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If that district which has
little history is to be considered happy then this is one of the happiest of
spots, as there are records of wonderfully few of those happenings which are
considered history, civil or uncivil, but much could be written of the ebb
and flow of the many ecclesiastical or religious waves by which for
centuries the district has been swept.
According to Ptolemy, a tribe called the Decanbae lived in the district
which extends from Beauly to Edderton, and the Smertae occupied the valleys
of the Carron, Oykell, and Shin. At a later period the inhabitants of the
district were known as Picts, who probably mixed with Celts. When the
Norsemen came to the west coast they probably drove the Scots eastward and
thus there is some likelihood that in the dim past there was a time when the
inhabitants spoke Pictish, Gaelic, and Norse. Before the opening of the
tenth century the Norsemen were all-powerful in the district and held sway
for about two hundred years.
When their power waned at the opening of the twelfth century the Gaels were
triumphant and the Picts a lost race. Of the feuds for mastery between these
races not a trace seems to remain in authentic history or local tradition
and really nothing can be affirmed of it until it was formally annexed to
the kingdom of Scotland, and then for a long time its history is associated
with Tain, its capital, which received from Malcolm Canmore its first
charter somewhere about 1060 a.d. There still exists in the Tain Council
Chambers a notarial certified copy made in 1564, of the Royal Charter
granted in 1457 by James II., who in it confirms the grants made by his
predecessors, “To God, the blessed St. Duthus, the church and clergy, the
town of Tain and its inhabitants, the immunities granted them within the
four corner crosses placed about the bounds of Tain and all their liberties
and privileges.”
Probably it was by Malcolm that the right of “Sanctuary” was conferred on
the town, a right which must have helped the place into prominence all over
the north as to it in lawless times the weaker could go and be safe from
their oppressors. It is quite possible that this right was got from
Malcolm^and his proselytising superstitious Queen Margaret by Duthack or
Duthus, afterwards St. Duthus, who is said to have been born in the now
ruined ivy covered chapel near the railway station and who by that time had
somehow acquired his saintly character. The king would very likely hold
Duthus in awe and readily grant the request if he were told that a smith,
when Duthus as a boy came to him for fire, placed some live coals in his lap
arid that the lad carried them home without injury to himself or his
clothes, and that angels were seen encamping around his home at the Angel’s
Hill. St. Duthus studied in Ireland, probably travelled as a missionary, and
died in Armagh in 1065. To this spot nearly two hundred years afterwards his
remains were carried and in this way the holiness of this sanctuary was
further enhanced. So sacred was this sanctuary held all over Scotland, that
in 1306, when Robert the Bruce’s fortunes were at their lowest ebb, he sent
his queen and daughter here with several ladies and a number of knights.
William, the fourth Earl of Ross, unscrupulously violated the sanctuary,
slew the knights, and delivered the ladies up to their English enemies.
Its sanctuary was next violated in 1427 when Mowat, a laird of Freswickin
Caithness, was defeated by Thomas Macneil of Creich. The vanquished fled
here for refuge, but the angry pursuers slew all whom they found outside and
then set fire to the chapel and so brought death to their enemies within and
an end to the building, which has never since been roofed. According to some
authorities important documents placed here for safety were also burnt,
perhaps also St. Duthus’ shirt, a relic which was said to possess marvellous
powers, but did not preserve Hugh, the fifth Earl of Ross, from fatal wounds
though he wore it at the battle of Halidon Hill in 1333. The English, who
likely enough regarded the relic with awe, restored it to the sanctuary.
To the chaplain of this shrine, Janies IV. ordered an annual sum to be paid
that masses might be said on behalf of his father’s soul, while he himself
did penance by wearing an iron chain to which he added a link year by year,
and came here on penance intent sometimes thrice a year for nineteen
successive years, that is from 1494 to 1513. During these journeys he would
doubtless learn to take an interest in the Highlands, would probably hear
complaints of injustice and help to maintain justice. He was here for the
last time on 5th August 1513, and on 9th September following he fell at
Flodden.
In 1483, William, Lord Crichton, took refuge within this “girth” of Tain,
and though verbally summoned by the King’s macer to come to Edinburgh, he
refused to leave it and lived here in safety for some time.
