Legend cattleman, outlaw, clansman, Jacobite, latter-day Robin Hood, Rob Roy was many things
to many people, but I'm going to break him down into one man with three lives and what made him
change from one to the next. If you're interested in the people, places and events in Scottish
history, then hit the subscribe button at the bottom right hand side of the screen anytime, and
click the notification bell to make sure they tell you when I bring out new videos. In the meantime,
let me tell you a story. Now Rob Roy was the younger son of a Duine Uassal of Clan MacGregor.
He was born at the head of this loch. Glengyle is at the western end of Loch Katrine. You could treat
yourself to a boat trip from Trossachs pier here to Stronachlacher, then walk to the top of the loch.
Three miles to the west is Loch Lomond, seven miles to the south is Ben Lomond. Ben Lomond is the first
Monroe that you come to in the Highlands. Now for foreigners, our mountains have been classified, so that all
those above 3000 feet are called Monroes, the point is that this is border country between Highlands
and Lowlands. Here they spoke Gaelic. 10 or so miles that way they spoke English. These were
a martial people who carried weapons to protect themselves. They were farmers who carried scythes
and lawyers who carried pens. The military in the state was their protection. Now it'd be a gross
oversimplification to say that down there there was arable land, and up here was cattle country,
so let's just say that up here there was cattle country and down there there was arable land,
but they had some cattle as well and no weapons, easy pickings. So let me show you Rob Roy country.
Loch Lomond, the MacGregor Clan were proscribed, banned, persona non grata. Now I'm going to make
a video about that, and there'll be a link at the end as always, but if I was going to be proscribed
anywhere, I think this would be the place. Anyway, let's focus on Rob Roy's first role as a cattleman.
Highlanders reared Highland cattle, Lowlanders ate beef. Now obviously they
couldn't come up, put a cow on the roof rack of a camper van, then drive back down south,
not with Covid restrictions, so you need men like Rob Roy; cattlemen.
Perfectly positioned on that border, he spoke English and Gaelic, he could use a sword
on this side of the Highland line and he could use a pen on that side of the Highland line. He
reared cattle and drove them south to market each year, but more than that, he'd collect other folks
cattle and drive them with his own. Traders in the south would commission them each year to deliver
a certain number of head of cattle. He'd source them up in the Highlands and then he'd take them south
receive payment and duly pay the Highlanders whose cattle he'd sold. He was like a cowboy clansman, yeee haaaa!
He was a businessman and it seemed a successful one at that, but he was still a MacGregor.
Sometimes Lowland cattle went missing, so Rob Roy offered a service to protect the Lowland farmers
from cattle theft. They paid him rent and he made sure that their cattle weren't stolen.
Now the Gaelic word for rent is 'mal' and the Gaelic word for black is 'dhu' black rent mal dhu or
as the English speakers called it black mail. Here are your cattle, he traded cattle, he protected cattle
he stole cattle, but to Highlanders lifting cattle wasn't thieving, it wasn't like stealing sheep
the point is as he carried out rôle number one, business was booming and life was good,
until it wasn't.
Rob's business was under strain throughout 1711. He took orders and payments for much
larger numbers of beasts than normal, he even took orders right up until April 1712, but that
spring time there was no sign of cattle, not one single cow and in spite of bold words, Rob
didn't seem to have the money to repay his creditors. Now this wasn't the first time
that somebody had got into financial difficulties, or even bankrupt and some arrangement would be made
they could continue if not quite in good standing then, at least walking with a slight stoop,
neither was it the first time that cattle had gone missing in the hands of a MacGregor,
but this time was different. You see, in the winter of 1711, before the outside world
realised, the crisis that spring would bring Rob Roy had transferred his assets into the names
of friends and relatives without registering the transfer in Edinburgh, that would raise suspicions!
He'd taken cash and issued bonds which had been transferred on to others, leaving them
with the liabilities. No this wasn't like other collapses for two very important reasons; the
first reason was that Rob Roy hadn't come south and lifted Lowland cattle at the end of a sword,
it was far worse than that, he'd plundered Lowland bank accounts with a Highland pen.
Secondly, the victims weren't ordinary folk who could suffer all sorts of losses and the world
would keep turning, the victims included the Duke of Montrose, a politically powerful noble
who owned lands south of Loch Lomond, Dunbartonshire, Stirlingshire and
townhouses in Glasgow and London. This was a man who'd been raised to the level of a Duke
as a reward for his parliamentary support for the Act of Union in 1707.
