The Highland Clearances

by John Prebble

  The Highlands became Britain's Alps, a stage for romanticism and healthy sport. When Lord Brougham introduced the fashion of tartan trousers to London, ordering bolts of every sett from Mr Macdougall the draper at Inverness, English Society went à L'Ecosse in a fanatic way that lasted until the death of Victoria seventy years later. Those picaresque confidence tricksters, John and Charles Sobieski Stuart, charmed everybody with their claim to be the grandsons of Bonnie Prince Charlie, by a legitimate son no less. They handsomely refused to press their right to the Throne, grew their black hair down to their shoulders, painted their own portraits in Highland dress, lived with musical-comedy splendour on an island given them by Lord Lovat, and fed public credulity with their Vestiarium Scoticum, a treatise on the tartan based on three ancient manuscripts which they said they possessed, but which nobody else ever saw.

  Although wool and mutton continued to pay for the gentry's expensive preoccupation with what tartan they ought to be wearing, and with the colourful advantage they had over English landowners, fluctuations in prices led most of them to buttress their income with the letting of shooting-rights on their emptied estates. Some of them found this more profitable than sheep, though the Marquess of Breadalbane never succeeded in introducing the capercailzie to an estate from which many of his Campbells and the whole of Clan MacNab, with its testy tyrant chief, had been removed. He spent a small fortune on the effort, however. Rents for shootings were fixed on the grouse as a unit of value, a brace being worth 5s. One red deer was held to be the equal of a hundred brace of birds, a roe-deer or a salmon equal to twenty. A man could shoot a hare, if he had the taste for it, for the price of one brace. English sportsmen rented the shootings in syndicates of four or six. By 1841, ninety Highland estates had shooting tenants paying £125 a month (more if the accommodation was good). Fifteen years' purchase was considered the average value of game on an estate. ‘This new branch of trade or commerce,’ said the Inverness Courier, rightly seeing it as something more than a sport, ‘has added greatly to the rental of many estates. Instances are not rare of the shooting letting as high as the grazing of a mountain district.’ Some lairds, with a perspicacity rare among their kind, were beginning to abandon sheep-walks and to turn their lands into deer-forests.*

  One of the most popular districts for English guns was Lochaber, easily and pleasantly reached by the Caledonian Canal. Here was Cameron country, or, to be exact, here had been their country. Sheep had scattered more of this honour-obsessed clan than Barrel's Regiment had been able to slaughter with bayonet and musketry at Culloden. The estates of the chief, Donald Cameron of Lochiel, had been forfeited after the last Jacobite Rebellion, but in 1784 they were returned to the family, to a weak boy of fifteen also called Donald. He was extravagant and selfish, and since he had been educated abroad he felt little kinship with his people and no great concern for their future, provided he survived. Before he reached his majority, and before he first came to the land of his ancestors, he was already burdened with debts, his own or those he had inherited. His estate, stretching southward across the Great Glen from Loch Arkaig to Loch Leven, was divided among one hundred and twenty-nine tacksmen, but produced less than £1, 200 a year in rents. Like his neighbour in Glengarry to the north, the young man began to increase some of the rents, withdraw some of the tacks, and offer the vacant hills for sheep-walks.

  These Cameron tacksmen were sharper than most of their rank in the Highlands. Many of them bid for their own property and regained it, clearing out their people and bringing in the Great Cheviot. For a while they did well, and the most successful among them were the two brothers who bought land in Ross and became the immediate cause of the Great Sheep Riot there. The evicted people endured all this as best they could. Having no taste for emigration, many of them became navvies on the Caledonian Canal, or went south to Glasgow. There was also the Army. The Great Cheviot Sheep won more battles in the Napoleonic wars than regimental historians have acknowledged. A thousand young men of Lochaber joined the 79th Regiment when it was raised by Alan Cameron of Erracht in 1793, at his own and his officers' expense. They fought from Bergen to Aboukir, Nivelle, Toulouse, Quatre Bras and Waterloo, and transfusions from Lochaber restored the blood lost at each. Yet perhaps these ‘aspiring young men’, whose grandfathers had marched to Derby and Culloden in the '45, had gone willingly to the 79th. Less willing were the recruits for the Lochaber Fencibles whom young Lochiel raised in 1799 by the customary method of threatening to evict their parents.

