LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 193.-22 JANUARY, 1848.

From Blackwood's Magazine.

THE WIDOW OF GLENCOE. THE massacre of Glencoe is an event which neither can nor ought to be forgotten. It was one of the earliest fruits of the so-called glorious Revolution Settlement, and exhibits in their foulest perfidy the true characters of its authors.

After the battle of Killiecrankie the cause of the Scottish royalists declined, rather from the want of a competent leader than from any disinclination on the part of the people to vindicate the right of King James. No person of adequate talents or authority was found to supply the place of the great and gallant Lord Dundee, of whom it was truly written

"Te moriente, novos accepit Scotia cives,

vious to submitting themselves to the existing government. That article had been sanctioned by William before the proclamation was issued, and a special messenger was despatched to France for that purpose.

In the mean time, troops were gradually and cautiously advanced to the confines of the Highlands, and, in some instances, actually quartered on the inhabitants. The condition of the country was perfectly tranquil. No disturbances whatever occurred in the north or west of Scotland. Lochiel and the other chiefs were awaiting the combound in honor to remain inactive; whilst the munication from St. Germains, and held themselves remainder of the royalist forces (for whom separate terms had been made) were left unmolested at Dunkeld.

But rumors, which are too clearly traceable to the emissaries of the new government, asserting the preparation made for an immediate landing of King James at the head of a large body of the French, were industriously circulated, and by many were implicitly believed. The infamous policy which dictated such a course is now apparent. The term of the amnesty or truce granted by the proclamation expired with the year 1691, and all who had not taken the oath of allegiance before that term were to be proceeded against with the utmost severity. The proclamation was issued upon the 29th of August, consequently, only four months were allowed for the complete submission of the Highlands.

Accepitque novos, te moriente, deos." General Cannon, who succeeded in command, was not only deficient in military skill, but did not possess the confidence, nor understand the character, of the Highland chiefs, who, with their clansmen, constituted by far the most important section of the army. Accordingly, no enterprise of any importance was attempted, and the disastrous issue of the battle of the Boyne led to a negotiation which terminated in the entire disbanding of the royal forces. By this treaty, which was expressly sanctioned by William of Orange, a full and unreserved indemnity and pardon was granted to all of the Highlanders who had taken arms, with a proviso that they should first subscribe the oath of allegiance to William and Mary, before the 1st of Not one of the chiefs subscribed until the manJanuary, 1692, in presence of the lords of the date from King James arrived. That document, Scottish council, 66 or of the sheriffs or their dep-which is dated from St. Germains on the 12th of uties of the respective shires wherein they lived." December, 1691, reached Dunkeld eleven days afterThe letter of William addressed to the privy coun- wards, and, consequently, but a very short time cil, and ordering proclamation to be made to the before the indemnity expired. The bearer, Major above effect, contained also the following signifi- Menzies, was so fatigued that he could proceed no cant passage:- That ye communicate our pleas- further on his journey, but forwarded the mandate ure to the governor of Inverlochy and other com- by an express to the commander of the royal forces, manders, that they be exact and diligent in their who was then at Glengarry. It was therefore several posts; but that they show no more zeal impossible that the document could be circulated against the Highlanders after their submission, than through the Highlands within the prescribed period. they have ever done formerly when these were in Lochiel, says Drummond of Balhaldy, did not open rebellion." receive his copy till about thirty hours before the time was out, and appeared before the sheriff at Inverara, where he took the oaths upon the very day on which the indemnity expired.

This enigmatical sentence, which in reality was intended, as the sequel will show, to be interpreted in the most cruel manner, appears to have caused some perplexity in the council, as that body deemed it necessary to apply for more distinct and specific instructions, which, however, were not then issued. It had been especially stipulated by the chiefs as an indispensable preliminary to their treaty, that they should have leave to communicate with King James, then residing at St. Germains, for the purpose of obtaining his permission and warrant pre

That a general massacre throughout the Highlands was contemplated by the whig government, is a fact established by overwhelming evidence. In the course of the subsequent investigations before the Scots parliament, letters were produced from Sir John Dalrymple, then Master of Stair, one of the secretaries of state in attendance upon the court which too clearly indicate the intentions of William

In one of these, dated 1st December, 1691—a | people, no distinction being made of age or sex, month, be it observed, before the amnesty expired would, in all human probability, have been put into -and addressed to Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton, there are the following words :-"The winter is the only season in which we are sure the Highlanders cannot escape us, nor carry their wives, bairns, and cattle to the mountains." And in another letter, written only two days afterwards, he says "It is the only time that they cannot escape you, for human constitution cannot endure to be long out of houses. This is the proper season to maule them in the cold long nights." And in January thereafter, he informed Sir Thomas Livingston that the design was to destroy entirely the country of Lochaber, Lochiel's lands, Keppoch's, Glengarry's, Appin, and Glencoe. I assure you," he continues, your power shall be full enough, and I hope the soldiers will not trouble the government with prisoners."

