Chapter 39
Stronachlachar – 1746/1789
“Well then, Alasdair.” Rob said to his grandson. “I did say that it was a long story. I trust that it has not tired you to hear of it.”
“No, seanair. I am not tired. Father told me nothing of this. Does he not know?”
“It was all a long time ago now, but when your father was young things were different. Jean and I did not tell your father very much because we were trying to put what had happened behind us. The factor to the Duke of Montrose introduced some new tenants who were really spies searching for Jacobite disaffection. Everyone was watched. We were frightened that if we told Duncan anything, he might tell his friends and it would be heard by the factor’s spies. Jean and I were able to come back to Stronachlachar before the winter with our baby. That was your father of course. Your father grew up so quickly and then when he was your age, my brother Donald took him away to sea.”
“What did happen after the rising – when you came home. You stopped telling the story then.”
“Well, Alasdair, there is not much more to tell. Most of the families around Loch Katrine took to the hills. The shielings were busy that summer. In most years only the young people went up to the high pastures with the animals, the older folk would stay in their houses, down in the glen to watch the crops. In 1746 almost everyone went up to the shielings. We built more of them wherever there was a hollow or a corner that could not be spied from the low ground. They had turf walls and heather thatched roofs that blended into the secret corries and hollows of the hills. Over in Balquhidder, too, Glencarnaig and Ronald moved their people up to the heights where they hoped the saighdearan dearg would never come.”
“Glengyle kept some of his band of men together for a while, but near to their families. We remained defiant for most of that summer. We all had fear for our homes and loved ones in our hearts. In May, Glengyle and James Mòr attempted to intercept the collection of the cess tax in Atholl. They took a band of men, even although I protested that it was foolhardy. Glengyle said that he wished to prove that the Whigs could not sack his patrimony with impunity. He failed to collect the money and detachments of recoats pursued him most of the way back from Atholl. They gave up, probably fearing that we would ambush them.”
“It was June before the redcoats came in strength. A whole regiment of 700 Hessian mercenaries swept through Strath Gartney, by Loch Katrine to Glen Gyle. They turned at the head of the Loch and went through Stronachlachar and Corrie Arklet to Inversnaid. Then they went on down Loch Lomond-side to Drymen. Smoke billowed from every thatch. The roof timbers were burned. Walls were overthrown. Ploughs and implements were smashed. Mills and granaries destroyed. They found little in the way of livestock or moveables. Indeed it was the families who had remained at home, confident in their innocence since they had taken no part in the rising that suffered most. In Buchanan the factor was apoplectic at the wanton and indiscriminate destruction meted out to the Duke of Montrose’s loyal tenants.”
“By October, the autumn was advancing and the weather turning cold and wet. Glengyle knew that there was no further hope. His people needed peace. I went with him to Glen Lyon. We had an interview with the ‘Black Colonel’, John Campbell of the Glen Lyon family. He was a second cousin of Glengyle. Though devoted to the Whig cause, he was a humane man too. Everyone knew by then that the Prince had escaped to France. Cumberland and the most brutal of his henchmen had left and taken the German regiments away. In much of the Highlands security was back in the hands of the Whigs such as Argyll and Atholl. Colonel Campbell demanded that we surrender our weapons in return for an end to the active hostility. He promised that women and children and most of the men who had been out would be secure from persecution.”
“However, the leaders would not be so fortunate. The Act of Indemnity was a blanket pardon to those who had played small parts in the rising, but it specified a list of people who would not be pardoned. Glengyle, Glencarnaig and Balhaldie had been included on the list. The Colonel said that there had been good reports of Glengyle’s humanity in the care of the prisoners at Doune. Glengyle would, therefore not be pursued with full rigour, although he would have to keep very quite and avoid attention. The Colonel suggested that clemency might be available if he agreed to surrender voluntarily. He said that John, my brother, would be released if Glengyle surrendered.”
“I was not exempted in the Act, so I was able to bring Jean and young Duncan down from the shielings. It took only a few days to rebuild the walls of the old house. I salvaged timbers for the roof and rethatched it. We had hidden most of our furniture and other plenishing. We had two milking cows and some money, thanks to Glengyle’s prudence. Duncan, your father, was a fine strong baby. He had thrived on the simple life in the shielings.”
“Glengyle did surrender most of the weapons. He and I argued for a long time over that. I believed that we should disarm, but for my father, disarming meant that we would have to trust our enemies. Never before had the enemies of Clan Gregor honoured such a trust. Glengyle himself did not surrender and was not captured. He had to move around a lot between 1746 and 1749. He lurked in the hills much of the time, but took shelter either here or at Corrie Arclet when the weather was bad. It did him little harm as he had reached the ripe old age of 88 when he eventually died in 1777. At least the old man lived long enough to see the proscription of our name end in 1774.”
“Mary Hamilton, my mother, had been confirmed in her fore-knowledge of the certain outcome of the rising. It was years before she ceased telling us how right she had been. She was happy, though, that we had lived through it all to finally come home. Her home was in ruins and it was the mid fifties before it could be rebuilt. John was released before the end of 1746. Edinburgh castle and the other state prisons were too congested to hold him any longer without grounds. She knew that Glengyle had kept some weapons back from the Colonel, but she also knew that in his heart, the ‘auld sang’ was at an end. John died in 1774.”
“Glencarnaig surrendered to General Jack Campbell in September 1746. He spent three years as a prisoner in Edinburgh. His property in Balquhidder had been ravaged and his fortunes never recovered. He went bankrupt in 1752 and died in 1758. Duncan his brother succeeded him and lived until 1787. Evan, the Major, died in 1778 but Evan’s son John made a fortune in India. He bought all of his uncle’s former land and a lot more beside. Then he persuaded many MacGregors to elect him as clan chief in 1782. I did not vote for him. My father would have been apoplectic if he had been alive to see it.”
“James Mòr and Robin Oig escaped punishment for their part, although the Jean Keay affair a few years later took Robin to the gallows and James Mòr to a lonely death in exile. Ranald went back to his farm and alehouse at the Kirkton of Balquhidder. Though the Perth Estate passed under the adminstration of the Commission for Forfeited Estates he was able to continue his tenancy and died, aged 80, in 1786.”
“Buchanan of Arnprior, though he had not come out after the death of Glenbuckie was nevertheless executed for his part in the rising. He had been imprudent enough to write a number of pro-Jacobite letters that came into the hands of the authorities. There have been suggestions that Arnprior shot Glenbuckie during the course of an argument as to who should have the post of major in the Duke of Perth’s regiment. Arnprior then pretended that Glenbuckie had taken his own life.”
“So that was the story of my time as His Majesty’s rebel.” Rob concluded.