The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 4

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At length, on the thirty-first of December, he repaired to Fort
William, accompanied by his principal vassals, and offered to
take the oaths. To his dismay he found that there was in the fort
no person competent to administer them. Colonel Hill, the
Governor, was not a magistrate; nor was there any magistrate
nearer than Inverary. Mac Ian, now fully sensible of the folly of
which he had been guilty in postponing to the very last moment an
act on which his life and his estate depended, set off for
Inverary in great distress. He carried with him a letter from
Hill to the Sheriff of Argyleshire, Sir Colin Campbell of
Ardkinglass, a respectable gentleman, who, in the late reign, had
suffered severely for his Whig principles. In this letter the
Colonel expressed a goodnatured hope that, even out of season, a
lost sheep, and so fine a lost sheep, would be gladly received.
Mac Ian made all the haste in his power, and did not stop even at
his own house, though it lay nigh to the road. But at that time a
journey through Argyleshire in the depth of winter was
necessarily slow. The old man's progress up steep mountains and
along boggy valleys was obstructed by snow storms; and it was not
till the sixth of January that he presented himself before the
Sheriff at Inverary. The Sheriff hesitated. His power, he said,
was limited by the terms of the proclamation, and he did not see
how he could swear a rebel who had not submitted within the
prescribed time. Mac Ian begged earnestly and with tears that he
might be sworn. His people, he said, would follow his example. If
any of them proved refractory, he would himself send the recusant
to prison, or ship him off for Islanders. His entreaties and
Hill's letter overcame Sir Colin's scruples. The oath was
administered; and a certificate was transmitted to the Council at
Edinburgh, setting forth the special circumstances which had
induced the Sheriff to do what he knew not to be strictly
regular.217

The news that Mac Ian had not submitted within the prescribed
time was received with cruel joy by three powerful Scotchmen who
were then at the English Court. Breadalbane had gone up to London
at Christmas in order to give an account of his stewardship.
There he met his kinsman Argyle. Argyle was, in personal
qualities, one of the most insignificant of the long line of
nobles who have borne that great name. He was the descendant of
eminent men, and the parent of eminent men. He was the grandson
of one of the ablest of Scottish politicians; the son of one of
the bravest and most truehearted of Scottish patriots; the father
of one Mac Callum More renowned as a warrior and as an orator, as
the model of every courtly grace, and as the judicious patron of
arts and letters, and of another Mac Callum More distinguished by
talents for business and command, and by skill in the exact
sciences. Both of such an ancestry and of such a progeny Argyle
was unworthy. He had even been guilty of the crime, common enough
among Scottish politicians, but in him singularly disgraceful, of
tampering with the agents of James while professing loyalty to
William. Still Argyle had the importance inseparable from high
rank, vast domains, extensive feudal rights, and almost boundless
patriarchal authority. To him, as to his cousin Breadalbane, the
intelligence that the tribe of Glencoe was out of the protection
of the law was most gratifying; and the Master of Stair more than
sympathized with them both.

The feeling of Argyle and Breadalbane is perfectly intelligible.
They were the heads of a great clan; and they had an opportunity
of destroying a neighbouring clan with which they were at deadly
feud. Breadalbane had received peculiar provocation. His estate
had been repeatedly devastated; and he had just been thwarted in
a negotiation of high moment. Unhappily there was scarcely any
excess of ferocity for which a precedent could not be found in
Celtic tradition. Among all warlike barbarians revenge is
esteemed the most sacred of duties and the most exquisite of
pleasures; and so it had long been esteemed among the
Highlanders. The history of the clans abounds with frightful
tales, some perhaps fabulous or exaggerated, some certainly true,
of vindictive massacres and assassinations. The Macdonalds of
Glengarry, for example, having been affronted by the people of
Culloden, surrounded Culloden church on a Sunday, shut the doors,
and burned the whole congregation alive. While the flames were
raging, the hereditary musician of the murderers mocked the
shrieks of the perishing crowd with the notes of his bagpipe.218
A band of Macgregors, having cut off the head of an enemy, laid
it, the mouth filled with bread and cheese, on his sister's
table, and had the satisfaction of seeing her go mad with horror
at the sight. They then carried the ghastly trophy in triumph to
their chief. The whole clan met under the roof of an ancient
church. Every one in turn laid his hand on the dead man's scalp,
and vowed to defend the slayers.219 The inhabitants of Eigg
seized some Macleods, bound them hand and foot, and turned them
adrift in a boat to be swallowed up by the waves or to perish of
hunger. The Macleods retaliated by driving the population of Eigg
into a cavern, lighting a fire at the entrance, and suffocating
the whole race, men, women and children.220 It is much less
strange that the two great Earls of the house of Campbell,
animated by the passions of Highland chieftains, should have
planned a Highland revenge, than that they should have found an
accomplice, and something more than an accomplice, in the Master
of Stair.

