The Mackenzies first come into note as seated at Kintail, in the south-west corner of Ross. Here the “Five Sisters of Kintail” now look frowningly down on a stranger’s deer forest, once held by Mackenneths on somewhat doubtful terms from the Earls of Ross; and so long as the Lordship of the Isles lasted, they were vassals also of that power. Their stronghold was the castle on Eilean Donan, where Loch Duich and Loch Long separate as inner recesses of Loch Alsh, a beautifully winding sheet of blue water, “fringed with golden seaweed,” beneath the shade of grassy cones that shut in one of the fairest Highland scenes. Here they lived at hot feud with Glengarry and other neighbours, exchanging tit for tat of raids and revenges till, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, Kenneth Mackenzie took a rise in the world by shifty arts to win royal favour, as well as by unscrupulous readiness to do without it. When the Fife Undertakers failed to lay out the turbulent Lewis, this chief, presently created Lord Kintail, got a commission of fire and sword to play civilising agent there. The last act of the Macleods’ defence was at the islet of Berrisay, when the Mackenzies forced its garrison to surrender by exposing their wives and children upon a rock overwhelmed by the tide.
Thus set astride on both sides of the Minch, the head of the victorious clan took from the Lewis his higher title Earl of Seaforth, whose ups and downs went mainly with those of the house of Stuart. As loyal Cavaliers, though they began by withstanding Montrose, the Seaforths suffered exile and forfeiture under Cromwell. Again they shared the misfortunes of James II., rewarded by a paper Marquisate. The fifth Earl was at Sheriffmuir, and made an attempt to prolong the struggle in his own country. Four years later the banished chief returned to Lewis to lead the rising of 1719, that, quickly stamped out, is not known to every schoolboy, though a little prudence or luck might have made it as formidable as that of 1745, and more famous, had not a cannon ball cut short Charles XII. of Sweden’s design to join the enterprise.
With three hundred Spanish soldiers, the vanguard of an Armada some thousands strong driven back to Spain by the winds that have more than once favoured our Protestant throne, and with a few hundreds of his own clan, Seaforth invaded the mainland by way of Glenshiel. He was joined by some other Highlanders, including a party of Macgregors under Rob Roy, while loyal clans like the Rosses and Munros rallied to support a force of English and Dutch soldiers which marched against the rebels from Inverness. The encounter was a drawn match; Scott seems to go too far in saying that the Jacobites had the best of it; but Seaforth being seriously wounded, and some of his followers not very keen in the cause, the rebels dispersed at nightfall, the Spanish soldiers surrendering next day. It was on this occasion that a wounded Munro officer on the Whig side was saved by the devotion of his servant, as mentioned by Burt, the poor fellow shielding his master’s body with his own and receiving several balls before they were both rescued by a sergeant, who had sworn on his dirk to rescue the chieftain at all risks. Another trait of Highland manners appears in one body of clansmen having been lent to Seaforth by an obliging neighbour, but for a single day only. With such auxiliaries even victory could be of little profit.
Seaforth, again driven into exile, was pardoned and allowed to end his days in Scotland. His son had the gratitude to hold aloof from Prince Charlie in 1745, and though some of the Mackenzies took part in the rising, the mass of the clan was kept quiet by Lord President Forbes of Culloden, who perhaps did more than any other man to check the movement that had its checkmate at his home. The next chief, who received an Irish peerage, presently advanced to the former title of Earl of Seaford, showed his loyalty by raising and commanding a famous regiment. With him the original line died out; but a collateral heir was created Lord Seaford, and after being half-ruined by keeping company with the Prince Regent, died without male issue in 1815. The chiefship of this clan, as of others, fell into a chaos of dispute, as to which the reader must be referred to its history above mentioned. “Who will, may hear Sordello’s story told.” That authority pronounces for the stock of Allangrange; but the most prosperous branch is now grafted into the ducal house of Sutherland, which has succeeded Seaforth as chief title in the Northern Highlands.
DUNROBIN CASTLE, SUTHERLANDSHIRE
A terrible story this is, in its early chapters, of bloodshed, rapine, and treachery, luridly illustrating those good old times of the poets. Of the many Mackenzies who have made their mark on modern history, two Sir Georges earned an uncanny renown as persecutors of the Covenanters, one of them better famed as founder of the Advocates’ Library. To their date belongs the “Doom of Kintail,” not less famous in the Highlands than the “Curse of Cowdray” in Sussex. The Seer of Brahan, who left other predictions said to have come true, was burned as a sorcerer by Lady Seaforth, under Charles II., and while being led to the stake he is recorded to have pronounced this “Doom”:—
I see a Chief, the last of his House, both deaf and dumb. He will be the father of four fair sons, all of whom he shall follow to the tomb. He shall live careworn, and die mourning, knowing that the honours of his House are to be extinguished for ever, and that no future Chief of the Mackenzies shall rule in Kintail. After lamenting over the last and most promising of his sons, he himself shall sink into the grave, and the remnant of his possessions shall be inherited by a white-coifed lassie from the East, and she shall kill her sister. As a sign by which it shall be known that these things are coming to pass, there shall be four great lairds in the days of the last Seaforth (Gairloch, Chisholm, Grant, and Raasay), one of whom shall be buck-toothed, the second hare-lipped, the third half-witted, and the fourth a stammerer. Seaforth, when he looks round and sees them, may know that his sons are doomed to death, and that his broad lands shall pass away to the stranger, and that his line shall come to an end.
The Psychical Society might examine this most circumstantial and well-vouched case of the second sight. Mr. A. Mackenzie asserts that the Doom had been handed down for generations; and he quotes several witnesses, one of them Lord Lieutenant of the county, another Sir Walter Scott, as testifying to knowledge of its provisions before they came to pass in due time. The last Lord Seaford was partly deaf, and so taciturn as to pass for dumb. He had reason not to be light of speech. Four neighbouring lairds showed the infirmities mentioned by the seer. His four sons died one by one before their broken-hearted father. He was succeeded by his eldest daughter, widow of Admiral Hood, our naval commander in the East, who might be taken for “white-coifed” in her widow’s weeds. In a sense she did kill her sister, through a carriage accident when the heiress was driving. Thus were almost literally fulfilled the predictions that had so long hung over this family.
The “stranger” that became second husband to the daughter of Seaforth and took her name, was a Galloway Stewart, whose ancestor came into Scotland as a stranger indeed, a Norman adventurer, destined by fortunes of love and war to breed more kings than those weird sisters of Forres foresaw. As we go south from the Mackenzie country, we get among Frasers, Gordons, Cummings, Murrays, Grahams and other clans of Southron, Saxon, or Norman race, that pressed northwards to cut out homes for themselves in the mountains, and soon fell under the charm of misty religion, Gaelic, tartans, bare legs, bards, bagpipes and all, even as the same sentiment may be mastering the intruders from Chicago, or Capel Court, who to-day conquer the Highlands at the edge of the dollar.