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A LOW scale of rent was a
necessary part of the old system in the Highlands. Lord Selkirk observed:
"The sacrifice of pecuniary interest was of very inferior importance, and
was not a matter of choice; for any proprietor who should have acted on
contrary principles, losing the attachment of his people, would have been
left a prey to the violence of his neighbours." This is undoubtedly true
in the main; but this writer goes too far when he says the Highland
gentlemen never ventured to raise their rents.
Amongst the MSS. in the
possession of the British Museum, there is one entitled, "Some Remarks on
the Highland Clans, and Methods proposed for Civilization." The writer
investigates the "trew and genuine reasons why theft and depredations
which above all things cherish the spirit of Jacobitism and rebellion are
more luxuriant of growth amongst the Highland clans than some of their
neighbours." He draws his information, he says, from the "honester sort of
natives." The first reason, he mentions, is the exorbitant lawless power
exercised by the gentry over the commoners. He proceeds to describe the
tenure by which the gentry held their lands:— "Their holdings of land are
either free or leases, so much for ordinary as can accommodate themselves
and great numbers of their tribes and dependants, generally bad people
entirely devoted to their service. Some of them have mortgages in the
lands they have a lease of, yet this, till of late, did not hinder the
chief to remove from one possession to another, or quite out of the land,
if any way disobedient to his irresistible orders and decrees—the unhappy
situation of the poor people at all times under the chief and inferior
gentry, so that the inferior gentry, as well as the commoners, were
constantly kept in a state of slavery and dependance, which they bore with
equal constancy. . . . The commoners are cunning, lazy, and vindictive as
the gentry are. They never get leases, but constantly depending on the
good pleasure of their masters, who thereby have it in their power to
fleece them, as they do their sheep, and keep them in the most abject
state of slavery and dependance. I have asked many of them why they did
not choose to have better houses, and the answer I had was commonly much
the same: that the building of good houses or making any other improvement
was a sure way to get themselves removed ; as for a shilling or two more
rent, the master would give the preference to the first that offered, so
that it seems every kind of industry was studiously discouraged, and that
laziness, that delusive mother of vice, and source of dependancy, were the
chief things aimed at." [This MS. bears no date, but, from internal
evidence, it appears to have been written about 1718.]
Captain Burt painted
vividly the lights as well as the shadows of the clan system. He tells us
of chiefs freeing the necessitous from arrears of rent, and maintaining
the decayed. He tells us that if the tribe increased, and there was in
consequence a want of land, farms were split up, "because all must be
somehow provided for." He records a curious instance of an agrarian
outrage, when a minister's hut was fired into because he had taken a small
farm—an outrage which, he says, arose from the "dread of innovations, and
the notion they entertain that they have a kind of hereditary right to
their farms, and that none of them are to be dispossessed, unless for some
great transgression against their chief, in which case every individual
would consent to their expulsion."
This passage has attracted
much attention. It has been regarded as "the solitary contemporaneous
testimony to a custom unknown to the Statute book, but which may have been
practically embodied in the reciprocal necessities and affections of chief
and clansmen, as long as those relations remained a reality." [Report of
the recent Royal Commission.]
But a curious confirmation
of Burt's testimony is to be found in the first page of Spalding's account
of the Troubles in which allusion is made to the Revolt of the Clan
Chattan in 1624.
"After the death and burial
of Angus M'Intosh of Auld Tirlie, alias Angus Williamson (which was a
little before Whitsunday in the year of God 1624), his kin and friends of
Clanchattan, whom he in his time held under rule and in peace by his power
and policy, began to call to mind how James, Earl of Murray, their master,
had casten them out of their kindly possessions, whilk past memory of man,
their predecessors and they had kept for small duty, but for their
faithful service, and planted in their places, for payment of a greater
duty, a number of strangers and feeble persons, unhabile to serve the Earl
their master, as they could have done, by which means those gentlemen were
brought through necessity to great misery, and therewith considering their
young chief, the laird of M'Intosh was but a bairn, who (according to the
common band) might not be answerable to their misdeeds; and thinking and
calling to mind how oft and how humbly they had craved their kindly
possessions from the said Earl, but could not be heard, nor find favour,
which grieved them in the highest degree; they therefore finding the time
proper, partly through infancy of their young chief, and partly through
the death of this worthy chieftain (who, by his wit and policy, held them
still under awe and obedience), desperately resolve by force of arms,
either to recover their own kindly possessions, or otherwise cast the
samen waste, and none should labour the ground or pay any duty to the
Earl; and to that effect, about the said feast of Whitsunday 1624 there
brake out in arms about the number of two hundred of the principal
gentlemen of that race and lineage of Clanchattan under the leading of
Lachlan M'Intosh, alias Lachlan Oyle (uncle to this now laird of M'Intosh),
and Lachlan M'Intosh or Lachlan Angusson (eldest son to the said umquhile
Angus Williamson) their captains. They keeped the fields in their Highland
weed upon foot, with swords, bows, arrows, targets, hag-buts, pistols, and
other Highland arms, and first began to rob and spuilzie the Earl's
tenants, who laboured their possessions, of their haill goods, gear,
insight plenishing, horse, holt, sheep, cows, and cattle, and left them
nothing that they could get within their bounds, syne fell in sorning
throughout Murray, Stratherick, Urquhart, Ross, Sutherland, Brae of Mar,
and divers other parts, taking their meat and food per force where they
could get it willingly, frae friends as well as frae their foes, yet still
kept themselves from shedding of innocent blood. Thus they lived as
outlaws, oppressing the country, besides the casting of the Earl's land
waste, and openly avowed they had taken this course to get their own
possessions again, or then hold the country waking. The Earl of Murray,
mightily grieved at the Clanchattan to break out in such disorder, himself
being dwelling in Murray, sends shortly and brings out of Monteith and
Balquidder about three hundred Highlandmen armed after their own custom.