The Master of Stair was one of the first men of his time, a
jurist, a statesman, a fine scholar, an eloquent orator. His
polished manners and lively conversation were the delight of
aristocratical societies; and none who met him in such societies
would have thought it possible that he could bear the chief part
in any atrocious crime. His political principles were lax, yet
not more lax than those of most Scotch politicians of that age.
Cruelty had never been imputed to him. Those who most disliked
him did him the justice to own that, where his schemes of policy
were not concerned, he was a very goodnatured man.221 There is
not the slightest reason to believe that he gained a single pound
Scots by the act which has covered his name with infamy. He had
no personal reason to wish the Glencoe men ill. There had been no
feud between them and his family. His property lay in a district
where their tartan was never seen. Yet he hated them with a
hatred as fierce and implacable as if they had laid waste his
fields, burned his mansion, murdered his child in the cradle.

To what cause are we to ascribe so strange an antipathy? This
question perplexed the Master's contemporaries; and any answer
which may now be offered ought to be offered with diffidence.222
The most probable conjecture is that he was actuated by an
inordinate, an unscrupulous, a remorseless zeal for what seemed
to him to be the interest of the state. This explanation may
startle those who have not considered how large a proportion of
the blackest crimes recorded in history is to be ascribed to ill
regulated public spirit. We daily see men do for their party, for
their sect, for their country, for their favourite schemes of
political and social reform, what they would not do to enrich or
to avenge themselves. At a temptation directly addressed to our
private cupidity or to our private animosity, whatever virtue we
have takes the alarm. But, virtue itself may contribute to the
fall of him who imagines that it is in his power, by violating
some general rule of morality, to confer an important benefit on
a church, on a commonwealth, on mankind. He silences the
remonstrances of conscience, and hardens his heart against the
most touching spectacles of misery, by repeating to himself that
his intentions are pure, that his objects are noble, that he is
doing a little evil for the sake of a great good. By degrees he
comes altogether to forget the turpitude of the means in the
excellence of the end, and at length perpetrates without one
internal twinge acts which would shock a buccaneer. There is no
reason to believe that Dominic would, for the best archbishopric
in christendom, have incited ferocious marauders to plunder and
slaughter a peaceful and industrious population, that Everard
Digby would for a dukedom have blown a large assembly of people
into the air, or that Robespierre would have murdered for hire
one of the thousands whom he murdered from philanthropy.

