Mr. Fraser Mackintosh says, ‘The Commissioners on the Forfeited Estates, or, more properly, their Factors, were the first evictors in the Highlands, and they were guilty of favouritism to such a degree in favour of strangers, that many of the tenants emigrated voluntarily.’
Indeed, Glenure was shot, by Allan Breck or another, because, as factor for the forfeited estates of Lochiel and Ardsheil, he had evicted Cameron or Stewart tenants, and preferred Campbells. But Mr. Fraser Mackintosh ought to know that the Commissioners were not the first evictors. Who drove a hundred families from Mull and Tyree about 1738, as Culloden tells us? Who ‘removed’ James Stewart of the Glens before Campbell of Glenure did? Why Ardsheil, whose bastard brother he was. Who evicted some and threatened to evict all Macphersons from the Duke of Gordon’s lands in Badenoch in 1724? Why the Duke and his factor, Gordon of Glenbucket.
The story is told in a letter of Cluny to the Earl Marischal.[181] The Macphersons held lands in Badenoch ‘as feuars, woodsellers, or kindly tenents to the Duke of Gordon.’ He however ‘vexes and reduces us by perpetuall lawsuits,’ and ‘has taken it into his head to root us intearly out of our own country.’ He therefore feued most of his Badenoch lands to Glenbucket ‘for the half of its value, or, I may say, a third, meerly out of design to take it out of the hands of the Macphersons.’ Glenbucket, ‘in order to begin the work of extirpating us, has turned out the tenants of six farms.’ Their high offers of rent were refused, so they dirked Glenbucket, ‘in a most barbarous manner.’ The operation can scarcely be performed in a gentle fashion. ‘They very luckily missed their aim by the favour of a buff belt he had about him,’ also by the favour of a claymore that, was lying convenient. The Duke now threatened to ‘extirpate’ or evict ‘the whole name of Macpherson,’ which he proceeded to do ‘with a body of a thousand men, foot and horse.’ All parties were Jacobites, and King James settled hæc certamina tanta. He had no objections to eviction. He writes to the Duke of Gordon, ‘I am far from blaming you for any steps you may have taken which are authorised by the law of the land, but there are only a few offenders, and, politically, the eviction disunites loyal clans.’[182]
Indeed the more one thinks of Mr. Fraser Mackintosh’s assertion that the Commissioners were the first evictors in the Highlands, the more grotesque does it appear. We turn to the manuscript ‘Letter of a Gentleman’ whose sympathies are with ‘the wretched commons,’ not with the Chiefs.[183] ‘The gentlemen of the name of Mackenzie,’ says our author, ‘are frugal and industrious.... They have screwed up their rents to an extravagant height, which they vitiously term improving their estates, without putting the tenants upon a proper way of improving the ground, to enable them to pay that rent, which makes the common people little better than slaves and beggars.’
No ‘screw’ but eviction could be used by these Mackenzie landlords, frugal and industrious.
Here is a case among the Camerons from the same MS.:—
‘To shew the present disposition of that Clan,’ described as ‘lazy, silent, sly, and enterprizing people,’ ‘I will relate an instance of their barbarity which happened since the year 1725. The possessor of a farm belonging to the Duke of Gordon, of the tribe of the Macmartins, about three miles to the North of Fort William, demanded an abatement of the usual rent, which the Duke refusing, he left the farm, boasting that no man would dare to succeed in it. For some years it was untenanted, till at last the Duke prevailed on Mr. Skeldoich, who was then minister of the parish, who could not find a place to reside in, to take this farm. The former possessor lay still till the minister had plentifully stocked the farm with cattle and built a house on it, then, with some other rogues, finding that the cattle were carefully watched, went to the place where the calves were kept, and with their durks cut off their heads, and cut the skins so that they would not be of any use.’
They also destroyed the Duke’s salmon nets on the Lochy. Later, watching till the minister chanced to be away from home, ‘they pulled down part of his house, and fired several shots towards the place where his wife lay.’ The worthy clergyman then thought it time to move into Fort William. Our author adds that cadets of Highland houses have possessed farms ‘for ages’ without leases, and when they are not able to pay their rents, and are turned out, they look upon the person who takes the farm after them as usurping their right. These people have often refused to take a written lease, thinking that, by so doing, they gave up the right of possession.
All this, written about 1749, is hardly congruous with Mr. Fraser Mackintosh’s bold statement that the Commissioners of Forfeited Estates were the first evictors in the Highlands. We learn that, ‘by reason of the great poverty and slavery of the commons,’ on the Mackenzie estates, out of the clan levy of 3,000 men, ‘a third are but dross.’ Let us add that the Campbells evicted the Macdonalds from Kintyre, by cutting their throats; that every defeated clan was likely to be, more or less, evicted; and that all the Macgregors were evicted. These were operations of clan warfare, though not much more enjoyable for that. But when a sub-tenant held from a tacksman, on a ‘precarious tenure,’ does Mr. Fraser Mackintosh maintain that he was never evicted? Why did Robin Oig shoot Macfarlane at the plough tail? He did so simply for the old agrarian reason.
In Prestongrange’s speech for the Crown, at the disgraceful trial which ended in the judicial murder of James Stewart of the Glens, he says that ‘a delusion in a peculiar manner prevailing in the Highlands,’ is that ‘a cause of mortal enmity arises if a man should be removed by another from his farm or possession which he hath no manner of title to hold or retain.’[184] ‘The delusion,’ he says, ‘prevails elsewhere,’ but is ‘in a particular manner prevalent in the Highlands.’