After the Earl of Murray had issued the notices, prohibiting all persons from communicating with, or assisting the clan Chattan, their kindred and friends, who had privately promised them aid, before they broke out, began to grow cold, and declined to assist them, as they were apprehensive of losing their estates, many of them being wealthy. The earl perceiving this, opened a communication with some of the principal persons of the clan, to induce them to submit to his authority, who, seeing no hopes of making any longer an effectual resistance, readily acquiesced, and, by the intercession of friends, made their peace with the earl, on condition that they should inform him of the names of such persons as had given them protection, after the publication of his letters of interdiction. Having thus quelled this formidable insurrection without bloodshed, the earl, by virtue of his commission, held justice courts at Elgin, where “some slight louns, followers of the clan Chattan,” were tried and executed, but all the principals concerned were pardoned.
As the account which Spalding gives of the appearance of the accused, and of the base conduct of the principal men of the clan Chattan, in informing against their friends and benefactors, is both curious and graphic, it is here inserted: “Then presently was brought in befor the barr; and in the honest men’s faces, the clan Chattan who had gotten supply, verified what they had gotten, and the honest men confounded and dasht, knew not what to answer, was forced to come in the earle’s will, whilk was not for their weill: others compeared and willingly confessed, trusting to gett more favour at the earle’s hands, but they came little speid: and lastly, some stood out and denyed all, who was reserved to the triall of an assyse. The principall malefactors stood up in judgment, and declared what they had gotten, whether meat, money, cloathing, gun, ball, powder, lead, sword, dirk, and the like commodities, and alse instructed the assyse in ilk particular, what they had gotten frae the persons pannalled; an uncouth form of probation, wher the principall malefactor proves against the receiptor for his own pardon, and honest men, perhaps neither of the clan Chattan’s kyne nor blood, punished for their good will, ignorant of the laws, and rather receipting them more for their evil nor their good. Nevertheless thir innocent men, under collour of justice, part and part as they came in, were soundly fyned in great soumes as their estates might bear, and some above their estate was fyned, and every one warded within the tolbuith of Elgine, while the least myte was payed of such as was persued in anno 1624.”[212]
Some idea of the unequal administration of the laws at this time may be formed, when it is considered that the enormous fines imposed in the present instance, went into the pockets of the chief judge, the Earl of Murray himself, as similar mulcts had previously gone into those of the Earl of Argyle, in his crusade against the unfortunate clan Gregor! This legal robbery, however, does not appear to have enriched the houses of Argyle and Murray, for Sir Robert Gordon observes, that “these fynes did not much advantage either of these two earles.” The Earl of Murray, no doubt, thinking such a mode of raising money an easy and profitable speculation, afterwards obtained an enlargement of his commission from Charles I., not only against the clan Chattan, but also against all other offenders within several adjacent shires; but the commission was afterwards annulled by his majesty, not so much on account of the abuses and injustice which might have been perpetrated under it, but because, as Sir Robert Gordon observes, “it grieved divers of his majesty’s best affected subjects, and chieflie the Marquis of Huntlie, unto whose predicessors onlie the office of livetennendrie in the north of Scotland had bein granted by former kings, for these many ages.”
There seems reason, however, for supposing that the recall of the commission was hastened by complaints to the king, on the part of the oppressed; for the earl had no sooner obtained its renewal, than he held a court against the burgh of Inverness, John Grant of Glenmoriston, and others who had refused to acknowledge their connexion with the clan Chattan, or to pay him the heavy fines which he had imposed upon them. The town of Inverness endeavoured to get quit of the earl’s extortions, on the ground that the inhabitants were innocent of the crimes laid to their charge; but the earl frustrated their application to the Privy Council. The provost, Duncan Forbes,[213] was then sent to the king, and Grant of Glenmoriston took a journey to London, at the same time, on his own account; but their endeavours proved ineffectual, and they had no alternative but to submit to the earl’s exactions.[214]
The quarrel between the laird of Duffus and John Gordon, younger of Embo, which had lain dormant for some time, burst forth again, in the year 1625, and proved nearly fatal to both parties. Gordon had long watched an opportunity to revenge the wrong which he conceived had been done him by the laird of Duffus and his brother, James, but he could never fall in with either of them, as they remained in Moray, and, when they appeared in Sutherland, they were always accompanied by some friends, so that Gordon was prevented from attacking them. Frequent disappointments in this way only whetted his appetite for revenge; and meeting, when on horseback, one day, between Sidderay and Skibo, with John Sutherland of Clyne, third brother of the laird of Duffus, who was also on horseback, he determined to make the laird of Clyne suffer for the delinquencies of his elder brother. Raising, therefore, a cudgel which he held in his hand, he inflicted several blows upon John Sutherland, who, as soon as he recovered himself from the surprise and confusion into which such an unexpected attack had thrown him, drew his sword. Gordon, in his turn, unsheathed his, and a warm combat ensued, between the parties and two friends who accompanied them. After they had fought a while, Gordon wounded Sutherland in the head and in one of his hands, and otherwise injured him, but he spared his life, although completely in his power.