The Master of Stair seems to have proposed to himself a truly
great and good end, the pacification and civilisation of the
Highlands. He was, by the acknowledgment of those who most hated
him, a man of large views. He justly thought it monstrous that a
third part of Scotland should be in a state scarcely less savage
than New Guinea, that letters of fire and sword should, through a
third part of Scotland, be, century after century, a species of
legal process, and that no attempt should be made to apply a
radical remedy to such evils. The independence affected by a
crowd of petty sovereigns, the contumacious resistance which they
were in the habit of offering to the authority of the Crown and
of the Court of Session, their wars, their robberies, their
fireraisings, their practice of exacting black mail from people
more peaceable and more useful than themselves, naturally excited
the disgust and indignation of an enlightened and politic
gownsman, who was, both by the constitution of his mind and by
the habits of his profession, a lover of law and order. His
object was no less than a complete dissolution and reconstruction
of society in the Highlands, such a dissolution and
reconstruction as, two generations later, followed the battle of
Culloden. In his view the clans, as they existed, were the
plagues of the kingdom; and of all the clans, the worst was that
which inhabited Glencoe. He had, it is said, been particularly
struck by a frightful instance of the lawlessness and ferocity of
those marauders. One of them, who had been concerned in some act
of violence or rapine, had given information against his
companions. He had been bound to a tree and murdered. The old
chief had given the first stab; and scores of dirks had then been
plunged into the wretch's body.223 By the mountaineers such an
act was probably regarded as a legitimate exercise of patriarchal
jurisdiction. To the Master of Stair it seemed that people among
whom such things were done and were approved ought to be treated
like a pack of wolves, snared by any device, and slaughtered
without mercy. He was well read in history, and doubtless knew
how great rulers had, in his own and other countries, dealt with
such banditti. He doubtless knew with what energy and what
severity James the Fifth had put down the mosstroopers of the
border, how the chief of Henderland had been hung over the gate
of the castle in which he had prepared a banquet for the King;
how John Armstrong and his thirty-six horsemen, when they came
forth to welcome their sovereign, had scarcely been allowed time
to say a single prayer before they were all tied up and turned
off. Nor probably was the Secretary ignorant of the means by
which Sixtus the Fifth had cleared the ecclesiastical state of
outlaws. The eulogists of that great pontiff tell us that there
was one formidable gang which could not be dislodged from a
stronghold among the Apennines. Beasts of burden were therefore
loaded with poisoned food and wine, and sent by a road which ran
close to the fastness. The robbers sallied forth, seized the
prey, feasted and died; and the pious old Pope exulted greatly
when he heard that the corpses of thirty ruffians, who had been
the terror of many peaceful villages, had been found lying among
the mules and packages. The plans of the Master of Stair were
conceived in the spirit of James and of Sixtus; and the rebellion
of the mountaineers furnished what seemed to be an excellent
opportunity for carrying those plans into effect. Mere rebellion,
indeed, he could have easily pardoned. On Jacobites, as
Jacobites, he never showed any inclination to bear hard. He hated
the Highlanders, not as enemies of this or that dynasty, but as
enemies of law, of industry and of trade. In his private
correspondence he applied to them the short and terrible form of
words in which the implacable Roman pronounced the doom of
Carthage. His project was no less than this, that the whole hill
country from sea to sea, and the neighbouring islands, should be
wasted with fire and sword, that the Camerons, the Macleans, and
all the branches of the race of Macdonald, should be rooted out.
He therefore looked with no friendly eye on schemes of
reconciliation, and, while others were hoping that a little
money would set everything right, hinted very intelligibly his
opinion that whatever money was to be laid out on the clans would
be best laid out in the form of bullets and bayonets. To the last
moment he continued to flatter himself that the rebels would be
obstinate, and would thus furnish him with a plea for
accomplishing that great social revolution on which his heart was
set.224 The letter is still extant in which he directed the
commander of the forces in Scotland how to act if the Jacobite
chiefs should not come in before the end of December. There is
something strangely terrible in the calmness and conciseness with
which the instructions are given. "Your troops will destroy
entirely the country of Lochaber, Lochiel's lands, Keppoch's,
Glengarry's and Glencoe's. Your power shall be large enough. I
hope the soldiers will not trouble the government with
prisoners."225

This despatch had scarcely been sent off when news arrived in
London that the rebel chiefs, after holding out long, had at last
appeared before the Sheriffs and taken the oaths. Lochiel, the
most eminent man among them, had not only declared that he would
live and die a true subject to King William, but had announced
his intention of visiting England, in the hope of being permitted
to kiss His Majesty's hand. In London it was announced exultingly
that every clan, without exception, had submitted in time; and
the announcement was generally thought most satisfactory.226 But
the Master of Stair was bitterly disappointed. The Highlands were
then to continue to be what they had been, the shame and curse of
Scotland. A golden opportunity of subjecting them to the law had
been suffered to escape, and might never return. If only the
Macdonalds would have stood out, nay, if an example could but
have been made of the two worst Macdonalds, Keppoch and Glencoe,
it would have been something. But it seemed that even Keppoch and
Glencoe, marauders who in any well governed country would have
been hanged thirty years before, were safe.227 While the Master
was brooding over thoughts like these, Argyle brought him some
comfort. The report that Mac Ian had taken the oaths within the
prescribed time was erroneous. The Secretary was consoled. One
clan, then, was at the mercy of the government, and that clan the
most lawless of all. One great act of justice, nay of charity,
might be performed. One terrible and memorable example might be
given.228

