by John Prebble
To put you out of all doubt, you will e'er long have my Lord Argyll's Regiment with you in London, and there you may speak with Glenlyon and Drummond and the rest of the actors in that dismal tragedy; and on my life there is never a one of them will deny it to you; for they know it is known all over Scotland, and it is an admiration to us that there should be any one in England who makes the least doubt of it.
On a Thursday morning late in June, Leslie himself took a hack into Middlesex where Argyll's thirteen companies were now quartered on the citizens of Brentford, ready to sail for Flanders when the King had further need of their bayonets. He spoke to many of the soldiers, though not, it would seem, to either Glenlyon or Drummond. Some of them, he said, were ashamed of what they had done. They told him to look at Robert Campbell, and in that wild, ageing man he would see the guilt they all felt. ‘MacIain hangs about Glenlyon night and day,’ they said. ‘You may see Glencoe in his face.’
Now that the story was public knowledge many men were ashamed and uneasy, and many more were unctuously pleased that they had had no part in the bloody business The members of the Privy Council were relieved that it had been ordered without their official approval, and Johnston delighted in informing his colleague Stair that there was no word about Glencoe on the Council's records. ‘So either the Registers are defective,’ he wrote sarcastically, ‘or someone in Scotland forges orders.’ In the Highlands there was fear of more bloodshed and betrayal. Hill's position was delicate and difficult. He was still under orders to kill the Glencoe men wherever they were found (Livingstone's irritable letter to Hamilton had made that plain), but he could not believe that the King now wished him to hunt them down and slaughter them like animals. He worked tirelessly at his desk throughout the candle-hours, pleading on their behalf, assuring the Council that under his protection the MacDonalds would be willing to come down from their mountain caves and live in peace. ‘They are very quiet,’ he said, ‘only in small parties, desire a little meal to keep them from starving, and are punctual in observing such directions as I give them, and await the King's pleasure as to their settlement.’ Quiet they may have been for the moment, but there was a growing suspicion that they might not long remain so. Since the spring thaws and the opening of the passes from the east, loose and broken men from all over the central Highlands had been joining John MacDonald's scattered bands below Bidean nam Bian, hungry for revenge, for plunder and the fat cattle of the Lowlands. This, as much as John Hill's sensible advice, forced the Council to a decision. At the beginning of May it placed the MacDonalds under the Government's protection ordering him ‘to take what security he shall think meet for their living peaceably until His Majesty signify his pleasure therein’.
Before the Council issued this order, news of William's cold pleasure was already on its way from The Hague. It came in letters from Stair, addressed to the Earl of Tweeddale and to John Hill. The Master was clearly unmoved by all the fuss about the massacre, as indifferent to public opinion as ever. ‘It's true,’ he said, ‘that affair of Glencoe was very ill executed, but tis strange to me that means so much regret for such a sept of thieves.’ For all the outcry, the indignation, the talk of treachery and murder, he and his royal Master were still determined to destroy Clan Iain Abrach. Though the sword had not succeeded, there was still another way.
The King has ordered me to write to your Lordship and to Colonel Hill that he is willing to pardon them they going abroad to the plantations, Ireland, or any place else, but he will not allow them to settle in their old quarter which is so commodious for their thieving trade. I fancy they will be glad of what's allowed, having their lives safe, and more can not in the will of the country be asked.
There is no evidence that John Hill told the MacDonalds that the only mercy they could expect was to be transported as bonded servants, to become slaves on the plantations of America. Yet he must have done, for he was a conscientious officer. For three months, throughout most of the summer, the MacDonalds remained on the high braes like frightened deer. They were without spirit and without songs, and they had no will to fight except in desperate defence of their liberty. The thought of transportation was a greater horror than the memory of the massacre, and in their fear they did what they could to prove to the Government that they were ready to live in peace, if only they might return to their glen. John MacDonald sent away the broken men who had come to him in the spring. Two more, who had robbed and wounded a traveller by Inverlochy and who had sought shelter on Bidean nam Bian, were bound hand and foot and delivered to one of John Hill's patrols.
