by John Prebble
‘Your Lordship has been made the victim of some unworthy trick,’ said Mulock later, ‘for on two occasions the whole of the heads of families at Sollas emphatically assured me that they had never signed, never seen, never heard of any petition on the subject of emigration. I cannot yield to the supposition that fifty or sixty decent persons palmed a rank falsehood on me.’
On Saturday, 14 July, the first attempt to execute the writs was made by a Sheriff-Officer of Langlash in North Uist, Roderick Macdonald, with two assistants also surnamed Macdonald. They were driven from Mallaglate by stones. They tried again on the 16th, this time accompanied by Patrick Cooper, and by Shaw, the Sheriff-Substitute of the Long Island, with twenty officers. Once more volleys of stones repulsed them. A third try was made the next day, this time without Cooper. He said that he had heard the people threaten ‘to murder certain parties whom I could name’ (meaning himself, Shaw suspected). ‘As you apprehend danger to yourself,’ Shaw told him, ‘you'd better not come forward. If the people yield, it will be easy for you to take possession. If not you are clearly better out of the way.’
At the approach to Mallaglate, Roderick Macdonald said afterwards, Shaw's party was stopped by a crowd of three hundred men and women, and there were warning signals flying: ‘Namely, a pole with some black thing on it, but I couldn't say whether it was a flag or a bonnet. The first flag was about fifty yards from the house, and three flags were on top of a hill about a mile distant. The crowd said they would not allow us to go on with the removals. They did not strike, but were speaking, and said that if we attempted the removals we should see the consequences.’ Rain came on, lowering Shaw's spirits still further, and he ordered another retreat to Lochmaddy.
At Armadale Castle on 19 July, Lord Macdonald wrote to the Home Secretary, asking for an ‘armed force’ to compel the people to obedience. He thought that forty men and officers would be enough, and he also told the authorities in Oban that he was appealing for soldiers. They were less anxious than he to have redcoats and bayonets doing the work for which their police were paid, and they told him that before the military were dispatched they would ‘give efficacy to the Law by employing the county forces only’. There was great indignation over the resistance shown to Shaw. Highlanders were supposed to be bold and valorous in battle only. ‘Their conduct,’ said the Inverness Courier, ‘was very unlike what Highlanders might be expected to exhibit, and some mischievous demagogue must have been among them. One man said that before they were turned out they would do as the Hungarians did with the Austrians!’
On Monday, 30 July, the steamer Cygnet arrived at Oban from Glasgow. It had been chartered for a week by Mr Mackay, the Procurator-Fiscal of Inverness-shire, and at seven o'clock that evening he boarded it with William Colquhoun, Sheriff-Substitute of the county, Superintendent MacBean, and thirty-three constables armed with ash truncheons. The Reverend Mr Macrae who had been on his way south for a visit, was persuaded to abandon the trip and return to the island in the hope that the Word of God might make the use of truncheons unnecessary. Also aboard was ‘OUR OWN REPORTER’ from the Inverness Courier, who later made a brave try for literary immortality:
The vessel proceeded to sea, reaching Tobermory before midnight. By three o'clock the vessel was again under steam, and her course was directed for the Sound of Sleat – the Sheriff and Mr MacBean having agreed on the propriety of communicating with Lord Macdonald before proceeding further. Rounding the point of Ardnamurchan (which, freely interpreted, is the point of the high-sounding waves), a heavy, tumbling sea convinced us that the name was no misnomer, but the bold, craggy shores of Eigg afforded shelter, and as the sun broke through the early clouds, pouring light on the bold hills of Arisaig, the wild scenery of Loch-Nevis, and the gloomier mountains around Loch-Ourn, we saw, in its most beautiful aspect, one of the grandest panoramas in the West Highlands…
At Armadale, the wretched Lord of the Isles told the Sheriff and Superintendent that, by his latest news, the Sollas people were determined to resist. Joined now by Patrick Cooper, the seasick police sailed on through the ‘short, crabbed, punching sea that rolls continually through the Minch’, and arrived in Lochmaddy on the evening of 31 July. They could have been in no mood for sweet reasonableness.