  He never did escape from his debts, though he doubled, trebled and quadrupled the rents of his tacksmen until he got rid of them entirely and gave the land to Lowlanders. Glen Pean, Glendessary and Glenkingle were cleared, the people driven to wretched hovels on the moss at Corpach. When this Lochiel died in 1832 he left debts of £33,000, a half-finished house at Achnacarry (which was to have been a replacement of the one burnt by Cumberland in 1746), a hopeless claim against the Canal Commissioners, and some timberland which had only been saved from the axe by his kinsman of Fassifern. His son held a banquet to celebrate his accession to the title, but could not find a single tenant of his own name on Locharkaigside to attend it.

  And the 79th was looking for recruits in Glasgow.

  One common man of Lochaber stood up against sheep, tacks-man, factor and chief, and so closely resembled a character from Walter Scott that his unseen presence in the hills would have been worth another £25 on the shooting rental, had he not been a sheep-stealer as well. He was Ewen MacPhee, the ‘Outlaw of Loch Quoich’, a goatherder who believed that since the Almighty had made both land and goats, the one was intended to graze unhindered upon the other. Among the ordinary people he was highly esteemed as an unorthodox veterinarian, possessing a number of charms for curing the diseases of their stock. He could also neutralize the harmful effects of the Evil Eye, should that bother them also. ‘He exacts an annual tribute according to the circumstances of the parties,’ said the Inverness Courier, tempted to list the report under the heading of Antiquarian Notes, ‘and although it may appear strange, he has a very extensive practice.’ He had also a terrifying wife, a wild woman with the bearing of Helen Macgregor, and the courage to match.

  Unfortunately, the land on which MacPhee chose to graze his goats belonged to John Cameron of Corriechoillie, an industrious fellow who had begun by renting a sheep-walk from Lochiel in 1824 for £70 a year, and had so increased the holding in ten years that he was now paying £1,430. It was his mutton on which the MacPhee family dined so often and so liberally. This was galling enough for Corriechoillie, but when MacPhee threatened to shoot him Cameron asked Lochiel to intervene. Lochiel sent a message to MacPhee, saying that he hoped that he ‘had better principles than Rob Roy’. The old rogue took this as an insult and a challenge, retired to an island on Loch Quioch with his family and goats, and declared that he was now under the protection of the Macdonells of Glengarry, a claim which nobody supported (certainly not the Macdonells, who had troubles enough).

  Finally Corriechoillie decided to get rid of him. When MacPhee was away from home (‘on one of his professional excursions’, said the Courier), fifteen of Cameron's shepherds armed with guns and clubs called on Mrs MacPhee. She kept them at bay with her husband's flintlock, but in the end they overran her. The goats were driven to Inverlochy, and there sold. Under sentence of outlawry for past offence, MacPhee could not ask the Law for help. Lochiel is said to have persuaded Corriechoillie to pay for the animals, and perhaps he did, but nothing more was heard from Ewen MacPhee the Outlaw.

  He had been an exception. The effect which eviction and its accompanying destitution was now having on the Highland people was less colourful. There was little sympathy for them yet. Society still believed that whether a man starved or not was entirely his own responsibility. When visitors were faced with the appalling degradation of the Highlanders, and were unable to see what could or should be done about it, they decided that it was no more than the sufferers deserved. This made
for an easy conscience and an unbuttoned purse. Such a visitor was John MacCulloch, Doctor of Medicine, Fellow of the Royal Society, who made a series of annual journeys through the Highlands over a period of ten years, and later crammed all that he saw and felt into four tight volumes. They resembled the mezzo-tints and water-colours, the preposterous scenes of alpine grandeur that were spreading across the walls of southern drawing-rooms. And when he came across people, other than the gentry whose grateful guest he was, he seemed to regard them as an offence to the noble landscapes he wished to enjoy.

