ALMOST OVERNIGHT THE entire situation in Scotland was changed. the uneasy balance which had prevailed in the political sphere was gone. The government and its supporters were suddenly no longer afraid of the Jacobite threat – and all the fence-sitters, the wait-and-see-brigade knew which side to take.
There was, however, no reign of terror, no major campaign of reprisals, by the authorities. They were not powerful enough for that, yet. The hatred and discontent with the Union was as strong as ever, and the government feared to fan the flames by making actual martyrs of the leading Jacobites. They knew that the Stewart cause had received a severe blow, but its latent support was still very potent in the country, especially in the north and in the Highlands. There was little or nothing that they could do about the Highlands, secure behind their great barriers of mountains.
So the government contented itself with making gestures against a few, and not too harsh gestures at that. A number of Lowland lords, who could be reached, were arrested and sent to London to be confined in the Tower – including the Duke of Gordon, the Marquis of Huntly, half-a-dozen earls and a dozen lords. However, they were all released fairly soon, either on bail or for lack of evidence. A group of Stirlingshire lairds who had ridden with their followers towards Edinburgh to be ready to aid King James and his French force, were tried in the Scottish capital for high treason. Their trial failed, partly because of deficiencies in the Scots law of treason – which parliament in London promptly set about amending – and partly for lack of anyone willing to witness against them. A not-proven verdict was returned by the jury – which meant that they could not be proved guilty even though no-one believed them innocent.
Other prominent Jacobites were confined for the time being in fortresses up and down the land. As for Rob Roy and his MacGregors, they could hardly be molested so long as they remained in their mountain fastnesses – as with the other clansmen. It would have required a large-scale military campaign to penetrate and subdue even the nearer Highlands – and the government was in no position to mount any such thing. Therefore against him, as against any other Highland chiefs to be brought to book, cunning had to be employed. In most cases it was quite impossible to lure the chiefs out of their remote glens, under any pretext. But Rob’s case, as has been pointed out, was different, because of his business needs.
It was a little while before any move was made, no doubt to lull Rob into the feeling that he was reasonably safe, and that there was no actual evidence to link him with the pathetic events of May 23rd, 1708. For himself, Rob was going very cautiously about his affairs, cattle being as much in demand as ever. When the summons came, it arrived in an unexpected form. It was merely a polite request from the Earl of Leven, commander of the government forces, that if Rob would make it convenient, he would be glad if he would come and see him in Edinburgh the following week. Nothing from the civil power, the Secretary of State or the Lord Advocate.
This put Rob in a quandary. It might well be a trap – but it might not. It might be only a warning, or even an offer of which he could take advantage. To refuse to go could mean that the government might take legal steps to outlaw him – as the MacGregors were still technically outlawed. This would greatly restrict his comings and goings on business, to say the least. And if the authorities had evidence to incriminate him, would they choose this peculiar way to proceeding against him? They might, of course and no doubt there was considerable argument one way and the other at Inversnaid on receipt of this summons. If Rob had one great weakness, however, it was his pride. He hated to appear to be afraid, not to meet a challenge. He declared that he would probably stand to lose more by refusing than by going. He was not going to risk other than himself, however. With only one gillie, he set out for Edinburgh.
It must have been with no little trepidation that Rob MacGregor, in due course, presented himself at the frowning gates of the great Castle of Edinburgh, Leven’s headquarters, on its towering rock above the capital – and it would have been strange if his heart had not sunk a little within him when the massive doors clanged shut behind him, the same doors that had held his father prisoner for over two years. However, he kept his head high, surrendered his sword with dignity, and was presently escorted into the presence of the Commander-in-Chief himself.
The Earl of Leven, great-grandson of the famous General Leslie of the Civil War, was a professional soldier. He did not beat about the bush when he had Rob secure before him. No doubt the cunning part of the scheme had not been of his devising. A middle-aged straightforward man, he accused Robert Campbell of Inversnaid of giving aid and comfort to the Queen’s enemies recently. Could he deny it?
Rob was a master of words, in English as in Gaelic, and was proceeding to make it clear that he had done nothing which could implicate him in the events of May 23rd, when Leven cut him short. That was not what he was being asked about, at the moment. Had he not had dealings earlier than that, with two French officers, unlawfully landed in this realm of Scotland, with a view to subverting the queen’s loyal subjects?
