Scottish Historian - Sennachie na h-Alba

31/08/2026

𝗣ì𝗼𝗯𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗱 𝗗𝗵ò𝗺𝗵𝗻𝗮𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗗𝘂𝗶𝗯𝗵: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗖𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗱!

The attribution of Pìobaireachd Dhòmhnaill Duibh has long divided piping historians. The tune appears in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources under Cameron names: Cruinneachadh Mhic Dhòmhnaill Duibh, Fàilte Loch Iall, and Cameron's Gathering. The chiefs of Cameron of Lochiel bore the patronymic Mac Dhòmhnaill Duibh, and the faiche at Inverlochy was the traditional assembly ground of the Camerons. Modern scholars such as Keith Sanger and Roderick D. Cannon have concluded that Black Donald was a Cameron chief and that the tune's identification with Lochiel, while not tied to any specific century, remains a Cameron possession.

Yet the MacDonald claim rests on equally significant evidence. The song Piobaireachd Dhomhnuill Duibh was preserved through MacDonald oral tradition in South Uist, with related versions in Skye and Barra. Donald MacDonald, in his 1820 collection, explicitly titled the tune Black Donald Balloch of the Isles' March, linking it to the first Battle of Inverlochy in 1431 and to Donald Balloch MacDonald, the cousin of Alexander, Lord of the Isles, who led Clan Donald to victory there. The Piobaireachd Society later published it as Black Donald Balloch of the Isles' March to Inverlochy, conflating two distinct figures.

The modern scholarly counter to the MacDonald claim holds that Donald Balloch was never known as Dubh. His epithet was Balloch, meaning freckled, and Sanger and Cannon have argued that the evidence weighs heavily against any connection to Donald Balloch. They note that a parenthetical phrase suggesting the tune was not Lochiel's appeared in some early printed copies but was scratched out in almost all surviving examples and omitted entirely after 1822.

However, the Cameron attribution collapses when you examine the historical chronology of Inverlochy. In 1429, at the Battle of Lochaber, Donald Dubh, XI Captain of Clan Cameron, deserted Alexander, Lord of the Isles, and crossed to the royalist side of James I. When Donald Balloch MacDonald defeated the royalist army at Inverlochy two years later, he did so as the avenging arm of a wronged lordship. The aftermath was not reconciliation but retribution: Clan Donald forces ravaged Cameron territory, put it to fire and sword, and Alexander, upon his release from Tantallon, confiscated Lochaber and bestowed it upon the Macleans. Donald Dubh himself was driven into exile in Ireland.

Given this sequence, the notion that a pibroch commemorating Inverlochy should bear the name of a Cameron chief who had betrayed the victorious cause, and who was subsequently dispossessed and exiled by that same victor, is chronologically and politically incoherent. A Cameron composition would hardly celebrate a battlefield where their clan had fought on the losing royalist wing and then suffered systematic devastation. The tune makes sense only as a Clan Donald piece, composed to mark Donald Balloch's victory and the subsequent punishment of disloyal vassals.

The restoration of Cameron fortunes came later, around 1470, when the Camerons defeated the Macleans at Corpach and reclaimed their lands. Celestine of Lochalsh reversed the Maclean preference in 1472. But this occurred a generation after Inverlochy, and it does nothing to rehabilitate a Cameron claim to a tune tied to the 1431 campaign.

Josephine MacDonell of Keppoch, author of The MacDonells of Keppoch and Gargavach, published in 1931, advanced the Clan Donald case for the tune's attribution. Writing with the authority of her own Clan Donald lineage, she understood this political geography intimately. Her argument rests not merely on onomastic dispute but on the basic historical reality that Inverlochy was a Donald victory achieved against, not for, the Camerons. The Mac Dhòmhnaill Duibh of the title is far more plausibly Donald Balloch, the Black Donald of the Isles, than the exiled Cameron chief who had forfeited his lord's trust.



References

Brown, M., James I, Edinburgh, 1994.