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Lochiel was more fortunate than others of his friends and neighbors. According to Drummond

execution, but for the remonstrance of one high-
minded nobleman. Lord Carmarthen, afterwards
Duke of Leeds, accidentally became aware of the
purposed massacre, and personally remonstrated
with the monarch against a measure which he
denounced as at once cruel and impolitic. After
much discussion, William, influenced rather by an
apprehension that so savage and sweeping an act
might prove fatal to his new authority, than by
any compunction or impulse of humanity, agreed
to recall the general order, and to limit himself, in
the first instance, to a single deed of butchery, by
way of testing the temper of the nation. Some
difficulty seems to have arisen in the selection of
the fittest victim. Both Keppoch and Glencoe
were named, but the personal rancor of Secretary
Dalrymple decided the doom of the latter. The
secretary wrote thus:-"Argyle tells me that
Glencoe hath not taken the oath, at which I rejoice.
It is a great work of charity to be exact in rooting
out that damnable set." The final instructions
regarding Glencoe, which were issued on 16th
January, 1692, are as follows:-
:-

"WILLIAM R.-As for M'Ian of Glencoe and that tribe, if they can be well distinguished from the rest of the Highlanders, it will be proper for public justice to extirpate that set of thieves."

"W. R."

Major Menzies, who, upon his arrival, had observed the whole forces of the kingdom ready to invade the Highlands, as he wrote to Gen. Buchan, foreseeing the unhappy consequences, not only begged that general to send expresses to all parts with orders immediately to submit, but also wrote to Sir Thomas Livingston, praying him to supplicate the council for a prorogation of the time, in regard that he was so excessively fatigued, that he was obliged to stop some days to repose a little; and that though he should send expresses, yet it was impossible they could reach the distant parts in such time as to allow the several persons concerned the benefit of the indemnity within the space limited; besides, that some persons having put the Highlanders in a bad temper, he was confident to persuade them to submit, if a further time were Macdonald, or as he was more commonly deallowed. Sir Thomas presented this letter to the signed, M'Ian of Glencoe, was the head of a concouncil on the 5th of January, 1692, but they re-siderable sept or branch of the great Clan-Coila, fused to give any answer, and ordered him to transmit the same to court."

This letter is remarkable as being signed and countersigned by William alone, contrary to the usual practice. The secretary was no doubt desirous to screen himself from after responsibility, and was further aware that the royal signature would ensure a rigorous execution of the sentence.

and was lineally descended from the ancient Lords of the Isles, and from the royal family of Scotland, The reply of William of Orange was a letter, the common ancestors of the Macdonalds having countersigned by Dalrymple, in which, upon the espoused a daughter of Robert II. He was, acrecital that "several of the chieftains and many of cording to a contemporary testimony, 66 a person their clans have not taken the benefit of our gra- of great integrity, honor, good nature, and courage, cious indemnity," he gave orders for a general and his loyalty to his old master, King James, massacre. "To that end, we have given Sir was such, that he continued in arms from Dundee's Thomas Livingston orders to employ our troops first appearing in the Highlands, till the fatal treaty (which we have already conveniently posted) to that brought on his ruin." In common with the cut off those obstinate rebels by all manner of hos-other chiefs, he had omitted taking the benefit of tility; and we do require you to give him your the indemnity until he received the sanction of assistance and concurrence in all other things that | King James; but the copy of that document which may conduce to that service; and because these rebels, to avoid our forces, may draw themselves, their families, goods, or cattle, to lurk or be concealed among their neighbors; therefore, we require and authorize you to emit a proclamation to be published at the market-crosses of these or the adjacent shires where the rebels reside, discharging upon the highest penalties the law allows, any reset, correspondence, or intercommuning with these rebels." This monstrous mandate, which was in fact the death-warrant of many thousand innocent

was forwarded to him, unfortunately arrived too late. The weather was so excessively stormy at the time that there was no possibility of penetrating from Glencoe to Inverara, the place where the sheriff resided, before the expiry of the stated period; and M'Ian accordingly adopted the only practicable mode of signifying his submission, by making his way with great difficulty to Fort-William, then called Inverlochy, and tendering his signature to the military governor there. That officer was not authorized to receive it, but at the

