A History of Scotland from the Roman Occupation

536

QUIETING OF THE HIGHLANDS.

also to "exhibit" some of the The old rules against "sorners,” enforced. Probably these were

representatives) were to make an appearance annually before the Council in Edinburgh, and were most potent cadets of their houses. men living at free quarters, were muscular idlers, of course of good family, who were supported by their hosts, now as useful fighters, now as kinsmen, now from timidity, while the ancient Celtic custom which entitled chiefs, tanists, bards, and others to free entertainment gave a kind of sanction to the usage. The chiefs were bidden to reside permanently at different residences of theirs, and to cultivate home farms-partly to give their idle hands something other than mischief to do, partly as an example of industry.

The Celt is naturally, or then was, rather in the pastoral than the agricultural stage of civilisation. To keep the kye, hunt the deer, and watch the eternal and beautiful passage of light and shade on the hills, the lochs, and the sea, was more congenial than to dig and plough an ungrateful soil. To counteract these sympathetic tendencies of children of nature, the chiefs promised to take home farms, or "mains," into their own hands. ("Mains" is common in Lowland place-names, as "Branxholme Mains," the "toun" or farm on the hillside above Branxholme Tower.) An attempt was made (1616) to enforce fixed rents in place of all the many forms of service, in agriculture and in war, which of old had existed in England and the Lowlands, as well as in the Highlands. But the ancient system continued to flourish, especially in Knoydart and Moydart, till the great epoch of change after 1745. The rules as to education and importation of foreign wines were re-enacted. The practice of taking "calps," or heriots, "the best beast," after the death of a tenant was denounced. They who have the power-church, chief, or democracy-usually think that the death of a man, which impoverishes his family, gives a happy opportunity to add to their distress by taxation.

The affairs of Lochiel, still an outlaw for the lesson he read to the Glen Nevis Camerons, were complicated by a dispute with the Mackintoshes about certain lands. This matter provided a good running feud, in which occurred that slaughter of the Mackintosh branch of Clan Chattan which caused the saying, "Cat-skins are cheap to-day." Lochiel, at considerable cost, reconciled himself to Huntly by a cession of the superiority over certain estates, but, as late as 1720, the exiled James VIII. had to settle a feud between the Gordons and Camerons which grew up out of this arrangement.

The outlawed Keppoch, for his part, joined Sir James Macdonald in Spain, whither (1618) the now Catholic Argyll had also wandered. In his absence the chiefship of the Campbells was put in commission-Lundy, Lochnell, Ardkinglas, Kilberry, and others being the managers. Among them was Macdonald of Largie, in Kintyre, one of the few Macdonalds whose representative still retains the ancient property in Kintyre. Argyll having been perverted, Sir James Macdonald and Keppoch were recalled from Spain by the king; Sir James died in London (1626), Keppoch was permitted to go home. The MacIans of Ardnamurchan, hard pressed by the Campbells, took to piracy, but were put down by that son of Argyll, Lord Lorne, who was afterwards the famous Presbyterian Argyll, Gillespie Grumach (1625).

At the time of the death of James VI., when our volume closes, the northern and island branches of the House of Somerled, the Macdonalds of Sleat, Glengarry, and Clanranald, with the Campbells, were the most powerful Highland clans, while the Mackintoshes held more sway than the elder Clan Vourich (Macphersons) over the septs of Clan Chattan. The troubles of the reign of Charles I. and the Restoration alternately elevated or depressed the Campbells and the Macdonalds.

A most disturbed district of the realm lay in the remote domains of the Earl of Orkney. The Earl was a son of that Lord Robert Stewart, commendator of Holyrood, who had vainly warned Darnley to fly from Kirk o' Field, vainly admonished Morton to escape his impending doom. This Lord Robert was a natural son of James V., a natural brother of Queen Mary, so that his son, the Earl of Orkney, was no distant cousin of the king. He seemed to derive his genius from a far more distant collateral, the famous Wolf of Badenoch. He dwelt in great pomp at Kirkwall, with a regular guard of musketeers, which his sovereign might have envied; he had a fleet, and his oppressions are said to have been exercised "under a shadow of the Danish law." The bishop expected to keep him in order was Law, who, in his day, had trouble with the impetuous and learned Calderwood, the preacher and historian. By 1608 the Earl had been "put to the horn," for which he cared very little, on account of his oppressions. James rebuked the Council for not being energetic in the matter in 1608.21 They replied that, as James knew, "they had no forces to send to Orkney" to make the said Earl conformable. He was only at the horn for a civil cause.

538

EXECUTION OF THE EARL OF ORKNEY (1615).