Throughout the summer, too, Hill pleaded with the Council, and through it with the King. He asked for kindness, compassion and good sense. He supported his pleas with the news that all great men in the hills were now anxious to serve the King, and nothing should be done to sour their good humour. Lochiel, he said, had come to him most humbly, promising to behave as a dutiful subject. He forwarded a slavish letter from Sir John MacLean in which this chief offered to surrender his house and castle and wait upon the King in Flanders.* ‘I wish I could have an answer about the settlement of the Glencoe men,’ said Hill, when he sent such news to Tweeddale, ‘I beg your Lordship's assistance in it, since I know it will conduce more to His Majesty's favour and the peace of the country than any other matter.’
In August he at last got his way. The inhuman proposal to transport the MacDonalds was at last abandoned, and Hill was told that the King was now willing to allow the Glencoe men to return to the Valley of the Dogs. The Governor wrote at once to John MacDonald, advising him to go to Inveraray as soon as possible and there submit and swear before Campbell of Ardkinglas. It was a week before the courier could find MacIain in the mountains and return with his reply.
Right Honourable, – I am exceedingly sorry that your line came not to my hands till this day, to the end I might give you my most hearty thanks for your goodness in procuring the King his pardon and remission, the which I will most cordially embrace and will betake myself to live under His Majesty's royal protection in such a manner that the Government shall not repent or give you cause to blush for the favour you have done me and my people. I am this day to take my voyage to find security to your honour's contentment, and thereafter I will do myself the favour to come to your garrison and be honoured with a kiss of your hand and end my affairs, which with cordial thanks for your courtesy never to be forgot by him who is
Yours most assured to obey your commands,
JOHN MACDONALD
Were it within his power, said Iain Lom the Bard of Keppoch, he would give all the lands of Breadalbane to John MacDonald of Glencoe. He would give all the sheep of Cowal to Alexander MacDonald, the son of the murdered tacksman of Achtriachtan. He would put the curse of barrenness on the race of Diarmaid so that their glens might pass into the hands of his injured kinsman of Clan Donald. And he would flay the skin from the back of Grey John Campbell, the Laird of Glenorchy.
But John MacDonald was content with no more than an opportunity to take his people home to Glencoe, and to kiss Colonel Hill's hand in gratitude. His brother Alasdair Og was more obstinate, and it was October before he accepted the Governor's protection. On the spot where their father's body had been thrown by the soldiers, the brothers planted a tree. It was still in leaf when their descendants were gone from the valley.
Nothing came of the great stir that had been made in the spring. The enemies of Stair were as yet too weak to pull him down, and Parliament and Council were divided into squabbling, selfish factions. The Jacobites were silenced by the exposure of another of their clumsy plots, and by the terrible defeat of a French fleet off Cape La Hogue.
In August, ten days before John MacDonald took his people home, William fought a battle against the French at Steinkirk. It was a bloody, useless struggle across fence and ravine, and was remembered only by a cravat that took its name. The King wept as he watched the slaughter. Of his twenty British battalions eight were Scots, and their presence in Flanders
had been made possible by the Massacre of Glencoe. Hugh Mackay died at the head of one of them, men of his own clan. He did not like the orders given him, but he said ‘The will of the Lord be done!’ and marched forward. Ten battalions were sent from England to reinforce this shattered army, and among them was the Earl of Argyll's Regiment. William welcomed it. Having seen Scotsmen die for him, Highland and Lowland, he said that they had made good their motto, Nemo me impune lacessit.
No one attacks me with impunity.
‘The laws of God and Nature are above those of men’
THE letter was signed by the Earl of Annandale on 23 May 1695, and the rider who carried it from Edinburgh reached Fort William within the week. John Hill read it with confused feelings. ‘Sir, It hath pleased His Majesty to give a Commission under the Broad Seal to the Marquis of Tweeddale, the Earl of Annandale and seven more, to take trial by what warrants and in what manner the Glencoe men were killed in February, 1692, and for that end to call for all persons, letters, and other writings that may give any light in it… to examine witnesses… that there may be a full discovery… require you to come to Edinburgh…’
It was more than three years since Hill had sat at this same desk, in this same green room, and written his order to Hamilton. Sometimes he wished that men would forget all about Glencoe, and at others he longed for an opportunity to clear his name before the world. In the spring of 1693, the King had made the Duke of Hamilton his Commissioner to the Scots Parliament, with orders to hold an inquiry into the massacre, and in that year too John Hill had been told to make ready his papers and his defence. But the Duke was a lazy man and his instructions were inadequate. When he finally saved himself and all others considerable embarrassment by dying, the Inquiry came to nothing. Colonel Hill continued to do his duty in the Highlands, trusting in God and common justice, spending the candle-hours with his books of sermons. His garrison now consisted of his own regiment only, and this was as sad a burden as ever. Since it was first mustered he had lost seven hundred men, almost the whole regiment. Three hundred and seventy had died of sickness, in the fort or on patrol, and their bodies lay in the soggy burial-ground by Loch Linnhe, or were lost in the heather of the hills. As if this terrible erosion were not enough, three hundred and twenty-six more had been taken to make up the strength of those battalions William had wasted at Steinkirk and Landen.
