History of Clan MACGREGOR

History of Clan MACGREGOR
Condensed from "Clans of the Highlands of Scotland"
Thomas Smibert, 1850

The McIan illustration of MacGregor as published (mid-19th century) in 'The Clans of the Scottish Highlands.'

All men admit the Clan MacGregor to be the purest branch of the ancient Gael of Scotland now in existence - true descendants, in short, of the native Celtic stock of the country, and unmixed by blood with immigrants either of their own or any other race. About this point there is no dispute; and the name of Clan Alpine, commonly adopted by themselves for centuries, would almost alone suffice to prove their descent from the Albiones, the first known inhabitants of Scotland. The inland position which they have ever held seems to have mainly tended to preserve this offshoot of the old Albionian or Alpinian race in all its primitive purity. Their original seat, when they became first historically distinguished as a separate sept, was chiefly in Argyleshire and Perthshire, or on the several borders of the two counties. In this position they were just far enough in the interior to be prevented from uniting with the Celto-Irish visitants, and far enough to the north to mix little with the Saxon settlers of the Lowlands. But this locality was the most dangerous which fate could have assigned to the Macgregors, and so the issue proved. Those predatory habits, which appear to have been but too natural to the untutored Gael of early days, found a peculiarly free vent by their vicinity to the Lowland plains, well cultivated as these were, and full of goodly cattle; but the same circumstances exposed them doubly Rob Roy MacGregor

to the vengeance of the settled authorities of the south. The temptations of their situation led them into mischief, and at the same time rendered them objects of retribution and punishment to an extent unknown in the annals of any other Highland tribe. Yet, in spite of the sufferings (sometimes most cruel ones) which they drew upon themselves, the Macgregors were among the last to give up the wild habits of their people. The name of Rob Roy (see picture at left) need but to be mentioned to establish the truth of this statement. But our account of the Macgregors must be commenced more regularly.

The common story is, that the clan sprung from a certain Gregorius, or Gregory, of the race of Alpine, or of his son Kenneth Macalpine, the proper founder of the permanent Scottish monarchy. The only prince named Gregory in history, however, died unmarried; and hence the claim of the Macgregors to a regal ancestry has been doubted, notwithstanding the proud vaunt of their certainly ancient motto, "My race is royal". The probability is, in our humble opinion, that the name of Clan Alpine proves their descent, not perhaps from a particular monarch entitled Alpine, but from the same Alpinian race to which he belonged, and which gave to him his designation. As to the name of Macgregor, the point seems to be one which it is impossible now to clear up satisfactorily. Very likely it is, that the first Gregory or Gregor may have been connected with the throne, and obtained rule over a body of the Gael, to whom he left his name. In regard to the general origin of this once num erous clan, we incline to agree with Mr Skene, who views them as a branch of the Ross-shire Gael - that is, as we understand the matter, a branch of the native Gael of the inland parts of the north of Scotland. The M.S. of 1450 confirms this conclusion.

The lands of Glenorchy seem to have been held at a very early period by the Macgregors, since all their traditions at least speak of a. Hugh of Glenorchy as a prominent ancestor of the family. The Lowland power transferred the legal right to these lands, however, to the Campbells, so early as in the fourteenth century. The Macgregors continued to be the chief occupants, nevertheless, for a long period afterwards. Indeed, the story of the gradual fall of the clan is an interesting one, and merits to be told in detail, since it shows how many other septs, besides theirs, fell before the Campbells, and other great barons, on the Highland borders. While the strong arm constituted the sole title to property, the Macgregors managed matters as well as their neighbours, but when property became secured generally by legal and regal title-deeds, this retired clan were placed at a terrible disadvantage. If not worse than others before, they became so by the attempts made, through court-giants, to oust them from their possessions. They resisted bravely, and every such case of resistance became a new crime. Driven from their homes, they were turned into true "Children of the Mist". Their hand was raised against every man, and every man's against them. In brief, at a very early period, they became a lawless and broken clan -partly, it may be believed, through their own wild acts of rapine, but largely, also, through the severities inflicted on them.

This state of things commenced at a very early period. In the reign of Queen Mary (see picture at right), two acts of the Privy Council, dated from Stirling in 1563, gave authority to Sir John Campbell of Glenorchy, and other powerful nobles and barons, to pursue the Macgregors with fire and sword; a commission which the parties concerned fulfilled, no doubt, to the utmost of their ability. But the Macgregors were not a people to be safely or easily suppressed. Oppression had made them all that their enemies had at first doubtfully called them. Robbed of the best portions of their property, they still retained fastnesses, that could yield them shelter but not food, more especially as their hunted mode of life prevented them from drawing sustenance in a regular way from the earth. Hence they were compelled to depend in a great measure on predatory forays for the very means of living. Their temper, too, had become embittered, and their passions eager and vehement, so that they were too easily roused to the commission of acts of violence and cruelty, which furnished new and successive pleas for the entailment of further miseries on themselves. In the year 1589, a body of the Macgregors seized and murdered John Drummond of Drummondernoch, a forester of the royal forest of Glenartney. The circumstances attending this crime were peculiarly horrible. Placing the head of the victim before them, the clan swore upon it that they would avow and defend the deed in common. Letters of fire and sword for the space of three years were issued anew against the Macgregors, and all men, according to the usual tenor of such documents, were forbidden to entertain or assist any of the sept, or to give them, under any plea whatsoever, either a mouthful of food or a scrap of clothing. Under these terrible denunciations, the Macgregors were only saved by their impregnable fastnesses from utter extinction.