James made it criminal in case the Earl did not appear before them in March 1609. The Earl did appear, and was warded in Edinburgh Castle, July 1609.22 But he had left kinsmen in Orkney as unruly as himself, while only less trouble was given by his neighbour and feudal enemy, the Earl of Caithness. In January 1610, Law, as bishop, had received a commission like that of Bishop Knox in the Western Isles. The Earl made plausible offers, which were rejected; his brother James and other kinsmen were apprehended. Things did not improve; to cut the Earl off from communications with his people he was confined to his chamber in the Castle, and was very destitute. In May 1611 the Danish laws in Orkney were abrogated by proclamation, and the Earl's deputies were dismissed. At the end of August he was allowed to dwell, under heavy caution, within four miles of Edinburgh. Meanwhile Bishop Law had been doing his best in Orkney, but Robert Stewart, bastard of the Earl, had proclaimed his own authority as soon as the bishop's back was turned.

On December 6, 1611, the Privy Council considered the grievances of the Orcadians. They were, it seems, forbidden to help shipwrecked vessels,-no great hardship to wreckers,-to carry law cases beyond the island courts, to cross ferries without a passport, and were subject to capricious confiscations. These ill customs were to be abrogated.23 In February 1612 the Earl was removed to Dumbarton Castle, and in October Parliament annexed the lands of Orkney to the Crown. Law was appointed administrator. In January 1613 Robert Stewart, the Earl's bastard, promised never to return to Orkney. By May 1614 he had broken parole, and was setting the heather on fire in the islands. In August the Earl of Caithness was empowered to restore order, and appeared with ships and guns before Kirkwall. The siege lasted till the end of September, when the place surrendered; the walls were strong, the cannon balls of the besiegers "were broken like golf balls, and cloven in two halfs," writes Caithness. Robert Stewart was removed to Edinburgh. He was tall, handsome, and only twenty-two, so he had public sympathy at his trial (January 5, 1615).

Some of the retainers of Caithness were on the jury; many of the others were burgesses of Edinburgh. They unanimously found Stewart and his associates guilty, and the men were hanged. A month later the Earl was tried for collusion with his son, convicted, and beheaded. The names of the associates of Robert Stewart are Low

land, unless Halcro be Scandinavian. The destroyer of the Earl, Caithness (a Sinclair) had himself betrayed his kinsman, the Lord Maxwell who murdered the Laird of Johnston under trust, and was a notorious ruffian. He later tried to drive the Forbeses out of Caithness by destroying their crops, and was a kind of land pirate. He lost the sheriffship of Caithness, and a warrant to pursue him was granted to his own son. Calderwood seems to grudge at the execution of the Earl of Orkney, who, he says, did not even know the Lord's Prayer. But Calderwood never, perhaps, approved of any measure of James, and public sentiment, in all classes, was averse to capital punishment when it was richly deserved by a noble. The plan was now to revile James for not punishing violence, now to rail at him when he did. There can be no doubt that "Earl Pate" was an ambitious tyrant, with dreams, perhaps, of a separate principality. The Orcadians were a peaceful people, probably they were as much wronged by Caithness as by their Earl, but they disliked "foreigners" -officials brought in by the central Government. Their old Scandinavian tenures and habits of wrecking were disturbed, and we receive the impression that the Claud Halcros were for the Earl, and that the complainers against his rule may have been the Yellowleeses (to cite examples from "The Pirate") of the period. But perhaps older Lowland settlers, who called themselves "The Gentlemen of Orkney," had become fond of Scandinavian institutions. They are Douglases, Grays, Sinclairs, Mowats, Gordons, with only Halcro, who was pardoned, to represent a Norse element. But, of 200 who signed the Band with Robert Stewart, only seventeen names, including initials, are given.24 Whatever the rights and wrongs of the natives, the question of Orkney was settled. Later the Orcadians gave very weak support to the great Montrose in his final fight and defeat.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XX.

1 Privy Council Register, vol. vii. viii.

2 Pitcairn, iii. 28-52, the Trials of Maxwell. The details are in the "Tales of a Grandfather."

3 Pitcairn, iii. pp. 4, 5.

Privy Council Register, vi. pp. 8-10.

8 In the Privy Council Register, viii. p. 219, is a note of January 5, 1609, charging Maclan of Glencoe with the murder at Glenfruin of forty poor persons "with his own hand." This is cited by Pitcairn, ii. p. 431.

9 Pitcairn, ii. 434, citing Erskine, Birrel's Diary, and Calderwood. Birrel calls "a Hielandman's promise."

Βιβλία

A History of Scotland from the Roman Occupation, Τόμος 2