till the minister chanced to be away from home, ‘they pulled down part
of his house, and fired several shots towards the place where his
wife lay.’ The worthy clergyman then thought it time to move into Fort
William. Our author adds that cadets of Highland houses have possessed
farms ‘for ages’ without leases, and when they are not able to pay their
rents, _and are turned out_, they look upon the person who takes the farm
after them as usurping their right. These people have often refused to
take a written lease, thinking that, by so doing, they gave up the right
of possession.
All this, written about 1749, is hardly congruous with Mr. Fraser
Mackintosh’s bold statement that the Commissioners of Forfeited Estates
were the first evictors in the Highlands. We learn that, ‘by reason
of the great poverty and slavery of the commons,’ on the Mackenzie
estates, out of the clan levy of 3,000 men, ‘a third are but dross.’
Let us add that the Campbells evicted the Macdonalds from Kintyre, by
cutting their throats; that every defeated clan was likely to be, more
or less, evicted; and that all the Macgregors were evicted. These were
operations of clan warfare, though not much more enjoyable for that. But
when a sub-tenant held from a tacksman, on a ‘precarious tenure,’ does
Mr. Fraser Mackintosh maintain that he was never evicted? Why did Robin
Oig shoot Macfarlane at the plough tail? He did so simply for the old
agrarian reason.
In Prestongrange’s speech for the Crown, at the disgraceful trial which
ended in the judicial murder of James Stewart of the Glens, he says that
‘a delusion in a peculiar manner prevailing in the Highlands,’ is that
‘a cause of mortal enmity arises if a man should be removed by another
from his farm or possession which he hath no manner of title to hold or
retain.’[184] ‘The delusion,’ he says, ‘prevails elsewhere,’ but is ‘in a
particular manner prevalent in the Highlands.’
How could a popular delusion of this kind come into existence if the
Commissioners of Forfeited Estates were ‘the first evictors in the
Highlands’? Demonstrably they were nothing of the kind. There were
evictions in the good old times.
On the other hand, evictions had probably not been much practised with
a view to obtaining higher rents or making improvements, but for other
reasons. Claymores, not money, had been in request from tenants before
1745.
Once more, according to Burt, a Lowland authority, the Chief ‘must free
the necessitous from their arrears of rent, and maintain such who, by
accidents, are fallen to a total decay.’ Far from throwing a lot of
small farms into a large one, or a sheep-walk, ‘if, by increase of the
tribe, small farms are wanting for the support of such addition, he
splits others into lesser portions, because all must somehow be provided
for.’[185]
This policy is the precise reverse of the Culloden lease, which
terminates, _ipso facto_, when rent falls into arrears. A Chief, bound
by consanguinity to treat all his tenants as gentlemen, might practise
shooting at them, like Clanranald with his famous piece, ‘the Cuckoo,’
but certainly was not apt to evict often for arrears of rent. He lived
at home, he built a great castle like Glengarry’s (probably by aid of
‘services’), he fed on the sheep, kine, butter, milk, of his tenants, but
he shook them by the hand, perhaps forgave arrears, held clan feasts, and
was a god on earth. When he raised rents, united farms in one hand, did
not shake that of every clansman, but rather evicted them, discontent was
natural, inevitable. Holders of land, proud free men, must emigrate, or
become labourers or artisans in towns. Who does not sympathise with their
emotions?
On the other side, the Chief must subdivide and subdivide, in the good
old times, ‘because all must somehow be provided for.’ But all could
not be and were not ‘provided for.’ We have seen the pictures of cruel
exquisite poverty from Franck in 1654, to the Gartmore MS. in 1747, and
the Culloden Report in 1738, and the ‘Life of Barisdale’ in 1754, and
Burt’s Letters of about 1735. It seems reasonable to suppose that all
arable lands were eagerly cultivated as far as the implements and skill
of the people availed to cultivate them. It was the interest of the
chiefs to increase their bands of warriors and the sentiment, if not the
interest, of the clansmen urged them to stay on the land.
But the land could not maintain them! The younger gentry pushed their
fortunes abroad as men of the sword or in commerce. But the commons were
often at the starving point; we hear of famines. Glengarry writes of a
great scarcity, when meal had to be bought in the Lowlands. Burt tells
of no meal in Inverness. ‘A house, grass for a cow or two,’ and ‘as much
land as will sow a boll of oats,’ rocky land, needing spade culture,
was a cottar’s ‘only wages of his whole labour and service,’ says the
Gartmore MS. The author reckons that there is not in the Highlands
employment for more than half the population, even when land has been
remorselessly sub-divided. Many earned a harvest wage in the Lowlands.