Cannon, R. D. and Sanger, K., Donald MacDonald's Collection of Piobaireachd, Pibroch Network, 2006.

Gregory, D., History of the Western Highlands and Isles of Scotland, Glasgow, 1881.

MacDonell, J. M., The MacDonells of Keppoch and Gargavach: An Historical Record of the Branch of Clan Domhnuill, Edinburgh, 1931.

Pibroch Network, PS 177: Black Donald's March, 27 March 2020.

Sanger, K., Who Was Black Donald?, Pibroch Network, 2017.

31/08/2026

Kenneth Nicolson Ceòl / Music

Kenneth Nicolson's new album Freumhan..S'math sin 🥰

Those of Clan Cameron NZ will enjoy the rendition of Pìobaireachd Dhomhnaill Duibh.

Kenneth Nicolson · Freumhan · Song · 2026

25/08/2026

𝗝𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀 𝗪𝗮𝘁𝘁.

James Watt, the son of Greenock, died on the 25th of August 1819 at Heathfield Hall, near Handsworth in Staffordshire, on the outskirts of Birmingham. He was eighty-three. Though he had lived and worked in England for more than four decades, he remained unmistakably a Scotsman to the end, born in the Renfrewshire seaport on the 19th of January 1736, steeped in the Calvinist discipline of his father James Watt senior, a Greenock shipbuilder and magistrate, and shaped by the global maritime culture of the Clyde.

By the time of his death, Watt had been retired for nearly twenty years. In 1800 he had handed the Boulton and Watt partnership to his son, James Watt junior, and withdrawn to Heathfield Hall. Yet even in retirement his Scottish connections endured. He maintained correspondence with friends in Glasgow, kept his ties to the University of Glasgow where he had first established himself as an instrument maker in the 1750s, and in 1816 made a final pilgrimage to his native town, travelling by the paddle-steamer Comet, a vessel powered by the very engines his genius had made practical. That return to Greenock was his last visit to Scottish soil.

His final years were spent in the attic workshop at Heathfield, where he continued to tinker with new devices, including a mechanical copying machine for sculptures. Despite a lifetime of nervous temperament, frequent migraines and episodes of melancholy, his death was peaceful and at home. His second wife, Ann MacGregor, whom he had married in 1776 after the death of his first wife Margaret Miller, survived him.

Watt was buried on the 2nd of September 1819 in the graveyard of St Mary's Church, Handsworth, beside his business partner Matthew Boulton. In the 1820s his son commissioned a memorial statue from the sculptor Francis Leggatt Chantrey for the church. A far larger white marble statue by Chantrey was erected in St Paul's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, in 1825, with an epitaph by Lord Brougham that deliberately recorded his origins: Born at Greenock MDCC###VI. That statue was removed from the Abbey in 1960 and is now held by the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, a fitting homecoming for a Scottish hero.

In Greenock, the approximate site of his birth is marked by a statue, and the town preserves street names, the Watt Memorial Library, and the Watt Cairn in Greenock Cemetery, a remarkable monument erected by the Watt Club and completed in 1936 on the bicentenary of his birth, built with stones sent from across the world. Glasgow honours him with statuary in George Square and on Glasgow Green, where the James Watt boulder marks the spot where, in May 1765, he is said to have conceived the separate condenser that revolutionised steam power. Edinburgh remembers him in Princes Street, while Heriot-Watt University bears his name alongside that of the sixteenth-century financier George Heriot. The University of Glasgow, where Watt first repaired scientific instruments and befriended Adam Smith and Joseph Black, houses the original model Newcomen engine that sparked his great insight, now in The Hunterian. A bust of Watt stands among the sixteen Scottish heroes in the Hall of Heroes at the National Wallace Monument in Stirling.

When Heathfield Hall was demolished in the 1920s, Watt's attic workshop, containing more than eight thousand objects, was carefully dismantled and reconstructed at the Science Museum in London. Yet his true legacy in Scotland lies deeper: in the industrial transformation of the Clyde, in the engineering tradition of Glasgow, and in the enduring pride of Greenock, which raised a man who, in Brougham's words, enlarged the resources of his country.