Much of the subsequent history of Tain and Easter Ross is connected with the
struggle of the various creeds and churches for mastery, and some of these
are detailed in the next chapter, but several other historical incidents are
worthy of note. For many a long year the Earls of Ross and other great folk
really held kingly sway and were very pleasant masters for their subjects so
long as they had their own way, but woe betide any who turned on them. It is
told, and though the story may be apocryphal it is illustrative, that when
an injured woman complained to an Earl of Ross, then said to be resident at
Balnagown, that she would go to the king for redress he ordered horseshoes
to be nailed to the soles of her feet that she might be better able to
perform the journey.
Among others who for a time had an interest in Easter Ross was “The Wolf of
Badenoch,” who married a Countess of Ross, and received a Royal charter of
his wife’s lands.
There are also records of clan battles. There was one fought at Alt Charrais
in i486 or 1487 between John, Earl of Sutherland, and Alexander the Sixth of
Balnagown. The occasion was revenge. One Angus Mackay, the son of Neil Vass
Mackay, had been previously slain at Tarbat; a son of the slain man begged
the Earl of Sutherland for assistance so that he might be revenged for his
father’s death. The Earl yielded and sent his uncle, Robert Sutherland, with
a company of chosen men to assist Mackay. Strathoykell was invaded with fire
and sword, and there was “burnt, spoiled, and wasted many lands appertaining
to the Rosses. The laird of Balnagown, hearing of this invasion, gathered
all the forces of the province of Ross, and met Robert Sutherland and John
Mackay at Alt Charrais. There ensued a cruel battle, which continued a long
space with incredible obstinacy; the doubt of the victory being no less
great than the desire. Much blood was shed. In the end, the inhabitants of
Ross, being unable to endure the enemy’s force were utterly disbanded and
put to flight. Alexander Ross of Balnagown was there slain with seventeen
other landed gentlemen of the province of Ross, with a great number of
common soldiers.”
Some of the leaders of Easter Ross Society, notably Katherine, the eldest
daughter of the ninth Earl of Balnagown, had resort to witchcraft and
poisoning to accomplish her purposes, and her career is fully and
interestingly set out in Chambers’ Domestic Annals of Scotland, vol. i, pp.
203.
Much interest was excited in
this district in 1626 in connection with the thirty years’ war, and a
regiment was raised here to fight under Gustavus Adolphus. It is worthy of
note that in these German wars under this Lion of the North, there were
engaged three generals, eight colonels, five lieutenant-colonels, eleven
majors, and more than thirty captains, besides a large number of subalterns
of the name of Munro.
The Twelfth Ross of Balnagown, at his own expense, raised a regiment of
Rosses to help Charles II., and proceeded with the Scots to England, where
they were defeated at Worcester. Eight thousand prisoners were taken, and
among them many Easter Ross men who were sold as slaves to the American
Colonists. The laird himself was imprisoned in the Tower and died in 1653.
It is pleasing to have to record that after the Restoration this king
settled a pension on Balnagown’s son.
That was not the only connection Easter Ross had with the fight between
Cromwell and the Royalists, and the following account of how Lieut.-Colonel
Strachan outwitted the celebrated Marquis of Montrose on the borders of
Sutherland and Ross is of interest.
The Marquis crossed from Orkney to Caithness in April 1650. He had
calculated on collecting a considerable force in that county, but failed. He
marched southwards, and the Earl of Sutherland retired before him as he
advanced and Montrose reached Strath Oykell with but a force of 1200 men.
Lieut.-Colonel Strachan hurried to meet him with a party of horse, while
Leslie was pressing on with 3000 foot. It was resolved that the Earl should
cross into Sutherland to intercept Montrose’s retreat, while Strachan
advanced with 230 horse and 170 foot in search of him. Under cover of some
broom, they succeeded in surprising him at a disadvantage, on level ground
near a pass called Invercharron, on the borders of the parish, on Saturday,
27th April 1650, having diverted his attention by the display of merely a
small body of horse. Montrose immediately endeavoured to reach a wood and
craggy hill at a short distance in his rear with his infantry, but they were
overtaken. The Orkney men made but little resistance, and the Germans
surrendered, but the few Scottish soldiers fought bravely. Many gallant
cavaliers were made prisoners, and when the day was irretrievably lost, the
Marquis threw off his cloak bearing the star, and afterwards changed clothes
with a Highland kern that he might effect his escape. He swam across the
Kyle, directed his flight up Strath Oykell, and lay for three days concealed
among the wilds of Assynt. At length, exhausted with fatigue and hunger he
was apprehended by Neil Macleod, who happened to be out in search of him.
