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TO give a proper account of
the Sutherland Clearances would take a bulky volume. Indeed, a large
tome of 354 pages has been written and published in their defence by him
who was mainly responsible for them, called "An Account of the
Sutherland Improvements," by James Loch, at that time Commissioner for
the Marchioness of Stafford and heiress of Sutherland. This was the
first account I ever read of these so-called improvements; and it was
quite enough to convince me, and it will be sufficient to convince
anyone who knows anything of the country, that the improvement of the
people, by driving them in the most merciless and cruel manner from the
homes of their fathers, was carried out on a huge scale and in the most
inconsiderate and heartless manner by those in charge of the Sutherland
estates. But when one reads the other side, Macleod's "Gloomy Memories,"
General Stewart of Garth's "Sketches of the Highlanders," and other
contemporary publications, one wonders that such iniquities could ever
have been permitted in any Christian country, much more so in Great
Britain, which has done so much for the amelioration of subject races
and the oppressed in every part of the world, while her own brave sons
have been persecuted, oppressed, and banished without compensation by
greedy and cold-blooded proprietors, who owed their position and their
lands to the ancestors of the very men they were now treating so
cruelly.
The motives of the
landlords, generally led by southern factors worse than themselves,
were, in most cases, pure self-interest, and they pursued their policy
of extermination with a recklessness and remorselessness unparalleled
anywhere else where the Gospel of peace and charity was preached—except,
perhaps, unhappy Ireland. Generally, law and justice, religion and
humanity, were either totally disregarded, or, what was worse, in many
cases converted into and applied as instruments of oppression. Every
conceivable means, short of the musket and the sword, were used to drive
the natives from the land they loved, and to force them to exchange
their crofts and homes—brought originally into cultivation and built by
themselves, or by their forefathers—for wretched patches among the
barren rocks on the sea shore, and to depend, after losing their cattle
and their sheep, and after having their houses burnt about their ears or
razed to the ground, on the uncertain produce of the sea for
subsistence, and that in the case of a people, who, in many instances,
and especially in Sutherlandshire, were totally unacquainted with a
seafaring life, and quite unfitted to contend with its perils.
What was true generally
of the Highlands, was in the county of Sutherland carried to the
greatest extreme. That unfortunate county, according to an eye-witness,
was made another Moscow. The inhabitants were literally burnt out, and
every contrivance and ingenious and unrelenting cruelty was eagerly
adopted for extirpating the race. Many lives were sacrificed by famine
and other hardships and privations; hundreds, stripped of their all,
emigrated to the Canadas and other parts of America; great numbers,
especially of the young and athletic, sought employment in the Lowlands
and in England, where, few of them being skilled workmen, they were
obliged---even farmers who had lived in comparative affluence in their
own country---to compete with common labourers, in communities where
their language and simple manners rendered them objects of derision and
ridicule. The aged and infirm, the widows and orphans, with those of
their families who could not think of leaving them alone in their
helplessness, and a number, whose attachment to the soil which contained
the ashes of their ancestors, were induced to accept of the wretched
allotments offered them on the wild moors and barren rocks. The mild
nature and religious training of the Highlanders prevented a resort to
that determined resistance and revenge which has repeatedly set bounds
to the rapacity of landlords in Ireland. Their ignorance of the English
language, and the want of natural leaders, made it impossible for them
to make their grievances known to the outside world. They were,
therefore, maltreated with impunity. The ministers generally sided with
the oppressing lairds, who had the Church patronage at their disposal
for themselves and for their sons. The professed ministers of religion
sanctioned the iniquity, "the foulest deeds were glossed over, and all
the evil which could not be attributed to the natives themselves, such
as severe seasons, famines, and consequent disease, was by these pious
gentlemen ascribed to Providence, as a punishment for sin."
The system of turning out
the ancient inhabitants from their native soil throughout the Highlands
during the first half of the nineteenth century has been carried into
effect in the county of Sutherland with greater severity and revolting
cruelty than in any other part of the Highlands, and that though the
Countess-Marchioness and her husband, the Marquis of Stafford, were by
no means devoid of humanity, however atrocious and devoid of human
feeling were the acts carried out in their name by heartless underlings,
who represented the ancient tenantry to their superiors as lazy and
rebellious, though, they maintained, everything was being done for their
advantage and improvement. How this was done will be seen in the sequel.
