After 1715, Rob submitted to the Government de facto; but in the feeble rising of 1719, that was quickly stamped out at Glenshiel, he again headed a band of Macgregors for King James; and again there is a hint of his not being very serviceable. More of an outlaw than ever, he then renewed his attacks upon Montrose, to whom he went the length of addressing a challenge, which Scott looks on as an impudent joke. But that embittered feud came to be made up. Argyll, now no longer trusted by the Government, was reconciled to his ducal neighbour, and got Rob Roy also to make peace with the Grahams. Then the chieftain sent in his celebrated letter of submission to General Wade, in which he makes unworthy excuses for his part in an “unnatural rebellion,” and accuses himself of having all along played the spy for Argyll, while taking care not to do much harm to the redcoats. In further proof of his character as a law-abiding citizen, he asserts that his debt to Montrose is paid “to the uttermost farthing.” Macgregors jealous of his fair fame must rule out this document, as the “Casket Letters” are barred by Queen Mary’s champions. It is signed Robert Campbell, whereas his nephew used the name of Graham.
Rob would now be more free to settle down at Balquhidder under the ægis of those two dukes. Still, there was on hand a feud with Atholl, who once more laid snares for him, and again he gave captivity the slip. It has been supposed that he spent the rest of his life quietly, or without more adventure than went with his blackmailing enterprises. But Dr. Doran unearthed from an old newspaper a statement that in 1727 the redoubtable Rob Roy was brought prisoner to Newgate, and sent to Gravesend, handcuffed with Lord Ogilvie, in a convoy of prisoners for transportation to the West Indies; then they came to be pardoned at the last moment. Fancy poor Rob pining among the “redshanks” of Barbados, that had been sadly stocked with political exiles! His fame already reached as far as London, for the Highland Rogue came out in 1723. George II. is said at this time to have had the rebel brought to his notice as a fine specimen of a Highlander; but here may be a confusion with the story of Gregor Boyac which I have already mentioned.
Having made such a narrow escape from transportation, Rob went home to end his days in comparative peace. He turned Roman Catholic in his old age, not having been hitherto much exercised by religious considerations. When a notorious judge of our time astonished or amused the public by taking the same step, a kinsman of his remarked to me, “Old Harry” (his lordship’s nickname in the family) “likes that sort of thing done for him.” This may have been the case of the Red Macgregor. Yet Scott has a story to show a deeper strain of feeling in him. When towards the end of his life he expressed contrition for some acts in it, and his wife would have laughed away those scruples, he rebuked her with, “You have put strife between me and the best men of the country; and now you would put enmity between me and my God.” The incident would at least fit Scott’s conception of the haughty virago whom he names Helen, while her real name is given as Mary, and her character has been represented in another light. As to Rob’s religious impressions in earlier days, an English traveller, two generations after his death, reports, on the authority of an unnamed witness, a story of his cheating a poor widow out of her only cow, then being moved by a sermon against dishonesty to give it back, promising the minister to amend his ways of business.
The Old Adam came out in Rob when in his last years he had a quarrel with the Appin Stewarts, a branch of whom were his neighbours in Glenfinlas. This was settled honourably by a little blood-letting in a broadsword duel between him and Stewart of Invernahyle, whose adventures in the ’45 were to give Scott more than one hint for Waverley. On his death-bed, a visit being announced from one of those hereditary enemies, the Maclarens, “Throw my plaid round me,” he desired, “and bring me my claymore, dirk, and pistols—it shall never be said that a foeman saw Rob Roy Macgregor defenceless and unarmed!” To this story is tacked on the somewhat hackneyed incident of a priest labouring to extract from the dying man some expression of forgiveness, to which he consented, with a plain hint for his son standing by: “I forgive my enemies; but see you to them, Rob.” We shall see presently how young Robin carried out such an injunction. The Caledonian Mercury announces the “Highland partisan’s” death at the end of 1734.
The renown of this popular hero, even in his lifetime, loomed out through a misty halo of such exploits as were attributed to Robin Hood, and such tricks as were more in the style of Jack Sheppard. Estimates of his character range from Doran’s “contemptible rascal” to the picture of a noble champion cherished in Highland memories, and set forth most elaborately in Mr. A. H. Millar’s life of him. Even his personal courage has been doubted by cavilling Lowlanders, who find cause to see in him more of a bully than a fire-eater; and instances are related of his allowing himself to be crowed down for all his cock-of-the-walk airs. The belief that he spoiled the rich and was good to the poor goes far to account for his contemporary popularity. A certain humorous shiftiness went to carry off his very dubious political conduct. With more craft than becomes a hero, there seems to be a general consent that he was not given to wanton cruelty, nor over-thirsty for revenge. Perhaps it may be said of him as of Brutus, “nec bene fecit, nec male fecit, sed interfecit,” a judgment translated into Andrew Fairservice’s homely language, and delicately expressed by some Highlander who called this chequered hero “a man of incoherent transactions.” But for good or evil, he bears in song and story the name of having been
A hedge about his friends,
A heckle to his foes.
Rob Roy’s attitude of aloofness towards law would not make for the bringing-up of his family in “decency and order.” He left five sons, of whom the eldest was happy enough to have no history; but the others proved themselves chips of the old block to the point of making a noise in criminal records. The youngest, known as Robin Oig, was first to get into trouble. A Maclaren had ventured to settle on what the family held to be their land. At the instigation, it is said, of his mother, Robin Oig, a lad in his teens, shot this intruder at the plough, with a gun belonging to his father which came into Sir Walter Scott’s possession, while Rob Roy’s claymore has emigrated into the hands of an American historical society; and the Edinburgh Museum of Antiquities contains the curious sporan clasp, set with concealed pistols, which is spoken of in the novel. But, indeed, too many of Rob’s weapons have been put upon the market.
The precocious murderer absconded, after a herd of Maclaren cattle had been barbarously mutilated by the help of his friends or his brothers. Two of the latter were tried as his accomplices, along with a rustic pretender to surgery called in to the wounded man, who had refused to give him the benefit of his reputed skill on the plea of not knowing with what shot the gun was loaded. An alibi was set up for the brothers, and the charge of being art and part in the murder was found “not proven,” but the two Macgregors had to give “caution” for good behaviour as “habit and repute thieves.”
Robin Oig appears to have fled abroad; then later he enlisted in King George’s Black Watch, and served at Fontenoy, where he was taken prisoner. After the ’45, he ventured home to Scotland, and in 1750 became concerned in another outrage, that seems as if thrown back into the Middle Ages, Being now a widower, he proposed a forcible marriage with a young widow named Jean Key, whose fortune of a few hundred pounds bulked large enough to balance the risk of abduction. In older days it had been not so uncommon for a Highlander, upon Sabine and savage precedent, to carry off a bride whose heart might not refuse to follow the violent possession of her hand, as in Red Indian story a white squaw has been found so strongly wedded to the wigwam that she would refuse to be rescued by her old kin. Only a generation earlier, the notorious Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, had played a prank of the same kind in high life with peculiar brutality that yet gained its end. But now the Macgregors committed themselves not only to a crime but to a blunder, in forgetting how times had changed.