The Highland Clearances

by John Prebble

  When the strife begins

  the poor man will be needed.

  The gentry will be calling for him

  over the face of the hills.

  Echo will answer

  ‘Do not be afraid in this day of stress

  when you have an abundance of hornless sheep.’

  Betrayed and bitter, the people who remained turned their backs on the recruiters. To the Isle of Skye, so fruitful in the past, went a Captain Otter. ‘After beating about all winter in the lochs and bays,’ said Donald Ross, ‘with all sorts of music, flags, ribbons, and tempting offers printed in Gaelic and English he only succeeded in getting one Skyeman to enlist, and after getting him he found the poor wretch was not worth the keeping and dismissed him.’ In Breadalbane, where a Campbell lord had once put sixteen hundred of his tenants' sons into a fencible regiment, his own son (the evicting capercailzie enthusiast) was now ‘sarcastically recommended to try how the present residents in the Black Mount, sheep, would look with red coats on.’ The young men of Ross, unattracted by a bounty of £2 which proprietors were offering to every recruit, took to the hills when British warships anchored in the Cromarty Firth, and the newspapers, unwilling to admit the truth, said that the credulous fellows believed that the Russian fleet had arrived. Lord Macdonald went to the Isles and asked men to remember how their fathers and their grandfathers had served with the 78th. ‘You remember Sollas!’ he was advised, ‘when you would have sent soldiers against us. What security have we that in a very short time we would not be called upon to clear out our kin and our friends to make room for sheep?’ Throughout the Highlands men came to recruiting meetings in angry protest. They bleated and they barked. Spokesmen among them stood up and told the landlords ‘Send your deer, your roes, your rams, dogs, shepherds and game-keepers to fight the Russians. They have never done us any harm.’

  The Duke of Sutherland was among the first to receive the Government's appeal for recruits, and because the 93rd was already under orders for Scutari it was thought that he would have no difficulty in raising a second battalion to join it. No doubt he thought so too. His mother had raised the regiment, a thousand men, and a thousand more for a fencible regiment to serve against the Irish. With an extraordinary lack of perception, he asked James Loch to go to Sutherland and arrange the matter. The Commissioner was 74 and within a few months of his death, but he went to work like a loyal and conscientious servant who requires no reward but continued employment. He toured the county for six weeks with no success. ‘More fruits of the Loch Policy’, said the Northern Ensign, after the fishermen of Golspie had booed him from the town. The writer was Donald Ross again:

  In Sutherland not one single soldier can be raised. Captain Craigie, R.N., the Duke's Factor, a Free Church Minister and a Moderate Minister, have been piping for days for volunteers and recruits; and yet, after many threats on the part of the Factor, and sweet music on the part of the parsons, the military spirit of the poor Sutherland serfs could not be raised to fighting power. The men told the parsons 'We have no country to fight for. You robbed us of our country and gave it to the sheep. Therefore, since you have preferred sheep to men, let sheep defend you !

  At last the deaf old Duke travelled north from London, and called a meeting of all the male inhabitants in the parishes of Clyne, Rogart and Golspie. Not all came, but four hundred were there to cheer him politely as he stepped from his carriage in Golspie. He was accompanied by four clerks who sat at a table before the Inn, and who laid upon it piles of notes and coin. ‘The Duke addressed the people very seriously,’ one of the crowd wrote to Donald Macleod in Canada, ‘and entered upon the necessity of going to war with Russia, and of the danger of allowing the Czar to have more power than he holds already, of his cruel and despotic reign in Russia, etc., likewise praising the Queen and her government, rulers and nobles of Great Britain, who stood so much in need of men to put down and keep down the tyrant of Russia.’ Every man who enlisted in the 93rd would be given, there and then, a bounty of £6, or £3 if he chose some other corps. This money would come from the Duke's private purse.

  He then sat down, and platform and people stared at each other in silence. He rose again, ‘his anxious looks assuming a somewhat indignant appearance’, and he asked for an explanation. He got it from an old man. ‘I am sorry for the response your Grace's proposals are meeting here, but there is a cause for it…. It is the opinion of this county that should the Czar of Russia take possession of Dunrobin Castle and of Stafford House next term that we couldn't expect worse treatment at his hands than we have experienced in the hands of your family for the last fifty years…. How could you expect to find men where they are not, and the few of them which are to be found among the rubbish or ruins of the country have more sense than to be decoyed by chaff to the field of slaughter. But one comfort you have. Though you cannot find men to fight, you can supply those who will fight with plenty of mutton, beef and venison.’

