Early in the morning of 13 February 1692, in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution
and the Jacobite uprising of 1689 led by John Graham of Claverhouse, a massacre took place
in Glen Coe, in the Highlands of Scotland.
This incident is referred to as the Massacre of Glencoe, or in Scottish Gaelic Mort Ghlinne
Comhann.
The massacre began simultaneously in three settlements along the glen—Invercoe, Inverrigan,
and Achnacon—although the killing took place all over the glen as fleeing MacDonalds were
pursued.
Thirty-eight MacDonalds from the Clan MacDonald of Glencoe were killed by the guests who had
accepted their hospitality, on the grounds that the MacDonalds had not been prompt in
pledging allegiance to the new monarchs, William and Mary.
Another forty women and children died of exposure after their homes were burned.
Background In 1688, William, Prince of Orange accepted
an invitation to take the throne of England, glad to enlist English help in his wars with
France.
The Scottish Parliament was more cautious and requested letters from him and James VII.
James's response displeased the Scots, and persuaded them to accept William as their
King.
In response, John Graham, 1st Viscount of Dundee, led a force of Scottish Highlanders
in Jacobite uprisings in an attempt to return the throne to James.
Viscount 'Bonnie' Dundee was killed at the Battle of Killiecrankie, and the rising in
Scotland resulted in an inconclusive defeat by the Scottish Cameronian forces at the Battle
of Dunkeld.
On their way home from this battle the MacIains of Glencoe, together with their Glengarry
cousins, looted the lands of Robert Campbell of Glenlyon and stole his livestock, increasing
his problems with gambling debts and forcing him to take an army commission to provide
for his family.
In his subsequent appeal for compensation, Campbell showed he clearly believed the Glengarry
men to be the more culpable, making no mention of Glencoe.
The Scottish Jacobites were heavily defeated at the Haughs of Cromdale on 1 May 1690, and
James was defeated on 1 July 1690 at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland.
Oath of allegiance to William On 27 August 1691, William offered all Highland
clans a pardon for their part in the Jacobite Uprising, as long as they took an oath of
allegiance before 1 January 1692 in front of a magistrate.
He also threatened them with reprisals if they did not sign.
The Highland chiefs sent word to James, now in exile in France, asking for his permission
to take the oath.
James dithered over his decision, convinced that he was close to returning to Britain
to reclaim his throne.
When it became apparent that this was not going to happen before the deadline, James
sent orders back to Scotland authorising the chiefs to take the oath.
This message reached its recipients in mid-December, in difficult winter conditions, only a few
weeks before the deadline.
A few managed to comply promptly but others did not, including Alastair Maclain, 12th
Chief of Glencoe, who waited until the last day before setting out to take the oath.
On 31 December 1691 MacIain travelled to Fort William to ask the governor, Colonel Hill,
to administer the required oath, but Hill demurred on the grounds that he was not authorised
to receive it.
He instructed MacIain to proceed quickly to Inveraray to make his oath before Sir Colin
Campbell, sheriff of Argyll.
Hill gave Maclain a letter of protection and a letter to Sir Colin asking that he receive
Maclain's oath since Maclain had come to him within the allotted time.
Hill also reassured MacIain that no action would be taken against him without him having
the opportunity to make his case before the King or the King's privy council.
It took Maclain three days to reach Inveraray, partly due to winter weather, partly due to
his being detained for a day at Barcaldine Castle by the 1st company of the Earl of Argyll's
Regiment of Foot, at the command of Captain Drummond, as a ruse to delay him.
On arrival at Inveraray, he then had to wait three days for the arrival of Sir Colin, who
was spending the New Year with his family across the waters of Loch Fyne.
Upon his return, Sir Colin reluctantly accepted Maclain's oath.
Maclain had satisfied the spirit of the oath, and was confident there would be no action
against him or his people.
However, he reckoned without the Secretary of State over Scotland and Lord Advocate,
John Dalrymple, Master of Stair.
Dalrymple was a Lowlander who disliked the Highlanders and thought their way of life
was a hindrance to Scotland, which he thought would be better served in union with England.
According to Macaulay, John Campbell, 1st Earl of Breadalbane and Holland, a senior
member of the Campbell clan, saw an opportunity for revenge in the fact that Maclain had been
late in taking the oath of allegiance.
While in London, Breadalbane along with his cousin Archibald Campbell, 10th Earl of Argyll,
found a willing accomplice in the form of the Master of Stair.
The Master of Stair was disappointed in the fact that the Jacobite clan leaders had taken
the oath of allegiance.