This people, with the Earl himself, came through Murray to Inverness in
battle rank; they stayed there that night, and the Earl was, with his good
brother the Earl of Enzie, in the castle well entertained. This people
stayed a while in the country upon the Earl's great expences, without
seeing or seeking the Clanchattan; therefore the Earl sent them all back
the gate they came; always the Earl returned frae Inverness back to Elgin,
and provided another company to go against the Clanchattan; but they also
did little service, and so returned without finding of the enemy first or
last, albeit they made a pretext of seeking them through the country.
"But the Clanchattan, nothing dismayed, became
more furious and enraged, to rob and spoil every man's goods, wherever
they came, whether friend or foe, to the great hurt and skaith of the
King's lieges. The Earl, seeing he could hardly get them suppressed by
force of arms, resolves upon another course to bear them down, which was,
he goes down to London to King James, and humbly shews the rising of their
Clanchattan, and that he could not get them overcome and subdued without
an lieutenantry in the North, which the King graciously granted to him for
some few years, and to sit, cognosce, and decern upon some capital points
allenarly, specially set down thereintill. The Earl returns home, causes
proclaim his lieu-tenantry (whereat it was thought the house of Huntly was
somewhat offended, thinking none should be lieutenant in the North but
themselves, albeit he was his own goodson who had gotten it, to wit, the
Marquis's son-in-law, who had married his eldest daughter), proclaims
letters of intercom-muning against the Clanchattan at the head burghs of
sundry shires, that none should receipt, supply, or intercommune with
them, under great pains and peril. After publication of which letters, the
Clanchattan's kin and friends who had privately promised them assistance
before their breaking out, begins now to grow cold, fearing their estates,
of whom sundry was wealthy in lands and goods, and simpliciter refused
them help, receipt, or supply, for fear of the laws.
"The Clanchattan seeing this, by expectation
begin now to repent their breaking out, and seek the Earl's peace, whilk,
by intercession of friends, was granted, provided they should the Earl
information who did receipt or supply them after publication of the
letters of intercommuning, and to give up their names and prove the same.
Upon this condition the Earl forgives them and takes them by the hand, and
shortly begins to hold justice courts within the burgh of Elgin. Some
slight lowns, followers of the Clanchattan, were execute, but the
principal outbreakers and malefactors were spared and never troubled."
[See also Shaw's "Historical Memoirs of the Clan," vol. ii. p. 303.]
We are not told that the Clan Chattan were
restored to their "kindly possessions," and the argument deducible from
the facts related by Spalding obviously cuts both ways. They consist with
a notion of hereditary right in the people, but cannot be cited in proof
that arbitrary eviction was unknown during the period when the clan system
was in vigorous operation.
But there are passages in Burt which could not
have been penned had he not too been deeply impressed with the arbitrary
powers of the chief. He was personally acquainted with a chief who, he
says, systematically impoverished the people. "This chief does not think
the present abject disposition of his clan towards him to be sufficient;
but entertains that tyrannical and detestable maxim, that to render them
poor will double the tye of their obedience, and accordingly he makes use
of all oppressive means to that end. To prevent any diminution of the
number of those who do not offend him, he dissuades from their purpose all
such as show an inclination to traffic. . . . This he does (when downright
authority fails) by telling them how their ancestors chose to live
sparingly and be accounted a martial people, rather than submit themselves
to low and mercenary employments like the Lowlanders. ... It may for aught
I know be suitable to clanish power, but in general it seems quite
contrary to reason, justice, and nature, that any one person from the mere
accident of his birth, should have the prerogative to oppress a whole
community for the gratification of his own selfish views and inclinations;
and I cannot but think the concerted poverty of a people is, of all
oppressions, the strongest instigation to sedition, rebellion, and
plunder." Burt
relates that on one occasion he had employed labourers at sixteenpence a
day. The same men were required by the chief to work at sixpence a day,
and complained that they lost by it. "I very well remember," says Burt,
"he then told me that if any of those people had formerly said as much to
their chief, they would have been carried to the next rock and
precipitated." This writer says the advantage of enclosing was a "mighty
topick" with the Highlanders, but he asks, "Where is the Highland tenant
that can lay out ten shillings for that purpose? And what would he be
gainer by it in the end, but to have his rent raised or his farm divided
with some other?" Other passages might be quoted from Burt's letters to
show the "arbitrary authority" exercised by the chief. |