Yet there was a difficulty. Mac Ian had taken the oaths. He had
taken them, indeed, too late to be entitled to plead the letter
of the royal promise; but the fact that he had taken them was one
which evidently ought not to have been concealed from those who
were to decide his fate. By a dark intrigue, of which the history
is but imperfectly known, but which was, in all probability,
directed by the Master of Stair, the evidence of Mac Ian's tardy
submission was suppressed. The certificate which the Sheriff of
Argyleshire had transmitted to the Council at Edinburgh, was
never laid before the board, but was privately submitted to some
persons high in office, and particularly to Lord President Stair,
the father of the Secretary. These persons pronounced the
certificate irregular, and, indeed, absolutely null; and it was
cancelled.

Meanwhile the Master of Stair was forming, in concert with
Breadalbane and Argyle, a plan for the destruction of the people
of Glencoe. It was necessary to take the King's pleasure, not,
indeed, as to the details of what was to be done, but as to the
question whether Mac Ian and his people should or should not be
treated as rebels out of the pale of the ordinary law. The Master
of Stair found no difficulty in the royal closet. William had, in
all probability, never heard the Glencoe men mentioned except as
banditti. He knew that they had not come in by the prescribed
day. That they had come in after that day he did not know. If he
paid any attention to the matter, he must have thought that so
fair an opportunity of putting an end to the devastations and
depredations from which a quiet and industrious population had
suffered so much ought not to be lost.

An order was laid before him for signature. He signed it, but, if
Burnet may be trusted, did not read it. Whoever has seen anything
of public business knows that princes and ministers daily sign,
and indeed must sign, documents which they have not read; and of
all documents a document relating to a small tribe of
mountaineers, living in a wilderness not set down in any map, was
least likely to interest a Sovereign whose mind was full of
schemes on which the fate of Europe might depend.229 But, even on
the supposition that he read the order to which he affixed his
name, there seems to be no reason for blaming him. That order,
directed to the Commander of the Forces in Scotland, runs thus:
"As for Mac Ian of Glencoe and that tribe, if they can be well
distinguished from the other Highlanders, it will be proper, for
the vindication of public justice, to extirpate that set of
thieves." These words naturally bear a sense perfectly innocent,
and would, but for the horrible event which followed, have been
universally understood in that sense. It is undoubtedly one of
the first duties of every government to extirpate gangs of
thieves. This does not mean that every thief ought to be
treacherously assassinated in his sleep, or even that every thief
ought to be publicly executed after a fair trial, but that every
gang, as a gang, ought to be completely broken up, and that
whatever severity is indispensably necessary for that end ought
to be used. If William had read and weighed the words which were
submitted to him by his Secretary, he would probably have
understood them to mean that Glencoe was to be occupied by
troops, that resistance, if resistance were attempted, was to be
put down with a strong hand, that severe punishment was to be
inflicted on those leading members of the clan who could be
proved to have been guilty of great crimes, that some active
young freebooters, who were more used to handle the broad sword
than the plough, and who did not seem likely to settle down into
quiet labourers, were to be sent to the army in the Low
Countries, that others were to be transported to the American
plantations, and that those Macdonalds who were suffered to
remain in their native valley were to be disarmed and required to
give hostages for good behaviour. A plan very nearly resembling
this had, we know, actually been the subject of much discussion
in the political circles of Edinburgh.230 There can be little
doubt that William would have deserved well of his people if he
had, in this manner, extirpated not only the tribe of Mac Ian,
but every Highland tribe whose calling was to steal cattle and
burn houses.

The extirpation planned by the Master of Stair was of a different
kind. His design was to butcher the whole race of thieves, the
whole damnable race. Such was the language in which his hatred
vented itself. He studied the geography of the wild country which
surrounded Glencoe, and made his arrangements with infernal
skill. If possible, the blow must be quick, and crushing, and
altogether unexpected. But if Mac Ian should apprehend danger and
should attempt to take refuge in the territories of his
neighbours, he must find every road barred. The pass of Rannoch
must be secured. The Laird of Weems, who was powerful in Strath
Tay, must be told that, if he harbours the outlaws, he does so at
his peril. Breadalbane promised to cut off the retreat of the
fugitives on one side, Mac Callum More on another. It was
fortunate, the Secretary wrote, that it was winter. This was the
time to maul the wretches. The nights were so long, the mountain
tops so cold and stormy, that even the hardiest men could not
long bear exposure to the open air without a roof or a spark of
fire. That the women and the children could find shelter in the
desert was quite impossible. While he wrote thus, no thought that
he was committing a great wickedness crossed his mind. He was
happy in the approbation of his own conscience. Duty, justice,
nay charity and mercy, were the names under which he disguised
his cruelty; nor is it by any means improbable that the disguise
imposed upon himself.231