earnest entreaty of the chief, he gave him a cer- | compassion, the captain inclined to have saved it, tificate of his appearance and tender, and on new-but one Drummond, an officer, arriving about the year's day, 1692, M'Ian reached Inverara, where break of day with more troops, commanded it to be shot by a file of musqueteers. Nothing ould be he produced that paper as evidence of his intenmore shocking and horrible than the prospect of tions, and prevailed upon the sheriff, Sir James these houses bestrewed with mangled bodies of the Campbell of Ardkinglass, to administer the oaths dead, covered with blood, and resounding with the required. After that ceremony, which was imme-groans of wretches in the last agonies of life. diately intimated to the privy council, had been "Two sons of Glencoe's were the only persons performed, the unfortunate gentleman returned that escaped in that quarter of the country; for, home, in the full conviction that he had thereby made peace with government for himself and for his clan. But his doom was already sealed.

A company of the Earl of Argyle's regiment had been previously quartered in Glencoe. These men, though Campbells, and hereditarily obnoxious to the Macdonalds, Camerons, and other of the loyal clans, were yet countrymen, and were kindly and hospitably received. Their captain, Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, was connected with the family of Glencoe through the marriage of a niece, and was resident under the roof of the chief. And yet this was the very troop selected for the horrid

service.

Special instructions were sent to the major of the regiment, one Duncanson, then quartered at Ballachulish, a morose, brutal, and savage man, who accordingly wrote to Campbell of Glenlyon in the following terms:

"Ballacholis, 12 February, 1692. "Sir-You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebels, the M'Donalds of Glencoe, and putt all to the sword under seventy. You are to have special care that the old fox and his sons doe upon no account escape your hands. You are to secure all the avenues that no man escape. This you are to put in execution att five o'clock in the morning precisely, and by that time or very shortly after it I'll strive to be att you with a stronger party. If I doe not come to you at five, you are not to larry for me but to fall on. This is by the king's speciall command, for the good and safety of the country, that these miscreants be cutt off root and branch. See that this be putt in execution without feud or favour, else you may expect to be treated as not true to the king's government, nor a man fitt to carry a commission in the king's service. Expecting you will not faill in the fulfilling hereof as you love yourself, I subscrive these with my hand.

"ROBERT DUNCANSON.

For their Majesty's service. To Captain

Robert Campbell of Glenlyon."

This order was too literally obeyed. At the appointed hour, when the whole inhabitants of the glen were asleep, the work of murder began. M'Ian was one of the first who fell. Drummond's narrative fills up the remainder of the dreadful story.

growing jealous of some ill designs from the behavior of the soldiers, they stole from their beds a few minutes before the tragedy began, and chancing to overhear two of them discoursing plainly of the matter, they endeavored to have advertised their father, but finding that impracticable, they ran to the other end of the country and alarmed the inhabitants. There was another accident that contributed much to their safety; for the night was so excessively stormy and tempestuous, that four hundred soldiers, who were appointed to murder these people, were stopped in their march from Inverlochy, and could not get up till they had time to save themselves. To cover the deformity of so dreadful a sight, the soldiers burned all the houses to the ground, after having rifled them, carried away nine hundred cows, two hundred horses, numberless herds of sheep and goats, and everything else that belonged to these miserable people. Lamentable was the case of the women and children that escaped the butchery. The mountains were covered with a deep snow, the rivers impassable, storm and tempest filled the air, and added to the horrors and darkness of the night, and there were no houses to shelter them within many miles."*

Such was the awful massacre of Glencoe, an event which has left an indelible and execrable stain upon the memory of William of Orange. The records of Indian warfare can hardly afford a parallel instance of atrocity; and this deed, coupled with his deliberate treachery in the Darien business, whereby Scotland was for a time absolutely ruined, is sufficient to account for the little estimation in which the name of the " great whig deliverer" is still regarded in the valleys of the

north.

Do not lift him from the bracken,
Leave him lying where he fell-
Better bier ye cannot fashion:

None beseems him half so well,
As the bare and broken heather,
And the hard and trampled sod,
Whence his angry soul ascended
To the judgment-seat of God!
Winding-sheet we cannot give him-
Seek no mantle for the dead,
Save the cold and spotless covering,
Showered from heaven upon his head.
Leave his broadsword, as we found it,
Bent and broken with the blow,
That, before he died, avenged him
On the foremost of the foe.
Leave the blood upon his bosom—
Wash not off that sacred stain.
Let it stiffen on the tartan,

Let his wounds unclosed remain,
Till the day when he shall show them
At the throne of God on high,

*Memoirs of Sir EWEN CAMERON OF LOCUIEL.

of

His boys were his friends. He possessed the rare faculty of being able to descend to the level of their intelligence; and they opened their little hearts and minds to him as if he had been their brother, or their playfellow, as, indeed, out of school hours, he often was. Yet he had brought with him into the scene of his tranquil existence much insight into mankind—a store of that purer and better wisdom which is founded on a knowledge of the existence of evil, tempered by an ever-watchful hope for good.