References

Carnegie, Andrew, James Watt (New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1905).

Dickinson, Henry Winram and Rhys Jenkins (eds), James Watt and the Steam Engine: The Memorial Volume Prepared for the Committee of the Watt Centenary Commemoration at Birmingham 1919 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927).

Muirhead, James Patrick, The Life of James Watt: With Selections from his Correspondence, 2nd edn (London: John Murray, 1859).

The Times, 28 August 1819, p. 3.

24/08/2026

Gàidhlig word of the day...gabh math an latha 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

23/08/2026

𝗜 𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗮 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗿, 𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗜 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘀𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵 𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴.

Sir William Wallace was captured on the 3rd of August 1305 at Robroyston, near Glasgow, having been betrayed by Sir John de Menteith, a Scottish knight in the service of Edward I. After being taken to Dumbarton Castle, he was transported under heavy guard to London, a journey of some four hundred miles that took nineteen days. He arrived on the 22nd of August and, because of the immense crowds eager to see the Scottish outlaw, was held overnight in a house on Fenchurch Street.

The following morning, 23rd of August 1305, Wallace was brought to Westminster Hall for what can only be described as a show trial. The proceedings were led by Sir Peter Mallorie, the King's Justice, before a commission of gaol delivery. Wallace was charged with treason, murder, robbery, sedition, fire-raising, plundering, and violence against civilians, including the killing of William Heselrig, the English sheriff of Lanark. He was also accused of burning churches and seeking to subject Scotland to the King of France in order to secure help against England.

As an outlaw, Wallace was denied the protections of English law. He had no lawyer and was not permitted to speak in his own defence. Nevertheless, when formally accused of treason, he shouted above his accusers that he could not be a traitor to Edward I, for he had never sworn homage or allegiance to the English king. He was a Scot, born in Scotland, and did not recognise England as his sovereign nation. To the other charges, he freely confessed that as Governor of Scotland he had been an enemy to its enemies, had slain the English, and had stormed towns and castles which Edward unjustly claimed. A crown of laurel was placed upon his head as a mockery of any supposed ambition to the Scottish crown.

The verdict and sentence were predetermined. Wallace was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. He was dragged through the streets of London to the Elms at Smithfield, a distance of some six miles. There, on Saint Bartholomew's Eve, he was hanged by the neck until near death, then cut down while still alive. His stomach was opened, his entrails pulled out and burned before him, and his heart, liver, and lungs cast into the fire. He was then beheaded, and his body cut into four quarters.

His head was dipped in tar and set upon a pike on London Bridge. His limbs were dispatched to Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling, and Perth, there to be displayed as a warning to all who might resist English rule. Edward I intended not only a political statement but a religious one: by destroying Wallace's body utterly, he sought to deny him resurrection on Judgement Day.

The ex*****on achieved the opposite of its purpose. Rather than crushing Scottish resistance, Wallace's martyrdom inspired Robert the Bruce and generations of Scots who followed. A memorial stone was erected near the site of his ex*****on at Smithfield in 1956, and to this day flowers and tributes are left upon it, particularly around the anniversary of his death.

References

Stevenson, Joseph (ed.), Documents Illustrative of Sir William Wallace, his Life and Times (Maitland Club, 1841)

Wallace, William, Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., vol. 28 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911)

22/08/2026

𝗕𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱/𝗕𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗼𝗻.

The Battle of the Standard, also known as the Battle of Northallerton, was fought on the 22nd of August 1138 near Northallerton in North Yorkshire. It arose from the political turmoil known as The Anarchy, the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Matilda for the English crown.

King Henry I of England died in December 1135 without a legitimate male heir, having designated his daughter Matilda as successor. Stephen of Blois, Henry's nephew, seized the throne despite having sworn fealty to Matilda. This usurpation triggered widespread baronial revolt across England.