Rob did not answer for a moment or two, his mind racing. It was the affair of the French couriers mistakenly landed in Argyll’s territory. He had believed that he had got away with that successfully. There might have been local rumours amongst the Campbells afterwards that Rob Roy MacGregor had been involved – for his notable red hair and peculiar physique were almost as famous as his reputation – but he did not believe that there was any actual evidence, proof of his participation in the business. He took the bold line.
‘What two French officers, my lord? Where? And when? Can you name any two Frenchmen whom I am supposed to have met? Such Frenchmen as have approached our shores of late have taken care not to land, I do believe!’
Leven himself was at the disadvantage of not knowing the officers’ names. But he had a card to play. He thought that Rob, if he set himself to search his mind, would probably be able to recollect the two Frenchmen and their names. To give him time and opportunity to do so he would provide him with accommodation in the castle overnight. And in the morning, an acquaintance of his would be brought in, who might assist Rob’s memory – one MacDonald of Dalness.
While Rob, appalled, was considering the implications of this piece of news, he was marched off to a cell.
Rob had no illusions as to the seriousness of his position now. Dalness was a small property in the high hills just south of Glen Coe, and its laird was a connection of MacIan of Glencoe with whom, of course, the French couriers had been left, to be set on their further journey north to Skye. That a MacDonald should have turned traitor and informer was a bitter and totally unexpected blow. But he could, undoubtedly, witness that he had seen Rob Roy in the company of the Frenchmen – though surely that would damage the name of MacIan, his own chief? What lay behind this, Rob could not think. Could it be because he himself was half a Campbell? Using a Campbell name? That MacDonald of Dalness, like the other Glencoe MacDonalds, was so thirsting for vengeance on the whole race of Campbell over the massacre, that he had betrayed Rob out of blind hatred? It seemed the only solution.
From his cell, after some urgent thinking, Rob besought his jailer that his servant might be brought to minister to him, as was a gentleman’s right. This presently was granted, and the gillie, one Alastair Roy MacGregor – not Macanleister on this occasion – was allowed in, although they were not left alone together. To the gillie Rob Roy gave lengthy and detailed instructions in the Gaelic – which, of course, the jailer could not understand – handed him a letter, also in Gaelic, and some money. Prisoners had to support themselves in captivity in those days, so this would not seem out of the ordinary. Then he dismissed him.
The letter was to an officer in the Town Guard, a Highlander as were many of that body, and known to Rob. Without stating that he was in prison, or even in the city, he requested this officer to do him a service by sending a sergeant and 12 men to a certain address at a certain hour that night, not long before the town gates were shut. There need be nothing more done, no entry of the house or any unpleasantness; just to have the party arrive outside at this time, wait for a little, and then march off. Such action would be much appreciated by Rob Roy MacGregor; it was to give a fright to a man who had done him an injury. A silver piece or two completed the matter, so that all concerned should have a drink at Rob Roy’s expense.
Rob was not a man whom any Highlander would wish to offend. The officer would not have to think twice about so innocent a request.
How Rob knew where MacDonald of Dalness was lodging is not reported. Probably he charged his gillie to find this out first, before approaching the officer. At any rate, Alastair Roy kept watch on the house in the Cowgate of Edinburgh that evening, and when MacDonald stepped out for a visit to a nearby alehouse the MacGregor slipped up to the door that he had left, knocked for the landlady, and after inquiring if Dalness lodged there, informed her that he was a friend of his, from his own country, and that he himself was getting out of town quickly. He said that she should advise MacDonald to do the same, for he had sure word that the Town Guard was coming for him, to arrest him in the queen’s name, at nine of the clock. If Dalness valued his life and freedom, he would not be in Edinburgh after the town gates shut at ten.
Rob banked on his knowledge of human nature. A man who could betray and inform on one of his own people, to the Lowlanders, would be sure to have a guilty conscience – and had quite possibly done other things which would make him dread arrest and questioning. Dalness, when he got back, gathered together his belongings and went to wait, standing back from a window of his lodging which looked up the Cowgate. When at nine o’clock precisely a strong picket of the guard, with lanterns, muskets and pikes, came marching into view down the street, he delayed no longer, but bolted by the back door into the maze of narrow wynds that led down to the South Back Canongate, making for the West Port and the long road home to Argyllshire.
The guard and their sergeant thereafter had a drink to Rob Roy’s health, and returned to their quarters. There was no summons to the governor’s room of the castle next morning for the prisoner, as promised. All day he waited. Towards the evening, Rob boldly sent a message to Lord Leven, requesting that the evidence against him be produced, for him to refute, or else that he be released forthwith after wrongful arrest. At the second time of demanding, he was conducted without comment to the castle gateway, denied any interview with Leven, given back his sword, and turned out into the night.