The gallant Marquis’ subsequent fate is well known.
As in other parts of the north the people of this district were much
agitated by “The Fifteen,” though they seem almost unanimously to have sided
with the Hanoverians. Sir Robert Munro asked Lord Strathnaver to assist him
to defend Ross-shire. This he did, and at the same time the Munroes, Grants,
and Rosses were mustered by their chiefs. When the Earl of Seaforth, who
favoured the Jacobites, asked Sir Robert to deliver up all his defensive
weapons, he refused, garrisoned his house, and sent men to the rendezvous at
Alness. But Lord Duffus, with Seatorth not far away, marched into Tain with
between 400 and 500 men of the Mackenzies, Chisholms, and Macdonalds,
proclaimed James there, and then made haste south to join the Earl of Mar.
The Easter Ross men who stood by the Government were in 1716 gathered at
Fearn to the number of 700, ready to march to Inverness but they had to
complain of the scarcity of provisions. So scarce indeed was meal then in
this district, that the people were starving. This regiment was soon
afterwards disbanded.
In “The Forty-five” Easter Ross men, with the exception of the Earl of
Cromartie and his son, Lord Macleod, again seem to have favoured the
government and some of them were at Prestonpans and Falkirk. Tain was during
this time subjected to great distress and oppression from a large body of
Jacobites quartering there and making arbitrary demands for money, and the
magistrates were forced to make large payments. The Earl of Cromartie raised
400 men and with his son (then a lad of eighteen), marched to join the
Pretender’s army and they fought—possibly against other Ross-shire men at
Falkirk. Subsequently tbe Earl held the chief command north of the Beauly,
but was on 15th April 1746, surprised and defeated near Dunrobin Castle
where he was captured on the eve of Culloden. For this, both father and son
were sentenced to death, but by the strenuous and good offices of Sir John
Gordon, the second Baronet of Invergordon, they were afterwards pardoned.
This Lord Macleod, after distinguished service in India, succeeded to the
estates of his influential uncle in 1783, and had his family estates
restored to him in 1894. It was he who sold the Invergordon estates to
Macleod of Cadboll.
So far the history of Easter Ross, like that of most other parts, has simply
been the story of the fighting of chieftains or their superiors for
supremacy but the condition of the people, as Hallam says, “like many others
relating to the progress of society is a very obscure inquiry. We can trace
the pedigrees of princes, fill up the catalogue of towns besieged and
provinces desolated, describe the whole pageantry of coronations and
festivals, but we cannot recover the genuine history of mankind. It has
passed away with slight and partial notice by contemporary writers, and our
most patient industry can hardly at present put together enough of the
fragments to suggest a tolerably clear representation of ancient manners and
social life.”
“The Forty-five altered the relation of the people to their chiefs and the
relation was afterwards in many cases a purely commercial one as between
landlord and tenant, and of course the former were naturally anxious to get
the highest possible rent for their lands. Farming in this fertile machair
was as yet carried on in primitive fashion but improvements were being
inaugurated and better crops were being got, but when it was found on the
Borders that the hills and dales yielded most profit when improved breeds of
sheep were reared, and that a sheep farmer from the southern dales offered a
rent of £350 for a sheiling in Glengarry for which others paid only £15 the
temptation to most landlords was irresistible. Though it involved hardship
to the natives they were not allowed to stand in the way and in 1763 the
laird of Balnagown took the initiative and after some experimenting, he in
1781 offered a farm to a Mr Geddes who is believed to have been the first
sheep farmer in the north of Scotland. The people saw themselves deprived of
their holdings for sheep and gave the farmer all the annoyance they could.
They shot or drowned many of his sheep but yet Mr Geddes was able to pay his
rent and grow rich though the seasons were bad enough. In 1782-83 the crops
were an entire failure over the whole Highlands. So hard pressed were the
tenantry that a gathering of lairds and their factors was held in Tain on
10th December 1783 I in order to take into consideration the state of the
tenantry in that part of the country and to form some plan whereby they
might convey some effectual relief to their distressed situation.” The
minutes of the meeting at which Donald Macleod of Geanies presided say, “the
gentlemen present having taken the state of the country into their serious
consideration, and having maturely and deliberately reasoned thereon, they
were unanimously of opinion that the situation of the whole of this country
is extremely critical, and that if severe and harsh means are adopted by the
proprietors of Estates in forcing payment of arrears at this time, though
the conversion should be at a low rate, it must have the effect of driving
the tenantry into despondency, and bring a great majority of them to
immediate and inevitable ruin ; and in so doing will go near to lay the
country waste, which to the personal knowledge of this meeting, has been for
these two hundred years back over-rented ; and if once the present set of
tenantry are removed, there will be very little probability of getting them
replaced from any other country.”