Others ‘sorned’ on their kindred. Armies of tramps were supported by
the generosity of the poor; nay, Lowland beggars came North, allured
by the open hands of the Highlanders. Whisky shops were everywhere;
here men sauntered and drank. Plunder was habitual; a captain of a
‘Watch’ like Barisdale was at once thief and thief-taker. ‘They live
like lairds, and die like loons,’ says Franck, speaking not of all the
Highlands (as Macaulay quotes him), but chiefly of Lochaber. ‘Upon this
fund’—blackmail—the Captain ‘employed one half the thieves to recover
lost cattle, and the other half of them to steal.’ Lochiel laboured to
reform his clan in this respect. The exactions of tacksmen, ‘sub-letting
farms to a much greater number than they can maintain, and at a much
higher rent than they can pay, obliges these poor people to purchase
their rents and expences by theifts and robberys,’ of cattle; for the
Highland honesty about portable property is extolled by Burt.
As to the moral iniquity of cattle robbing, all morality is local, and a
man who does not sin against the local standard is no extreme criminal.
The Macdonalds held a simple creed of communism. ‘They say that the
Cattle are God’s creatures, made for the use of man, for which the
earth yields grass and herbs in plenty, without the labour of man, and
that therefore they Ought to be common’—that is, ought to belong to the
Macdonalds.[186] The same ideas had prevailed on the Border:
If every man had his ain cow,
A richt poor clan Buccleugh’s wad be.
Dr. Carlyle shows that Border cattle thieves, though not encouraged by
the gentry, were a powerful class about 1740.
This is not a picture of a golden age, and Bailie Nicol Jarvie, in
‘Rob Roy,’ sums up this theory of what the age was really like. But,
if we turn to Stewart of Garth,[187] we find the real condition of the
Highlands in times past revealed in a rosy haze. Blackmail is only
extorted from _Lowlanders_, as if Barisdale had Lowland neighbours![188]
The game and fish were ‘free to all’—a palpable error as regards salmon,
at all events, while one doubts if every clansman was made free of
Cluny’s forest. We do not read of grouse and venison in cotters’ huts.
‘Cottagers and tradesmen were discouraged from marrying.’[189] Yet
the surplus population was very large. A young amorous Highlander set
himself up for marriage by ‘thigging’—that is, by begging among friends
for cows, sheep, and seed-corn.[190] They did not discourage him. ‘The
extinction of the respectable race of tacksmen ... is a serious loss
to the people.’[191] Mr. Fraser Mackintosh, however, speaking of Skye,
says, ‘large tacksmen ... could be relied on to assist (each other)
or keep aloof, if the oppressed were below their class or set.’[192]
The author of MS. 104 would reduce the power of tacksmen by making all
tenants leaseholders for terms not under twenty years, and would pay off
all wadsetts on forfeited estates, ‘because the gentlemen who had them
were great oppressors of the Poor, and most of them, though they did not
themselves take arms, were very active in forcing the people into the
late Rebellion.’
An association had been made by Sutherland farmers in General Stewart’s
time to suppress sheep-stealing. He objects to the new social state which
made this association necessary. Previously ‘crimes had been so few that,
from 1747 to 1810, there was only one capital conviction for theft.’ This
may have been so in Sutherland, and the MS. Letter already cited makes
it probable. ‘The Mackays of Lord Reay’s country,’ though previously
reckoned ‘the wickedest clan,’ now ‘abhor thieving.’ But ‘the common
people who dwell along the East Coast are next to the Caithness people
for poverty, slavery, and dwarfish stature, while the people further up
the country towards Strathnaver’ (where Franck found them bleeding their
cattle for food) ‘live better.’ A third of the Earl of Sutherland’s levy
‘are mean, despicable creatures.’ Thus one county showed very different
conditions: however, like the Mackenzies, the Sutherland men ‘abhor
thieving.’ Elsewhere in the Highlands, hangings for theft occupy a good
deal of the old _Scots Magazine_. Many pretty men ‘died for the law,’ as
every one knows.
General Stewart, objecting to the new farmers’ association, seems not to
have observed that blackmail and ‘Highland Watches’ were old-fashioned
associations for protecting property.’ Complaints are made by him of
‘cutting down farms into lots,’ as if the old Chiefs had not infinitely
subdivided the soil.[193] The old extreme poverty is left out of notice
by General Stewart, with the old tippling, loafing, ‘sorning,’ thieving,
‘thigging’ habits. Much land could be and was cultivated, he says, which
is now pasture, the harvest only failing ‘in cold and wet autumns.’[194]
These not being unknown in the Highlands, but, on the other hand, very
common, famines followed often, notably in 1782.