King David I of Scotland was Matilda's uncle, his sister Edith (also called Matilda) having been Henry I's first wife. David had substantial landed interests in England through the Honour of Huntingdon, which he held via his marriage to Matilda de Senlis. When Stephen took the throne, David refused to do homage to him, though he permitted his son Henry to pay homage for Carlisle and the Honour of Huntingdon at York in 1136. David launched three incursions into England during 1138, with the third and largest aimed at supporting his niece's claim and expanding Scottish territory southward, particularly into Northumberland.

By July 1138, David had taken much of Northumberland and laid siege to Wark Castle. He then crossed the River Tees into Yorkshire, advancing toward York. King Stephen was occupied suppressing rebellions in southern England and could not march north himself.

Resistance was organised by Archbishop Thurstan of York, who framed the defence as a holy crusade against the ancient enemy. He successfully raised an army of approximately 10,000 men from Yorkshire and the north Midlands, comprising local militia, baronial retinues, and a small force of knights sent by Stephen under Bernard de Balliol.

The spiritual and tactical centre of the English force was a wagon bearing a mast from which flew the consecrated banners of the minsters of York (St Peter), Beverley (St John), and Ripon (St Wilfred). A silver casket containing the consecrated host was placed upon this carriage, which became known as the Standard. The English drew up on a low hill about two miles north of Northallerton, blocking the Great North Road.

The English commanders included William de Aumale and Walter l'Espec, Sheriff of Yorkshire. Most of the Anglo-Norman knights dismounted to fight on foot in the front ranks, interspersed with archers, while their horses were held in reserve to the rear. This formation was unusual for the period and reflected a defensive, static posture.

David's force numbered around 16,000 men and was drawn from across Scotland and his allies. It included heavily armoured knights and mounted men, archers, and large contingents of unarmoured infantry from Galloway and the Highlands. Prince Henry, David's son, commanded the heavy cavalry on the right flank. The Galwegians, fierce but lightly equipped warriors, demanded and were granted the honour of leading the attack despite David's better judgement.

The battle began in the early morning fog of 22nd of August.The Galwegians charged first, howling war cries and hurling javelins. They were met by volleys of arrows from the English bowmen, who targeted the unarmoured Scots with devastating effect. Contemporary chroniclers noted that the Galwegians fell in large numbers, some resembling hedgehogs with arrows protruding from their bodies. Those who survived the missile storm were cut down in hand-to-hand combat by the dismounted, well-armoured English knights.

Two Galwegian chieftains, Donald and Ulgerich, were killed, at which point their men broke and fled. Prince Henry then led a cavalry charge with approximately 200 heavy horsemen against the English left flank. The Scottish knights broke through the English line but, rather than wheeling to attack the English rear or seizing the Standard, they pressed on against the English mounted reserve behind the lines. This allowed the English infantry to close ranks and isolate the Scottish horse. Henry's attack was ultimately unsuccessful, and he was forced to retreat, mingling with English forces to escape.

King David attempted to rally his reserves and even dismounted to lead an infantry counterattack, but the rout of the Galwegians had spread panic through the Scottish ranks. After approximately two to three hours of fighting, the Scottish army was in full retreat. The English did not pursue vigorously, allowing David to withdraw toward Carlisle.

Contemporary chroniclers claimed enormous Scottish losses, with figures of 10,000 to 11,000 dead cited by Henry of Huntingdon and Richard of Hexham. Modern historians consider these figures inflated, suggesting perhaps 1,500 to 3,000 Scottish casualties against English losses that were relatively light, with only one English knight, a brother of Gilbert de Lacy, confirmed killed.

Despite the defeat, David's strategic position improved. Because the English failed to destroy his army, he was able to regroup and continue operations. In 1139, the Treaty of Durham saw King Stephen cede Northumberland to David and recognise Scottish sovereignty over much of northern England. David thus achieved his territorial aims despite the battlefield loss. He died in 1153, outliving his son Prince Henry by one year. Stephen died in 1154, and the throne eventually passed to Matilda's son, Henry II.

