Glencoe is an awe-inspiring valley formed by glaciers, ending at desolate Rannoch Moor. The valley is most well-known for the massacre of the MacDonalds, often named the site of "Murder Under Trust". The story goes that on February 13, 1692, the MacDonalds welcomed the Campbells into their homes and acted as gracious hosts. In the middle of the night, when all the MacDonalds were asleep, the Campbells then slaughtered all of the MacDonalds. This has often been mistaken as a clan feud, and to this day many folks believe the Campbell and MacDonald clans to be enemies, and all because of this one night. There is a local pub near the glen that has a sign posted in the entrance stating, "No Hawkers or Campbells". This is a common sentiment to some, a joke to others.
The following text is a monologue about the history of this event, and it is the closest to the unbiased truth I've found. I suppose I shouldn't state it is unbiased, as the author is Diarmid A. Campbell, originally from Argyll, Scotland. Diarmid is the Editor of the Clan Campbell Society (North America) quarterly journal, and is also writing his own family history. Diarmid has earned the respect of many people in his fair treatment of Campbell history, both the good and the bad. In the instance of Glencoe, he points out that the history here really isn't as horrorful as it has been made out to be. This text comes verbatim from a message he posted to the Campbell Genealogy e-mail listserve. It is a fascinating narrative, and one so full of color I refuse to edit it. As you read the following please remember, as Diarmid has stated in a subsequent message to me, "You have to realize that inevitably it was very much 'off the cuff' and, while I believe it was accurate, inevitably contained some personal views on the issue." Keeping that in mind, read on and enjoy...
After the reformation of 1560 the majority of Scots - and certainly in the Lowlands and Argyll - were concerned to hold onto the new democratic element in their religion where congregations could appoint their own ministers without having heritors (leading locals) or Bishops appoint them. Their ministers also worked them up to a fever pitch of fear about the spiritual consequences of lapsing into Roman Catholicism. Even when I was a young man in Argyll I heard a sermon in which the minister described the Pope as "the scaaarlet haaarlot of Roam!"...hardly a Christian attitude today, but 17th century Scotland was often a very fundamentalist place (not in any good sense) and bigotry was rampant.
James II had tended towards Catholicism and so was replaced by William and Mary in what some then called "the glorious revolution" of 1688. William of Orange was from Holland and much more interested in fighting his European wars - but he was a Protestant and therefore welcome in Britain at that time. However his attitude towards the Scots was not positive. William was consort - not initially King - and it was actually Mary who was the monarch as Queen, but William wanted to be made king - he was in fact also descended from the British royal line. He insisted on an oath of loyalty and this was what started the train of events leading to Glencoe. A number of the Highland gentry remained Catholic - although I am not sure who - likely mostly in the outer Isles. A number were Episcopalian (liking to have Bishops and themselves as heritors being able to appoint priests). The Campbell Earl of Breadalbane known in the Gaelic as 'Iain glass' or grey John, had been meeting with the less protestant Highland Chiefs to try to mediate between them and the government because he knew that if it came to war his people and their lands would be in the middle of any conflict (geographically) and would easily be destroyed. To a degree he was successful in persuading them to compromise on the Loyalty Oath issue. This took place at the little tower of Achallader on the southeaster edge of the Moor of Rannoch which ran down to Glencoe in the west. You can still see the place to this day. So the Jacobite or anti-William faction of Chiefs sent over to France to ask James in exile whether it was all right for them to take the Oath of Allegiance. He endangered their lives with his delays but eventually agreed, seeing that many would likely be killed if they failed. Most then signed in good time, but MacIain of Glencoe was late. First he went to Fort William, in the wrong direction, when he was meant to go to Inveraray and was then just after the deadline at Inveraray due to a snowstorm. I think it was Campbell of Stonefield or Ardkinglass who was in charge at that time at Inveraray and, as a Highlander and a Campbell he understood about snowstorms and so accepted MacIain's signature and sent it on to Edinburgh with a note telling the reason for the lateness. But when the List got to the Earl of Stair - who acted as Secretary of State for Scotland as it were, he had evidently been instructed by King William to pick out a 'tribe' and make an example of them. Disappointed that all the more prominent Chiefs had signed in time, on the flimsly excuse of the delayed date, he ordered the extermination of all the MacIains of Glencoe. The MacIains were a part of Clan Donald who were earlier in Ardnamurchan but got Glencoe in the fourteen hundreds if I remember rightly. Like the Gregorach (MacGregors) they tended still to believe in cattle 'lifting' or reiving (rustling) as an excercise to keep their young men fit as warriors, but the Breadalbane lands were between them and the Lowlands so they often got 'hit' by the men of Glencoe. But they were not un-sophisticated in their leadership and in fact in 1607 the then Earl of Argyll, asked to raise an army to go to Ireland, picked MacIain of Glencoe and one of my MacConnochie Campbell family as the two leaders of the force. In the end they didn't go, but it shows the respect in which the then MacIain was held. Stair sent orders to the army at Fort William. A company of soldiers had been sent to Glencoe to be billeted on the MacIains because of the Glencoe people's failure to pay the 'Cess Tax' which I believe was to raise money for William's European wars. So a company was forcefully billeted on them whom they were obliged to feed