The constables marched for Sollas in the rain the next morning, arriving on the hills above it at mid-day. There they waited for Fiscal, Sheriffs and Commissioner, those gentlemen having taken their time over breakfast at the inn. Three black flags were flying over the townships, and a great crowd was gathering. ‘All were evidently in such a state of excitement,’ said the Courier's reporter, ‘that it appeared more than questionable, should an ejectment be proceeded with, whether a promise made to Mr Macrae in the morning that no resistance would be made to the officers, would be fulfilled.’ Much of the day was spent in argument, the police standing in wet, ill-tempered ranks while Cooper shouted against the wind, repeating Macdonald's promises and appealing to the people to accept the writs and emigrate. ‘Mr Macrae and Mr MacBean added their arguments and advices in Gaelic, but the people resolutely persisted in refusing to leave the island, principally for the reason that it was now too late in the season.’ Four or five families promised to leave immediately, but the rest sullenly refused. ‘Although the demean-our of the men had been quiet and peaceable, almost all the women of the district, young and old, were assembled around a signal, raised at the top of an eminence, and seemed very much excited.’
At dusk MacBean and Colquhoun decided to withdraw, but a tactical victory had to be scored over the people. A squad of police moved suddenly on the men. There was a short, bitter struggle and Roderick Macphail and Archibald Maclean were dragged out in handcuffs. According to Shaw, they had been ringleaders of the earlier deforcements. When the constables and the gentlemen retired to Lochmaddy, the Courier reporter, who was a better newspaperman than his writing suggests, remained behind to get a statement from the people. It was a long and sad account of their hardships, but it confirmed Mulock's claim that ‘no petition was sent to Lord Macdonald by the crofters praying for assistance to emigrate’. It also demonstrated that the people had positive ideas of how their happiness and prosperity might be secured without emigration. ‘If Lord Macdonald,’ they said, ‘would increase the crofts to double the present size, for which there is sufficient improvable land, and would give leases and encouragement to improvements, we would be content to pay rents, and we would have seaware and stock sufficient.’
The black flags of defiance were flying again the next morning when the police once more marched down the Lochmaddy road to Mallaglate. Now there was no discussion, no arguments, no appeals. The police formed two lines down the street of the township. Sheriff-Officers asked one question only at the doors of the cottages, whether those within were prepared to emigrate on the terms offered. If the answer was no, and it invariably was, then bedding, bed-frames, spinning-wheels, barrels, benches, tables and clothing were all dragged out and left at the door. Divots were torn from the roof, and the house-timbers were pulled down ready for burning. Patrick Cooper, with a guard of constables, supervised each eviction. ‘That a rash young man,’ Mulock told Lord Macdonald in the Advertiser, ‘flushed with sudden authority, and inflated with professional pedantry, should have been let loose upon the ancient retainers of the house of Macdonald, is not creditable to your Lordship's judgment.’
In the beginning the people made a moving protest of silence, but it could not last. When the wife of John Mackaskill rushed from her cottage with a child in her arms, crying ‘Tha mo chlann air a bhi air am murt!’ (My children are being murdered! ), there was a great shout of anger. The people of Dunskellar, Middle-quarter and Sollas, who had been watching from the hill about the black flag, ran down with stones in their hands. The police drew their truncheons and faced about.
Mr MacBean went up to the crowd, and explained what the men were actually doing in the house. He was listened to quietly; but as he returned a stone was thrown at
him, and he had scarcely joined his men when a heavy volley of stones drove the assistants from the roof of the house, and a band of from fifty to one hundred women, with a few boys and men, came running up from the shore, shouting and armed with large stones, with which they compelled the assistants to fall back behind the police for shelter. Fresh supplies of large, sharp-pointed stones were obtained from the bed of a small stream, and several heavy volleys were discharged, most of them, however, falling short of the officers.