Hill, who commanded the forces assembled at Fort William, was not
entrusted with the execution of the design. He seems to have been
a humane man; he was much distressed when he learned that the
government was determined on severity; and it was probably
thought that his heart might fail him in the most critical
moment. He was directed to put a strong detachment under the
orders of his second in command, Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton. To
Hamilton a significant hint was conveyed that he had now an
excellent opportunity of establishing his character in the
estimation of those who were at the head of affairs. Of the
troops entrusted to him a large proportion were Campbells, and
belonged to a regiment lately raised by Argyle, and called by
Argyle's name, It was probably thought that, on such an occasion,
humanity might prove too strong for the mere habit of military
obedience, and that little reliance could be placed on hearts
which had not been ulcerated by a feud such as had long raged
between the people of Mac Ian and the people of Mac Callum More.

Had Hamilton marched openly against the Glencoe men and put them
to the edge of the sword, the act would probably not have wanted
apologists, and most certainly would not have wanted precedents.
But the Master of Stair had strongly recommended a different mode
of proceeding. If the least alarm were given, the nest of robbers
would be found empty; and to hunt them down in so wild a region
would, even with all the help that Breadalbane and Argyle could
give, be a long and difficult business. "Better," he wrote, "not
meddle with them than meddle to no purpose. When the thing is
resolved, let it be secret and sudden."232 He was obeyed; and it
was determined that the Glencoe men should perish, not by
military execution, but by the most dastardly and perfidious form
of assassination.

On the first of February a hundred and twenty soldiers of
Argyle's regiment, commanded by a captain named Campbell and a
lieutenant named Lindsay, marched to Glencoe. Captain Campbell
was commonly called in Scotland Glenlyon, from the pass in which
his property lay. He had every qualification for he service on
which he was employed, an unblushing forehead, a smooth lying
tongue, and a heart of adamant. He was also one of the few
Campbells who were likely to be trusted and welcomed by the
Macdonalds; for his niece was married to Alexander, the second
son of Mac Ian.

The sight of the red coats approaching caused some anxiety among
the population of the valley. John, the eldest son of the Chief,
came, accompanied by twenty clansmen, to meet the strangers, and
asked what this visit meant. Lieutenant Lindsay answered that the
soldiers came as friends, and wanted nothing but quarters. They
were kindly received, and were lodged under the thatched roofs
of the little community. Glenlyon and several of his men were
taken into the house of a tacksman who was named, from the
cluster of cabins over which he exercised authority, Inverriggen.
Lindsay was accommodated nearer to the abode of the old chief.
Auchintriater, one of the principal men of the clan, who governed
the small hamlet of Auchnaion, found room there for a party
commanded by a serjeant named Barbour. Provisions were liberally
supplied. There was no want of beef, which had probably fattened
in distant pastures; nor was any payment demanded; for in
hospitality, as in thievery, the Gaelic marauders rivalled the
Bedouins. During twelve days the soldiers lived familiarly with
the people of the glen. Old Mac Ian, who had before felt many
misgivings as to the relation in which he stood to the
government, seems to have been pleased with the visit. The
officers passed much of their time with him and his family. The
long evenings were cheerfully spent by the peat fire with the
help of some packs of cards which had found their way to that
remote corner of the world, and of some French brandy which was
probably part of James's farewell gift to his Highland
supporters. Glenlyon appeared to be warmly attached to his niece
and her husband Alexander. Every day he came to their house to
take his morning draught. Meanwhile he observed with minute
attention all the avenues by which, when the signal for the
slaughter should be given, the Macdonalds might attempt to escape
to the hills; and he reported the result of his observations to
Hamilton.