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whose conversation and habits were, we may suppose, not very congenial with those of a Highland chief, Allaster dashed away one day to his native hills.

Still he persisted in his efforts to maintain friendly relations with the king and his council; and when other clans, stirred up, it was said, by the crafty and dissimulating Earl of Argyle, invaded the lands occupied by the Macgregors, Allaster, instead of retaliating, took the extraordinary step-extraordinary for a Highland chief-of demanding damages in a court of law. "The Laird of Macgregor and his kin," are the words of his counsel in a paper of protest preserved in the Justiciary Records, 66 were the first since King James the First's time that came and sought justice." And in July 1599, when he was summoned to appear before the king and council to give farther security for the good order of his clan, there was presented an offer in his name of eighteen hostages, six out of each of the three principal houses of the clan, with a prayer that his majesty would be pleased to accept these in lieu of the pecuniary caution demanded; "in respect," says the document and there is a tone of real melancholy in the words-" that neither is he responsible in the sums whereupon the caution is found, and that nae inland man will be caution for him in respect of the bypast enormities of his clan." In other words, the poor chief confesses that his clan now had neither money nor credit.

Notwithstanding all Allaster's promises and endeavours, the clan could not all at once conform to the usages of civilised life. Ever and anon the irrepressible Macgregor spirit broke out: a provoking Campbell was occasionally stabbed by the dirk of a fiery clansman, or a stray herd of cattle was found missing from the hills. At length the king and his council relieved themselves of the whole charge of the Macgregors, by appointing the Earl of Argyle to the office of lord-lientenant and chief-justice over all the lands inhabited by the clan. Under this new arrangement, it might have been possible for the Macgregors to recover their character, and become good subjects; and Allaster Macgregor seems to have flattered himself at first with the expectation of this desirable result. But Argyle was a crafty, doubledealing man; and while seeming zealously engaged in restoring order in the west Highlands, he in reality used the authority with which his office invested him to convert the Macgregors into instruments for accomplishing his own purposes of private revenge. Establishing Allaster and his clan as a sort of district police, he employed them to attack those families against which he entertained personal ill-will; and then being the first himself to point to the outrages which they had perpetrated, he threw the whole blame on his miserable agents. By Argyle's secret orders, Allaster and his men inflicted great damage on the property of the Lairds of Luss, Buchanan, Ardkinglass, and Ardincaple, and other proprietors near Loch Lomond.

The most disastrous to the poor Macgregors of all the enter prises in which the Earl of Argyle engaged them, was their feud with the Colquhouns of Luss-a clan inhabiting Dumbartonshire, on the west of Loch Lomond. Firing the blood of Allaster Macgregor and his men by calling to their recollection some old occasion of quarrel between them and the Colquhouns, Argyle prevailed on them to march along the banks of Loch Long towards Luss. The Macgregors amounted to upwards of three hundred; but, receiving timely notice of their approach, the Laird of Colquhoun was able to collect a force about twice as strong, composed, besides his own clan, of his neighbours the Buchanans and the Grahams, together with a number of the citizens of Dumbarton, who took the field on the occasion under the command of Tobias Smollett, bailie of the town, and ancestor of no less a personage than the author of "Roderick Random." The two little armies met in Glenfruin, a name which signifies the Glen of Sorrow. Daunted by the great superiority of the Colquhouns in numbers, the Macgregors hesitated to commence the fight. At this moment an old Macgregor, who was a seer, or had the gift of second-sight, cried out, "Aha! I see the chiefs of the Colquhouns wrapped in their winding-sheets!" Encouraged by these words, the Macgregors met the foe; and after a desperate fight, completely routed them, killing more than two hundred in the pursuit. It is also said that a party of savage Macgregors massacred a number of defenceless students of divinity and grammar-school boys, who had come from Dumbarton to witness the fray; and a stone, bearing the name of Leck-amhimsteir, or Clergyman's Flagstone, is still pointed out in Glenfruin as being the spot where the youths were killed; it is strenuously denied by some that any such atrocity was committed, and certainly there is no mention of it in the contemporary records of the courts of justice.