I thought you'd say that!! Rob might have expected to negotiate one of those reductions in debt in
lieu of settlement, you know the ones they advertised on the telly, and then he would have gone back to trading,
but the Duke of Montrose made it his business to humiliate himself by being outsmarted by Rob
time and again making a famous hero out of Rob and an infamous buffoon out of himself.
Other political opinions are available your social standing will go down as well as up.
Now there were three men of great position and power around at the time;
the Duke of Montrose was to the south at Loch Lomond, to the north and the west where the Campbells of
Glen Lyon and the Campbell, Duke of Argyll, and to the north and the east was the Duke of Athol.
Now each was king in his own clan lands and Rob played one political rival off against the other,
thus escaping justice from any. Rob was now firmly established in his second career, Rob Roy
the outlaw. Now there are stories of his capers, too numerous to mention, but I can recommend
the book 'The Hunt for Rob Roy', there's a link in the description below, obviously. Now my favourite
story is when he escapes from imprisonment under the Duke of Athol only to find that the Duke of
Montrose has sent troops to take possession of Rob's own lands, so Rob went all the way south
to Montrose's Buchannan Castle and he stole 30 of the Duke's best cattle from under his nose! Oh the
indignity! Troops were sent out to chase him and they followed him back up here to his home country
and commandeered houses for the night, leaving Rob Roy and his men out in the hills, but the next day
they found to their disappointment, that Rob had returned back to the unprotected Buchannan Castle
and emptied 16 bolls of wheat from the Duke's grain store, but he did leave a receipt for the
grain as payment for the rents that Rob had lost while the Duke took his lands. Of course
the tenants on his land continued paying rent to Rob Roy, whilst pleading poverty to the Duke,
but Rob Roy was still an outlaw, so when Queen Anne died in 1714 to be replaced
by the Hanoverian George the First, Rob Roy's third role was almost inevitable.
Rob Roy, the Jacobite. Now if there was an uprising and you were an outlaw, you certainly wouldn't take
the Government side. Now don't get me wrong, Rob Roy is recorded as a youth as being at the Jacobite
side at the Battle of Killiecrankie in the first Jacobite uprising. Incidentally I've got a really
popular video about that folks, really enjoy it, and surprise surprise, I'll leave a link at the end,
but now Rob took a prominent role in the Jacobite agitation of 1715 that ended
at the Battle of Sheriffmuir, although he didn't quite make it to the battle.
He was at the battle of Glenshiel during the Jacobite rise in 1719, that doesn't really
get talked about, but if you ever pass Eilean Donan Castle you'll see that it's always swamped by
tourists. It's a stunningly mystical castle in that beautiful setting at the junction of Loch Duich, Loch
Long and Loch Alsh, but the thing is that the current castle wasn't built until the 1920s.
You see when Jacobites took control of it along with Spanish troops in 1719, the British Navy came up
Loch Alsh and bombarded them. After the Jacobite loss at the Battle of Glen Shiel that followed
and to prevent the castle and supplies falling into British Government hands the job
of blowing up the gunpowder, stores and the castle with it was given you've guessed it to Rob Roy.
The life of Rob Roy was far too eventful to cover in a short video.
As I say, if you want more detail you can read 'The Hunt for Rob Roy' the link's there. Eventually
he threw off the title of outlaw and settled here at Balquidder just over the hill from his
birthplace where we started, but he was still no stranger to disputes and his quarrelling continued
to the end. At the age of 63, Rob Roy fought a duel with a young Stuart of Appin man.
Now there are various stories about the cause and nature of this duel, but one tells that after much
drink they teased each other about whether the Stuart of Appin's father was worse for his poor
performance at the Battle Sheriffmuir or Rob Roy was worse for not making it there at all.
Things got heated and it ended in a duel the next day. They say it was the first of more than
20 duels that Rob Roy fought that he ever lost. Now he didn't die in that duel, Highland duels
were to the first cut, but he did suffer a cut and gradually as the days went on infection took over.
He probably died of septicaemia in his bed on the 28th of December 1734. He was buried here
in the kirkyard at Balquhidder as they played Maccrimmon's lament. Now if you don't know the
story in Maccrimmon's lament let me know, I'll maybe make a video about that. I'm certainly going to
make a video about why the MacGregors were outlawed. That should appear down there, until then why not
find out about the Battle of Killiecrankie, that'll be there and if you're ever passing Balquhidder,
why not come and pay your respects to Scotland's most famous Jacobite cattleman and outlaw.
In the meantime, tha mi an dochas bum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.