The battle is notable as the first major engagement between English and Scottish forces since the Norman Conquest, and it demonstrated the effectiveness of combined arms tactics, with dismounted knights and archers working in mutual support against a numerically superior but less disciplined foe.



References

Ailred of Rievaulx, Relatio de Standardo, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. Richard Howlett, Rolls Series 82 (London: Longman, 1884).

Richard of Hexham, De Gestis Regis Stephani et de Bello Standardii, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. Richard Howlett, Rolls Series 82 (London: Longman, 1884).

English Heritage, Battlefield Report: Northallerton 1138 (London: Historic England, n.d.).

21/08/2026

𝗕𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗗𝘂𝗻𝗸𝗲𝗹𝗱.

The Battle of Dunkeld was fought on the 21st of August 1689 in and around the town of Dunkeld, Perthshire, during the Jacobite rising of 1689. It pitted a government force of Cameronians, loyal to William of Orange, against Jacobite clans supporting the deposed King James VII of Scotland. The engagement was a brutal, close-quarters urban fight that effectively ended the first Jacobite rising.

The rising had been led by John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, known to his enemies as Bluidy Clavers and to his allies as Bonnie Dundee. In July 1689, Dundee secured a dramatic victory at Killiecrankie, routing General Hugh Mackay's government force. However, Dundee was killed in the moment of triumph, and command of the Jacobite army passed to Brigadier-General Alexander Cannon, a lowland Scot who had served in the Scots-Dutch Brigade. The appointment offended Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, one of the most formidable Highland chiefs, who departed with some of his clan in disgust.

Following Killiecrankie, Cannon gathered the Jacobite forces and marched south toward Dunkeld, a strategically vital town. Its capture would open the route to Perth, which was weakly defended and strongly pro-Jacobite, and from there to Stirling and the Lowlands. The Scottish Privy Council, fearing a Jacobite onslaught, ordered the newly formed Cameronian regiment under Lieutenant-Colonel William Cleland to march north from Perth and hold Dunkeld at all costs.

The Cameronian regiment took its name from Richard Cameron, a Covenanter martyr and religious reformer killed in 1680. It was raised largely from the tenantry of the Marquess of Douglas, chief of Clan Douglas, and was composed of fervent Presbyterians. Cleland himself was a veteran of the Covenanter battles at Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge in 1679, and at only twenty-eight years of age he was already an experienced and determined commander. The regiment numbered between 700 and 800 men, though some sources suggest an initial muster of around 1,200. They were poorly equipped, issued with matchlock muskets, pikes, and halberds, and had no uniforms, fighting in civilian clothing.

Cleland and his men arrived at Dunkeld on the evening of the 17th of August and immediately set about fortifying the town. They occupied Dunkeld Cathedral and Dunkeld House, the seat of the Marquess of Atholl, erected barricades, threw up entrenchments, and filled gaps in the walls. On the 19th of August, the Earl of Cardross arrived with cavalry and dragoons, but he was ordered back to Perth the following night, leaving the Cameronians isolated and heavily outnumbered.

At dawn on the 21st of August, Cannon's Jacobite army appeared on the hills north of Dunkeld. His force numbered between 4,000 and 5,000 men, comprising Irish dragoons under Colonel Nicholas Purcell, and clansmen including MacLeans, MacDonalds of Sleat, Clanranald, Glencoe, and Keppoch, Macneils of Barra, Gordons, Farquharsons, Camerons, Frasers, MacGregors, Stewarts of Appin, and Athollmen. They also had three leather cannon captured at Killiecrankie, along with cavalry and a large number of muskets seized from Mackay's defeated army. Like the Cameronians, however, they were short of powder and shot.

At around seven o'clock, the leather guns opened fire from Gallow Hill, but the makeshift pieces quickly collapsed under recoil. Sir Alexander Maclean then led a hundred shock troops in a highland charge against Stanley Hill, held by a small Cameronian detachment behind a stone d**e. After fierce fighting, the defenders were forced back into the town.