  On the shores of Loch Kishorn one evening (‘Our vessel lay in a beautiful rocky creek, over which rose a picturesque and wooded hill’) he met with something that spoiled the whole pleasure of the walk he was taking and the sentences he was no doubt composing. By the water was some flotsam of the evictions, a dirty, haggard woman and her children, cooking shell-fish. In a shelter of branches lay a husband, sick with fever. Except for one blanket and the cooking-pot, the family possessed nothing but their clothes. They made no complaint to MacCulloch, and he put this down to insensibility rather than pride. His account of his emotions at that moment is more concerned with syntax than with sincerity, but in a burst of extraordinary honesty he said that in his opinion while such a scene would have been remarkable in England, in the Highlands it was commonplace. ‘The condition of these poor people is not so widely different as it seems to be from that which, however miserable to the stranger, is in this country the usual state of life.’

  In Sutherland he saw the black ruins of emptied townships, ‘the former hamlets of the idle and useless population’, and while his heart stirred with compassion for the evicted (not for being evicted, but for the degrading nature of their life before removal) he was impatient with them, and with their attachment to the land they had once occupied.

  ‘The attachment of the wretched creatures in question was a habit; the habit of indolence and inexperience, the attachment of an animal little differing in feeling from his own horned animals. Had it been even more, they were children, unable to judge for themselves, and knowing nothing beyond the narrow circle of their birth. As children, it was the duty of their superiors to judge for them, and to compel them for their own advantage.’

  An interesting example of this compulsion occurred in 1827, three years after the publication of Dr MacCulloch's book. Lady Stafford made one of her infrequent visits to Dunrobin, in some discomfort since most of her teeth had just been removed by a London dentist. Her factors and ministers made her feel welcome by presenting her with a set of ornaments ‘in the name of the tenantry’. Donald Macleod said that the money for these had been collected from all the people ‘on the moors and the barren cliffs’. He said: ‘They were told that those who would subscribe would thereby secure her ladyship's favour and her factor's, and those who could not or would not, were given to understand very significantly what they had to expect by plenty of menacing looks and an ominous shaking of the head.’ The gift was presented at a great entertainment in the Castle, ‘but, of course, none of the poor victims were present, and no compliments were paid to them’.

  Three years later, at the age of sixty-five, she came again to Sutherland, and this time she toured the northern parishes. Her husband had just purchased Lord Reay's estate for £300,000, and Mr Loch (shortly to be returned unopposed as M.P. for the Northern Burghs) was busy with plans for its resettlement and its transformation into sheep-walks. The coastal towns were still being built under the direction of southern masons. ‘Even female labour could not be dispensed with,’ said Macleod, ‘the strong as well as the weak, the delicate and the sickly, and (shame to their oppressors) even the pregnant…. In one instance I saw the husband quarrying stones and the wife and children dragging them along in an old cart to the building. The timber for their houses was furnished by the factors, and charged about a third higher than it could be purchased in any of the neighbouring seaports.’

  The sight of her northern lands and northern people, for the first time, was unnerving for the Marchioness. ‘At one place she stood upon an eminence,’ said Macleod, ‘where she had about a hundred of those wretched dwellings in view. She turned to the parish minister in the utmost astonishment and asked, “Is it possible that there are people living in yonder places?” – “Oh yes, my lady!” was the reply. “And are they quite comfortable?” – “Quite comfortable, my lady.” ’ But, says Macleod, Mackenzie the minister knew that some of his parishioners were at that moment begging in Caithness, carrying his own certificates attesting that they were objects of charity.

  Lady Stafford was no fool. She drove down in her carriage, alighted among the people and asked them how her factors were treating them. But she had no Gaelic and they little English, and since the interpreter was Mr Mackenzie the answers she received no doubt relieved her mind. She went back to Dunrobin, leaving behind gifts of clothes for the needy. ‘But as usual,’ said Macleod, ‘all was entrusted to the ministers and factors, and they managed the business with the same selfishness, injustice and partiality that had marked their conduct on former occasions.’

