Viscount Dundee

by Louis A. Barbé

Within less than a fortnight there occurred an incident which supplied Hamilton not only with a justification of the action he had taken, but also with a reason for adopting further measures against Dundee. The Viscount’s commissions as Lieutenant-General and Commander-in-Chief in Scotland had been dispatched from Ireland. They were accompanied with letters from Melfort to both Dundee and Balcarres. To the former he wrote, ‘You will ask, no doubt, how we shall be able to pay our armies: but can you ask such a question while our enemies, the rebels, have estates to be forfeited? We will begin with the great, and end with the small ones.’ The same sentiments were expressed in even stronger terms in his letter to the latter. ‘The estates of the rebels will recompense us. You know there were several Lords whom we marked out, when you and I were together, who deserved no better fates; these will serve as examples to others.’ According to Balcarres, he added the senseless threat, ‘when we get the power we will make these men hewers of wood and drawers of water.’ Whether by the folly or the knavery of the bearer of them, these compromising documents fell into the hands of Hamilton. He communicated them to the Convention. When they had been read, he rose and cried out in an impetuous voice, ‘You hear, you hear, my Lords and Gentlemen, our sentence pronounced. We must take our choice, to die, or to defend ourselves.’

The President had not waited for the decision of the Assembly. In virtue of the power given him at an earlier meeting, to imprison whomsoever he suspected to be acting against the common interest, he had sent a hundred men of the Earl of Leven’s regiment into Fifeshire, and a like number into Forfarshire, to apprehend the two noblemen. Balcarres had already been brought back to Edinburgh and cast into prison. The knowledge that Dundee still had a number of his old troopers with him, did not help to stimulate the zeal of those to whom the duty of effecting his capture had been committed. Moreover, there lay between him and them two rivers, which necessitated a circuitous march. There had, consequently, been ample time for him to be informed of their approach; and when they reach Dudhope, they learnt that their errand would be fruitless. Taking what was destined to be a last farewell of his wife and of his infant son, he retired towards the north.

But his retreat was not a flight. One of those who sallied forth with him, has described in scholarly Latin hexameters, how the gallant Graham mounted on his charger, brilliant in scarlet, in the face of the town, drew out in long line his band of brave youths, all mounted and in bright armour; how, on the very top of the Law of Dundee, he unfurled the royal banner for the Northern war; and how he triumphantly led the little troop of those who dared stand for the King in his misfortunes, over the lofty ridges of the Seidlaws, by Balmuir and Tealing, to his wife’s jointure-house, in Glen Ogilvy. There he remained three days; and Sir Thomas Livingstone, with his hundred men, marched after him, in the hope of being able to take him by surprise. But, ‘though very well and secretly led on,’ he was again too late. He returned to Dundee, whence he sent information of ‘his mislucked design’ to Mackay, whom William had appointed to the supreme command of the troops sent to Scotland, and where he was told to await the arrival of the General himself.

In the meantime, Dundee, who, at his interview with Lochiel’s son-in-law, had been assured that as soon as he could get a body of troops together, the clans ‘would risk their lives and fortunes under his command, and in King James’s service,’ was riding through the Highlands in the hope of enlisting recruits for the Stuart cause. From Dudhope, he had proceeded due north, through Glen Ogilvy, to the ‘bare town’ of Kirriemuir. Then crossing the Esk at the North Water Bridge, climbing the rugged heights of the Cairn-o’-Mount, and fording the Dee, he reached Kincardine O’Neil. By the 21st of April he was north of the Don, at Keith, where he made a brief halt, utilised for the purpose of attempting negotiations with Lord Murray. His next halting-place was Elgin, on the other side of the Spey, where the hospitality accorded him brought down the anger of the Convention on Provost Stewart and two of his bailies. Forres was the term of the rapid dash to the north, and there the little band again rested for a brief space.

During his progress through the Highland provinces, Dundee had not omitted the precaution of keeping up communication with the south; and he had received from his wife important information in accordance with which he at once devised a scheme of action. General Mackay was now in Scotland. On reaching Edinburgh he had received orders to march the forces which he had brought with him, and which consisted of three or four regiments of foot, and one of horse, besides Sir Thomas Livingstone’s dragoons, against Lord Dundee. Leaving Sir John Lanier to carry on the siege of the Castle, he hastened across the Tay to the town of Dundee, where he halted for a night or two.