If the Lowlanders, the English, and the Anglified Highlanders, like
Culloden, paint too gloomy a picture of the good old times, General
Stewart may be regarded as erring in the opposite direction. His charge
against the new Chiefs and landlords is the callous hurry with which
they seized their pecuniary advantage, ‘which proved ruinous to their
ancient tenants.’[195] This is also Scott’s opinion, in his _Quarterly
Review_ article of 1816. He, too, a Tory of the Tories, condemns the
heartless greed of evicting landlords.[196] General Stewart records
cases of delicate consideration and honourable sagacity on the side of
the landlords. But often we find either a well-meaning hurry to make
sweeping ‘improvements,’ and benefit people in a way they detest and do
not understand (as by giving them leases), or a mere hasty desire to save
such a ruined estate as war had left to Glengarry, by raising rents,
causing, with the aid of frequent famine years, wholesale emigration.
This policy was, indeed, far unlike what Burt reports: ‘the poverty of
the tenants has rendered it customary for the Chief, or Laird, to free
some of them every year from all arrears of rent; this is supposed, upon
an average, to be about one year in five of the whole estate.’
These habits vanished with the change in the Highlands; the old ‘arts
of popularity’ were no longer practised by the Chiefs: clan affection
became clan hatred. If we may believe a tithe of our Whig or Lowland
information, it should have done so long before 1745. Cattle, sheep,
red-deer, grouse, now occupy the place of the swords of the North: the
banker, brewer, or upholsterer shoots the Chiefs game, or misses it.
Truly money is the root of all evil. When specie was scarce in the
North, a guinea a thing seldom seen, the fatal treasure of Loch Arkaig
produced, or evoked, the moral consequences of hatred, malice, treachery
and slander. Twenty years later the lack of money hardened the hearts
of Chiefs (which had not been so very soft before). Clansmen had to
emigrate, and they were wisest who sailed first from a land of famine.
Their descendants, or some of them, dwell happily in a realm of forests,
hills, and streams, deer and salmon, still retaining Highland courtesy,
Highland speech, Highland courage, and Highland hospitality. They seem to
have chosen the better part, and to be more fortunate than their cousins
in the new times, or their fathers in the old days that were not really
golden.
On the whole, a distressed Highlander need not, it seems, conceive that
the old times were free from distress, or that Chiefs were really always
humane. They acted in accordance with their immediate interests. They
kept rents low when it paid to have a following, and they screwed rents
up when money was more desirable than men. The two policies might be
contemporary; this among Mackenzies, that among Macdonalds. Ensign Small
reported[197] that, among the Macdonalds, ‘the gentry are fond of a
rising, the commoners hate it.’ The author of MS. 104 represents the
Macdonalds as ‘cursing their Prince and their Chiefs.’
The world, to its disadvantage, allows interest to override sentiment,
which we only find here and there, as in the noble words of Lochiel.
When he arrived with Prince Charles in France, in the autumn of 1746,
he was, of course, very poor. The Prince, according to Young Glengarry,
in a conversation with Bishop Forbes, was obliged to give Lochiel a
full security for his estates before the Chief would raise his clan.
Consequently Charles felt bound, said Glengarry, to secure a French
regiment first of all for Lochiel. This, in Lochiel, would have been a
singular piece of caution! But let us hear his own words, in a letter
to King James.[198] ‘I told H.R.H. that Lord Ogilby or others might
incline to make a figure in France, but my ambition was to serve the
Crown, and serve my Country, or perish with itt. H.R.H. say’d he was
doing all he could’ (to return with forces to Scotland), ‘but persisted
in his resolution to procure me a Regiment. If it is obtained, I shall
accept it out of respect to the Prince, but I hope Yr. M. will approve
of the resolution I have taken _to share in the fate of the people I
have undone_, and, if they must be sacrificed, to fall along with them.
It is the only way I can free myself from the reproach of their blood,
and shew the disinterested zeal with which I have lived, and shall dye,
Your Majesty’s most humble, most Obedient, and most faithfull subject and
servant,
‘DONALD CAMERON.[199]’
There speaks a man who makes real the ideal of the Clan system. But
the ideal, though a hundred times illustrated in the conduct of the
commons, has left less conspicuous examples in the behaviour of some
Chiefs. ‘My brother-in-law, Major Grant, pretended that the man,’ (a
recruit) ‘I sent from this country, _I sold_, which is false,’ says Old
Lovat to Cluny.[200] Major Grant, his brother-in-law, knew Old Lovat.