My mind and heart are full, yet I fear to take up the pen. I would fain write a short story some things which happened to myself-a simple, yet a strange tale, wherefrom men may draw a moral if they choose. But it is true; and it hinges on facts which are the staple of our daily knowledge, though we lack the faith that would show us how they are linked together, and made One boy-he was the eldest of the schoolto act upon each other by an unseen yet everworking power; and, therefore, I doubt if it will was to Mr. Faber almost a companion. On his be believed. Within this hour, in a part of Lon-promising nature he had bestowed much care don, whither my duties seldom call me in the stimulating his habit of reverence, strengthening purlieus of Covent Garden-I have seen one, skulking under the shadow of night, who has brought back to my thoughts what happened many long years ago—scenes in which I was forced against my will to act, and yet in which I felt as if the sorrow had been my own. And here let me also say, that my story is not one of strong passions or glaring crimes. I am no skilled writer of cunningly schemed fictions, nor-did I even know how-should I care to harrow tender hearts with plots of wicked men, or scenes of poignant grief. My tale will only be a plain string of facts: it will have but one claim upon the reader's heart, which is, that it is true.

II.

About twenty years ago, in the little woody village of, in Middlesex, there was a boy's school. It was not a seminary for young gentlemen; it was not a child-trap—“ a mockery, a delusion, and a snare," for anxious mothers, or a commission agency for parents and guardians, or a huckster's-shop for butchers and bakers to exchange meat and bread for Latin and stripes; nor was it a house of torture for gentle hearts and emulous spirits, where a cold, low despotism chills and stifles the warm impulses of the childish nature, or a vile grinding tyranny stirs and stimulates the nascent passions in forms of monstrous precocity. It was not a place where the eternal welfare of living souls could be jobbed away against petty profits on bad beef and stick-jaw-pudding; nor where one stinted, coarse, unshapen moral uniform was forced by contract on all minds alike, whether by nature they were great or little, strong or weak. It was called a Boy's School; but it was something more: it was a family, where the time was spent in living and learning, where authority and coercion were unknown, because love and duty preoccupied their places.

his honesty of spirit and passion for truth; and, and disposition to self-sacrifice for the sake of while encouraging a naturally active benevolence serving others, at the same time striving to develop and encourage discrimination and prudence. The youth's mind had thus attained a healthy and early maturity.

The master, who was in easy circumstances, kept a sort of little pony barouche-a neat affair, in which he and his wife could now and then pay a visit at a distance. Sometimes, when a commission was to be executed in a town not far distant, he would trust the boy I speak of to drive over for the purpose, with perhaps a quiet junior.

One day, the unpretending carriage and its youthful charioteer were on the way back to when, at the end of a plantation, a gentleman hailed the latter from a cottage-door. He was tall, remarkably handsome, and had a soft mode of address which instantly charmed the boy. He had a young lady on his arm.

"My little man, I wish you would do me a favor."

as

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Certainly, sir, with pleasure." "Then, will you let this young lady ride as far and set her down at the Merton Arms, to wait for me? She is not well enough to walk so far, and there is no hope of any other conveyance. I am obliged to wait here for an hour or so. I am sure I can trust her with you, my little gentleman; and I see you are a steady driver."

The young lady did not speak, but, as she stepped into the carriage, she bowed kindly to the boy, and slowly to the gentleman, and in a minute they were on the road. The youth made some friendly remark to his fair charge, but she only bowed, though still kindly. She spoke not a word; and her companion, who had already that instinctive respect for the sex, which is the true key to human happiness, forbore to intrude on her The master, to be sure, seemed somewhat reserve. In less than an hour the chaise stopped young to be the patriarch of such a little loving at the inn; he jumped down, handed out his fair tribe. He was an M. A., and the clergyman of charge, whom he confided to the smiling landlady, the village. His attainments were such as would and followed them into the inn parlor. Alone have entitled him to aim at distinction in the for a moment with the young lady, he saw that church, but, though active-minded, he loved she was in tears. He felt sympathy, but he dared peace and retirement, and he had a passion for not speak. She thanked him courteously, as a training and developing the minds of children, to-young woman would thank a growing lad; and, wards whom he felt a really Christian love. on giving him her hand, she said, abruptly—