was a still fiercer family feud, deepened by Macaulay having married the widowed mother of Galbraith. It was clear that such hounds could not hunt in couples, and it was considered reasonable by the court to exempt the Colquhouns and the Macaulays from co-operating with Galbraith.

The reasons for this exemption, when put in the form of a solemn judicial conclusion, seem so odd and quaint an adjustment of professional formality to the ferocious habits of the age, that the passage expressing the source of the so greatly-respected family feud, is here offered for the reader's perusal, with no greater alteration than the modernising of the spelling.

"In respect of the deadly feud standing betwixt the said Alexander Colquhoun, of Luss, and the said Robert, through the slaughter of umwhile Donald M'Neill M'Farlane, household servant to the said Robert, committed by the said Alexander's umwhile brother, which feud yet stands betwixt their houses unreconciled, and the said Laird of Culcreuch, daily awaits all occasions to revenge the same; and in respect of the feud lately renewed betwixt the said Laird of Ardincaple and the Buchanans, with whose power and force the said Robert is assisted in execution of the said commission, using their advice and direction in all things there-anent: as

also in respect of the great grudge and hatred standing likewise betwixt the said Laird of Ardincaple and the said Robert, who having bereft his own mother, whom the said Laird of Ardincaple has now married of her whole living, he has by order of law recovered the same furth of his hands: for the which cause the said Robert seeks to have his advantage of him, has given up kindness, and denounced his evil will to him with solemn vows of revenge. 11*

The ravages of the Macgregors came at length to a climax, in an event which figures in Scottish history as the battle of Glenfruin or the Raid of the Lennox. It makes its appearance on the criminal records in the trial of Alaster Macgregor of Glenstray, Duncan Pudrache Macgregor, and the owners of a varied list of similar names, arraigned before the court of justiciary on the 20th of January, 1604, for treason, stouthrief, and fire-raising. It was set forth that, "having concluded the destruction of Alexander Colquhoun, of Luss, his kin, friends, and alia, and the haill surname of the Buchanans, and to harrie their lands, they convened the Clan Chameron, the Clan Vourich, and divers other broken men and sorners,† to the number of four hundred men, or

*Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, i., 290.

+"Broken men" was an expression applied generally to all the Border and Highland depredators; but in its limited sense

thereby, all bodin in feir of weir (i.e., set out in warlike array) with hakbuts, pistollettes, morions, mail-coats, poll-axes, two-handed swords, bows, darlochs, and other weapons." They were charged with putting to death seven score or 140 persons, in a partial list of whom there occurs the familiar name of Tobias Smollett, who was, it appears, bailie or civic magistrate of the town of Dumbarton.

It is said by the annalists partial to the Macgregors, that they had no intention to commit any outrage-that they proceeded to Luss for the purpose of having an amicable and satisfactory arrangement of difficulties, and that they were treacherously and unexpectedly attacked by the Colquhouns. But Highland rievers did not generally march into the low country, four hundred strong, peaceably to adjust differences, any more than the highwaymen of later times presented pistols with the like object. Nor could the differences be very easily adjusted, since they consisted in the one party desiring the it applied to those who had no chief or other person to stand surety for them. Sorners or sojourners were those who had a general partiality for living at the expense of their neighbours. They are denounced in several acts of parliament, and one of the year 1455 provides that, "wherever sorners be found in existence in time to come, that they be delivered to the king's sheriffs, and that forthwith the king's justices do law upon them as upon a thief or riever." This, it may be noticed, is an entire statue, and a favourable specimen of what Bacon called "the excellent brevity" of the old Scottish acts.

cattle, horses, and miscellaneous property belonging to the other. On the other hand, the Macgregors were charged with atrocities, of which one would fain believe, in the absence of good evidence, that they were not guilty. "It is reported," says Sir Walter Scott, "that the Macgregors murdered a number of youths, whom report of the intended battle had brought to be spectators, and whom the Colquhouns, anxious for their safety, had shut up in a barn to be out of danger. One account of the Macgregors denies this circumstance altogether; another ascribes it to the savage and bloodthirsty disposition of a single individual, the bastard brother of the Laird of Macgregor, who amused himself with this second massacre of the innocents, in express disobedience to the chief, by whom he was left their guardian during the pursuit of the Colquhouns. But had such an episode occurred, we may rest sure that it would not have been passed over in the indictment, where there is no allusion to it. This document contains a sufficient number of atrocities. It states, that the greater part of the slaughter was among prisoners who had been "tane captives by the said Macgregors before they put violent hands on them, and cruelly slew them," and concludes with denouncing the whole as a series of "cruel, horrible,

*Notes to the "Lady of the Lake."

and treasonable crimes, the like whereof was never committed within this realm."

It was of course difficult then, as for a century and a half afterwards, to apprehend the Macgregors, either by penetrating to their wilds, or inducing them to trust themselves in the low country. One chronicler says, that Argyle, by fair promises, induced the chief to visit him during a festival, where he was seized and bound. The castle where this took place stood on an island—probably it was Kilchurn Castle, in Loch Awe. As a boat was conveying the captive chief to the shore, he escaped, much after the same fashion as his representative Rob Roy in the novel, by tossing overboard the nearest of his keepers, and taking to the water.* If the accounts of his final recapture are to be credited, they would say more for the cunning than the candour of Argyle. The earl told the chief that if he surrendered himself he would be seen safe to England, or, as other authorities say, safe out of Scotland. Emissaries were sent to accompany him southward, ostensibly that they might protect him, a denounced criminal, from any king's messenger who might recognise in the fugitive the chief of a band of Highland ruffians, who had slain in one raid a hundred and forty Lowlanders. Highlanders were not at * MS. quoted, Pitcairn, ii., 435.

VOL. I.