Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/390

 The Calendar of Scottish Crime. gregors, Argyle united his forces with those of the government for their apprehension. The chief — Macgregor of Glenstrae — was taken by the Laird of Ardkinlas, but escaped, whereupon Argyle invited Glenstrae to come and treat with him, under solemn promise be allowed doubting, that, came toif go they to free. the failed meeting, Glenstrae to agree, andheyielding nothing should

to Argyle's perfidious advice, agreed to ac cept an escort to be provided by the earl to conduct him out of the kingdom, Argyle undertaking to obtain the king's pardon for the slaughter of Glenfruin. It was a shame ful trap. Argyle and Macgregor travelled together to Edinburgh, whence an escort was sent with the outlaw to Berwick, to place him on English ground. Thus the letter of part of Argyle's promise was kept. But the es cort had instructions to rearrest him at once. He was brought back to Edinburgh, tried with four of his clansmen, and all five were hanged. With them were hanged, without trial, seven other Macgregors, "young men, and reputed honest for their own parts," ' who had given themselves as hostages. Twelve Macgregors had immediately pre ceded their chieftain on the gibbet, and whole sale hangings of the broken clansmen went on for years afterwards — nine of them on March 2, 1611, ten on July 28, 1612, six on June 22, 1613, and so on. However hateful we must deem the per fidy which brought these poor hillmen to their doom, and however repugnant such wholesale hangings must be to modern ideas of judicial measures, it has to be confessed that it is difficult to see how the social ulcer of the highlands could have been dealt with by anything short of actual cautery. The tradition of clan vengeance was too deeply rooted — the practices of robbery and black mail too essential to existence — to yield to anything less than force. A typical instance of what was common in almost every glen may 1 Caldenvood's be found MS., as late quoted as by1623 Pitcairn. in the trial of

359

nine Buchanans for the slaughter of the son of the Chief of the Macfarlanes. The pris oners admitted the slaughter, but pleaded that it was justifiable because of what had happened not long before. William Buch anan, it. was stated in the defense, having in curred the vengeance of the Macfarlanes by informing against certain of that clan and exerting himself to recover stolen goods and cattle from them, met with a horrible fate at their hands. Having gone hunting one morn ing in the Lennox alone, with four hounds, he was waylaid and seized by half a score of Macfarlanes, who bound him to a tree at eight o'clock in the morning, and every hour thereafter till six in the evening they inflicted three wounds with a dagger, " in such pairtis of his body as war nocht to bring present daithe." Then they cut his throat, tore out his tongue, and disembowelled him; killed the four dogs, put the t'ongue of one of them in their victim's mouth and its entrails in his body, and decamped, leaving the corpse stark naked. It is fair to the Macfarlanes to say that they met this allegation with a supplica tion to the Privy Council, in which they pro tested that, although they could not " extén uât the slauchter " of Buchanan, " who, to our regrait, was mischeantlie incscliantcmcnf and vnworthilie slayne," yet the circumstances of his death had been exaggerated " past the boundis of modestie" by his kinsmen, "after suche a detestable manner as might mak we, who ar innocent, to seame odious." Prob ably there was not much to choose between the two parties to this savage feud : at all events, nobody seems to have been hanged on either side. We are familiar, even in our own enlight ened age, with the strife engendered by ques tions of land tenure. The hatred of the "land-grabber" was as intense in Scotland of the seventeenth century as it is in Ireland at the present day, and identical methods of ter rorising him have been adopted in both coun tries. A typical case, on a large scale, was afforded by certain doings at Howpasley