and that company was of the Earl of Argyll's regiment - a government regiment raised in a show of loyalty to William who had rescued Argyll's fortunes after his father the 9th Earl had been beheaded by Catholic James II when the Earl had been part of Monmouth's rebellion - an attempt to restore a protestant monarchy in 1685. The regiment was raised by Argyll but in no way under his control. It was entirely under government control. Commanding the company was Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, a man too old for a soldier and an alcoholic who had been forced to join the army due to the MacIains having burnt all his tenant's houses and driven off their cattle in Glenlyon on their way home from the battle of Killiekrankie some years earlier. But Robert of Glenlyon was kin to some of the Glencoe people by marriage and the past was past. Then on a cold February night a runner arrived from Fort William and woke Glenlyon with Stair's orders to massacre all the MacIains before dawn - orders which virtually threatened him with the firing squad if he did not obey. If I remember rightly, thirty five of the Glencoe people were killed, some brutally as happens - women and children among them. But the great majority escaped although there is no account of the casualties which may have occurred in crossing the snowbound passes. Certainly many fled onto Campbell lands (my own ancestor's) in Glen Etive where they had MacDonald cousins at Dalness and were welcomed, warmed and fed. The army reinforcements which the orders to Glenlyon stated would arrive failed to do so which no doubt helped the number who got off in the snow and darkness. This may have been intentional so as to focus the blame on Glenlyon. The whole incident was a horrible one and was naturally seized upon by the Jacobite anti-Willain faction and blown up to tremendous propaganda advantage, from which the fall-out continues to this day. In Victorian times interest was revived by historical novelists and artists, but by then the facts had been forgotten or overlaid and it got translated from a government action - which it clearly was in no uncertain terms - to a clan fight in which - because of Argyll's regiment happening to be involved and with Glenlyon in command, the ancient Donald-Campbell rivalry was remembered. There are still individuals who can get quite choleric about it in 'clan' terms to this day. One has to question their sense of balance. As with religious issues, it seems as though there is nothing so forceful as determined refusal to learn the facts (or open one's mind to them) to incite an insecure person to bigotry. The main charge against the "the Campbells" (which lumping of a large and diverse people into one ball of dough shows a certain shallowness to start with) was that they had broken "the sacred Highland Trust of Hospitality". This of course is very much undermined by the fact that they were not invited into the MacIain houses but forcefully billeted upon them for their failure to pay the Cess Tax. Another issue is that in calling the government troops "the Campbells" the writers fail to notice that only 13 of the company were of Campbell names while 6 were of Clan Donald names - plus others and quite a few Lowlanders whose religious enthusiasm seems to have been accountable for the worst of the attrocities. I write that from the perspective of myself being a Christian. On the issue of Highland Hospitality what is conveniently forgotten are the tales of Highland feasts at which the carrying in of a particular dish was the sign for the locals to stab each of their neighbours - or the fact, for example, of how less than 50 years before 'Glencoe', in 1645, the incident in which Alastair MacColla and his Clan Donald forces had herded women and children into a barn near Bragleenmore in Argyll and burned them alive. The Highlands in the politico-religious wars of the 17th century were no place for the squeamish. Anyone whose religious concepts draws them towards a fiercely judgemental attitude at times should read the history of Scotland in the 17th century when so many utopian concepts of bringing the power of God into government were attempted on the basis of policy rather than personal faith. One tends to thank God that one didn't live then, and too easily take part in the attrocities. I have not seen and cannot yet see any "Web Sites" so I don't know what is 'out there' on the 'Net about Glencoe. But if anyone finds people calling Glencoe a 'clan' massacre rather than a 'government massacre', do not blame the confusion on the Web Site writers. The legend of Gencoe is miles better known than the facts. My good cousin Forrest MacDonald who is editor of the Southern California Clan Donald newsletter will back me up in that statement. I may have unintentionally offended a very good person by saying that anyone who wrote that Glencoe was a 'clan' event had their heads full of bunny poop - (a polite version of what a sergeant told me when I was a private in the Argylls) when they may have had their web site dressed up with just that information. If so I apologise because I have not seen their web site. Vehemence or aceptance of legend as fact tends to incite vehemence in me I suppose, not always a good thing. The best book on the subject (by an academic historian rather than by a romanticist or clan polemicist) is a massive tome by Paul Hopkins, a lecturer in history at Cambridge University - neither Campbell nor MacDonald - titled "Glencoe and the Highland War". The book also exonorates Breadalbane for any blame in the massacre and points out his efforts to mediate before it came to such a pass. The Earl of Argyll was in London and had just recently sold the overlordship of Glencoe (to Breadalbane I believe?). I believe the book was published in the late 1980s and should be avaiable on inter-library loan in Canada and the U.S., but it is an academic book and requires work. Any corrections are always welcome. On-going research can often shift the emphasis of interpretation and nothing in print about historical events is necessarily forever accurate. It is just the best attempt at the moment. Diarmid A. Campbell
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