Such was life in the Highlands in the golden days of the Clans, before sheep, Lowlanders, evictions, emigration, and deer forests brought, as we are told, discontent and destitution. The poor lived on mussels and cockles, some tenants eked out a scanty livelihood by stealing their neighbours’ cows, and the genial Barisdale kept all in good order. For Barisdale’s prowess we are not obliged to rely on the ‘Impartial Hand’ and the Gartmore MS. alone. In ‘The Highlands of Scotland: a Letter from a Gentleman at Edinburgh to a Friend in London,’ we meet our Col again. This manuscript[54] is in the King’s Collection, 104, in the British Museum. The author is an enragé Whig and Protestant, but a close observer. From him we learn how cattle-stealing paid; for at first blush it looks like the practice of those fabled islanders ‘who eke out a livelihood by taking in each other’s washing.’ The business was extended over a wide area; the Macdonells did not merely harry the Mackenzies and Rosses.
Speaking of Knoydart, our author says: ‘Coll. Macdonell of Barisdale, cousin-german of Glengarry, took up his residence here, as a place of undoubted security from all legal prosecution. He entered into a confederacy with Lochgarry and the Camerons of Loch Arkaig, with some others as great villains in Rannoch. This famous Company had the honour to introduce theft into a regular trade; they kept a number of savages dependent on them for the purpose, whom they out-hounded’ on predatory expeditions.
They robbed from Sutherlandshire to Perthshire, Stirlingshire, and Argyle. When the thieves were successful these gentlemen had a dividend of the spoil. When unsuccessful, the thieves lived on the country which they traversed. To denounce them was ill work. A gentleman, known to our author, was nearly ruined by Barisdale & Co. He caught two of the Macdonalds, who were hanged. Fifteen years later his son, going to Fort William, vanished. The tribe, says our author, demanded ‘blood for blood.’
By these devices Barisdale compelled his neighbours to pay, in blackmail, ‘above double their proportion of the land-tax in Seaforth’s, Lovat’s, and Chisholme’s country.’ He captained a kind of ‘Watch.’ But Barisdale’s ‘Watch’ was expensive and unsatisfactory to his subscribers. As early as 1742 we have found Cluny setting up an opposition in business. Cluny’s Watch is described at great length by the author of a kind of memoir of the chief, written in France in 1755-1760. The writer’s object is to show how much Cluny lost by his loyalty to the Stuarts, and how much he deserves the encouragement of Louis XV. He established, for the discouragement of theft, ‘a watch or safeguard of his own trusted followers.’ The nobility and gentry ‘were surpris’d at Cluny’s success, and enveyed so much his happiness, that they applyed to him with one accord, to take them under his protection, and cheerfully offered to join in a voluntary subscription....’ Among the subscribers are the Duke of Gordon, the Earl of Airlie, the Earl of Aberdeen, Forbes of Culloden, the Mackintosh, Grant of Grant, and even the Duke of Argyll. These facts attest the extent of Barisdale’s raids.
Cluny was highly successful, rescuing ‘even those who had never applyed to him.’ The subscriptions amounted to 20,000 livres, and the Dukes of Atholl and Perth, with Seaforth, were about to join. It was now that a preacher, thundering against theft, was interrupted by a listener who ‘desired him to save his labour upon that point, for Mons. de Cluny alone would gain more souls to heaven in one year, than all the priests in the highlands could ever do in fifty.’
The English Ministry, hearing of Cluny’s fame, now sent him, unasked, a captain’s commission in Loudon’s regiment, worth 6,000 livres yearly. But he threw up his new commission when he joined Prince Charles. Cluny’s spirited behaviour, says MS. 104, ‘took the bread out of their mouths,’ the mouths of Barisdale & Co. But ‘Barisdale, by the former trade (theft) and the latter expedient (blackmail), lived at a very high rate, and mortgaged a large sum of money on Glengarry’s estate,’ where he was a wadsetter.
