon the female portion of the evicted clan. Mr. D. Ross, in a
letter addressed to the Right Hon. the Lord Advocate, Edinburgh, dated
April 19, 1854, thus writes in reference to one of those clearances
and evictions which had just then taken place, under the authority of
a certain Sheriff of the district, and by means of a body of policemen
as executioners:--‘The feeling on this subject, not only in the
district, but in Sutherlandshire and Ross-shire, is, among the great
majority of the people, one of universal condemnation of the Sheriff’s
reckless conduct, and of indignation and disgust at the brutality of
the policemen. Such, indeed, was the sad havoc made on the females on
the banks of the Carron, on the memorable 31st March last, that pools
of blood were on the ground--that the grass and earth were dyed red
with it--that the dogs of the district came and licked up the blood;
and at last, such was the state of feeling of parties who went from a
distance to see the field, that a party (it is understood by order or
instructions from headquarters) actually harrowed the ground during the
night to hide the blood!
“‘The affair at Greenyard, on the morning of the 31st March last, is
not calculated to inspire much love of country, or rouse the martial
spirit of the already ill-used Highlanders. The savage treatment of
innocent females on that morning, by an enraged body of police, throws
the Sinope butchery into the shade; for the Ross-shire Haynaus have
shown themselves more cruel and more blood-thirsty than the Austrian
women-floggers. What could these poor men and women--with their wounds
and scars, and broken bones, and disjointed arms, stretched on beds of
sickness, or moving on crutches, the result of the brutal treatment of
them by the police at Greenyard--have to dread from the invasion of
Scotland by Russia?’”
Commenting on this incredible atrocity, committed in the middle of
the nineteenth century, Donald Macleod says truly that:--“It was
so horrifying and so brutal that they did not wonder at the rev.
gentleman’s delicacy in speaking of it, and directing his hearers to
peruse Mr. Ross’s pamphlet for full information. Mr. Ross went from
Glasgow to Greenyard, all the way to investigate the case upon the
spot, and found that Mr. Taylor, a native of Sutherland, well educated
in the evicting schemes and murderous cruelty of that county, and
Sheriff-substitute of Ross-shire, marched from Tain upon the morning of
the 31st March, at the head of a strong party of armed constables, with
heavy bludgeons and fire-arms, conveyed in carts and other vehicles,
allowing them as much ardent drink as they chose to take before leaving
and on their march, so as to qualify them for the bloody work which
they had to perform; fit for any outrage, fully equipped, and told by
the Sheriff to show no mercy to any one who would oppose them, and not
allow themselves to be called cowards, by allowing these mountaineers
victory over them. In this excited, half-drunken state, they came in
contact with the unfortunate women of Greenyard, who were determined to
prevent the officers from serving the summonses of removal upon them,
and keep their holding of small farms where they and their forefathers
lived and died for generations. But no time was allowed for parley;
the Sheriff gave the order to clear the way, and, be it said to his
everlasting disgrace, he struck the first blow at a woman, the mother
of a large family, and large in the family way at the time, who tried
to keep him back; then a general slaughter commenced; the women made
noble resistance, until the bravest of them got their arms broken; then
they gave way. This did not allay the rage of the murderous brutes,
they continued clubbing at the protectless creatures until every one
of them was stretched on the field, weltering in their blood, or with
broken arms, ribs, and bruised limbs. In this woeful condition many of
them were hand-cuffed together, others tied with coarse ropes, huddled
into carts, and carried prisoners to Tain. I have seen myself in the
possession of Mr. Ross, Glasgow, patches or scalps of the skin with
the long hair adhering to them, which was found upon the field a few
days after this inhuman affray. I did not see the women, but I was told
that gashes were found on the heads of two young female prisoners in
Tain jail, which exactly corresponded with the slices of scalps which
I have seen, so that Sutherland and Ross-shire may boast of having had
the Nana Sahib and his chiefs some few years before India, and that in
the persons of some whose education, training, and parental example
should prepare their minds to perform and act differently. Mr. Donald
Ross placed the whole affair before the Lord Advocate for Scotland, but
no notice was taken of it by that functionary, further than that the
majesty of the law would need to be observed and attended to.