It was not long before he and Alastair Roy were hurrying out of the same West Port as Dalness had done the night before, heading in the same general direction, for home.
Legends innumerable have, of course, grown up around Rob Roy’s name. The above story is vouched for in contemporary correspondence, however. Less well authenticated is another adventure where treachery played an important part, at this difficult period immediately after the premature rising. The fact that no confirmatory documentary evidence has been left for some of these traditional exploits by no means implies that they did not really happen – for many of them are highly unlikely ever to have found their way into official records of any sort, and the people involved were not apt to write about them. James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, writing less than a century later, recounts this hearsay tale as true and certainly it matches well the circumstances and characters implicated.
John Campbell, 11th of Glenorchy and first Earl of Breadalbane, was a remarkable man, of great gifts, but something of a slippery customer. The sort of man who was worth watching if things went wrong and they were now going very wrong indeed for the Jacobites. Not a few of them looked towards him, on his vast north Perthshire estates, a little distrustfully. It will be remembered that it had been on his land, at Kinloch Rannoch, that the famous hunting-match had been held about 18 months before, and the Bond of Association for the rising signed. That bond, in the government’s hands, would be as good as a noose round many noble and chiefly throats. Men suddenly remembered it, and began to question where this incriminating document might be.
Word of where it was came to Rob Roy in most alarming fashion. He had excellent channels of information, in the Highlands as elsewhere, and he learned that all this time the bond had been retained in Breadalbane’s hands. Now, although he had not made any move to muster his own men for the ill-fated rising, he was being accused of Jacobite sympathies and passed over for suitable appointments in the rule of Scotland. He was therefore parting with the precious paper – sending it to the Privy Council, in fact, as the price of clearing himself of suspicion.
Rob thought fast. His own name was on that bond, and the names of many friends, men whom he had personally brought into the conspiracy. That parchment must somehow be kept from the authorities. On the other hand, Breadalbane was a very powerful figure in the area in which Rob lived and operated. Rob had adopted his name and put himself to some extent under his patronage. In his peculiar position, he badly needed a powerful man behind him, with Atholl now fallen by the wayside, and ill into the bargain, and Montrose, since the French business, acting exceedingly cool towards him. He did not want an open breach with Breadalbane just then.
Rob urgently, but secretly, set about obtaining vital information.
What he discovered was distressing. Breadalbane was indeed negotiating with the authorities, and was using as go-between his notorious clansman, Captain Campbell of Glenlyon; the same man who had been responsible for carrying out the orders for the Massacre of Glencoe – and of course Rob’s own mother’s brother. Glenlyon, being a government officer, was in an excellent position to carry messages and documents through the Highlands by military roads, to Edinburgh and the south. Through his agency, negotiations apparently had gone well for Breadalbane, and the price agreed was satisfactory. The bond itself was to be sent from Fort William, army headquarters for a wide area, in the sure care of the next strong military convoy going south.
It was a long and difficult journey, even by the so-called military roads, through the Highlands from Fort William to the beginning of the settled Lowlands – 150 miles of steep hillside paths, rushing torrents, high passes and lonely empty moorland. All army personnel travelled by well defined routes therein, keeping to Campbell territory as far as possible, even though this entailed long detours, avoiding known danger-spots, always moving in large parties, heavily armed. The military knew only too well that they were hated interlopers in a hostile land.
Tyndrum, a scattered hamlet, an alehouse and a small military outpost, lay under tall frowning mountains at the head of Strathfillan on the Argyll-Perthshire border, something over halfway on the journey. Whether any army convoy travelled south by way of the coast, by Ballachulish, Appin, to the Pass of Brander and Loch Awe or, as was less likely, along Loch Leven-side, through Glen Coe and over the desolate Moor of Rannoch, it must come this way, for at Tyndrum both routes met again. Moreover, there was no other spot for the night, for many miles on either side of it, where a sizeable party could put up with safety.