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The battle of Glenfruin was fought in the spring of 1603. On being reported to the king and his council, it was looked upon as an addition to the black calendar of crimes committed by an incorrigible race; and whatever concern the Earl of Argyle had in it, was concealed by the crafty conduct of that nobleman. He was the first to turn against the men whom he had himself stirred up to commit the crime; at least contemporary historians say so, and contemporary documents bear them out. All the blame and all the punishment fell on the Macgregors. In order to impress the mind of the king with a vivid idea of the extent of the slaughter at Glenfruin, and excite a thirst for vengeance in those who were about him, two hundred and twenty widows of the slain Colquhouns and Buchanans appeared before the court at Stirling, clad in black, and riding on white palfreys, each carrying her husband's bloody shirt on a spear a sight at which, according to tradition, no man would be so likely to turn pale as the son of her who had seen Rizzio murdered at her feet. Mea

sures more severe than any that had ever been adopted against the Macgregors, than had ever been adopted against any clan, were now resolved upon. On the 3d of April 1603, the privy council passed an act abolishing for ever the name and clan of Macgregor. All who bore this odious surname were commanded instantly to exchange it for some other, on pain of death; and all who belonged to the clan were prohibited, under the same penalty, from wearing 66 ony kind of armour except ane pointless knife to cut their meat." Measures were also taken for the apprehension and punishment of the principal Macgregors known to have been present at Glenfruin. After several months of wandering through the Highlands, Allaster Macgregor of Glenstrae and the chief men of the clan surrendered to the Earl of Argyle, on the understanding that they should be sent out of Scotland. The earl "kept his promise to the ear, but broke it to the sense." Sending the captive Macgregors, under a strong escort, across the Scottish border, and thus having literally fulfilled his bargain, he had them brought back to Edinburgh, where, after a hasty trial on the 20th of January 1604, Glenstrae and several of his associates were conveyed from the bar to the gibbet at the market-cross, and hanged, Glenstrae being suspended his own height higher than his companions. Others of the clan were brought to Edinburgh as they were taken, and shared the same fate as their chief; and it appears from Calderwood's History, that in the case of seven of these, "reputed honest for their own parts," the formality of a trial was dispensed with. On the trial of Allaster Macgregor, he produced a declaration, the original of which is preserved in the Register-House of Edinburgh. Several passages in it are very affecting. It commences thus: "I, Allaster Macgregor of Glenstrae, confess here before God that I have been persuaded, moved, and enticed, as I am now presently accused and tried for; also, gif I had used counsel or command of the man that has enticed me, I would have done and committed sundry heich (high) murders mair; for truly since I was first his majesty's man, I could never be at any ease by my Lord of Argyle's falsehood and inventions, for he caused M'Lean and clan Cameron commit herschip and slaughter in my room (country) of Rannoch, the which caused my puir men to beg and steal." After explaining the affair of Glenfruin, and enumerating the other instances in which Argyle had urged him on to the commission of crimes, with threats that, if he did not obey, he would be his "unfriend,” Glenstrae concludes his declaration thus:-"At this hour I would be content to take banishment, with all kin that was at the Laird of Luss's slaughter, and all others of them that any fault can be laid to their charge, if his majesty, of his mercy, would let puir innocent men and bairns young pass to liberty, and learn to live as innocent men.' Without a chief now, and no longer allowed to call themselves a clan, the Macgregors were hunted down in their native glens.

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The Earls of Argyle and Athole were charged with the execution of the acts of the privy council; and many a bloody battle was fought between the agents of these two noblemen and the desperate men whom they came to disarm. To abjure the names of their forefathers-to forget their descent from the old Scottish Alpin-to call themselves Macgregors no more-to walk through the hills which were once their own, downcast and dishonoured, a jeer and a scorn to every Campbell or Menzies who might choose to laugh at them-this was an indignity to which it required a crushing force to make them submit. But government was resolute; and for thirty years it continued to pass stringent acts against the Macgregors. By an act of 1613, they were forbidden, under the penalty of death, to assemble in greater force than four at a time; and in 1617 the act making the name of Gregor or Macgregor illegal was repeated, for the benefit of the new race of clansmen which had sprung up since its first publication. The women of the clan were also ordered to be branded with the mark of a key in the face; but there is no instance of this brutal regulation being actually carried into effect. reason assigned for the stringency of these and other acts passed relative to the clan Macgregor between 1603 and 1617, is, that "the bare and simple name of Macgregor made that hail clan to presume on their power, strength, and force."