For all this the people continued to feel the pinch of poverty and Sir
George Mackenzie said that they were prejudiced against “improvements,” as
the formation of sheep farms was called. At last in the Autumn of 1792 men
were despatched to make public proclamation at all the churches in Ross and
Sutherland that the hated sheep were to be gathered and driven across the
Beauly. In response the people began at Lairg and drove before them every
sheep they could find in Lairg, Creich, and Kincardine. In four days they
had thousands of sheep driven out of Easter Ross as far as Alness. Here the
drovers were met by the sheriff accompanied by Sir Hector Munro of Novar and
a party of the 42nd Regiment which had made forced marches from Fort George.
At sight of the soldiers the drovers fled. Several of them were caught,
tried at Inverness, and had heavy sentences passed on them, but they soon
escaped from prison. General Stewart of Garth says, It would appear that
though the legality of the verdict and sentence could not be questioned,
these did not carry along with them public opinion, which was probably the
cause that the escape of the prisoners was in a manner connived at; for they
disappeared out of the prison, no one knew how, and were never inquired
after or molested.”
For some time after this things went on quietly, notwithstanding the
hardships endured by the failure of the crops in 1808 and 1818, until in
1820 Munro of Novar resolved to remove the Culrain tenantry to the number of
between two and three hundred. The tenantry knowing that they owed him no
rent, resolved to retain their holdings. They therefore resisted the
officers employed to serve the summons of removal. In order to enforce the
execution of the writs the sheriff of the county went to Culrain accompanied
by twenty-five soldiers and a body of gentlemen from Easter Ross. On
approaching Culrain the progress of the party was interrupted by the
appearance of a crowd of between three and four hundred people, chiefly
women, and men in women’s clothes, who rushed on the soldiers, attacked them
with sticks, stones, and other missiles and compelled them to retreat. The
soldiers fired several rounds of blank cartridge but the people were not
terrified. Then one of the party used a ball cartridge by which one woman
was fatally, and one or two less seriously, injured. Of course the “civil”
power was in the end victorious and this “improvement” also was effected at
Culrain. Small landholders were thereafter gradually removed in several
other districts and the fertile large farms of Easter Ross formed.
In the New Statistical Account the ministers of Kilmuir Easter, Nigg, Logie
Easter, Rosskeen, and Kincardine comment on the result. He of Kilmuir says,
“The great evil which requires to be remedied in some way or other is the
fluctuating state of the population in consequence of the arable land being
in the possesion of a few, which, however much it may tend to the
agricultural improvement of the parish, certainly is not calculated to
improve the state of the population. In consequence of this many of the
people are always on the wing, and shifting from one parish to another, in
quest of a better place or of more congenial employment; thus rendering in a
great measure migratory the instruction which they receive.”
Since then things had to be adjusted after the passing of the Corn Laws but
the farms have increased in fertility so that now it can truly be said that
life has little better to offer than the lot of an Easter Ross farmer, while
the lot of the farm servants has been ameliorated in many directions.
Probably nothing affected the progress of the people so much as the making
of roads which were begun to be seriously made when the provisions of the
Statute Service Road Act of 1720 were adopted and bye laws made for
enforcing the Statute Labour Act or commuting it by money payments. The
greatest step in this direction was the making of the parliamentary road
from Perth to Wick, completed in 1821, and which effectually linkedthe
district to the rest of Scotland. In 1809 a “Diligence” began to run from
Inverness to Tain on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and from Tain to
Inverness on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Much was made of the fact
that the 44 miles could be covered in one day. The upkeep of these roads was
so heavy that toll-bars were placed here and there along the route and were
certainly bars to progress until the Ross and Cromarty Act of 1866 abolished
therm and now the roads in the district are as good as any in Scotland.
The railway was opened to Invergordon in 1863 and to Bonar-Bridge in 1864. |