Duffus immediately cited John Gordon to appear before the Privy Council, to answer for this breach of the peace, and, at the same time, summoned before the council some of the Earl of Sutherland’s friends and dependants, for an alleged conspiracy against himself and his friends. Duffus, with his two brothers and Gordon, came to Edinburgh on the day appointed, and, the parties being heard, Gordon was declared guilty of a riot, and was thereupon committed to prison. This result gave great satisfaction to Duffus and his brothers, who now calculated on nothing less than the utter ruin of Gordon; as they had, by means of Sir Donald Mackay, obtained a Strathnaver man, named William Mack-Allen (one of the Siol-Thomais), who had been a servant of Gordon’s, to become a witness against him, and to prove every thing that Duffus was pleased to allege against Gordon.
In this state of matters, Sir Robert Gordon returned from London to Edinburgh, where he found Duffus in high spirits, exulting at his success, and young Embo in prison. Sir Robert applied to Duffus, hoping to bring about a reconciliation by the intervention of friends, but Duffus refused to hear of any arrangement; and the more reasonable the conditions were, which Sir Robert proposed, the more unreasonable and obstinate did he become; his object being to get the lords to award him great sums of money at the expense of Gordon, in satisfaction for the wrong done his brother. Sir Robert, however, finally succeeded, by the assistance of the Earl of Enzie, who was then at Edinburgh, in getting the prosecution against the Earl of Sutherland’s friends quashed, in obtaining the liberation of John Gordon, and in getting his fine mitigated to one hundred pounds Scots, payable to the king only; reserving, however, civil action to John Sutherland of Clyne against Gordon, before the Lords of Session.[215]
Sir Donald Mackay, always restless, and desirous of gratifying his enmity at the house of Sutherland, endeavoured to embroil it with the laird of Duffus in the following way. Having formed a resolution to leave the kingdom, Sir Donald applied for, and obtained, a license from the king to raise a regiment in the north, to assist Count Mansfield in his campaign in Germany. He, accordingly, collected, in a few months, about 3,000 men from different parts of Scotland, the greater part of whom he embarked at Cromarty in the month of October 1626; but, on account of bad health, he was obliged to delay his own departure till the following year, when he joined the king of Sweden with his regiment, in consequence of a peace having been concluded between the King of Denmark and the Emperor of Germany.[216] Among others whom Mackay had engaged to accompany him to Germany, was a person named Angus Roy Gun, against whom, a short time previous to his enlistment, Mackay and his brother, John Mackay of Dirlet, had obtained a commission from the lords of the Privy Council for the purpose of apprehending him and bringing him before the council for some supposed crimes. Mackay could have easily apprehended Angus Roy Gun on different occasions, but having become one of his regiment, he allowed the commission, as far as he was concerned, to remain a dead letter.
Sometime after his enlistment, Angus Roy Gun made a journey into Sutherland, a circumstance which afforded Mackay an opportunity of putting into execution the scheme he had formed, and which showed that he was no mean adept in the arts of cunning and dissimulation. His plan was this:—He wrote, in the first place, private letters to the laird of Duffus, and to his brother, John Sutherland of Clyne, to apprehend Angus Roy Gun under the commission he had obtained; and at the same time, sent the commission itself to the laird of Duffus as his authority for so doing. He next wrote a letter to Alexander Gordon, the Earl of Sutherland’s uncle, who, in the absence of his brother, Sir Robert, governed Sutherland, entreating him, as Angus Roy Gun was then in Sutherland, to send him to him to Cromarty, as he was his hired soldier. Ignorant of Mackay’s design, and desirous of serving him, Sir Alexander sent two of his men to bring Gun to Sir Alexander; but on their return they were met by John Sutherland of Clyne and a party of sixteen men, who seized Gun; and to prevent a rescue, the laird of Duffus sent his brother, James Sutherland, Alexander Murray, heir-apparent of Aberscors, and William Neill-son, chief of the Sliochd-Iain-Abaraich, with 300 men to protect his brother John. At the same time, as he anticipated an attack from Sir Alexander Gordon, he sent messengers to his supporters in Ross, Strathnaver, Caithness, and other places for assistance.
When Sir Alexander Gordon heard of the assembling of such a body of the Earl of Sutherland’s vassals without his knowledge, he made inquiry to ascertain the cause; and being informed of Gun’s capture, he collected 18 men who were near at hand, and hastened with them from Dunrobin towards Clyne. On arriving at the bridge of Broray, he found James Sutherland, with his brother John, and their whole party drawn up in battle array at the east end of the bridge. He, thereupon, sent a person to the Sutherlands to know the cause of such an assemblage, and the reason why they had taken Gun from his servants. As the Sutherlands refused to exhibit their authority, Sir Alexander made demonstrations for passing the bridge, but he was met by a shower of shot and arrows which wounded two of his men. After exchanging shots for some time, Sir Alexander was joined by a considerable body of his countrymen, by whose aid, notwithstanding the resistance he met with, he was enabled to cross the bridge. The Sutherlands were forced to retreat, and as they saw no chance of opposing, with success, the power of the house of Sutherland, they, after some hours’ consultation, delivered up Angus Roy Gun to Sir Alexander Sutherland, who sent him immediately to Mackay, then at Cromarty.