  Macleod said that one man only was enlisted at this meeting, and he was a silly man who believed that thereby ‘his bread was baked for life, but no sooner was he away to Fort George to join his regiment than his place of abode was pulled down, his wife and family turned out, and only permitted to live in a hut from which an old female pauper was carried a few days before to the churchyard.’ Macleod said that the Duke, who was away south to London again, knew nothing of this, but it had been done in his name by the Factor.

  When the recruiters left the Highlands, without the men they had hoped for, Donald Ross jeered at the astonished landlords. ‘Let them bring out their cooks and their housemaids with pokers and broomsticks, and their flunkeys and coachmen with switches and pitchforks!’ But the young men of Sutherland, remembering their ancestors and those few of their kin who were dying of cholera and cold before Sebastopol, did not wish it to be thought that they were cowards. They called a public meeting and drew up an address to the newspapers.

  We have no country to fight for, as our glens and straths are laid desolate, and we have no wives nor children to defend as we are forbidden to have them. We are not allowed to marry without the consent of the factor, the ground officer being always ready to report every case of marriage, and the result would be banishment from the county. Our lands have been taken from us and given to sheep farmers, and we are denied any portion of them, and when we apply for such, or even a site for a house, we are told that we should leave the country. For these wrongs and oppressions, as well as for others which we have long and patiently endured, we are resolved that there shall be no volunteers or recruits from Sutherlandshire. Yet we assert that we are as willing as our forefathers were to peril life and limb in defence of our Queen and country were our wrongs and long-endured oppression redressed, wrongs which will be remembered in Sutherlandshire by every true Highlander as long as grass grows and water runs.

  But to reverse history and overturn a profitable economy in return for six hundred willing recruits to the 93rd was a ridiculous proposal, and it was given less thought by the landlords than it received space in the Press. As the war continued, so did the little evictions. Some disbanded men of the 93rd came home to the parish of Lairg to find that a factor known to them as Domhnal Sgrios, Donald Destruction, had cleared their families and pulled down their houses. They caught him at his work, stripped him naked and beat him with switches of gorse, and though this may have raised their spirits higher than hearing Colin Campbell call upon them to stand firm at Balaclava, it did not give them back the land. Over all the Highlands the earth now belonged to the Lowlander and to the Great Cheviot. ‘Heavy, sorrowful my heart, going through the glen,’ said John Maclachlan of Rahoy.

  On an April morning I no longer hear

  bird-songs, or the lowing of cattle on the moor.

  I hear the unpleasant noise of sheep

  and the English language, dogs barking

  and frightening the deer.

  The slow attrition of the people went on, small removals as the sheep-wal
ks changed hands, grew in size, or were broken into lots. Thirty years after Knoydart, and sixty since Strathnaver, the cause of the people was taken into politics by the Land Restoration League and by a League for the Nationalization of Land. On Skye and Lewis crofters fought with police, Marines and Royal Scots. Before Lord Napier and his Commissioners of Inquiry, old men and old women remembered their childhood in the Year of the Burnings. The Land Leagues had their poet in Mary Macdonald of the Songs, and with her they believed that ‘Deer and sheep will be wheeled away and the glens will be tilled. The cold, ruined houses will be raised up by our kinsmen.’ But Lord Adam Gordon had seen the future more clearly a century before. The people did not return to the Highlands. When Australian mutton and Australian wool, bred and sheared by the children of emigrants, destroyed the wealth of the True Mountain Sheep, the land was given to the deer and the sporting rifle. In time, spruce and fir were regimentally planted over the ruins of the townships and the enduring green of the potato gardens. Men accepted the removals as inevitable, a casualty of progress, though Sinclair of Ulbster had hoped for something better from the animal he brought to the north. And in 1845, Delane's unknown Commissioner had written from the Inn at Ardgay:

  What, then is the remedy? Employment. Give employment to the people. Create employment. Pursue a course directly the opposite in its tendencies to that now pursued. Do not make employment more scarce by turning the hills and glens into sheep-wilds. Make many yeomen out of one sheep-farmer. A people, the mass of whom it is evident can now only just live, cannot create employment. That is a duty his Grace of Sutherland ought to perform… Promote factories; surely with water-power costing nothing, and wool at your doors, you can make cloth as cheaply as it can be made in Yorkshire. This will employ your population instead of driving them to Canada… Abandon the tenant-at-will system; give leases, or make such agreement as shall secure the tenant as well as the landlord; and independence of spirit, and improvement, and enterprise, will rapidly follow.

