The Highland Clearances

by John Prebble

  The Cameron brothers were big and powerful men, and the Captain, his blood stirring, had armed himself with a musket and with a dirk a foot long. There was little parleying before the Rosses flooded over the shepherds in an angry, scuffling mob. Big Wallace grappled with Captain Alan, and it is said that in the struggle the barrel of the musket was twisted like a reed. In a few minutes the Lochaber gentry were on their backs, and their people were flying in terror up the brae. The Rosses took their cattle home to Strath Rusdale, a piper playing a triumphant rant before them.

  A brawl which would have made no stir at all fifty years earlier, now sent ripples of alarm southward to Edinburgh. The Camerons, their pride injured and their property rights abused, wrote in protest to the Sheriff. Mr Macleod wrote in his turn to the Lord Advocate who was not, at this stage, particularly worried, recognizing the incident as one tedious result of ‘a measure very unpopular, the removing of the inhabitants from their small properties and dwelling-houses’. But when Sheriff Macleod wrote again to say that he alone would not be enough to bring the rioters to trial and punishment, and please could he have some assistance from the military, his lordship asked the Commander-in-Chief to put the Black Watch on the road northward. And he hoped, no doubt, that nothing more would be heard of the matter.

  On Friday, 27 July, the Rosses of Strath Rusdale gathered for a wedding. Kinsmen came from all parts of Ross. They danced and they sang and they drank heavily. Fired by the crude whisky which they distilled themselves (in bland defiance of the King's rightful revenues), inflamed by the warrior challenge of the pipes and by the retold story of the rout at Loch Morie, they planned another foray that would rid them for ever of the Great Sheep and restore to them the home of their ancestors. They decided to call upon the men of Sutherland to join them in driving every ram, ewe and lamb, every Lowland shepherd and his dog from Glen Achany, Strath Oykel, Strathcarron and Strath Rusdale, from the east and the west southward to the Beauly Firth and over into Inverness. There, if they wished and had the spirit, the men of Inverness might drive them further, and others further still until the Great Sheep was returned to the land that had spawned it.

  On Sunday, at the church doors in the parishes of Alness, Urquhart, Resolis and Kincardine, at the taverns in the parishes of Creich and Lairg (there being no preaching there that day), messengers called upon all men to gather that Tuesday along the banks of the River Oykel.

  How many answered the call is not known, although Sheriff Macleod said there were four hundred. They went northward first, up Glen Achany to Lairg in Sutherland, and there they pressed the frightened Lowland shepherds into service before turning southward again. It was the largest drive the Highlands had known. Soon the hills on either side of the River Shin were covered with bleating, drifting animals. Men and women came to their doors to watch them pass, to offer water and encouragement to the drovers. The weather was warm and kindly, the earth soft beneath the feet of the exultant Highlanders.

  ‘No act of violence or outrage occurred,’ wrote David Stewart of Garth, who was at this moment coming north with his comrades in the 42nd Regiment, ‘nor did the sheep suffer in the smallest degree beyond what resulted from the fatigues of the journey and the temporary loss of their pasture. Though pressed with hunger, these conscientious peasants did not take a single animal for their own use, contenting themselves with the occasional supplies of meal or victuals which they obtained in the course of their journey.’

  Mr Macleod was less generous in his account of what the drovers were doing. He knew what was afoot as soon as the call went out on Sunday. ‘Not one Constable has ventured or dared apprehend any of those who made the proclamation,’ he complained bitterly to the Lord Advocate on Tuesday evening. ‘They have kept their word and are this day gone from all quarters of the County on this extraordinary attempt.’ The frightened constables had obviously larded their reports with their imaginations, for as a result of them Mr Macleod could see no hungry, conscientious peasantry coming south to Dingwall, only a dangerous and seditious mob.

  ‘The most violent threats of denunciation were added against such as were luke-warm, or did not appear at the time or place appointed, such as killing their oxen in the hills, driving the sheep through the corn of many of them…. No Military Force is arrived, and by return of an Express I sent to Fort George, the 3 companies of the 42nd destined for that place are not expected before Friday or Saturday. I have no accounts whatever from the Commander-in-Chief or the rout or destination, which I think not a little extraordinary.’