MacBean put his men into two divisions and sent them forward against the crowd with their batons. One took the women in the rear, the other on the flank, and drove them over barley-rigs and dykes, along the deep-pooled shore. Some of the women fought with the police, calling out to their men, ‘Be manly, and stand up!’ Thus constables and women, Highlanders both, fought on the wet heather and the white sand for the possession of Lord Macdonald's land, until MacBean's whistle recalled the officers and the women crawled away to bathe their bloody heads.
The threat of mobbing remained all afternoon to worry Patrick Cooper. Now and then young girls and boys sallied down the hill to throw stones and cry insults. He could not retire, he could not continue without the risk of killing somebody. On the hill maddened women were soon shouting ‘such wishes as that the men might come down and wash their hands in their enemies' heart's-blood, and that the devil and his angels might come and sweep them out of the land’. Cooper was learning that however much he might belong to the Age of Steam and the Gas Lamp, the women of Uist were closer to Conn of the Hundred Battles when roused. Sheriff Colquhoun made his distaste plain by refusing to execute some of the writs, claiming that there were faults in the wording of them, and Cooper now decided that if he made ten token ejectments, and took some prisoners, the Law could return to Lochmaddy without the loss of too much dignity.
Archibald Boyd and Roderick MacCuish, tenants of Mallaglate, were taken after a wild scuffle along the shore and placed, securely handcuffed, in the middle of the police. Cooper then ordered two last ejectments.
The ninth ejectment was that of a family in Middle-quarter, named Monk, who had taken an active part in all the previous opposition to the authorities. It was found necessary to remove the women by force. One of them threw herself on the ground, and either fell or pretended to fall into hysterics – (fortunately, I have not had experience enough to know the difference) – uttering the most doleful sounds, and barking and yelling like a dog for five or ten minutes. Another, with many tears, sobs and groans, put up a petition to the Sheriffs that they would leave the roof over part of her house where she had a loom with cloth in it which she was weaving; and a third woman, the eldest, made an attack with a stick on an officer, and missing her blow, sprung upon him and knocked off his hat. Two stout policemen had difficulty in carrying her to the door.
And now the mood of the people changed. Suddenly, like an island squall, their resistance was over. Macrae had been busy among the men, most of whom were sullen spectators only, telling them that if they gave a promise to emigrate the following year they would be allowed to remain in their houses for the winter. They did not trust Cooper, they would not promise, but they asked Macrae for guidance. Meanwhile, to show that he meant business, Cooper ordered the eviction of the tenth family, that of Peter Morrison, ‘formerly Lord Macdonald's ground-officer, but who was believed by the managers to have taken an active part in fomenting discontent’. Whether or not he was the ‘mischievous demagogue’ suspected by the Courier, he was prudently absent today at the peat-moss. When his wife and children had been turned out, his house unroofed, the heads of the families were gathered at the school-house for their answer.
Still they were undecided. After a passionate appeal, Macrae secured from Cooper an assurance that they could have until the morning to accept the writs and sign a pledge to emigrate. Police and officers, Commissioner and Fiscal, then marched away in a wet, tarpaulin tail to the house of a gentleman of the neighbourhood, ‘where Mr Cooper put in writing the terms he had before explained to the people, and a copy was sent to each of the four towns. This done, the authorities with their force retired to Lochmaddy, having appointed a meeting with the heads of families at the schoolhouse the next morning at nine o'clock.’
One by one in the morning, under pressure and persuasion from Macrae and Shaw, the tenants put their names to a bond, promising to emigrate to Canada whenever and however Lord Macdonald decided. All their stock they surrendered to Cooper at his valuation, with the exception of a cow and a pony to each family, the one for milk and the other for carrying peat. The four prisoners were released on Macrae's bail and his word that they would surrender themselves for trial when called. There was one last flash of spirit when some of the tenants boldly asked Cooper to put his name to a bond, promising to honour his part of the bargain. This was ignored.
At ten o'clock on Saturday evening, the Cygnet left Lochmaddy for Armadale and Oban. The rain had stopped. It was a gentle August night, and the isles were like surfaced whales on the still sea astern. The gentleman from the Inverness Courier finished his dispatch on deck. ‘The bare, barren hills of North Uist are fading behind me, nor will I regret should they never rise before me again but in memory.’