South countrymen were introduced and the land given to them for sheep
farms over the heads of the native tenantry. These strangers were made
justices of the peace and armed with all sorts of authority in the
county, and thus enabled to act in the most harsh and tyrannical
fashion, none making them afraid ; while the oppressed natives were
placed completely at their mercy. They dare not even complain, for were
not their oppressors also the administrators of the law? The seventeen
parish ministers, with the single exception of the Rev. :Mr. Sage, took
the side of the powers that were, exhorting the people to submit and to
stifle their cries of distress, telling them that all their sufferings
came from the hand of their Heavenly Father as a punishment for their
past transgressions. Most of these ministers have since rendered their
account, and let us hope they have been forgiven for such cruel and
blasphemous conduct. But one cannot help noting, to what horrid uses
these men in Sutherlandshire and elsewhere prostituted their sacred
office and high calling.
The Sutherland clearances
were commenced in a comparatively mild way in 1807, by the ejection of
ninety families from Farr and Lairg. These were provided for some
fifteen or seventeen miles distant with smaller lots, to which they were
permitted to remove their cattle and plenishing, leaving their crops
unprotected, however, in the ground from which they were evicted. They
had to pull down their old houses, remove the timber, and build new
ones, during which period they had in many cases to sleep under the open
canopy of heaven. In the autumn they carried away, with great
difficulty, what remained of their crops, but the fatigue incurred cost
a few of them their lives, while others contracted diseases which stuck
to them during the remainder of their lives, and shortened their days.
In 1809 several hundred
were evicted from the parishes of Dornoch, Rogart, Loth, Clyne, and
Golspie, under circumstances of much greater severity than those already
described. Several were driven by various means to leave the country
altogether, and to those who could not be induced to do so, patches of
moor and bog were offered on Dornoch Moor and Brora Links—quite unfit
for cultivation. This process was carried on annually until, in 1811,
the land from which the people were ejected was divided into large
farms, and advertised as huge sheep runs. The country was overrun with
strangers who came to look at these extensive tracts. Some of these
gentlemen got up a cry that they were afraid of their lives among the
evicted tenantry. A trumped-up story was manufactured that one of the
interlopers was pursued by some of the natives of Kildonan, and put in
bodily fear. The military were sent for from Fort George. The 21st
Regiment was marched to Dunrobin Castle, with artillery and cartloads of
ammunition. A great farce was performed; the people were sent for by the
factors to the Castle at a certain hour. They came peaceably, but the
farce must be gone through, the Riot Act was read; a few sheepish,
innocent Highlanders were made prisoners, but nothing could be laid to
their charge, and they were almost immediately set at liberty, while the
soldiers were ordered back to Fort George. The demonstration, however,
had the desired effect in cowing and frightening the people into the
most absolute submission. They became dismayed and brokenhearted, and
quietly submitted to their fate. The clergy all this time were assiduous
in preaching that all the misfortunes of the people were "fore-ordained
of God, and denouncing the vengeance of Heaven and eternal damnation on
all those who would presume to make the slightest resistance." At the
May term of 1812 large districts of these parishes were cleared in the
most peaceable manner, the poor creatures foolishly believing the false
teaching of their selfish and dishonest spiritual guides—save the mark!
The Earl of Selkirk, who went personally to the district, allured many
of the evicted people to emigrate to his estates on the Red River in
British North America, whither a whole ship-cargo of them went. After a
long and otherwise disastrous passage they found themselves deceived and
deserted by the Earl, left to their unhappy fate in an inclement
wilderness, without any protection from the hordes of Red Indian savages
by whom the district was infested, and who plundered them of their all
on their arrival and finally massacred them, save a small remnant who
managed to escape, and travelled, through immense difficulties, across
trackless forests to Upper Canada.
The notorious Mr. Sellar
was at this time sub-factor, and in the spring of 1814 he took a large
portion of the parishes of Farr and Kildonan into his own hands. In the
month of March the old tenantry received notices to quit at the ensuing
May term, and a few days after the summonses were served the greater
portion of the heath pasture was, by his orders, set on fire. By this
cruel proceeding the cattle belonging to the old tenantry were left
without food during the spring, and it was impossible to dispose of them
at a fair price, the price having fallen after the war; for Napoleon was
now a prisoner in Elba, and the demand for cattle became temporarily
dull, and prices very much reduced. To make matters worse, fodder was
unusually scarce this spring, and the poor people's cattle depended for
subsistence solely on the spring grass which sprouts out among the
heather, but which this year had been burnt by the factor who would
himself reap the benefit when he came into possession later on.