This past winter had been the worst that Hill had spent at Inverlochy. Although he was never well, he refused to take to his bed. There were not enough coals to heat the barracks or the hospital, now staffed by two overworked young surgeons. There were no blankets, no replacements for worn clothing and shoes, and there was rarely enough food. Until he left in February 1695 to become lieutenant-colonel of Lindsay's regiment in Ireland, James Hamilton had been able to buy fish from Breadalbane's tenants on Loch Tay and Loch Awe. But this had been an occasional luxury only. John Forbes had taken £150 from his own pocket to buy meat and meal, and the Government had neither thanked nor repaid him. Hill was still waiting for the money he had spent in defence of Belfast six years before. It was hard to suppress the bitter feeling that his service and his sacrifices meant nothing to the King, that his regiment was no more than a holding battalion for others.
The hills were quiet and peaceful, and that at least was God's mercy. The Glencoe MacDonalds were abundantly civil, he reported, and obedient to his will. They had rebuilt their townships, and John MacDonald was planning a fine new house by the mouth of the Coe, with his initials carved on the stone pediment above the door.* For a while, in the summer of 1694, that ‘pretty boy’ Robert Stewart of Appin had been troublesome, and Hill had been afraid that his clansmen might be drawn out on the heather. Though he had come to Inverlochy on a stretcher after the massacre, promising to take the oath, Appin had put off his submission for two years, and was at last called to Edinburgh to explain the delay. On his way there he insulted one of Hill's captains, and in Edinburgh he passionately assaulted two of the city's officers. The Privy Council locked him in the Tolbooth until his temper cooled, until he took the oath and promised to apologize to Hill and his captain. It was a small affair, but it showed how close to the skin of his docile submission was a Highland chief's arrogant independence.
And now Glencoe again. Hill was not surprised by the summons to Edinburgh. It had long been rumoured that Parliament was determined to debate the matter, whether or not the King set up an Inquiry. Public unease had been increasing. Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall was said to have refused to accept the Lord Advocate's office (when it was resigned by Stair) unless he were allowed to prosecute those responsible for the massacre. There was little sympathy for the MacDonalds in this agitation, only a jealous concern for private interest and public honour. ‘It's not that anybody thinks that the thieving tribe did not deserve to be destroyed,’ Livingstone had told Hamilton in 1693, ‘but that it should have been done by such as were quartered amongst them makes a great noise.’ Society is driven by political ambition more frequently than by humanity, and the Master's enemies were determined to ruin him in the name of common justice.
To bring him down, his servants were first to be discredited, and Hill knew that some men wished to put much of the blame upon him. One of them was Sir Ludovick Grant, the Laird of Grant and a Member of Parliament for Elgin and Inverness, who spread malicious gossip about Hill, which particularly hurt the old man. In the past he had done much to help the Grant family, and he asked his friend Duncan Forbes of Culloden to call ‘this bull-dog’ from his heels. He hoped that Culloden would protect his reputation from the slanders then current in Edin-burgh. He knew that he stood well in Secretary Johnston's favour, and in the opinion of honest men, but there were evil men throwing dirt, knowing that some must stick. He could not understand why he should be attacked, unless it were that he had never been one to dance to another's piper. ‘I pray that if you find mouths open in Parliament to our detriment you will, with the help of other friends, endeavour to stop them.’ This reminded him of a passage he had read in Mr Joseph Caryll's Exposition on Job…. Caryll had been Cromwell's chaplain, a great preacher in Lincoln's Inn Fields during the Commonwealth, and the old soldier's youth was much in his thoughts these days…. What Mr Caryll had written about the opening of mouths was very true. ‘It was on these words, Then Job opened his mouth and spake, from which Mr Caryll observed that wise men open their mouths when they speak, and fools speak with their mouths open.’