The people of Sollas were members of the Free Church, and the absence of their minister, Mr Macdonald, throughout the whole unhappy affairs was never explained. The influence of Macrae had been personal, not spiritual. He was a minister of the Establishment.
By the middle of August Thomas Mulock was in North Uist, writing alliterative protests to Lord Macdonald, the Lord Advocate and the Inverness Advertiser. ‘Is there no hope for landlords,’ he asked Macdonald, ‘but the expatriation of their humble and attached tenants? Is it a crime that the poor Highland peasantry should still cherish that instinctive patriotism which binds them to their native mountain nooks?’ He said that Colquhoun had compelled the people to sign the bond of emigration under threat of pulling their houses down. He accused Macdonald, and other proprietors, of ‘sueing in forma pauperis for savoury slices from a public charity, the pernicious, perverted Destitution Fund’. And he had no patience with talk of over-population, which he called ‘the babble of Malthusian deprecators of progeny’.
In traversing large districts I have indeed found the peasantry crowded into some narrow, swampy spots, for which they have been forced to exchange their former patches of cultivated land, now added to the huge farms of some tacksmen up held by cash credits from an accommodating Bank…. I maintain that the people are not too many, but that their holdings are too small, their rents too high, their oppressions innumerable, their encouragements nil!
On 13 September the arrested men – Maclean, Macphail, Boyd and MacCuish – appeared before the great Lord Cockburn at Inverness, accused of mobbing, rioting, obstructing and deforcing officers of the law in the execution of their duty. There was strong sympathy for them, and for Lord Macdonald, who was regarded as the victim of events rather than a creator of them. Lord Cockburn found it necessary to clear his mind, and the jury's, of any question but ‘Was the Law broken?’ The Court could not concern itself with the rights or wrongs of evictions.
There are moral and political considerations involved in such questions with which you and I have no concern. Had I been appointed to settle the question of the propriety of those proceedings I would have declined the task; and I shall endeavour to cleanse my mind from such considerations. Your duty and mine is simply to uphold the majesty of the law; and it would be a grievous consideration for this country if the administration of justice in its Supreme Court could be so tainted. I have no facts before me from which to applaud Lord Macdonald or the people. I do not wish to give an opinion, and so help me God I have no opinion on the subject!
The jurymen had, however. They found the accused guilty, but recommended them ‘to the utmost leniency and mercy of the Court in consideration of the cruel, though it may be legal, proceedings adopted in ejecting the whole people of Sollas’. When C
ockburn finally silenced the applause which followed this recommendation, he demonstrated that he might have an opinion after all. There was, he said, no reason for a severe sentence; four months in prison would be enough. Justice is as wayward as public opinion. Five years later, in the same court, there was no recommendation to mercy, no public sympathy for Ann Ross and Peter Ross, and Lord Hope passed savage sentences upon them for resisting a bloody assault of police in Strathcarron.
Though he had secured the people's pledge to emigrate, Lord Macdonald was reluctant to send them away from Sollas, and it is not clear whether this was from compassion, doubt, or inefficiency. Whatever the reason, the people suffered from the delay and indecision. In January 1850, Cooper warned them to make ‘every preparation within your power to go to America, or elsewhere as you may determine, in conformity with the written bargain existing between you and Lord Macdonald’. In July, when they should have been gone, they were still there. In September they were all removed to Loch Efort, in the south of the island, where each family was given twenty acres of land. These allotments, known as the Perth Settlement, had been made possible by a grant of £1,700 from the Perth Destitution Commitee. Though the land was not as good as that at Sollas, had the move been made two years before (and at Macdonald's expense) the people might have been content. But their morale was broken, their energy wasted, and after one bitter season of failure they petitioned Macdonald to send them to Australia. Not unnaturally, the Perth Committee was angry, and accused the people of indolence. It denied that the holdings were poor and too far from the sea, but others, apart from the people, said that this was true, and that no man could hope to make anything of such land. Macdonald argued for months, and at last gave in. Those who were young, or healthy, could go to Australia. He could do nothing for the aged and the sick.