In May the work of
ejectment was again commenced, accompanied by cruelties hitherto unknown
even in the Highlands. Atrocities were perpetrated which I cannot trust
myself to describe in my own words. I shall give what is much more
valuable—a description by an eyewitness in his own language. He
says:---In former removals the tenants had been allowed to carry away
the timber of their old dwellings to erect houses on their new
allotments, but now a more summary mode was adopted by setting fire to
them. The able-bodied men were by this time away after their cattle or
otherwise engaged at a distance, so that the immediate sufferers by the
general house-burning that now commenced were the aged and infirm, the
women and children. As the lands were now in the hands of the factor
himself, and were to be occupied as sheep farms, and as the people made
no resistance, they expected, at least, some indulgence in the way of
permission to occupy their houses and other buildings till they could
gradually remove, and meanwhile look after their growing crops. Their
consternation was therefore greater, when immediately after the May
term-day, a commencement was made to pull down and set fire to the
houses over their heads. The old people, women and others, then began to
preserve the timber which was their own; but the devastators proceeded
with the greatest celerity, demolishing all before them, and when they
had overthrown all the houses in a large tract of country they set fire
to the wreck. Timber, furniture, and every other article that could not
be instantly removed was consumed by fire or otherwise utterly
destroyed. The proceedings were carried on with the greatest rapidity
and the most reckless cruelty. The cries of the victims, the confusion,
the despair and horror painted on the countenances of the one party, and
the exulting ferocity of the other, beggar all description. At these
scenes Mr. Sellar was present, and apparently, as sworn by several
witnesses at his subsequent trial, ordering and directing the whole.
Many deaths ensued from alarm, from fatigue, and cold, the people having
been instantly deprived of shelter, and left to the mercies of the
elements. Some old men took to the woods and to the rocks, wandering
about in a state approaching to, or of absolute, insanity; and several
of them in this situation lived only a few days. Pregnant women were
taken in premature labour, and several children did not long survive
their sufferings. "To these scenes," says Donald Macleod [Author of"
Gloomy Memories," etc.], "I was an eye-witness, and am ready to
substantiate the truth of my statements, not only by my own testimony,
but by that of many others who were present at the time. In such a scene
of general devastation, it is almost useless to particularise the cases
of individuals; the suffering was great and universal. I shall, however,
notice a very few of the extreme cases of which I was myself an
eye-witness. John Mackay's wife, Ravigill, in attempting to pull down
her house, in the absence of her husband, to preserve the timber, fell
through the roof. She was in consequence taken in premature labour, and
in that state was exposed to the open air and to the view of all the by-standers.
Donald Munro, Garvott, lying in a fever, was turned out of his house and
exposed to the elements. Donald Macbeath, an infirm and bed-ridden old
man, had the house unroofed over him, and was in that state exposed to
the wind and rain until death put a period to his sufferings. I was
present at the pulling down and burning of the house of William
Chisholm, Badinloskin, in which was lying his wife's mother, an old
bed-ridden woman of nearly roo years of age, none of the family being
present. I informed the persons about to set fire to the house of this
circumstance, and prevailed on them to wait until Mr. Sellar came. On
his arrival, I told him of the poor old woman being in a condition unfit
for removal, when he replied, `Damn her, the old witch, she has lived
too long—let her burn.' Fire was immediately set to the house, and the
blankets in which she was carried out were in flames before she could be
got out. She was placed in a little shed, and it was with great
difficulty they were prevented from firing it also. The old woman's
daughter arrived while the house was on fire, and assisted the
neighbours in removing her mother out of the flames and smoke,
presenting a picture of horror which I shall never forget, but cannot
attempt to describe." Within five days she was a corpse.