“In this unfortunate country, the law of God and humanity may be
violated and trampled under foot, but the law of wicked men which
sanctions murder, rapine, and robbery must be observed. From the same
estate (the estate of Robertson of Kindeace, if I am not mistaken in
the date) in the year 1843 the whole inhabitants of Glencalvie were
evicted in a similar manner, and so unprovided and unprepared were they
for removal at such an inclement season of the year, that they had
to shelter themselves in a Church and a burying-ground. I have seen
myself nineteen families within this gloomy and solitary resting abode
of the dead, they were there for months. The London _Times_ sent a
commissioner direct from London to investigate into this case, and he
did his duty; but like the Sutherland cases, it was hushed up in order
to maintain the majesty of the law, and in order to keep the right, the
majesty of the people, and the laws of God in the dark.
“In the year 1819 or ’20, about the time when the depopulation of
Sutherlandshire was completed, and the annual conflagration of burning
the houses ceased, and when there was not a glen or strath in the
county to let to a sheep farmer, one of these insatiable monsters of
Sutherlandshire sheep farmers fixed his eyes upon a glen in Ross-shire,
inhabited by a brave, hardy race for time immemorial. Summonses of
removal were served upon them at once. The people resisted--a military
force was brought against them--the military and the women of the
glen met at the entrance to the glen, and a bloody conflict took
place; without reading the riot act or taking any other precaution,
the military fired (by the order of Sheriff MacLeod) ball cartridge
upon the women; one young girl of the name of Mathieson was shot dead
on the spot; many were wounded. When this murder was observed by the
survivors, and some young men concealed in the background, they made
a heroic sudden rush upon the military, when a hand-to-hand melee or
fight took place. In a few minutes the military were put to disorder
by flight; in their retreat they were unmercifully dealt with, only
two of them escaping with whole heads. The Sheriff’s coach was smashed
to atoms, and he made a narrow escape himself with a whole head. But
no legal cognizance was taken of this affair, as the Sheriff and the
military were the violators. However, for fear of prosecution, the
Sheriff settled a pension of £6 sterling yearly upon the murdered
girl’s father, and the case was hushed up likewise. The result was that
the people kept possession of the glen, and that the proprietor and the
oldest and most insatiable of Sutherlandshire scourges went to law,
which ended in the ruination of the latter, who died a pauper.”
Hugh Miller, describing a “Highland Clearing,” in one of his able
leading articles in the _Witness_, since published in volume form,
quotes freely from an article by John Robertson, which appeared in the
_Glasgow National_ in August, 1844, on the evictions of the Rosses of
Glencalvie. When the article from which Hugh Miller quotes was written,
the inhabitants of the glen had just received notices of removal,
but the evictions had not yet been carried out. Commenting on the
proceedings Hugh Miller says:--
“In an adjacent glen (to Strathcarron), through which the Calvie
works its headlong way to the Carron, that terror of the Highlanders,
a summons of removal, has been served within the last few months on
a whole community; and the graphic sketch of Mr. Robertson relates
both the peculiar circumstances in which it has been issued, and the
feelings which it has excited. We find from his testimony that the old
state of things which is so immediately on the eve of being broken up
in this locality, lacked not a few of those sources of terror to the
proprietary of the county, that are becoming so very formidable to them
in the newer states.”
The constitution of society in the Glens, says Mr. Robertson, is
remarkably simple. Four heads of families are bound for the whole
rental. The number of souls was about ninety, sixteen cottages paid
rent; they supported a teacher for the education of their own children;
they supported their own poor. “The laird has never lost a farthing of
rent in bad years, such as 1836 and 1837, the people may have required
the favour of a few weeks’ delay, but they are not now a single
farthing in arrears;” that is, when they are in receipt of summonses
of removal. “For a century,” Mr. Robertson continues, speaking of the
Highlanders, “their privileges have been lessening; they dare not now
hunt the deer, or shoot the grouse or the blackcock; they have no
longer the range of the hills for their cattle and their sheep; they
must not catch a salmon in the stream: in earth, air, and water, the
rights of the laird are greater, and the rights of the people are
smaller, than they were in the days of their forefathers.” The same
writer eloquently concludes:--
“The father of the laird of Kindeace bought Glencalvie. It was sold by
a Ross two short centuries ago. The swords of the Rosses of Glencalvie
did their part in protecting this little glen, as well as the broad
lands of Pitcalvie, from the ravages and the clutches of hostile septs.
