Thus ended a life characterized by no ordinary share of vicissitude and misfortune. If the fate of Sir John Maclean be less tragical than that of other distinguished Jacobites, it was, it must be acknowledged, one replete with anxiety and disappointment. He may be said to have been peculiarly "born to trouble." To our modern notions of honour and consistency, his conduct in becoming a courtier of William the Third, appears to betray that unsoundness and hollowness of political principle which, more or less, was the prevalent moral disease of the period, and which was attributable to some of the most celebrated men of the day. It undoubtedly forms an unfavourable contrast to the stern independence of Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, and of other Highland chieftains, and too greatly resembles the code of politics adopted by the Earl of Mar. But those who knew Sir John Maclean intimately, considered him a man of straightforward integrity; they deemed him above dissimulation, and have placed his name among those who despised every worldly advantage for the sake of principle, and who loved the cause which he had espoused for its own sake. The broken towers of Duart and of Aros, the ruins of those once proud lords of the soil, attest the sacrifices which they made, and form a melancholy commentary upon their history.
The castle of Aros, in the Island of Mull, "is interesting," says Macculloch,[92] "from the picturesque object which it affords to the artist; the more so, as the country is so devoid of scenes on which his pencil can be exerted. Still more striking, from its greater magnitude and more elevated position, is Duart Castle, once the stronghold of the Macleans, and till lately garrisoned by a detachment from Fort William. It is fast falling into ruin since it was abandoned as a barrack. When a few years shall have passed, the almost roofless tenant will surrender his spacious apartments to the bat and the owl, and seek shelter, like his neighbours, in the thatched hovel which rises near him. But the walls, of formidable thickness, may long bid defiance even to the storms of this region; remaining to mark to future times the barbarous splendour of the ancient Highland chieftains, and, with the opposite fortress of Ardtornish, serving to throw a gleam of historical interest over the passage of the Sound of Mull."
Hitherto Iona had received the last remains of the Lords of Duart; but Sir John Maclean was not carried to the resting-place of his forefathers. He was buried in the church of Raffin in Bamffshire, in the family vault of the Gordons of Buckie. In Iona, that former "light of the western world," are the tombs of the brave and unfortunate Macleans. Their bones are interred in the vaults of the cathedral, which, after coasting the barren rocks of Mull, buffeted by the waves, the traveller beholds rising out of the sea, "giving," as it is finely expressed, "to this desolate region an air of civilization, and recalling the consciousness of that human society which, presenting elsewhere no visible traces, seems to have abandoned these rocky shores to the cormorant and the gull." On the tombs of the Highland warriors who repose within St. Mary's Church in Iona, are sculptured ships, swords, armorial bearings, appropriate memorials to the island lords, or, as the Chevalier not inaptly called them, "little kings;" and, undistinguishable from the graves of the chiefs, are the funereal allotments of the Kings of Scotland, Iceland, and Norway.[93]
Sir John Maclean left one son and six daughters. His son Hector was born in France, but brought to Scotland at the age of four, and placed under the care of his kinsman, Maclean of Coll, where he remained until he was eighteen years of age; when he repaired to Edinburgh, and in the college made considerable progress in the usual course of studies in that institution. After various journeys abroad, chiefly to Paris, Sir Hector Maclean returned in 1745 to Edinburgh, intending again to lead his clansmen to the standard of Prince Charles; but a temporary imprisonment, occasioned by the treachery of a man in whose house he lodged, prevented his appearance in the field. He was detained in confinement until released as a subject of the King of France. He died at Rome in the year 1758, in the forty-seventh year of his age. At his death the title of Baronet devolved upon Allan of Brolas, great-grandson of Donald, first Maclean of Brolas, and younger brother of the first baronet.
Although the chief was thus prevented from following Prince Charles to the field of Culloden, many of his clan distinguished themselves there; Charles Maclean of Drimnin appeared at the head of five hundred of the clan, and his regiment, which was under the command of the Duke of Perth, was among those that broke forward with drawn swords from the lines, and routed the left wing of the Duke of Cumberland's army. The whole of the front line of this gallant regiment was swept away as they presented themselves before their foes. They were afterwards overpowered by numbers, and obliged to retire. Their leader, as he retreated, inquired for one of his sons, who was missing. "I fear," said an attendant to whom the inquiry was addressed, "that he has fallen." The fate of the father is well told in these few words,[94] "If he has, it shall not be for naught," was his reply; and he rushed forward to avenge him.
Many of the clan fell in the massacre after the battle of Culloden Muir. Hundreds of the Highlanders who escaped the inhumanity of their conquerors, died of their wounds or of hunger, in the hills, at twelve or fourteen miles' distance from the field of battle. "Their misery," says a contemporary writer, "was inexpressible." While the cannon was sounding, and bells were pealing in the capital cities of England and Ireland, for the united events of the Duke of Cumberland's birth and the battle of Culloden Moor, fires were seen blazing in Morvern, in which numerous villages were burned by order of the victorious Cumberland. The Macleans who came from Mull, seem generally to have escaped; they made off in one of the long boats for their island, the night after the engagement, and were fortunate enough to carry with them a cargo of brandy and some money.[95]
A calmer, though less interesting career has, since 1745, been the fate of the chiefs of the clan Maclean.[96] Sir Allan, respected and beloved, became a colonel in the British army. He retired eventually to the sacred Isle of Inch Kenneth, in Mull, where he exercised the hospitality characteristic, in ancient times, of the Lords of Duart. Dr. Johnson has handed down the memory of the venerable chief, not only in a few descriptive pages of a Tour to the Hebrides, but in a Latin poem, translated by Sir Daniel Sandford.[97] In the lines he refers to Sir Allan in these terms.
"O'er glassy tides I thither flew,
The wonders of the spot to view;
In lowly cottage great Maclean
Held there his high ancestral reign."[98]
Sir Allan Maclean died in 1783: he was succeeded by his nearest male relation, Sir Hector Maclean, of the family of Brolas. The brother of Sir Hector, Sir Fitzroy Grafton Maclean, a distinguished officer, and formerly Governor of the island of St. Thomas, is now chief of the clan Maclean. Two sons continue the line. Of these, the eldest, Colonel Charles Fitzroy Maclean, has chosen, like his father, the profession of arms. He commands the eighty-first foot: and has, by his marriage with a daughter of the Hon. and Rev. Dr. Marsham, an heir to the ancestral honours of the house. The youngest son of Sir Fitzroy Maclean is Donald Maclean, of Witton Castle, Durham, the member for Oxford, married to Harriet, daughter of General Frederick Maitland, a descendant of the Duke of Lauderdale, whose former injustice to the clan Maclean has been noticed in this work. It is remarkable, that the same fidelity, the same loyalty, that sacrificed every possession to the cause of James Stuart, has been, since the extinction of that cause, worthily employed, with distinguished talent and success, in the service of Government. Such instances are not uncommon in the history of the Jacobites.