Early on a dull, wet and misty autumn morning, therefore, a group of Gregorach might have been observed – but only by the very keen-sighted – moving like wraiths in the heather and rocks of the steep hillside a couple of miles south-east of Tyndrum. The place was famous, even though most men had long forgotten why. The name might have reminded them; Dalrigh, the Field of the King. There was nothing there now; certainly nothing like a field – but then it was not an agricultural field that was referred to. It was a battlefield, rather – though even that was a misnomer, for there was no room here for any true battle. The Ambush of the King would have better described it. Here the great King Robert the Bruce had been ambushed and defeated by a comparatively small body of Highlanders, MacDougalls of Lorne, 400 years before. The king had barely escaped with his life, hero as he was, leaving behind him his cloak and its shoulder-clasp, torn from him by a clansman, and a treasured memento of the MacDougalls ever since – the Brooch of Lorne. What was good enough to bring the great Bruce to his knees, was good enough for Rob Roy MacGregor.
Here the slender muddy drove road twisted and turned through a cleft of the hills just above the deep ravine of the rushing Fillan Water. As at Loch Lubnaig-side in Strathyre, men here could ride only two abreast. There was no way out of this long, narrow valley but onwards or backwards except for nimble mountaineers. Innumerable small burns, too, cascaded down the steep braeside from the high ground above to join the river, scoring deep red weals. The road crossed the multitude of these by a succession of narrow and roughly-built wooden bridges.
On certain of these bridges Rob’s men had been busy, throughout the night. Now, in the dim light of this wet morning, they looked well enough; they would still carry a horse and rider. But a sudden jerk on a rope, attached to a kingpin beneath each, would bring them down in collapse into their respective gullies. Two MacGregors crouched beneath each bridge.
The rest of the band, about 30, were spread out amongst the outcropping rocks and heather clumps above the road, waiting, soaked to the skin, wrapped in their plaids, their horses hidden out of sight a mile away. Rob himself, with Gregor, was in a carefully selected spot near the far southern end of the defile.
The tired, cold and hungry men waited, silent and motionless. Their scouts had reported that 50 heavy cavalry horses had been tethered for the night outside the military post at Tyndrum. They thought now, enviously, of the dragoons lazing late this wet morning, snug in their blankets, or eating their breakfasts – and they told themselves grimly that he who laughed last, would laugh longest.
At length, when Rob had begun to worry about the mist and rain clearing, the listened-for signal of a curlew’s high-pitched trilling call, thrice repeated, came from the higher ground in the direction of Tyndrum. The soldiers were on their way.
Presently Rob could hear the sound of hooves. Every now and again the beat of these rang a little hollow. That was the beasts trotting across one or other of the little bridges. Then figures loomed out of the eddying white mist wreaths below, which rose from the river.
Even though the dragoons did not know the significance of the name Dalrigh, and what once had happened there, they were trained soldiers and used to taking due precautions in this sort of territory. First came an advance party of six troopers under a corporal, riding in single file but keeping close together, eyes busy on the track ahead and on the slopes above. The muddy patches of the road had all been swept over with pine branches however, to brush away footprints, and the Gregorach themselves crouched low, well hidden behind the rocks and outcrops.
The advance guard passed on, unmolested and unsuspicious. There was an interval, and then more hoofbeats and the jingle of harness. The mist was thinning. Round the bend nearest to Rob trotted two troopers. Then a brief gap, and a single horseman. This man was enveloped in a long black travelling-cloak, but where his scarlet cuff projected towards the reins, gold braid gleamed. Also his cocked hat was gold-decked. Close behind trotted a non-commissioned officer. The main body, not yet in view, could be heard fairly near.
Rob had only moments in which to make his decision. This man was obviously an officer – but was he the commander? The man who would be carrying the precious despatches? With a troop of 50, there might be more than one officer. This one looked young, and no badges of rank showed beneath the cloak. It was a risk. And yet …
Rob acted. He had chosen his own position with great care, at a spot where two of the steeply dropping tributary burns, little better than waterfalls, had dug their gullies quite close together, so that there were two little bridges spanning the track a bare 40 yards apart. As the second of the two troopers clattered across the second of the bridges, he raised his hand to one of the MacGregors who crouched under the timbers, watching. In a moment, just as the cloaked officer was riding up to it, the entire bridge disintegrated in front of him, the two kilted Gregorach darting and scrambling away in the gully, just in time to avoid the crash of the debris.
The officer’s horse reared violently in fright as Rob jumped to his feet, two cocked pistols in his hands. As he leaped down, he fired one above his head as a signal, and then tossed it away. It was a bare dozen yards to the road.
That pistol-shot set the entire defile in pandemonium. Bridges collapsed behind and in front of startled riders, and all along the hillside above them great rocks and boulders, already loosened and poised, came crashing down. Men shouted, horses reared up and bagpipes skirled – the last always a terrifying sound for southerners.