  His querulous dismay was perhaps understandable. The past was too close in the Highlands for a man holding his office not to fear trouble. Rusty weapons, hidden in defiance of the Disarming Acts, still lay beneath the divots of many cottages, and Mr Macleod may have had no doubt that these might soon appear in the hands of the men of Ross, if indeed they had not already. He told his lordship what he intended to do in the absence of the soldiers. The gentry of the country had been aroused, coming to Dingwall at the Sheriff's request. For all the priming of pistols, the arming of servants, there had been less ardour for the field than Mr Macleod had hoped.

  ‘I proposed to attempt interrupting the Rioters with this Force if they thought it adequate, but they were decidedly of the opinion that it was perfectly inadequate, and that in the beginning of a commotion of this kind we were of no account to hazard a defeat which might be attended with the most dreadful and melancholy consquences to the Troops and to ourselves individually. They therefore advised me in the strongest manner not to move a man from Fort George until a sufficient force did arrive, and for the present to permit the deluded population to take their swing.’

  It was obvious from the tone of his letter that the Sheriff did not share the gentry's view. And behind each word of it seems to stand the chimera of these days, a monster in a red cap waving hands of blood. He hoped his lordship would not treat the affair lightly, it was ‘an actual, existing Rebellion against the Laws’. He did not know, could not say with certainty that the Rebellion had no ‘Heads or Advisers’, and he hoped that no Gentleman had been so ill-advised as to give it his encouragement and support.

  As usual, he was writing his dispatch at the end of an exhausting day, and he wished his lordship to know this. After he had signed himself his lordship's most humble servant, he recalled something that he had forgotten, something that must surely make the Lord Advocate realize how serious the matter had become.

  ‘PS. It was stated as an undoubted fact to the meeting that a person from Sutherland had come to Inverness a few days ago and had purchased gun-powder to the value of £26 Stg, and it is known that they have got a good many arms among them.’

  ‘We are so completely under the heel of the Populace’

  TWENTY-THREE alarmed gentlemen had met in Dingwall on Tuesday morning, summoned by Sheriff Macleod to hear from him the true and particular news from the glens, and to address His Majesty as ‘Freeholders, Justices of Peace and Commissioners of Supply of the Shire of Ross’. For their President they naturally elected Sir Hugh Munro of Foulis, chief of his clan and the most notable man of the county, and between them they owned every acre and controlled every vote in Ross. The drovers in the hills were their clansmen and their tenants, but from the language they used the Men of Ross might well have been a revolutionary rabble from France.

  From Mr Macleod they heard the worst confirmation of their fears. Constables in every part of the county were reporting ‘disturbances and tumultuous associations’, and every gentleman present saw his family in danger of bodily harm, his property in risk of pillage. They demanded exemplary punishment of the Strath Rusdale men who had outraged the rights and liberty of Captain Cameron, and so frightened themselves that when Sir Hugh wrote to the Lord Advocate that evening he said ‘We are at present so completely under the heel of the Populace that should they come to burn our houses or destroy our Property in any way their caprice may lead them to, we are incapable of resistance.’

&
nbsp; Desiring His Majesty to know the full extent of their alarm and loyalty, they drew up a series of resolutions, the preamble to which deplored both the assault on the brothers Cameron and the resistance of the Men of Ross to all legal enquiries into it. Such behaviour had been ‘atrocity’ enough, but the church-door proclamation of Sunday ‘is considered by us as absolute sedition and setting the Laws and Government of this Kingdom at defiance’. In the gentleman's opinion, there was no just cause for the commotion. The Law was open to redress injuries suffered by all ranks. They declared, in their different characters of Magistrates and Landowners, that they had not until then heard of any grievance among their people. They were not ignorant, of course, of the fact that the introduction of sheep on to some farms was ‘the pretext at present made use of to cover the crimes and outrages that are daily committed against all Law and Order’, but no complaint had been laid before them by proper persons in the proper way.

  Having thus polished their consciences, and declared their innocence before His Majesty, they presented to him the Resolutions agreed upon:

  1st. THAT we shall exert ourselves in our private character as Landlords, to impress on the minds of our tenants and others on our properties the very dangerous tendency of the associations which subsist, and endeavour to prevail on them by every rational argument applicable to their interests and feelings to withdraw themselves from them, or warn them of their danger.