Amongst the officers of the Scotch dragoons there were some who had not forgotten their old chief, and who were ready to avail themselves of any favourable opportunity that occurred to join themselves to him. One of them was William Livingstone, a relative of the Colonel’s. Captain Creichton, who had served with Claverhouse in the west, was another. It was arranged between them to enter into communication with Lady Dundee; and it was Creichton who undertook to act as messenger. Making his way to Dudhope privately and by night, he assured the Viscountess that the regiment in which he served would be at her husband’s command, as soon as he pleased to give the word. This acceptable news was dispatched north. Creichton, who did not belong to either of the two troops that were left in Dundee, but had been obliged to follow Mackay into the Highlands, received a reply to the effect that Dundee had written to James to send him two thousand foot and one thousand horse out of Ireland, and that, as soon as those forces had arrived, he would expect his friends to join him with the dragoons.

In the hope of securing this important and welcome reinforcement, he resolved to make his way south, towards Dundee, where a part of the regiment was stationed. An intercepted despatch from Mackay to the Master of Forbes having given him some information as to the plan by which it was intended to check his movements, he waited at the Cairn-o’-Mount till the General was within eight miles of him, near Fettercairn. Understanding that it would be unsafe to advance further, in view of the dispositions that had been taken to surround him, he turned back again to Castle Gordon, where the Earl of Dunfermline joined him with forty or fifty gentlemen.

It appears to have been from Castle Gordon that Dundee dispatched a messenger to Lochiel to inform him of the situation. After consultation amongst the neighbouring Highland chiefs, it was decided that a detachment of eight hundred men, under Macdonald of Keppoch, should be sent to escort him into Lochaber. But Keppoch, whom the poetical chronicler describes as a man whom love of plunder would impel to any crime, had his own ends to serve. He was at feud with the Macintosh, and the town of Inverness had taken sides with the Macintosh. Instead of marching to meet Dundee, he led his forces against the town, from the magistrates of which he extorted the promise of a ransom of four thousand merks. The hasty arrival of Dundee, to whom information of Keppoch’s outrageous conduct had been conveyed, put an end to this state of siege. But the weakness of his following obliged him to adopt a conciliatory policy towards the freebooter. He assured the magistrates, who appealed to him, that Keppoch had no warrant from him to be in arms, much less to plunder. Beyond that, however, he could only give his bond that, at the King’s return, the money exacted by Keppoch should be made good. Having so far humoured the plundering laird, Dundee depended on his help to engage Mackay. But Keppoch, to whom honour and glory meant little, and for whom booty was everything, found various reasons for refusing his co-operation; whilst his followers declared that they could do nothing without the consent of their master. Their object was, in reality, to add to their spoil, by harrying the country, and to retire with it to their mountain fastnesses.

Dundee was sorely disappointed at this untoward incident. So fully did he expect to be joined by Keppoch’s men that he had already written to the magistrates of Elgin to prepare quarters for nine hundred or a thousand Highlanders besides his own cavalry. And now, instead of turning round on his pursuer, he was obliged to make his way through Stratherrick to Invergarry and Kilcummin, and thence into the wilds of Badenoch. Throughout this march, Dundee did not relax his efforts to enlist recruits, and he succeeded in engaging the greater part of the men of note to be ready at call to join in his master’s service. Feeling that he might now depend on the active co-operation of the Highland chiefs, about the sixth or seventh of May, from the isolated farm of Presmukerach, in a secluded district between Cluny and Dalwhinnie, he issued a royal letter, calling upon the clans to meet him in Lochaber on the eighteenth of the month.

In the meantime, however, it was not Dundee’s intention to remain idle. On the 9th of May, he was at Blair. Thence he advanced next day to Dunkeld, where, coming unexpectedly upon an agent of the new Government, who, with the help of the military, had been gathering the revenues of the district, he relieved him of the money, and secured the arms of his escort. This was but an incident. The real object of the raid was seventeen miles further. Dundee had received information that William Blair of Blair, and his lieutenant Pollock were raising a troop in the county of Perth, for the new Government; and he had resolved to interfere with their recruiting. Leaving Dunkeld in the middle of the night, he was at Perth by two o’clock in the morning, with seventy followers. No attack was expected, and no resistance was offered. Blair and Pollock were taken prisoners in their beds; and several officers of the new levies were also captured. Secure from surprise, the invading troopers carried out their work deliberately and thoroughly; and when they retired, about eleven o’clock next morning, the spoil they took with them included arms, gunpowder, public-money, and forty horses. It is said that, on being brought before Dundee, Blair had protested with some indignation against the treatment to which he had been subjected, and that the Viscount had curtly replied, ‘You take prisoners for the Prince of Orange, and we take prisoners for King James, and there’s an end of it.’