  This was the year in which the stonemason was finally driven from Sutherland by the persecution of factors and ministers. Though he worked outside the county, in Wick and sometimes as far south as Edinburgh, his wife and children lived in Sutherland, at Armadale eight miles to the east of the manse of Farr. Since the last evictions from Strathnaver he had refused to close his mouth, but spoke his mind clearly and directly against what he had seen and what he had heard. ‘Had I possessed a less independent mind and a more crouching disposition I might perhaps have remained, but stung with the oppression and injustice prevailing around me, and seeing the contrast my country exhibited to the state of the Lowlands, I could not always hold my peace.’

  In 1827 he was summoned for debt, for £5 8s. which the factor in Strathnaver claimed was owing to him, though Macleod produced receipts of payment. It was an odd trial, for the complainant was prosecutor and judge also. No attention was paid to the receipts. ‘All went for nothing,’ said Macleod, ‘The factor, pursuer and judge commenced the following dialogue:

  JUDGE: Well, Donald, do you owe this money?

  DONALD: I would like to see the pursuer before I enter into any defences.

  JUDGE: I'll pursue you.

  DONALD: I thought you were my judge, sir.

  JUDGE: I'll both pursue and judge you. Did you not promise me on a former occasion that you would pay this debt?

  DONALD: No, sir.

  JUDGE: John Mackay (constable) seize the defender.

  I was accordingly collared like a criminal and kept a prisoner in an adjoining room for some hours, and afterwards placed against the bar, when the conversation continued.

  JUDGE: Well Donald, what have you got to say now, will you pay the money?

  DONALD: Just the same, sir, as before you imprisoned me, I deny the debt.

  JUDGE: Well Donald, you are one of the damnedest rascals in existence, but if you have the sum pursued for between heaven and hell, I'll make you pay it whatever receipts you may hold, and I'll get you removed from this estate.

  DONALD: Mind, sir, you are in a magisterial capacity.

  JUDGE: I'll let you know that (with another volley of execrations).

  DONALD: Sir, your conduct disqualifies you from your office, and under the protection of the law of the land and in the presence of this court I put you to defiance.’

  This report, as he published it years later, shows signs of polishing for dramatic effect, but his defiance was probably real enough. He was ordered from the bar and the case was declared undecided, but shortly afterwards he was issued with a writ of removal. He continued to fight, petitioning the Staffords for an investigation. They showed fairness in ordering that he be allowed to remain in possession of his house, but a complete lack of understanding by asking Loch to look into the matter when next he was in Sutherland. Macleod prepared for the investigation in the manner he knew would be expec
ted of him. He asked the Reverend Mr Mackenzie for a certificate of good character, without which Loch would waste no time on him. ‘Some days after I waited on the Rev. gentleman…. His manner was contemptuous and forbidding. At last he told me that he could not give me a certificate as I was at variance with the factor, that my conduct was unscriptural, as I obeyed not those set in authority over me.’

  Macleod prepared his own certificate, and persuaded some of the elders and parishioners to sign it, which says much for their courage. When Loch came he treated Macleod with good humour, but without the minister's signature on the certificate would do nothing. And when Macleod asked that Mackenzie be examined on oath, Loch shook his head. ‘By no means. We must believe the minister.’

  And after that it was not long before the Sutherland Estate got rid of the bold stonemason. On 20 October 1830, when he was working forty miles away in Caithness, a party of eight men threw his wife and children out of his house. Furniture and bedding were tossed out after them, the hearth-fire was extinguished, doors and windows were nailed up, and the neighbourhood was warned to give no shelter to Mrs Macleod or her children. In the night she made a little wall of her furniture, placed her children by it under the care of the eldest, a boy of seven, and then set out to meet her husband.

  Her spirit and strength gave out before she had gone far, and she was given shelter by William Innes, tacksman of Sandside, a man of integrity and compassion who was protected by his lease from any action the Sutherland factors might take against him. In his house, a day later, Macleod found his wife. He then went to look for the children, but found that they had left the protection Mrs Macleod had built them. The seven-years' old boy had his father's courage. ‘He took the infant on his back,’ said Macleod with pride, ‘and the other two took hold of him by the kilt, and in this way they travelled in darkness, through rough and smooth, bog and mire, till they arrived at a great-aunt's house.’ The man of this house left it immediately, saying that though he could not turn the children out he was afraid of what might happen if it were thought he had taken them in. He stayed two miles off until they were gone with their father.