  2nd. THAT we will afford our countenance, assistance and protection to the Sheriff in carrying through such proper and legal measures as may appear most likely to him to bring the ringleaders of the late and present tumults and disturbances to justice.

  3rd. AND THAT we will never afford any protection or countenance to any who may presume to oppose the laws or regular administration of justice.

  And so on, until they remained, jointly and individually the subscribed gentlemen of Ross. The list was impressive. There were the lairds of Foulis, Novar and Kindeace, Geanies, Culrain and Highfield, Tulloch, Scotsbean and Culcairn. And fourteen more. The meeting had been long and declamatory. The critical nature of the hour as much as the custom of the age demanded that each express himself with histrionic passion. The fear of one man took fire from another's alarm, and even Mr Macleod's assurance that three companies of the Black Watch were on the way was of no comfort. Although they had passed a resolution to prevail upon their tenants with rational arguments, they were of the private opinion that five hundred infantrymen and three troops of dragoons would be more effective.

  No wonder the Sheriff told the Lord Advocate that he was ‘perfectly exhausted with the business of this day’.

  The week moved toward its end with no sign of redcoats and tartan on the Beauty road, but with daily news and rumours of the Rioters. They had crossed the Kyle of Sutherland southward into Ross, driving before them all the sheep of Colonel Baillie and Sir Charles Ross of Balnagowan. They were moving against Mr Mitchell's flocks in Strath Oykel. Men of the Sutherland glens by Lairg were with them, armed with muskets. Mr Macleod was now convinced that before the Black Watch reached Dingwall the Mob would already be howling through its streets, burning and killing. He decided that it was his duty to send word immediately to Simon Fraser, Sheriff-Depute of Inverness, not so much to advise that gentleman to bar his door as to ask him to summon up his gentry and send them north at once.

  ‘You can be no stranger to the tumults, commotions and actual seditious acts that are going on in this County at this time,’ he wrote, ‘the flame is spreading; what is our case today, if matters are permitted to proceed, will be yours tomorrow. I understand a Mob of about four hundred strong are now actually employed in collecting the sheep, over all this and the neighbouring county of Sutherland. I intend to oppose them with what force I can collect – the Gentlemen of the County, armed with such of their servants and dependants as they can confide in, backed by three companies of the 42nd regiment. If you suppose you can raise any Volunteers hearty in the Cause of good Order and Subordination to join us, we shall feel much obliged to you; and request you may inform me here by Express tomorrow whether I may have any reliance on your assistance.’

  Mr Fraser promptly appealed to his kinsman and chief, the Honourable Archibald Fraser of Lovat. As a boy, this old man had lain in the heather on Culloden Moor and watched his father's people go forward in a charge against the Royal line. He was a nervous, excitable man who seems to have needed little encouragement to see rebellion and riot behind every ben. He summoned forty gentlemen of the shire (thirteen of them of his own name) to meet under the presidency of the Sheriff. They drew up a series of resolutions which they ordered to be printed and circulated, and which declared their anxiety and their determination to give Mr Macleod all the assistance he needed. More confident of victory than the Gentlemen of Ross (being, perhaps, that much farther away) they resolved that if the jails of Inverness and Ross proved inadequate to hold all the prisoners that must be taken, then the Commander-in-Chief in Scotland should be asked to take the overflow into His Majesty's forts. They also told Mr Fraser that it was his duty to supply them with the necessary provisions and transport should they move northward into Ross.

  Lovat sent these resolutions to the Home Secretary in London, with a covering letter so ill-spelt and ill-written that it is now almost unreadable. He asked for permission to draw arms and ammunition from the garrison at Fort George. If there were insufficient supplies there, he wanted some from Edinburgh, or even from Woolwich. Henry Dundas placed these martial demands before the King with the reassurance that the matter was in the capable hands of his nephew, and he wrote to the Commander-in-Chief in Scotland, warning him that if more soldiers' must be sent to Ross then he was to take care that Edinburgh was not left unprotected before its own mob.