There were many mouths open in Edinburgh and London, both wise and foolish, and the Jacobite pack was again in cry. James Johnston's intriguing against his colleague Stair had now become an open campaign. He said that the Master's hatred of the MacDonalds had been the cause of the Glencoe affair and that it was ‘a foul business’. He was still working to keep the King free from any charge. He wanted an Inquiry, for by this alone could William be exonerated and the Dalrymple ruined. For three years he had been collecting information about the massacre and sending it to John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury. When Tillotson died in 1694, Johnston sent the same information and more to his successor, Thomas Tenison, ‘that he may tell his Churchmen how innocent the King is’. And presumably that he might also tell William how guilty his Minister was. Johnston enlisted the sympathy of the sentimental Queen, telling her that the officers concerned in the slaughter should be broken. The gentle woman was so horrified that she said they ought to be hanged.
Since the Revolution the Scots Parliament, now stumbling toward extinction, had had little real power, and that only in the voting of supplies. Its Members had been increasingly angered by William's indifference to Scottish affairs, except where the country could furnish him with soldiers and money for his wars. When they assembled in the spring of 1695 they were determined to conduct their own Inquiry into Glencoe, and thus force the King and his oligarchy of ministers to accept them as responsible representatives of the country. At the end of April they crowded into Parliament Hall, silk and black broad-cloth passing beneath
the Royal Arms of Scotland and the figures of Justice and Mercy. They took their places beside the empty Throne or on the floor of the Hall, each Estate separated from the others so that there might be no consultation or collusion between them. The stone walls were warmed by tapestries, and sixty feet above the floor the excited hum of voices from the benches was lost among the hammer-beams. But there was an astonished silence when the Members were addressed by the Lord High Chancellor, the King's Commissioner to Parliament, John Hay, Marquis of Tweeddale. He told them that the King had anticipated their wishes. His Majesty had been ‘pondering what method will be the most effective for obtaining full information about the massacre of certain people surnamed MacDonald, and others of Glencoe, in the year 1692’. He had now ordered a Commission of Inquiry, formed by eight of his most loyal and beloved kinsmen and counsellors. There was nothing the Members could do but wait until this Commission finished its work, and then press for its Report to be laid before them.
Were it possible to believe that any such Commission would find him guilty, it might be said that William's loyal and well-beloved kinsmen and counsellors had been well chosen to protect his reputation, for the most important of them had good reason to prove their somewhat tardy allegiance to the Throne and the Revolution.
The Marquis of Tweeddale had been an earl until recently, and his elevation demonstrated a considerable degree of Royal tolerance and trust. He had been involved in at least one Jacobite plot, and only a full and craven confession had got him out of prison. The second Commissioner was William Johnstone, Earl of Annandale, a handsome man not yet forty, with a dark and ironic face. Few men trusted him, for he did not let their affairs divert his own instinct for self-preservation. Though he had supported the Revolution in 1689, he later hoped for more from King James and joined The Club. A bungled, stupid plot took him to prison also, but he was soon released upon an apology and a promise of good behaviour. He was now a Lord of the Treasury. Sir James Stewart, the third Commissioner, was Lord Advocate, having been given the office when it was refused by Lauder of Fountainhall. He was an affable old man who made a virtue out of lack of ceremony, and a career out of expediency. James II had outlawed him as one of the engineers of the Argyll Rebellion in 1685, but later recalled him and put him to work, a change of loyalties that put no great strain on Stewart's conscience. William knighted him, but was only slowly beginning to trust him. There was James Ogilvy, the Solicitor-General, a soft-tongued, beautiful young man of thirty-one, whose great strength was that he knew exactly what would please the King without ever having to think about it. The fifth Commissioner was Adam Cockburn of Ormiston, the Lord Justice Clerk, a bigoted and zealous Presbyterian who saw no virtue and no honesty in any man who was not. He was a fine gentleman in his person and manners, and believed that King William could do no wrong. John, Lord Murray was the son of the Marquis of Atholl, and he had supported the Revolution when his father and most of his clan had declared for James. He was proud and passionate, with a violent temper that brought him to blows with Breadalbane over Glenlyon's lands, and he would serve the King so long as William kept his word. The two remaining Commissioners were Sir William Hamilton of Whitelaw, and Adam Drummond of Megginch, both of them lawyers.