He, like Barisdale, was an example of the kind of chief who, till after
1745, was not impossible. He throve wickedly on the survival of a kind
of society, the tribal society with its usages, which was in no sense
exclusively Celtic, but originally prevalent all over Europe. In parts
of the Highlands tribal society outlived its day, and gave to Lovat the
opportunities which he abused.
APPENDIX
I.—_PICKLE’S LETTERS_
These two letters of Pickle’s, not published in full in _Pickle the Spy_,
illustrate ‘The Case against Glengarry’ in this volume. In the letter
dated Edinburgh, 14th September, 1754, we find that, immediately on
hearing of his father’s death, the writer sent a note to Gwynne Vaughan,
an English official, and went to Edinburgh, writing from Newcastle on his
way North. His ‘family affairs are in confusion.’ Now Old Glengarry died
in Edinburgh, on September 1, 1754, and, as has been elsewhere shown,
Young Glengarry at once repaired to the North. No reader of these letters
can doubt that their writer is, or is feigning to be, Young Glengarry.
Now no such pretence could possibly succeed in Edinburgh, where Young
Glengarry, a man eminently well known, happened to be at the moment. For
the rest, the letters are mainly concerned with the Informer’s proposed
terms of payment, now that his ‘situation is greatly altered,’ by the
death of his father, obviously Old Glengarry. Further comment seems
needless, the evidence being beyond suspicion, and capable of but one
interpretation.
Dr. Sir,—I have receivd the pleasur of yours of 20 Septr, but
have been of late so hurried that I had no time to return a
proper answer. I thought I was pritty pointed in my last in
regard to a certain stipulation, but as by yours I imagen I was
not so well understood, I beg leave to be now more explicite.
I waited patiently four years (since 1750) without making
the least demand, but for Journy expences, which fell so fare
short that I spent all my owne ready Mony, and ran in debt
eight hundred £st. Now, Sir, I expect that your friend will pay
this sume by way of gratification, which will make me free of
all debt contracted during my several trips, for I expect to
be considered for what is past, as well as for times coming:
I _had had his worthy Brother’s[201] paroll for this as well
as a promise of his countenance, and protection, in all my
other claimes, as I will not varrie the least in my demand,
notwithstanding my situation is greatly altered_, I will only
mention £ five hundred St. yearly, twice regularly payd by
Grandpapa, for I won’t absolutely have to dow with any other.
If Mr. _Kenady_ (Duke of Newcastle) whose friendship I have a
right to Claim, in vertue of his Brother’s promise, will obtain
this for me, there is nothing honourable he can think of, but
I am able to perform. Only I beg he be not prejudic’d by that
swarm of Videts that dally infest him. The Services I can be of
are pritty well known, and as I am embark’d I am determin’d to
percevere, but then I expect that Mr. Kenady (D. of N.) will
fulfill his worthy Brother’s promise to me, which was to clear
me of the Debts contracted in my new way of lief, when that
is done, and a certain thing yearly fixt, Mr. _Kenady_ shall
dispose of me in what shape he pleases. Young Swift (Lochgarry)
is arrived, and upon his waiting of _20_ (Genl. Bland) was
not recevd as was promis’d he should. When I waited of him,
he did not receve me as I expected, haughtly refusd the use
of a fulsie without I should qualifie. I smiling answr’d, if
that was the case, I had then a right without his permission,
but that he could not take it amiss that I debar’d all under
his comand the pleasure of hunting upon my grounds, or of any
firing, which they can’t have without my permission, so that I
thought favours were reciprocall. _20_ (Genl. Bland) and his
Club pretends to be well inform’d of the minutest transaction
in the Grand Monark’s Cabinet, _O rare polliticians, Poor 21
(Bruce) is greatly to be pityed, for my old friends are mad at
my consulting him in all my affairs, and 20 (Bland) and some
about him spoke very injurious of him to me_. I think this
ought to be put to rights. _I go North in a few days_, I hope
to prevail on _21_ (Bruce) to follow in order to assist me
in making a Judicial rent roll.[202] My stay will not exceed
a month, and his not a fortnight, so that if you expect me
up, write under _21_ (Bruce’s) cover, and I shall obey your
comands. But Mr. _Kenady_ (D. of N.), your friend, must enable
me to go about it in a proper manner, and I am sure I will
performe the business to his entire satisfaction. Young Swift,
(Lochgarry) has verbally communicated to me most of _Miss
Philips_ (Young Pretender’s) amours. She has turn’d adrift all,
or most of her former companions and galants. (This refers to
the rupture between Prince Charles and his English adherents.)