  Unaware of the commotion and alarm they were causing among loyal gentlemen, the simple men of Ross and Sutherland came southward, driving six thousand sheep or more before them. On Friday, 5 August, they reached the scattered cottages of Boath seven miles from the Cromarty Firth and close by the elbow of Strath Rusdale. Here was a wide saucer of land, holding the warmth of the day's sun close to the sky. To the north was the green gash of the strath, to the west the brown flanks of Meall Beg and Meall Mor rose two thousand feet from the water of Loch Morie. The Great Sheep filled the gentle valley, moving restlessly in the evening light, boiling from corries of violet heather. Four hundred men, if Mr Macleod's figure is to be accepted, built their fires of peat and wrapped themselves in their plaids for the night. There was more yet to be done before they moved on to Beauly, and on Saturday morning all but fifty of them left the sheep at the trysting-place and departed for the west.

  Sheriff Macleod was not without cunning. He had his intelligence service in the glens, the nature of which he did not think necessary to explain to the Lord Advocate. At two o'clock on Saturday afternoon he heard that the drovers had reached Boath, that the sheep were still there, and that most of the Rioters had left ‘to collect Captain Cameron's and to go with them by a different rout and collect those belonging to Mr Mitchell, and proceed Monday and Tuesday with them by another Pass until they got the whole beyond the bounds of the County’.

  To his relief, the three companies of the 42nd Regiment arrived almost at the same time as this information reached him. They were paraded in the streets of Dingwall, red coats dusty, bonnets nodding, the sun shining on oiled wood and polished steel. They were a reassuring sight to the frightened town, their scarlet-kilted pipers standing with one knee bent in the van of the platoons. Major Dalrymple, strapped about with broad-sword and pistols, placed his men at the disposal of Mr Macleod, remarking only that they were tired, and that while they would march upon the Sheriff's orders they were scarcely in a condition to go bounding over the heather after agile men who had slept well this week.

  No one asked what the men of the 42nd thought of their present role. Some of them had been recruited in Ross, and all had more in common with the drovers than with Sir H
ugh Munro and his lairds. Among the officers was one young lieutenant who found the duty distasteful. He had not been impressed by the talk of Riot, Sedition, Disorder and Insurgence. ‘The manner in which the people gave vent to their grief and rage when driven from their ancient homes,’ wrote David Stewart many years later, ‘showed that they did not merit this treatment, and that an improper estimate had been formed of their character.’ But he was a soldier, and his first loyalty and first love was his regiment. ‘I was a very young soldier at the time, but on no subsequent occasion were my feelings so powerfully excited as on this. To a military man it could not be but gratifying to see the men, in so delicate and trying a situation, manifesting a full determination to do their duty against whomsoever their efforts should be directed; while to their feelings of humanity, the necessity of turning their arms against their friends and relations presented a severe alternative.’

  There seems to have been no doubt in Mr Macleod's mind that the men of the Black Watch would, if ordered, advance with the bayonet against their kin, for in none of his letters is there any suspicion of their loyalty to the Crown. They were given no time, in any case, to reflect upon their duty. At eight o'clock they were on the road again, marching north-eastward up the firth toward Alness, trudging in the dust behind the hooves of the Ross-shire gentry. They were desperately tired, and even the fact that their Colonel, Sir Hector, was riding ahead could put no strength into their limbs.

  To Mr Macleod their presence was enough, and knowing now that there were only half a hundred of the drovers at Boath, he was in high spirits. The gentry had gathered willingly upon the arrival of the Highlanders, and, said Mr Macleod, ‘I added an order to the Magistrates of Dingwall to collect their inhabitants and to represent the urgency of the case and hoped that all who wished well to Good Order would attend upon me.’ At five o'clock a score or more citizens were recruited in this way and put on the road with gentry and soldiers at eight. Ahead of them ran a screen of scouts, sending back messages to Mr Macleod. It took the column five hours to reach An Corran, a sickle-shaped braeside overlooking Boath from the south-east. Below, in the faint darkness of the northern night, could be seen the blue smoke of peat and the ghostly herd of sleeping sheep. Mr Macleod halted his troops and waited word from his scouts. The men of the 42nd, now beaten, fell out on the heather, exhausted.