  At Culloden, and during the military occupation of the glens, the British government first defeated a tribal uprising and then destroyed the society that had made it possible. The exploitation of the country during the next hundred years was within the same pattern of colonial development – new economies introduced for the greater wealth of the few, and the unproductive obstacle of a native population removed or reduced. In the beginning the men who imposed the change were of the same blood, tongue and family as the people. They used the advantages given them by the old society to profit from the new, but in the end they were gone with their clans.

  The Lowlander has inherited the hills, and the tartan is a shroud.

  APPENDIX

  Principal Characters

  AIRD, The Rev. Gustavus. Minister to the people of Glencalvie.

  BAILLIE, James. Banker, merchant and landowner, who put Glenelg under sheep.

  CHISHOLM, William. Tinker and ‘gypsy’ of Strathnaver, whose mother-in-law Patrick Sellar was accused of murdering.

  CHISHOLM, William. 24th Chief of Clan Chisholm who began the clearance of Strathglass.

  ELLICE, Edward. M.P. for St Andrews Burghs. Bought Glenquoich on the Glengarry estates, a critic of the administration of the Poor Law in the Highlands.

  GEDDES, Thomas. Lowland sheep-farmer whom Lockhart-Ross of Balnagowan brought to the North.

  GILLANDERS, James. Factor to Robertson of Kindeace and other lairds. Evictor of Strathcarron and Strathconon.

  GILLESPIE, Thomas. Lowland grazier who brought sheep to Glengarry and Strathglass.

  GORDON, Colonel John, of Cluny. Bought South Uist and Barra and was responsible for wide and brutal clearances there.

  LOCKHART-ROSS, Sir John of Balnagowan. Retired admiral. Began sheep-farming in the Highlands.

  LOCH, James. Commissioner for the Marquess of Stafford's Estates in Scotland and England. Creator of the Policy of Improvement.

  MACDONALD, Lord. Godfrey William Wentworth, Fourth Baron of the Isles, descendant of the Macdonald chiefs of Sleat. Authorized the clearing of his people on North Uist and Skye.

  MACDONELL, Alistair Ranaldson. 15th Chief of Glengarry. The ‘True Highlander’ and model for ‘Fergus Maclvor’ in Waverley. The great clearances of Glengarry began under his chieftainship.

  MACDONELL, Josephine. Wife of the 16th Chief of Glengarry who cleared Knoydart in 1853.

  MACDONELL, Marjorie. ‘Light-headed Marjorie’, wife of the 14th Chief of Glengarry, who brought Thomas Gillespie to the Highlands.

  MACKENZIE, the Rev. David. Minister at Achness in Strathnaver, and later of the Parish of Farr.

  MACKENZIE, Sir George Steuart, of Coul. Mineralogist, agriculturalist. Author of A General View of Ross and Cromarty. An advocate of clearance and sheep-farming.

  MACKID, Robert. Sheriff-Substitute of Sutherland, who brought Patrick Sellar to trial.

  MACLAUCHLAN, Thomas. Presbyterian divine and Gaelic scholar, writer against the evictions.

  MACLEOD, Donald of Geanies. Sheriff-Depute of the County of Ross. Suppressed the Sheep Riots of 1792 and 1820.

  MACLEOD, Donald. Stonemason of Strathnaver. Author of Gloomy Memories. Prolific writer against the clearances and the Loch Policy.

  MACNEILL, Sir John. Chairman of the Board of Supervision of the Scottish Poor Law Act.

  MATHESON, James. Made a fortune trading in China. Bought the Lewis Estate for £190,000, also Achany in Sutherlandshire. A liberal and generous proprietor. Later knighted. M.P. for Ross.

  MULOCK, Thomas. Journalist and Baptist Minister. Father of Mrs Humphrey Craik. Attacked the Duke of Sutherland and other proprietors in the Inverness Advertiser.

