‘Four of those poor deluded people called Quakers, two men and two women, came about noon to the Cross [of Edinburgh], when one of the women, who by her accent seemed to be of Yorkshire, after several violent agitations, said, that she was appointed by God to preach repentance to this sinful city; that a voice of mortality, as she called it, had sounded in her ears, and that desolation and all kinds of miseries would befall the inhabitants if they did not repent. After she had spoke about a quarter of an hour, a party of the city-guard carried her and the other three prisoners to the main guard.’
Some years after, one Thomas Erskine, a brewer, made himself conspicuous as a Quaker preacher in Edinburgh. One Saturday, January 17, 1736, he ‘made a religious peregrination through this city. He made his first station at the Bow-head [reputed as |1722.| the head-quarters of the saints in Edinburgh], where he pronounced woes and judgments on the inhabitants of the Good Town, if they did not speedily repent. Thence he walked to the Cross, where he recapitulated what he had evangelised by the way, and concluded with desiring his auditory to remember well what he had told them. However, he gave them forty days to think on’t.’
One day, in the ensuing July, Erskine sent a notice to the quiet little country town of Musselburgh, to the effect that the Spirit had appointed him to hold forth to them in the marketplace at five in the afternoon; and, accordingly, at the appointed hour, he mounted the Cross, and discoursed to a large audience.[[557]]
Aug. 29.
A second attempt was now made to obtain possession of the forfeited Seaforth estates for the government. It was calculated that what the two factors and their attendants, with a small military force, had failed to accomplish in the preceding October, when they were beat back with a fatal loss at Aa-na-Mullich, might now be effected by means of a good military party alone, if they should make their approach through a less critical passage. A hundred and sixty of Colonel Kirk’s regiment left Inverness under Captain M‘Neil, who had at one time been commander of the Highland Watch. They proceeded by Dingwall, Strath Garve, and Loch Carron, a route to the north of that adopted by the factors, and an easier, though a longer way. Donald Murchison, nothing daunted, got together his followers, and advanced to the top of Maam Attadale, a high pass from Loch Carron to the head of Loch Long, separating Lochalsh from Kintail. Here a gallant relative named Kenneth Murchison, and a few others, volunteered to go forward and plant themselves in ambush in the defiles of the Choille Van [White Wood], while the bulk of the party should remain where they were. It would appear that this ambush party consisted of thirteen men, all peculiarly well armed.
On approaching this dangerous place, the captain went forward with a sergeant and eighteen men to clear the wood, while the main body came on slowly in the rear. At a place called Altanbadn, in the Choille Van, he encountered Kenneth and his associates, whose fire wounded himself severely, killed one of his grenadiers, and wounded several others of the party. He persisted in advancing, and attacked the handful of natives with |1722.| sufficient resolution. They slowly withdrew, as unable to resist; but the captain now obtained intelligence that a large body of Mackenzies was posted in the mountain-pass of Attadale. It seemed as if there was a design to draw him into a fatal ambuscade. His own wounded condition probably warned him that a better opportunity might occur afterwards. He turned his forces about, and made the best of his way back to Inverness. Kenneth Murchison quickly rejoined Colonel Donald on Maam Attadale, with the cheering intelligence that one salvo of thirteen guns had repelled the hundred and sixty sidier roy.[[558]] After this, we hear of no renewed attempt to comprise the Seaforth property.
Strange as it may seem, Donald Murchison, two years after thus a second time resisting the government troops, came down to Edinburgh with eight hundred pounds of the earl’s rents, that he might get the money sent abroad for his lordship’s use. He remained a fortnight in the city unmolested. He would on this occasion appear in the garb of a Lowland gentleman; he would mingle with old acquaintances, ‘doers’ and writers; and appear at the Cross amongst the crowd of gentlemen who assembled there every day at noon. Scores would know all about his doings at Aa-na-Mullich and the Choille Van; but thousands might have known, without the chance of one of them betraying him to government.
General Wade, writing a report to the king in 1725, states that the Seaforth tenants, formerly reputed the richest of any in the Highlands, are now become poor, by neglecting their business, and applying themselves to the use of arms. ‘The rents,’ he says, ‘continue to be collected by one Donald Murchison, a servant of the late earl’s, who annually remits or carries the same to his master into France. The tenants, when in a condition, are said to have sent him free gifts in proportion to their several circumstances, but are now a year and a half in arrear of rent. The receipts he gives to the tenants are as deputy-factor to the Commissioners of the Forfeited Estates, which pretended power he extorted from the factor (appointed by the said commissioners to collect those rents for the use of the public), whom he attacked with above four hundred armed men, as he was going to enter upon the said estate, having with him a party of thirty of your majesty’s troops. The last year this Murchison marched in a public manner to Edinburgh, to remit eight hundred pounds to France for his master’s use, and remained fourteen days there |1722.| unmolested. I cannot omit observing to your majesty, that this national tenderness the subjects of North Britain have one for the other, is a great encouragement for rebels and attainted persons to return home from their banishment.’[[559]]
Donald was again in Edinburgh about the end of August 1725. On the 2d of September, George Lockhart of Carnwath, writing from Edinburgh to the Chevalier St George, states, amongst other matters of information regarding his party in Scotland, that Daniel Murchison (as he calls him) ‘is come to Edinburgh, on his way to France’—doubtless charged with a sum of rents for Seaforth. ‘He’s been in quest of me, and I of him,’ says Lockhart, ‘these two days, and missed each other; but in a day or two he’s to be at my country-house, where I’ll get time to talk fully with him. In the meantime, I know from one that saw him, that he has taken up and secured all the arms of value in Seaforth’s estate, which he thought better than to trust them to the care and prudence of the several owners; and the other chieftains, I hear, have done the same.’[[560]]
The Commissioners on the Forfeited Estates conclude their final report in 1725 by stating that they had not sold the estate of William Earl of Seaforth, ‘not having been able to obtain possession, and consequently to give the same to a purchaser.’