He had been hoping that they would have declined, so as to give him the opportunity to execute
a plan which he had already drawn up in December to break the clan system.
Maclain’s certificate was deemed to be irregular and the Master of Stair persuaded King William
in London to sign an order to "extirpate" the MacDonalds of Glencoe.
Stair persuaded King William that the order was designed to root out a den of thieves
in the Valley of Glencoe.
The order was then passed on to Sir Thomas Livingstone, commander of the forces in Scotland.
The massacre In late January or early February 1692 the
first and second companies of the Earl of Argyll's Regiment of Foot, which consisted
of approximately 120 men under the command of Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, were
billeted on the MacDonalds in Glencoe, who received them in the hospitable tradition
of the Highlands.
Most of the regiment was recruited from the Argyll estates but only a minority actually
bore the Campbell name.
Others, including many of the officers, came from the Lowlands.
Captain Campbell was related by marriage to old MacIain himself and so it was natural
that he should be billeted at the Chief's own house.
Each morning for about two weeks, Captain Campbell visited the home of Alexander MacDonald,
MacIain's youngest son, who was married to Campbell's niece, the sister of Rob Roy MacGregor.
At this stage, it is not clear that Campbell knew the nature of their mission — ostensibly
they were there to collect the Cess tax, instituted by the Scots Parliament in 1690.
The planning was meticulous enough for them to be able to produce legitimate orders to
this effect from Colonel Hill — the man who had tried to help MacIain complete his
oath in the first place — thus dispelling any suspicions the MacDonalds may have had.
However, it was Colonel Hill who issued the orders to begin the massacre two weeks later.
On 12 February 1692, Captain Drummond arrived.
Due to his role in ensuring MacIain was late in giving his oath, Drummond would not have
been welcomed.
As the captain of the 1st company of the regiment, the Grenadiers, he was the ranking officer,
yet did not take command.
Drummond was bearing instructions for Robert Campbell, from his superior officer, Major
Duncanson.
He spent the evening playing cards with his unsuspecting victims and upon retiring, wished
them goodnight and accepted an invitation to dine with MacIain, the chief, the following
day.
Alasdair MacIain was killed while trying to rise from his bed by Lt Lindsay and Ensign
Lundie but his sons escaped, as initially did his wife.
In all, 38 men were murdered either in their homes or as they tried to flee the glen.
Another 40 women and children died of exposure after their homes were burned.
The first clansman to be killed was Duncan Rankin.
He was shot down as he tried to escape by crossing the River Coe near the chief's house.
Elsewhere, various members of the two companies found ways of warning their hosts.
Two lieutenants, Lt Francis Farquhar and Lt Gilbert Kennedy even broke their swords rather
than carry out their orders.
They were arrested and imprisoned, but were exonerated, released and later gave evidence
for the prosecution against their superior officers.
In addition to the soldiers who were actually in Glencoe that night, two other detachments,
each of four hundred men were, according to the plan, to have converged on the escape
routes.
Both were late in taking up their positions.
It is possible that a snowstorm made arrival on-time quite difficult—especially for those
approaching over the Devil's Staircase from Kinlochleven; it is equally possible that
they simply did not want to play any part in what they knew to be a heinous crime.
Inquiry Under Scots law there was a special category
of murder, known as "murder under trust", which was considered to be even more heinous
than ordinary murder.
The Glencoe massacre was a clear example of such, and the results of the inquiry into
it draws parallels with the Nuremberg Trials:
Though the command of superior officers be very absolute, yet no command against the
laws of nature is binding; so that a soldier, retaining his commission, ought to refuse
to execute any barbarity, as if a soldier should be commanded to shoot a man passing
by inoffensively, upon the street, no such command would exempt him from the punishment
of murder.
The challenge to the inquiry which had been established, was to apportion blame on those
responsible for the massacre, and yet the orders which led to it were signed by the
King himself, who could not be seen to be responsible.
The scandal was further enhanced when the leading Scottish jurist Sir John Lauder, Lord
Fountainhall was, in 1692, offered the post of Lord Advocate but declined it because the
condition was attached that he should not prosecute the persons implicated in the Glencoe
Massacre.
Sir George Mackenzie, who had been Lord Advocate under King Charles II, also refused to concur
in this partial application of the penal laws but, unlike Fountainhall, his refusal led
to his temporary disgrace.
The conclusion of the commission was to exonerate the King and to place the blame for the massacre
upon Secretary Dalrymple.