These clansmen bled and died in the belief that every principle of
honour and morals secured their descendants a right to subsisting on
the soil. The chiefs and their children had the same charter of the
sword. Some Legislatures have made the right of the people superior
to the right of the chief; British law-makers made the rights of the
chief everything, and those of their followers nothing. The ideas
of the morality of property are in most men the creatures of their
interests and sympathies. Of this there cannot be a doubt, however, the
chiefs would not have had the land at all, could the clansmen have
foreseen the present state of the Highlands--their children in mournful
groups going into exile--the faggot of legal myrmidons in the thatch
of the feal cabin--the hearths of their homes and their lives the
green sheep-walks of the stranger. Sad it is, that it is seemingly the
will of our constituencies that our laws shall prefer the few to the
many. Most mournful will it be, should the clansmen of the Highlands
have been cleared away, ejected, exiled, in deference to a political,
a moral, a social, and an economical mistake,--a suggestion not of
philosophy, but of mammon,--a system in which the demon of sordidness
assumed the shape of the angel of civilization and of light.”
That the Eviction of the Rosses was of a harsh character is amply
corroborated by the following account, extracted from the _Inverness
Courier_:--“We mentioned last week that considerable obstruction was
anticipated in the execution of the summonses of removal upon the
tenants of Major Robertson of Kindeace, on his property of Greenyards,
near Bonar Bridge. The office turned out to be of a very formidable
character. At six o’clock on the morning of Friday last, Sheriff Taylor
proceeded from Tain, accompanied by several Sheriff’s officers, and a
police force of about thirty more, partly belonging to the constabulary
force of Ross-shire, and partly to that of Inverness-shire,--the latter
under the charge of Mr. Mackay, inspector, Fort William. On arriving at
Greenyards, which is nearly four miles from Bonar Bridge, it was found
that about three hundred persons, fully two-thirds of whom were women,
had assembled from the county round about, all apparently prepared
to resist the execution of the law. The women stood in front, armed
with stones, and the men occupied the background, all, or nearly all,
furnished with sticks.
“The Sheriff attempted to reason with the crowd, and to show them the
necessity of yielding to the law: but his efforts were fruitless; some
of the women tried to lay hold of him and to strike him, and after a
painful effort to effect the object in view by peaceable means--which
was renewed in vain by Mr. Cumming, the superintendent of the
Ross-shire police--the Sheriff was reluctantly obliged to employ force.
The force was led by Mr. Cumming into the crowd, and, after a sharp
resistance, which happily lasted only a few minutes, the people were
dispersed, and the Sheriff was enabled to execute the summonses upon
the four tenants. The women, as they bore the brunt of the battle, were
the principal sufferers. A large number of them--fifteen or sixteen, we
believe, were seriously hurt, and of these several are under medical
treatment; one woman, we believe, still lies in a precarious condition.
The policemen appear to have used their batons with great force, but
they escaped themselves almost unhurt. Several correspondents from the
district, who do not appear, however, to make sufficient allowance
for the critical position of affairs, and the necessity of at once
impressing so large a multitude with the serious nature of the case,
complain that the policemen used their batons with wanton cruelty.
Others state that they not only did their duty, but that less firmness
might have proved fatal to themselves. The instances of violence are
certainly, though very naturally, on the part of the attacking force;
several batons were smashed in the melee; a great number of men and
women were seriously hurt, especially about the head and face, while
not one of the policemen, so far as we can learn, suffered any injury
in consequence. As soon as the mob was fairly dispersed, the police
made active pursuit, in the hope of catching some of the ringleaders.
The men had, however, fled, and the only persons apprehended were
some women, who had been active in the opposition, and who had been
wounded. They were conveyed to the prison at Tain, but liberated on
bail next day, through the intercession of a gallant friend, who became
responsible for their appearance.”
“A correspondent writes,” continues the _Courier_, “ten young women
were wounded in the back of the skull and other parts of their
bodies.... The wounds on these women show plainly the severe manner in
which they were dealt with by the police when they were retreating. It
was currently reported last night that one of them was dead; and the
feeling of indignation is so strong against the manner in which the
constables have acted, that I fully believe the life of any stranger,
if he were supposed to be an officer of the law, would not be worth
twopence in the district.”
The _Northern Ensign_, referring to the same case, says:--“One
day lately a preventive officer with two cutter men made their
appearance on the boundaries of the estate and were taken for Tain
Sheriff-officers. The signals were at once given, and in course of
half-an-hour the poor gauger and his men were surrounded by 300 men and
women, who would not be remonstrated with either in English or Gaelic;
the poor fellows were taken and denuded of their clothing, all papers
and documents were extracted and burnt, amongst which was a purse with
a considerable quantity of money. In this state they were carried
shoulder-high off the estate, and left at the braes of Downie, where
the great Culrain riot took place thirty years ago.”