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SOURCE
Rob Roy MacGregor by W. H. Murray
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A Slice of Highland History
The early clan system held that land belonged to a clan and not to individuals. A clan chief might hold the land in name, but only in trust for the whole clan. Before the invasion of the Highlands by the English feudal system, people worked the land together, were free, and could speak with their chief as to a father.
However, for the Gregors, life was not always this simple.
Marriage of the Clan Gregor into the Clan Campbell generations before Rob Roy’s birth had brought a kind of virus into the family. In a quest for wealth and power, the Campbells acquired land and property ruthlessly. Their early techniques of murder and rape gave way to a more subtle form of power: corrupt control of the courts.
The Campbells set about to build an empire. Ousting the Clan Gregor was an extensive process, undertaken with more determination than honor. Exploiting the ambition of Dughall Ciar Mor (Big Brown Dougall), younger son of Gregor of Glenorchy, the Campbells declared him chief of Can Gregor, even though private records show that they knew the claim to be false. The ensuing civil dispute within Clan Gregor enabled the Campbells to evict the Gregor men from their lands.
As the Gregors were pushed from their rightful homes, the government in Edinburgh — as corrupt as many other offices across Europe at the time — assisted in the persecution of the Gregor clan. In 1563, Letters of Fire and Sword, issued by Act of the Privy Council at Stirling, allowed a policy of genocide against the Gregors. Brief respite was granted the Clan when Mary Queen of Scots canceled the letters and gave the Clan Gregor land and stock at Loch Rannoch, but it ended when she was deposed.
Now scattered throughout the Highlands as a result of the evictions, the MacGregors maintained enough unity to strike back when injury was done to members of the clan. Close-knit and made desperate by years of persecution, the Clan repaid the murder of two of its men by sending a party of eighty to kill two men and lift a fortune in stock from Sir Alexander Colquhoun. Colquhoun had executed the two Gregor men for the killing of a sheep.
A one-sided report of the incident went to King James VI, and the MacGregors became outlaws. The battle of Glen Fruin ensued, and again th eGregors bested Colquhoun. Retribution for their latest attack came from the King. James forbid use of the names Gregor or MacGregor, and banned anyone who had used those names from carrying arms. The ruling was to be carried out by, among others, powerful members of the Clan Campbell.
So many Gregor families were left destitute by the ruthless execution of the King’s orders, that the clan chief finally made a bargain which should have gained his kinsmen exile in England. Instead, thirty-four members of the chief’s immediate family were executed, and the rest of the clan again forced to renounce their names.
Upon learning of their chief’s betrayal, the Clan Gregor again planned retribution. They attacked Sir Duncan Campbell, whom they believed to be involved in the chief’s murder: “The records of the Glenlyon Campbells declare that when the storm broke, ‘Even Sir Duncan quailed. They laid waste Culdares ad Duneaves in Fortingall, Crannuich in Breadalbane, Glenfalloch, and Bochastel in Menteith, and burnt his castle at Achallader.’ His loss in money was 66,666 pounds. The loss in men was not collated.”
The Clan Gregor then went underground, taking, according to the law, the surnames of the clans on whose land they lived. Though the Acts of Proscription against them were renewed five times, until 1635, the MacGregors maintained their unity, refusing to starve or succumb as their enemies hoped they would.
For another 30 years, despite promises to restore their land, royal leaders allied with enemies of the Gregor Clan: “Clan Gregor’s chance of regaining their ancient rights, the most basic rights of a Celtic people, had gone forever. They alone among the sixty principal families of the Highlands had no homelands.”
It was this history that Rob Roy inherited.
BACK TO ROB ROY
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"Every father of the Clan Gregor was keenly aware how