In 1816 Sellar was
charged at Inverness, before the Court of Justiciary, with culpable
homicide and fire-raising in connection with these proceedings, and,
considering all the circumstances, it is not at all surprising that he
was "honourably" acquitted of the grave charges made against him. Almost
immediately after, however, he ceased to be factor on the Sutherland
estates, and Mr. Loch came into power. Evictions were carried out from
1814 down to 1819 and 1820, pretty much of the same character as those
already described, but the removal of Mr. Young, the chief factor, and
Mr. Sellar from power was hailed with delight by the whole remaining
population. Their very names had become a terror. Their appearance in
any part of the county caused such alarm as to make women fall into
fits. One woman became so terrified that she became insane, and whenever
she saw any one she did not recognise, she invariably cried out in a
state of absolute terror—"`Oh! sin Sellar" - "`Oh there's Sellar." The
people, however, soon discovered that the new factors were not much
better. Several leases which were current would not expire until 1819
and 1820, so that the evictions were necessarily only partial from 1814
down to that period. The people were reduced to such a state of poverty
that even Mr. Loch himself, in his "Sutherland Improvements," page 76,
admits that—"Their wretchedness was so great that, after pawning
everything they possessed to the fishermen on the coast, such as had no
cattle were reduced to come down from the hills in hundreds for the
purpose of gathering cockles on the shore. Those who lived in the more
remote situations of the county were obliged to subsist upon broth made
of nettles, thickened with a little oatmeal. Those who had cattle had
recourse to the still more wretched expedient of bleeding them, and
mixing the blood with oatmeal, which they afterwards cut into slices and
fried. Those who had a little money came down and slept all night upon
the beach, in order to watch the boats returning from the fishing, that
they might be in time to obtain a part of what had been caught." He,
however, omitted to mention the share he and his predecessors had taken
in reducing the people to such misery, and the fact that at this very
time he had constables stationed at the Little Ferry to prevent the
starved tenantry from collecting shellfish in the only place where they
could find them.
He prevailed upon the
people to sign documents consenting to remove at the next Whitsunday
term, promising at the same time to make good provision for them
elsewhere. In about a month after, the work of demolition and
devastation again commenced, and parts of the parishes of Golspie,
Rogart, Farr, and the whole of Kildonan were in a blaze. Strong parties
with faggots and other combustible material were set to work ; three
hundred houses were given ruthlessly to the flames, and their occupants
pushed out in the open air without food or shelter. Macleod, who was
present, describes the horrible scene as follows:-
"The consternation and
confusion were extreme; little or no time was given for the removal of
persons or property; the people striving to remove the sick and the
helpless before the fire should reach them ; next, struggling to save
the most valuable of their effects. The cries of the women and children,
the roaring of the affrighted cattle, hunted at the same time by the
yelling dogs of the shepherds amid the smoke and fire, altogether
presented a scene that completely baffles description—it required to be
seen to be believed. A dense cloud of smoke enveloped the whole country
by day, and even extended far out to sea; at night an awfully grand but
terrific scene presented itself—all the houses in an extensive district
in flames at once. I myself ascended a height about eleven o'clock in
the evening, and counted two hundred and fifty blazing houses, many of
the owners of which were my relations, and all of whom I personally
knew, but whose present condition—whether in or out of the flames—I
could not tell. The conflagration lasted six days, till the whole of the
dwellings were reduced to ashes or smoking ruins. During one of these
days a boat actually lost her way in the dense smoke as she approached
the shore, but at night was enabled to reach a landing-place by the
lurid light of the flames."
The whole of the
inhabitants of Kildonan, numbering nearly 2000 souls, except three
families, were utterly rooted and burnt out, and the whole parish
converted into a solitary wilderness. The suffering was intense. Some
lost their reason. Over a hundred souls took passage to Caithness in a
small sloop, the master humanely agreeing to take them in the hold, from
which he had just unloaded a cargo of quicklime. A head storm came on,
and they were nine days at sea in the most miserable condition—men,
women, and helpless children huddled up together, with barely any
provisions. Several died in consequence, and others became invalids for
the rest of their days. One man, Donald Mackay, whose family was
suffering from a severe fever, carried two of his children a distance of
twenty-five miles to this vessel. Another old man took shelter in a meal
mill, where he was kept from starvation by licking the meal refuse
scattered among the dust on the floor, and protected from the rats and
other vermin by his faithful collie. George Munro, the miller at Farr,
who had six of his family down with fever, had to remove them in that
state to a damp kiln, while his home was given to the flames. And all
this was done in the name of proprietors who could not be considered
tyrants in the ordinary sense of the term.
General Stewart of Garth,
about a year after the cruelties perpetrated in Sutherland, writes with
regret of the unnatural proceedings as "the delusions practised (by his
subordinates) on a generous and public-spirited proprietor, which have
been so perseveringly applied, that it would appear as if all feeling of
former kindness towards the native tenantry had ceased to exist. To them
any uncultivated spot of moorland, however small, was considered
sufficient for the support of a family; while the most lavish
encouragement has been given to all the new tenants, on whom, with the
erection of buildings, the improvement of lands, roads, bridges, &c.,
upwards of £210,000 had been expended since 1808 (in fourteen years).