The tale of the victory of the Macgregors over the Colquhouns at Glenfruin has already been told. It gives a sad picture of the times, and also shows how fearful were the Macgregors in battle, since they slew above two hundred foes, and lost very few of their own party. The chief, called Dugald Ciar Mhor, ancestor of Rob Roy, was eminently noted on this occasion, and, unhappily, for his ferocity as well as courage. But the whole tale may be found in the story of the Colquhouns.

Only one man of note on the side of the Clan Alpine was slain in the vale of Glenfruin. This was the brother of Macgregor of Glenstrae, whose death-scene is yet marked by a stone, called the Grey Stone of Macgregor. But although the battle was to them almost bloodless, it entailed dire misery otherwise upon the race. Eleven score women, widows of those slain in the engagement on the side of the Colquhouns, attired themselves in deep mourning, and, mounted on white palfreys, appeared before the king, James VI, at Stirling, and demanded vengeance on the heads of the Macgregors. To make the deeper impression on those to whom this supplicaiton was made, each of the petitioners bore on a spear her husband's bloody shirt. Such a spectacle was well calculated to affect the reigning king, who had always shown a heart specially accessible to sights of fear and sorrow. The consequence was, that measures of extreme severity were resorted to for the punishment of the Macgregors, in whose favour no man was found to lift up his voice. By a Privy Council act, of date 1603 (the year following the battle), the very name of Macgregor was abolished, a proceeding which has no parallel in the annals of the country. All those who bore that name were commanded, on pain of death, to adopt other surnames, and all who had been concerned in the battle of Glenfruin and other marauding excursions detailed in the act, were forbidden, under the same penalty, to carry any weapon but a pointless knife to eat their victuals. Death was also denounced against any of the race who should meet in greater numbers than four at a time. From time to time, acts of this kind were issued, keeping up the ban against the unfortunate race of Alpine.

The execution of these statutes was assigned to the Earls of Argyle and Athol and their followers, whose territories almost surrounded those of the doomed sept. The Marquis of Huntly also assisted in the fulfilment of the acts against the Macgregors. Stubbornly did the clan resist for a time the enemies by whom they were now hemmed in, but at length their chief, Allaster Macgregor of Glenstrae, saw the necessity of bending before the storm. He surrendered, with some of his principal followers, to Argyle, upon the previously stipulated condition of being allowed to leave the country. The chieftain of Clan Alpine was wretchedly betrayed. The promise made to him was kept to the ear, but broken to the sense. He was sent "out of the country" - that is to say, he was sent under a guard across the English border, but he was immediately brought back again to Edinburgh, and thrown into confinement. On the 20th of January, 1604, he was tried, and condemned to death. The sentence was soon after carried into execution at the Cross of Edinburgh, where several of the chief followers suffered with him. To mark his rank, the chief of Glenstrae was suspended from a higher gallows than that allotted to his friends. Before his death, the chieftain made a confession, which is still extant, and which presents a terrible picture of the life "of sturt and strife" led by the race of Macgregor, from the number of feuds in which the chieftain owns to having borne a part.

Though the Macgregors, out of necessity, submitted ostensibly to the edict commanding them to take other names, they nevertheless held firm hold of the fastnesses which they had formerly occupied, and which no exertions could expel them from. While known, as their situation might render convenient, by the names of Campbell, Drummond, Graham, or Stewart, they still retained their individuality as a clan in all but the name. They forayed in unison as formerly, and menaced with the general vengeance all who might injure one of their nameless race. They therefore remained much in the same odour as previously, and Charles I thought proper to renew all the statutes enacted against them by his father.

"Yet", says Sir Walter Scott, "notwithstanding the extreme severities of James VI and Charles I against this unfortunate people, who were rendered furious by proscription, and then punished for yielding to the passions which had been wilfully irritated, the Macgregors to a man attached themselves during the civil war to the cause of the latter monarch". This kept the sore-vexed clan still in a mesh of troubles for a long period, but they in some measure got their reward at the Restoration. Charles II, in the first Scottish parliament after his ascension to the throne, annulled the various statutes against them, gave them once more a name, and re-installed them in all the ordinary privileges of liege subjects, expressly on account of the distinguished loyalty which they had shown.