The Scottish Parliament, after reviewing the commission report, declared the execution
of the MacDonald men to have been murder and delegated the "committee for the security
of the kingdom" to prepare an address to the King which included recommendations for the
punishment of the perpetrators of the plot and compensation to be paid to the surviving
MacDonalds.
As far as is known, these recommendations were never acted upon except for the imprisonment
of John Campbell Earl of Breadalbane for a few days in Edinburgh Castle on a charge of
high treason because he had been involved in secret talks with the Jacobite chiefs.
Aftermath
The Glencoe massacre became a propaganda piece for Jacobite sympathies, which were to come
to a head in the next generation in the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745.
In the Victorian era interest was revived and the massacre was romanticised in art and
literature, such as Sir Walter Scott's "The Highland Widow".
More recently Glencoe was the subject of Eric Linklater's 1957 story "The Masks of Purpose",
and David Clement-Davies's "Fire Bringer", in which the region is called the "Valley
Of Weeping".
The massacre is also the subject of Susan Fletcher's novel Corrag.
Due to the involvement of Argyll's regiment under Glenlyon's command, the massacre was
regarded by many not as a government action, but as a consequence of the ancient MacDonald–Campbell
rivalry.
Memory of this massacre has been kept alive by continued ill feeling between MacDonalds
and Campbells.
Since the late 20th century the Clachaig Inn, a hotel and pub in Glencoe popular with climbers,
has had a sign on its door saying "No Hawkers or Campbells" although it has been said that
this is probably more for the amusement of tourists than from any lasting sense of revenge.
In 1883 Macdonald of Aberdeen sculpted the Upper Carnoch memorial to the massacre, a
tapering Celtic cross on a cairn which stands at the eastern end of Glencoe village, which
was formerly known as Carnoch.
Each year, on 13 February, the Clan Donald Society of Edinburgh arranges an annual wreath
laying ceremony at the memorial to the Massacre of Glencoe.
Clansmen from Clan Donald, from across the world, attend the ceremony, along with local
people.
The ceremony originated in 1930 when the late Miss Mary Rankin, Taigh a’phuirt, Glencoe,
decided that a wreath should be laid annually on the monument.
Miss Rankin, who supplied the wreath up to the time of her death in 1944, commissioned
the late Mr. Angus MacDonald to lay it on her behalf.
On Mr. MacDonald’s death in 1936, his second son Robert took over the duty, the wreath
being supplied after Miss Rankin's death by Robert’s sister, Miss Annie MacDonald.
General Stewart of Garth, in a footnote, relates that Prince Charles Edward Stuart was anxious
to save the house and property of Lord Stair at Kirkliston during the ’45 Rising.
He proposed to march the Glencoe men some distance from the scene lest they take revenge
on the part played by his grandfather when ordered by William III to extirpate their
clan.
But, when the proposal was communicated to the Glencoe men they declared that, if that
were the case, they must return home.
If they were considered so dishonourable as to take revenge on an innocent man, they were
not fit to remain with honourable men, nor to support an honourable cause.
It was not without much explanation, and great persuasion, that they were prevented from
marching away the following morning.
For several decades, the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement have held a commemoration
on the Sunday closest to the anniversary which is often attended by members of other groups
including Siol nan Gaidheal, Na Fir Dileas etc.
In literature The T.S.
Eliot poem "Rannoch, by Glencoe" refers to the event, as does the modern ballad by Jim
MacLean with the refrain: "Cruel is the snow that sweeps Glencoe and covers the graves
o' Donald" See also
List of massacres in the United Kingdom Betrayal of Clannabuidhe, a similar incident
in Ireland References
External links Glencoe Massacre on In Our Time at the BBC.
History – Massacre of Glencoe 1692—BBC: brief account of the massacre
Macaulay's History of England, chapter XVIII Includes a well written and moderately detailed
account of the massacre in its political context, with footnotes to original source documents.
Glen Coe Massacre Detailed account of the events leading up to the massacre and the
massacre itself.
The Massacre of Glencoe Very detailed account of the plot and massacre.
Medieval Scottish Calendar and Holidays Discussion of the need for care in discussing historical
dates as they apply in Scotland, due to change of New Year in 1600 and general adoption of
Gregorian Calendar.
The Vale of Glencoe Radio episode from the series Quiet, Please.
Poor sound quality, but the radio script may be found below.
The Vale of Glencoe Radio Script OTR Plot Spot—plot summaries, scripts and reviews
of Old Time Radio shows, including "The Vale of Glencoe", above.