The bridge behind the officer had gone only a few seconds after the one in front, effectively isolating him and the corporal at his back, from the rest of the company. But that company itself was also in process of being split up into little groups, separated from each other by suddenly yawning gaps, chasms and spouting torrents – always, of course, with the almost sheer drop to the river itself. With the rocks and debris hurtling down around them, nothing could have been more effective at throwing both riders and horses into panic and confusion.
In a few wild leaps Rob Roy was down beside the startled officer, who was vainly trying to control his prancing, curveting steed and at the same time tug out a pistol from within the folds of his cloak. At neither had he been remotely successful when his beast’s bridle was grabbed, dragged round and down by a powerful and masterful arm, and a long-barrelled pistol thrust up within a foot or so of his face.
‘Halt – in the King’s name!’ Rob ordered.
The other could only gape, and gasp incoherently, in a mixture of astonishment, indignation and alarm, most of his energies being concerned with staying on his horse.
The corporal had started to spur forvvard to his superior’s aid, when the bridge at his back fell with a crash, and he had whirled round to stare. In two minds as to what to do now, after calming his own restive mount, he was making towards the officer again, drawing his sabre, when a fair-haired young giant of a man bounded down the slope and launched himself bodily through the air at him. Before his sword was fully out of its scabbard, Gregor’s arms were around him, pinioning him, and then wrenching him right off his beast’s back. Together the two men crashed to the road. Only a few seconds later the unfortunate corporal was rolling and bounding down the steep slope to the white-foaming Water of Fillan.
The two troopers who had crossed the bridge in front were now very fully occupied in trying to dodge a hail of rocks and stones coming down from the bank above them.
The young officer, after breathless shouts for help, recognised that he was not likely to obtain any at present. Also, that pistol barrel jabbing into his chest spoke eloquently. His cries faded away in gabbled protests that he was the queen’s messenger, demanding free passage in the queen’s name.
‘Free passage you shall have, sir,’ Rob assured him. ‘All I require from you is a certain paper belonging to me and my friends, which you wrongfully carry. A single sheet of parchment – stolen property whatever. Give it to me, and you and yours may go unharmed.’
‘No! No! Never!’ the unhappy officer cried.
But as he stared around him, he perceived no aid coming his way. ‘I a risk. And yet I do not surrender my despatches save with my life, fellow!’
‘With or without your life, it’s all the same to me, sir,’ the MacGregor assured him. ‘But a risk. And yet you are young to die for a piece of stolen paper!’
He observed how the other’s hand went up involuntarily to his breast. Rob acted swiftly. Tearing off the man’s cloak with a single savage jerk, a leather pouch was revealed to him, slung over the breast on a shoulder-belt. Another grab of Rob’s long arm wrenched it off, all but pulling its owner out of his saddle with it.
Gregor came running up laughing loudly with joyful excitement. He took over the pistol, and the charge of the unhappy officer. Rob whipped open the sealed pouch. There were some letters inside but larger than any other was a long package from which came the unmistakable crackle of stiff parchment. Its florid seal – the arms of Breadalbane – undone in a moment, Rob had only partially to unfold it to assure himself that this was what he had come for. Thrusting other letters back into the pouch, he handed this up to the protesting officer, bowing.
‘A thousand apologies for troubling you,’ he said courteously. ‘I wish you an excellent journey hereafter.’ Reaching up, he took the officer’s pistol out of the belt beneath the cloak, and tossed it away down the bank. ‘Good day to you, sir!’ he said.
Rob and Gregor together raised their voices - and they both had quite excellent lungs. ‘Gregalach! Gregalach!’ they yelled, in unison, the slogan of their clan. As a signal to break off the engagement it was better than any pistol-shot, which might be lost amongst other shooting. Not that any shooting was in fact going on as yet; the MacGregors had their orders on the subject, and their victims were all much too busy at the moment.
The entire incident had occupied considerably less time than it takes to tell. As suddenly as it had begun, it ended, with kilted men streaming away uphill at the double, many of them laughing heartily. Two pipers still blew lustily further up the bank, parading back and forth. A shot or two did ring out now, from dragoons who felt the need to bolster up their morale. But pistol-shooting at long range is never to be taken seriously. Soon all the MacGregors were up with the pipers, vague figures melting into the morning mists. Rob waved the precious parchment over his head, and gestured away towards the hidden garrons. A few moments later not a soul was to be seen above the gapped and stone-littered road. Many Jacobite loyalists would sleep more easily of a night from then on.