My presence is much wanted, and ardently wished for by hir, and
hir present conductors. But I cant hear any thing materiall
till old _Swift_ (Lochgarry) return from hir. What I mentiond
concerning _Black Cattel_ is fact, but I hate repetitions, and
at any rate must deffer further particulars till my return
from the North. I will expect the pleasure of hearing to
satisfaction and pointedly from you—I will beg the continuance
of your good Offices, and will conclude by making offer of my
Compts. to Mr. _Kenady_ and assures him that all now depends
upon himself, as Every thing is in his option.
I ever remain, Dear Grandpapa
Your most obedient and most oblidged humble Servt.
ALEX GUTHRY.
Edinbr. 10. Octr. 1754.
(Pickle to G. V.) (Gwynne Vaughan)
Add. 32,736. f. 525.
Edinbr. 14 Septr. 1754.
Dr. Sir,—I am vastly uneasy not to receive the least answer
to either of my letters from Newcastle, or that which I wrote
immediately upon my Father’s death;[203] but, as I have the
greatest confidence in your friendship, I perswade myself that
nothing prevents my receiving apointed answer to every article
in both my last, but the multiplicity of weighty Affairs daily
crouding upon the Duke of Newcastle; therefore without any
suspicion or diffidence I am determined to continue firm to our
Concert, untill you acquaint me if he agrees to my Proposals,
which if he does, he may safely rely upon everything in my
power, and I think I can’t give stronger proof of my sincerity
than by this offer, _in the confusion of my Family affairs,
which in its present situation, demands all my attention_.
I have heard fully from Lochgary, who acquaints me that the
Young Pretender’s affairs take a very good turn, and that he
has lately sent two expresses to Lochgary earnestly intreating
a meeting with Pickle, and upon Lochgary’s acquainting him of
the great distance Pickle was off, he commanded Lochgary to a
rendezvous, and he set out to meet me the 4th. Instant, and is
actually now with me.
I shall very soon have a particular account of the present
plan of operation. I have now the ball at my foot, and may
give it what tune I please, as I am to be allowed largely, if
I fairly enter in co-partnership. The French King is in a very
peaceable humour, but very ready to take fire if the Jacobites
renew their address, which the Young Pretender assures him
of, and he will the readier bestirr himself, as the English
Jacobites hourly torment him. Troops, Scotch and Irish, are
daily offered to be smuggled over: _but I have positively yet
refused to admit any_. The King of Spain has lately promised
to add greatly to the Young Pretender’s patrimony, and English
Contributors are not wanting on their parts.
I suspect that my letters of late to my friends abroad are
stopt, pray enquire, for I think it very unfair dealings. I am
in a few weeks to go north to put some order to my affairs.
I should have been put to the greatest inconveniency if _21_
(Bruce) had not lent his friendly assistance; but as I have
been greatly out of pocket by the Jants I took for Mr. Pelham,
I shan’t be in condition to continue trade, if I am not soon
enabled to pay off the Debts then contracted. I have said on
former occasions so much upon this head to no effect that I
must now be more explicit, and I beg your friendly assistance
in properly representing it to the Duke of Newcastle. If he
thinks that my services, of which I have given convincing
proofs, will answer to his advancing directly eight hundred
Pounds, which is the least that can clear the Debts of my
former Jants, and fix me to the Certain payment yearly of
Five hundred at two several terms, he may command anything in
my power upon all occasions. I am sorry to be forced to this
explanation, in which I always expected to be prevented. I am
so far from thinking this extravagant, that I am perswaded it
will save them as many thousands, by discarding that swarm of
Videts, which never was in the least trusted. If the Duke of
Newcastle’s Constituent (the King) was acquainted with this,
I dare say he would esteem the demand reasonable, considering
what he throws away upon others of no interest or power on
either side. I beg you’ll acquaint me with the soonest of
the Duke of Newcastle’s answer, and assure him of my ready
obedience to his commands. I have referred to _21_ to enlarge
further upon this, and other subjects I have been conversing
with him some days ago, _as he can inform you of my great
hurry and confusion for this fortnight past_,[204] which will
be all the apology I will make for this hurried scrawl, and I
beg you’ll be fully convinced of the great esteem etc. etc. etc.