Cluny’s opposition may have led to his duel with Barisdale, as reported by the Stuarts d’Albanie. Barisdale was, as we have seen, like Lochgarry, a wadsetter of Glengarry’s; that is, he received from Glengarry certain lands, redeemable after a specified interval of time, in exchange for money paid, or bills, or perhaps for cattle, which he was skilled in procuring. We do not find that the chief, Glengarry, could or did exercise any authority in controlling the excesses and depredations of his independent cousin Col. For this he is blamed by the author of the Gartmore MS., but his Mackenzie following made Col too strong for his chief.
Ignorant, perhaps, of the character of Barisdale, unwilling, at least, to dispense with his aid, Prince Charles visited him in August 1745, made him a colonel, and gave a major’s commission to his son, young Archibald Macdonnell of Barisdale, a lad of twenty in 1745. Our ‘Impartial Hand’[55] declares that Coll, though at Prestonpans, was not under fire, which seems improbable. Barisdale may have been with the Prince in the second line (fifty yards behind the first, says the Chevalier Johnstone), or, in the oblique advance of the first line, Lochiel and James Mohr may have routed the English before Barisdale could engage. But, in a letter of Thomas Wedderburn to the Earl of Sutherland, we read (September 26, 1745), ‘Three troops that were making their way for Berwick were pursued by Barisdale, and 150 men, who all stript to their shirts, on foot, who overtook the dragoons, I suppose by turning a hill and gaining ground that way, and made them prisoners, for which Barisdale was made a knight bannarett’[56]—knighted, that is, like Dalgetty, on the field.
After Prestonpans, according to the Impartial one, confirmed by the ‘Culloden Papers,’ and by Broughton’s ‘Memorials,’ Barisdale, by Sheridan’s advice, was sent north, to work on Old Lovat. Sheridan reckoned that no man was likely to have so much influence with that subtle schemer as the bluff Barisdale, with ‘his devouring looks, his bulky strides, his awful voice, his long and tremendous sword, which he generally wore in his hand, with a target and bonnet edged broad upon the forehead.’ Barisdale, thus accredited, worked both on Lovat and Lord Cromarty, who raised his peaceful tenants by threats of burning their cottages and cattle.[57] Cromarty might have reported, like a Highland recruiting officer in later days, ‘The volunteers are ready; they are all lying bound hand and foot in the barn.’ Many of the Highlanders did not want to fight, though they fought so well. Barisdale also sent ‘the bloody cross,’ we are told, through the Frazers, who marched reluctantly under the Master of Lovat, a St. Andrews student, himself as reluctant as he was brave. At Falkirk, Barisdale is said to have been with the second line, and later ‘he set out to collect the public money, the greater part of which he kept to himself.’
Just before Culloden, Barisdale was engaged in the not uncongenial duty of reducing the shires of Ross and Sutherland. In the latter county Lord Reay, with the Mackays and the Earl of Sutherland, were for King George; Lord Loudon also was quartered with his force in Ross-shire. Lord Cromarty, with the Mackenzies, Mackintoshes, Mackinnons, Macgregors, and Barisdale’s Macdonnells, did little, retiring to his own house. Barisdale was anxious to burn the house of Ross of Balnagoun, but Lochiel, who had arrived with Lord George Murray, intervened. At Dornoch, Barisdale went to church, where the Rev. Mr. Kirk, a gentleman connected with the Duke of Argyll, had the courage to pray for King George. Barisdale leaped up, swaggered, fumed, and, it is rather absurdly said, threatened to put Mr. Kirk in his famous engine of torture. The chivalrous Duke of Perth protected Mr. Kirk, saying that all brave men were his friends, and asked the clergyman to dinner.[58] Lord George Murray, finding Cromarty incompetent, and Barisdale mainly occupied in burning granaries, now took the command, and Loudon crossed the Firth into Sutherland. Perth then led the Prince’s forces across the Firth, and Loudon hastened to withdraw into central Sutherland.