Without any very well understood cause, or even plea of renewed violence and lawlessness, William III recalled into force all the original statutes, making the clan once more "nameless and landless" in the eye of the law. But things were more peaceful generally throughout the country, and, excepting when the clan was raised into an unfortunate notoriety by the acts of Rob Roy, who was born about the times of the Revolution, the clan of Macgregor seems to have been but little disturbed in consequence of their unhappy prominence in the statute-book. The history of the race from this-time forth, excepting as far as regards the renowned freebooter just alluded to, presents no particular events worthy of notice. Up to the very close of the eighteenth century, the Macgregors were legally a nameless clan, in as far as the penal acts against them still held a place in the statutebook, though, practically, the law recognised the name, and none of the penal statutes were ever enforced. The British Parliament finally abolished all these traces of ancient barbarity. As soon as this boon was conferred on them, the Macgregors showed remaining tokens of a strong feeling of clanship, by acknowledging a head and chief. Eight hundred and twenty-six persons of the name of Macgregor subscribed a deed, admitting John Murray of Lanrick, Esq., afterwards Sir John Macgregor, Bart., as lawfully descended of the house of Glenstrae, and the proper and true chieftain of Clan Alpine.

Since this period, the race of Macgregor have bravely served their country by field and flood, and have enjoyed all civic privileges.

We have now to trace the connections of the Macgregor house, and to notice the acts of some eminent members descended therefrom collaterally. Buchanan of Auchmar agrees in the belief that they all sprung from a family seated in Glenorchy, in the time, he says, of Malcolm 111, or in the eleventh century. How they lost that estate he cannot distinctly tell; but we have already, as our readers may have noted, ascribed the circumstance to the power of the Campbells at court, and their usefulness to the Lowland kings generally. The beginning of their downfall seems to have occurred in the days of the Bruce and Baliol controversies, when, as Buchanan says, "they might be induced or obliged, being so near neighbours, to join Macdougal, Lord of Lorn, against King Robert Bruce." The conjecture is the most rational one that could or can be made. Intermarrying with the Bruces, the Argyle Campbells were likely to get any grants for which they asked, both out of favour and to maintain the royal authority in the west. So parted not only Glenorchy from the Macgregors, but also many other districts. Glenlyon was among these, a region made but too memorable as held by a Campbell in the days of William III. He led the men who acted the bloody tragedy of Glencoe. The lands remaining in the possession of the Macgregors at the commencement of the eighteenth century are alluded to by Buchanan, already so often quoted. The main or direct male line of the chiefs, he says, became extinct in the time of King William 111, and the representation of the line fell, by "a formal renunciation of the chiefship," into the branch of Glengyle. The words of the writer named are: "This surname is now divided into four principal families. The first is that of the Laird of Macgregor, being in a manner extinct, there being few or none of any account of the same. The next family to that of the Macgregor is Dugal Keir's (Dougal Ciar's) family, so named from their ancestor, a son of the Laird of Macgregor; the principal person of that family is Macgregor of Glengyle. " Buchanan then mentions the Macgregors of "Rora and Brackley", as the next in the line of connection with the chiefship. He also distinctly names the Mackinnons of Skye as being of this race, besides certain Macaras, Macleisters, and Macchoiters, septs of lesser note.

This statement made by Auchmar refers, it will be observed, to the very commencement of the eighteenth century. At that period there lived (though the fact is not stated by him) a Macgregor of the Glengyle line, who has done more to render the name memorable than any other by whom it was ever borne - namely, Robert Macgregor, otherwise better known as Rob Roy (Red Rob). This man formed an admirable specimen of the class and race to which he belonged. With talents which might have made him a great general, valuable to his country, under fitting circumstances, he passed his life as a freebooter on the pettiest scale. The Lowland government had grown in his time so strong that extensive forays there could neither with safety be attempted nor effected. Rob Roy, therefore, was under the necessity of sustaining his "following", partly by minor creaghs, and partly by taking "black mail" from the quiet southern men in his vicinity, in return for saving them from the less scrupulous occupants of the interior Highlands. Much of good and much of evil has been told of Rob Roy. From the pages of General Stewart of Garth, Sir Walter Scott, and others, a few of these anecdotes will be here selected.

Rob Roy Macgregor Campbell, which last name he took when his own was by law proscribed, was a younger son of Macgregor of Glengyle, and became tutor to his nephew, the head of that branch, and claimant, indeed, of the chiefship of the clan. It may detract in southron eyes from the romance of the man's life of state that he was a drover in early life - a master-drover, however - who purchased or bred the small cattle of the Highland hills, and carried them for sale to the south. But the Duke of Montrose condescended to be a dealer in the same line; and hence arose all the calamities of Rob Roy. Whether truly or falsely, he was charged by the duke, and others who employed him, with appropriating sums of money which fell into his hands in his trading or agent capacity. They prosecuted and persecuted him accordingly, and he became a "broken man". Another strong cause for the change has also been assigned. His patrimonial designation was that of Laird of Inversnaid, but he also possessed a property called Craig-Royston, which lies on the northern angle of Loch Lomond. In his absence, his house was visited by the messengers of the law, and his wife (a daughter of the house of Campbell of Glenfalloch, heirs of Breadalbane) is commonly said to have been most infamously abused. She was a high-spirited woman, and made her husband, or tended mainly to make him, the outlaw he became. These things occurred about the year 1712.