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The Macgregors, now broken up and dispersed, and without any acknowledged chief, complied so far with the edicts issued against them as to lay aside their clan name in public, and assume others. Such of the clan as were settled among the Campbells called themselves Campbells; such as were settled among the Stewarts called themselves Stewarts; and so on; till there was scarcely a single clan in the central district of Scotland without some disguised Macgregors in it. Still, there were various bonds of connexion which attached the scattered fragments of the royally-descended clan; and it is, according to what we know of Highland human nature, natural to suppose that, in their low and downcast condition, the Macgregors would regale their memories more frequently than before with tales from the history of their race, and that each recollection of a deed of valour done by an ancestor would be accompanied, in a Macgregor's heart, by a hotter thrill. That there were occasional ebullitions of the Macgregor spirit, even after the disgrace and dispersion of the clan, appears from the preamble to a statute passed in 1633, eight years after the accession of Charles I., which states that the turbulent clan Gregor was again lifting its head in Perth, Stirling, Clackmannan, and the Mearns, and renews the persecuting edicts of the previous reign. The following striking little anecdote is told of a Macgregor chieftain of that period residing in Glenurchy. His son had gone out with a party of young men to shoot on the moors. Accidentally meeting with a young gentleman of the name of Lamont, who was on his way to Fortwilliam, attended

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by a servant, they went all into an inn to have some refreshment together. A quarrel took place on some trifling circumstance between Lamont and young Macgregor; dirks were drawn; and Macgregor fell mortally wounded. In the confusion Lamont escaped, and ran for his life, pursued by the Macgregors. The night favoured him; and at the dawn of morning he found himself near a habitation, to which he proceeded. It was the house of the Macgregor whose son he had killed; and the old man himself was standing at the door. "Save my life," cried Lamont as he came up; "I am pursued." "Whoever you are,' said Macgregor, "you are safe here;" and saying so, the old man took him in, and introduced him to his wife and daughters. Ere long the Macgregors who were in pursuit came up, and told the chief that his son had fallen in a scuffle, and that the assassin had passed that way. Macgregor's wife and daughters filled the house with their cries, as the pursuers recognised the stranger. "Be quiet," said the old chief; "let no man touch the youth. He has Macgregor's word for his safety; and, as God lives, he shall be safe while he is in my house." He kept his promise, and even accompanied Lamont, with twelve men in arms, to Inverary, where, having landed him on the other side of Loch Fine, he left him with these words:-"Lamont, you are now safe; no longer can I, or will I, protect you. Keep out of the way of my clan; and God forgive you." This occurred shortly before the repetition of the persecuting edicts in 1633; and it is gratifying to be able to add that the old chief, when afterwards hunted from his property in consequence of these acts, found a refuge in the house of the man whose life he had so nobly saved.

During the civil war, the fierce spirit of the clan found a lawful vent in fighting on the king's side, and against the Commonwealth; for, notwithstanding their sufferings at the hand both of James and Charles, the Macgregors, remembering their descent from Alpin, the ancestor of the Stuarts as well as their own, took part with royalty, and ranging themselves under other clan chiefs, fought in the armies of Montrose; and after Charles's death, assisted the Lowlanders against Cromwell. They evidently hoped to wipe out past transgressions by their loyal conduct; and there is extant a certificate under Montrose's hand, dated 7th June 1645, promising the Laird of Macgregor, in the king's name, the restoration of his ancestors' lands of Rannoch, Glenlyon, and Glenurchy, after the troubles of the kingdom were put an end to. As these lands were then held by the dependents of Argyle, Montrose, in granting the certificate, was meditating at once the rewarding of loyalty and the punishing of rebellion. But Montrose's gallant enterprise failed; Scotland likewise was too weak to resist the Commonwealth; and the Highlands, with all the rest of the kingdom, came within the iron gripe of Oliver Cromwell. On the restoration of Charles II.,

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