This was a terrible day for the broken men who had for the last few years been carrying on such wild proceedings in Morayland and other districts bordering on the Highlands. Lord Lorn—who soon after, as Marquis of Argyle, became the leader of the Covenanting party—had exerted himself with diligence to put down the system of robbery and oppression by which the country had been so long harassed; and he had succeeded in capturing ten of the most noted of the catterans, including one whose name enjoys a popular celebrity even to the present day. This was Gilderoy or Gillieroy; such at least was his common appellation—a descriptive term signifying the Red Lad—but he actually bore the name of Patrick Macgregor, being a member of that unhappy clan which the severity of the government had driven to desperate courses about thirty years before. Another of the captured men was John Forbes, who seems to have been the fidus Achates of the notorious outlaw, James Grant. A natural son of Grant was also of the party. These ten men were now brought to trial in Edinburgh.
It was alleged of Gilderoy that he and his band had for three years past sorned ‘through the haill bounds of Strathspey, Braemar, Cromar, and countries thereabout, oppressing the common and poor people, violently taking away from them their meat, drink, and provision, and their haill guids.’ They had taken fifteen nolt from one farm in Glenprosen; had lain for days at Balreny, eating up the country, and possessing themselves of whatever they could lay hands on, and in some instances they had carried off the goodman himself, or the man and wife together, in order to extort money for their ransom. One of the charges leads us to the romantic scenery of Loch Lomond, where there is an island called Inchcailloch (Women’s Island), from having been the seat of a nunnery in ancient times. Gilderoy, in company with his brother, John Dhu Roy, and his half-brother, John Graham, had come to William Stewart’s house in this island, and taken from it ‘the whole insight plenishing, guids, and geir,’ besides the legal papers belonging to the proprietor. There had also been a cruel slaughter of one of the Clan Cameron. The other men were taxed with offences of a similar kind.
If the doom of the ten catterans was duly executed—and we know nothing to the contrary—they were all, two days after, drawn backwards on a hurdle to the Cross, and there hanged, Gilderoy and John Forbes suffering on a gallows ‘ane degree higher’ than that on which their companions suffered, and further having their heads and right hands struck off for exhibition on the city ports.[70]
Gilderoy, as is well known, attained a ballad fame. There is a broadside of the time, containing a lament for him by his mistress, in rude verses not altogether devoid of pathos. She says:
‘My love he was as brave a man
As ever Scotland bred,
Descended from a Highland clan,
A catter to his trade.
No woman then or womankind
Had ever greater joy