With this proof of unprecedented liberality, it cannot be sufficiently
lamented that an estimate of the character of these poor people was
taken from the misrepresentation of interested persons, instead of
judging from the conduct of the same men when brought into the world,
where they obtained a name and character which have secured the esteem
and approbation of men high in honour and rank, and, from their talents
and experience, perfectly capable of judging with correctness. With such
proofs of capability, and with such materials for carrying on the
improvements and maintaining the permanent prosperity of the county,
when occupied by a hardy, abstemious race, easily led on to a full
exertion of their faculties by a proper management, there cannot be a
question but that if, instead of placing them, as has been done, in
situations bearing too near a resemblance to the potato-gardens of
Ireland, they had been permitted to remain as cultivators of the soil,
receiving a moderate share of the vast sums lavished on their richer
successors, such a humane and considerate regard to the prosperity of a
whole people would undoubtedly have answered every good purpose." He
then goes on to show that when the valleys and higher grounds were let
to the sheep-farmers, the whole native population was driven to the sea
shore, where they were crowded on small lots of land to earn subsistence
by labour and sea-fishing, the latter so little congenial to their
former habits and experience. "And these one or two acre lots are
represented as improvements!" He then asks how in a country, without
regular employment or manufactories, a family is to be supported on one
or two acres? The thing was impossible, and the consequence is that
"over the whole of this district, where the sea-shore is accessible, the
coast is thickly studded with thatched cottages, crowded with starving
inhabitants," while strangers, with capital, usurp the land and
dispossess the swain. Ancient respectable tenants, who passed the
greater part of their lives in the enjoyment of abundance, and in the
exercise of hospitality and charity, possessing stocks of ten, twenty,
and thirty breeding cows, with the usual proportion of other stock, are
now pining on one or two acres of bad land, with one or two starved
cows; and for this accommodation a calculation is made, that they must
support their families, and pay the rents of their lots, not from the
produce, but from the sea. When the herring fishery succeeds, they
generally satisfy the landlords, whatever privations they may suffer ;
but when the fishing fails, they fall in arrears and are sequestrated
and their stocks sold to pay the rents, their lots given to others, and
they and their families turned adrift on the world; but in these trying
circumstances, he concludes, "we cannot sufficiently admire their meek
and patient spirit, supported by the powerful influence of moral and
religious principle."
The beautiful Strathnaver,
containing a population equal to Kildonan, had been cleared in the same
heartless manner.
In 1828, Donald Macleod,
after a considerable absence, returned to his native Kildonan, where he
attended divine service in the parish church, which he found attended by
a congregation consisting of eight shepherds and their dogs —numbering
between twenty and thirty—the minister, and three members of his family.
Macleod came in too late for the first psalm, but at the conclusion of
the service the fine old tune Bangor was given out, "when the
four-footed hearers became excited, got up on the seats, and raised a
most infernal chorus of howling. Their masters attacked them with their
crooks, which only made matters worse; the yelping and howling continued
to the end of the service." And Donald Macleod retired to contemplate
the painful and shameful scene, and contrast it with what he had
previously experienced as a member, for many years, of the large and
devout congregation that worshipped formerly in the parish church of his
native valley.
The Parish Church of Farr
was no longer in existence; the fine population of Strathnaver was
rooted and burnt out during the general conflagration, and presented a
similar aspect to his own native parish. The church, no longer found
necessary, was razed to the ground, and its timbers conveyed to
construct one of the Sutherland "improvements"—the Inn at Altnaharra,
while the minister's house was converted into a dwelling for a
fox-hunter. A woman, well-known in the parish, travelling through the
desolated Strath next year after the evictions, was asked on her return
home for her news, when she replied—"O, chan eil ach sgiala bronach!
sgiala bronach!" "Oh, only sad news, sad news! I have seen the timber of
our well attended kirk covering the inn at Altnaharra; I have seen the
kirk-yard where our friends are mouldering filled with tarry sheep, and
Mr. Sage's study turned into a kennel for Robert Gunn's dogs, and I have
seen a crow's nest in James Gordon's chimney head;" after which she fell
into a paroxysm of grief. |
