[271] This is a reference to the well-known story of the conversion of the islanders. The laird, a man ‘much respected,’ an elder of the kirk, reproved by the General Assembly for allowing his people to remain in popery, retrieved his character by driving his tenants from the Catholic chapel to the Protestant church with the vigorous application of a gold-headed cane, called by the Highlanders a yellow stick: from this the Presbyterian religion became known in the islands as Creidimh a bhata bhui, the creed of the yellow stick. Cf. Bellesheim’s Hist. Cath. Church Scot. (iv. 188).
[272] Called the Parish of the Small Isles.
[273] Modernly, Loch Hourn = Hell Loch.
[274] Scotus and Barisdale were brothers, both being uncles of the chief of Glengarry. The elder, Angus Macdonell of Scotus, was an old man in ’45, and died the following year. He remained at home, but his eldest son Donald went out with Glengarry. Donald fell wounded at Culloden, and was supposed to have died on the field. The clan historians, however, state that evidence has been found in the Stuart Papers at Windsor that certain marauders landed from a ship at night, carried off a number of wounded, among them Donald of Scotus, who after various adventures was captured by Turkish pirates, and held in bondage ever afterwards. (History of Clan Donald, iii. 324.) Two of Scotus’s younger sons John and Allan were captains in Glengarry’s regiment. Donald’s eldest son Ranald fought on the Government side in ’45 in Loudoun’s regiment. Ranald’s grandson succeeded in 1868 as 18th hereditary chief of Glengarry.
For Macdonell of Barisdale, see post, p. 96.
[275] The Morar family was really not a cadet, but the senior branch of the Clanranald family, descended from the eldest son of Dougall, 6th Clanranald, who was deposed by the clan for cruelty and oppression, and his children excluded for ever from the chiefship, which was conferred on his uncle. Dougall was assassinated in 1520; his family, on whom the lands of Morar were conferred, were known as the ‘MacDhughail Mhorair.’ In 1745 the laird of Morar was Allan, whose mother was a Macdonald of Sleat. He must have been an elderly man, as his wife was an aunt of Lochiel’s, the youngest daughter of Sir Ewan Cameron by his third wife, daughter of the Quaker David Barclay of Urie. Morar was one of the first to meet the Prince on his reaching Lochnanuagh in July ’45. He served as lieut-colonel of the Clanranald regiment. Prince Charles in his wanderings came to him for hospitality in July ’46, and Morar could only give him a cave to sleep in as his house had been burned down. His reception of the Prince, prompted it is said by young Clanranald, was very cold, and he was the object of fierce invective by the chief of Mackinnon, and of sorrowful reproach by Charles himself. (L. in M., iii. 187.) According to the clan historians, Morar had the reputation of being ‘an unmanly, drunken creature all his life.’ (Hist. Cl. Donald, iii. 256.)
Mr. Andrew Lang says that Morar was the author of the Journal and Memorial of P—— C—— Expedition into Scotland (printed in the Lockhart Papers), which is a principal source of knowledge of the early days of the adventure. Mr. Lang did not remember his authority, but was certain of its authenticity. (I had been assured in Moidart that the Journal was by young Ranald of Kinloch-Moidart, but without proof.) Allan of Morar died in 1756. His eldest son, John, was ‘out,’ but in what capacity he served I have failed to trace. Morar’s step-brother, John of Guidale, was a captain in the Clanranald regiment.
Another step-brother was Hugh Macdonald, who had been educated for the Church in France. He was reported to Rome as a ‘scion of one of the noblest branches of the Macdonalds.... He himself is distinguished even more for his zeal and piety than for his honourable birth, and is also a man of singular prudence and modesty.’ (Bellesheim, iv. 386.) He was consecrated Bishop of Diana in partibus in 1731, and appointed vicar-apostolic of the Highlands. The Bishop visited the Prince on board ship on his first arrival, and implored him to return. When the Standard was raised in Glenfinnan it was blessed by Bishop Hugh. What part he took during the campaign I do not know, but after the debacle, he accompanied Lord Lovat in his hiding in Morar. When the fugitives were pounced upon by Ferguson’s party (see post, pp. 90, 244) Lovat was captured, but the Bishop escaped and went to France, in September, along with Prince Charles. He returned to Scotland in 1749, when he had an interview with Bishop Forbes, who veils his identity by calling him ‘Mr. Hugh.’ (L. in M., iii. 50.) He was betrayed in July 1755, and arrested, released on bail, and obliged to reside at Duns until the following February, when he was sentenced by the High Court to perpetual banishment. (Scots. Mag., xvii. 358, xviii. 100.) By connivance of the authorities, the sentence was not enforced, and he remained in Scotland until his death, which occurred in Glengarry in 1773.
The Kinlochmoidart family descends from the 9th Clanranald (d. 1593). The laird in 1745 was Donald Macdonald; his mother was Margaret Cameron, the only sister of Lochiel of the ’45; his wife was a daughter of Stewart of Appin. Donald, as a boy, had fought at Sheriffmuir. His brother Æneas, a banker in Paris, came over from France with Prince Charles. On arrival in Scotland Æneas was sent to summon the laird. Kinlochmoidart, who was given a commission as colonel and made aide-de-camp to the Prince, was at once despatched to summon his uncle Lochiel, and other Jacobite leaders. Prince Charles lived in his house from August 11th to 18th. When a captive the following year, Kinlochmoidart was asked what made him embark in the adventure, ‘Lord, man’ he replied, ‘what could I do when the young lad came to my house.’ (Carlisle in 1745, p. 266.) It is interesting from the point of view of Highland hospitality to compare this reply with the advice given to Prince Charles by Clanranald’s brother, Boisdale, who had an interview with the Prince at Eriska on his first arrival, but refused to rise. When he found it impossible to dissuade the Prince from his enterprise he ‘insisted that he ought to land on the estate of Macdonald of Sleat or in that of Macleod, for if he trusted himself to them in the beginning they would certainly join him which otherwise they would not do. The Prince would not follow this counsel, being influenced by others.’ (Bishop Geddes’s MS.) Kinlochmoidart was made prisoner at Lesmahagow in Lanarkshire, in November ’45, while returning to the army from an unsuccessful mission to Sir Alexander of Sleat and Macleod. The principal agent in his capture was a divinity student, Thomas Lining, afterwards rewarded with the living of Lesmahagow. The chieftain was tried at Carlisle, and there hanged on 18th October ’46. His head was fixed on the Scots Gate, where it remained for many years. His house was burned down.
Kinlochmoidart’s family was deeply implicated in the Rising. Four of his brothers served in Clanranald’s regiment: John, a doctor of medicine, who was one of Ferguson’s victims in the Furness; he afterwards returned to Moidart; Ranald, whose chivalrous championship of the Prince’s cause, gave the first note of enthusiasm to the adventure (Home, Hist. Reb., p. 39); Allan, who fled to France and perished in the Revolution; James, who was captured at Culloden, but escaped; he was exempted from the general pardon, and is supposed to have gone to America. A fifth brother, Æneas the Paris banker, was captured, tried, and sentenced to death. He escaped from Newgate by throwing snuff in the turnkey’s eyes, but being shod with loose slippers he tripped when flying along Warwick Lane and was retaken. He received a conditional pardon, returned to France, and was killed in the Revolution.