  ROBERTSON, William. 6th laird of Kindeace, in whose name writs of removal were first issued against the Glencalvie people.

  ROBERTSON, Charles. 7th laird of Kindeace, a Major in the 78th Highlanders. Son of the above.

  ROSS, Donald. Lawyer of Glasgow. Wrote of the evictions in Strathcarron and the destitution in Knoydart.

  SAGE, the Rev. Donald. Minister at Achness during the last clearance of Strathnaver. Son of the Minister of Kildonan.

  SELKIRK, 5th Earl of. Founder of the Red River Settlement in Canada to which the Kildonan people emigrated.

  SELLAR, Patrick of Morayshire. Advocate, later a prosperous sheep-farmer. Factor to the Marquess of Stafford, charged with homicide after the first Strathnaver evictions.

  SHOEMAKERS' David Ross Senior, David Ross Junior, and Alexander Ross, tenants at Glencalvie who were known as Greusaich – Shoemaker. Evicted in 1845.

  Also William Ross in Greenyards.

  SINCLAIR, Sir John, of Ulbster in Caithness. President of the Board of Agriculture (which he created). Brought improved methods of agriculture and stock-breeding to northern Scotland, and also the Great Cheviot Sheep.

  STEWART, David of Garth. An officer of the 42nd in 1792 and later a major-general and governor of St Lucia. In his Sketches of the Highlanders he defended the people against the Improvers.

  STOWE, Harriet Beecher. Author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, friend of the second Duchess of Sutherland. Wrote Sunny Memories in support of the Sutherland family and the Loch Policy.

  SUTHERLAND, Duchess-Countess of. Elizabeth Gordon, daughter of the last Earl of Sutherland, Ban mhorair Chataibh, the Great Lady of Sutherland. Married the 2nd Marquess of Stafford who acquired through her the great estates of Sutherland.

  SUTHERLAND, 1st Duke of. George Granville Leveson-Gower, 2nd Marquess of Stafford. The largest landowner and probably the richest man in Britain of his time. Authorized the Loch Policy of Improvement in Sutherland.

  SUTHERLAND, 2nd Duke of. George Granville Leveson-Gower succeeded his father, the above, in 1833. Continued the work of Improvement and clearance.

  SUTHERLAND, 2nd Duchess of. Harriet Howard, daughter of the Earl of Carlisle, Mistress of the Robes to Queen Victoria. Invited Mrs Stowe to Sutherland. Attacked by Thomas Mulock and Donald Macleod.

  TREVELYAN, Sir Charles. Assistant-Secretary to the Tre
asury. Administered Irish relief works in 1845, also relief during the Highland Potato Famine of 1846. Chairman of the Highland and Island Emigration Society.

  YOUNG, William. One-time corn-chandler of Morayshire. Became the first Commissioner and later the Chief Factor under Loch for the Stafford estates. Responsible for early evictions in the west. Became a rich sheep-farmer.

  Chronology

  Two periods of major clearances: 1782–1820; 1840–1854

  1762 Sir John Lockhart-Ross inherits Balnagowan and introduces sheep-farming to the north.

  1782 Thomas Geddes, a Lowland sheep-farmer, takes a lease on Balnagowan land.

  1783 Thomas Gillespie rents a sheep-walk on Glenquoich from Macdonell of Glengarry.

  1784 The Forfeited Estates, administered by the Crown since the Jacobite Rebellion, are restored to their owners.

  1785 First large clearances on Glengarry's estates. Marriage of Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland, to the Marquess of Stafford.

  1786 Large emigrations to Canada from Knoydart, on Glengarry's property.

  1790 The Great Cheviot brought to Ross and Caithness.

  1792 THE YEAR OF THE SHEEP.

  1800 First clearances in Sutherland, small numbers to the north of the River Oykel.

  1801 STRATHGLASS. Beginning of the evictions.

  1802 Disbanded men of the Glengarry Fencibles leave for Upper Canada.

  1807 SUTHERLAND. Ninety families removed from the parishes of Farr and Lairg. The Northern Association of Gentlemen Farmers and Breeders of Sheep resolve to obtain a Royal Charter to extend their activities in Inverness, Ross, Sutherland and Caithness.