The Jacobites launched a multi-pronged assault, entering the town at four different points. The fighting raged street by street, house by house. The Cameronians, defending barricades at the Market Cross and Scots Raw, were pushed back toward the cathedral and Dunkeld House. Lieutenant Henry Stewart held a barricade until he was killed. Cleland, moving actively among his men encouraging the defence, was fatally wounded within the first hour. Major James Henderson, his second-in-command, was also struck, and command eventually devolved upon Captain George Munro of Auchinbowie.

The Cameronians found themselves holding only the cathedral, Dunkeld House, and a few adjoining buildings. With am******on nearly exhausted, they resorted to stripping lead from the roof of Dunkeld House, melting it down to fashion makeshift musket balls. In a desperate measure, Munro organised small parties with burning faggots to set fire to the thatched houses into which Jacobites had crowded. The town was soon engulfed in flames. The pikemen reportedly locked the doors of some houses, trapping Jacobites inside to perish in the inferno. No fewer than sixteen Highlanders were said to have burnt to death in one house alone.

After four hours of savage combat, the Jacobite assault faltered. Their attacks had been uncoordinated and costly. Both sides were running out of am******on, and with the town in ruins and no shelter remaining, the Highlanders began to withdraw. Cannon attempted to rally them for a renewed assault, but they refused, declaring that they were willing to fight men, but not devils. The Cameronians, reduced to their last flask of powder, emerged from the smoking ruins to hurl defiance at the retreating foe, then sang psalms in thanksgiving.

Jacobite losses were heavy, estimated at between 150 and 300 killed, with a similar number wounded. Cameronian casualties were far lighter, at around 45 to 50 killed and many more wounded. The town of Dunkeld was almost entirely destroyed; only three houses survived the conflagration. Lieutenant-Colonel William Cleland was buried in the nave of Dunkeld Cathedral, his grave marked by a simple stone bearing only his name.

The defeat at Dunkeld shattered Jacobite morale and effectively ended the first rising. Those who were not killed or burnt fled homeward, abandoning any advance on Perth or Stirling. In April 1690, the remaining Jacobite clans gathered under Major-General Thomas Buchan, but they were defeated at Cromdale on the 1st of May 1690.

The Battle of Dunkeld was added to the Inventory of Historic Battlefields in Scotland in 2012. The pockmarked stonework of Dunkeld Cathedral's east gable still bears the scars of musket balls fired during the engagement. The town that stands today was largely rebuilt after the battle, its layout altered forever by the destruction of 1689. The Cameronian regiment went on to become the 26th (The Cameronian) Regiment of Foot, and later the Cameronians (Scottish Ri**es), carrying the memory of their desperate stand at Dunkeld as a defining moment in their history.

I am lucky to be the custodian of a couple of bullets from the battle.

References

Crichton, Andrew. The Life and Diary of Lieut. Col. J. Blackader of the Cameronian Regiment, and Deputy Governor of Stirling Castle. Edinburgh, 1824.

Douglas History. Battle of Dunkeld, 1689. Available at douglashistory.co.uk.

Historic Environment Scotland. Inventory of Historic Battlefields: Battle of Dunkeld. Designation BTL32.

Keltie, John Scott, ed. A History of the Scottish Highlands, Highland Clans and Highland Regiments. Vol. 1. London, 1882.

Macaulay, Thomas Babington. The History of England from the Accession of James II. London, 1848.

The Exact Narrative of the Conflict at Dunkeld, Betwixt the Earl of Angus's Regiment and the Rebels, Collected from Several Officers of that Regiment. London, 1689.

19/08/2026

𝗥𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗝𝗮𝗰𝗼𝗯𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗮𝘁 𝗚𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗮𝗻.

In the late summer of 1988, a moorland fire burned through deep peat on the hillside north of the Glenfinnan Monument, stripping away centuries of accumulated turf to expose a large flat rock bearing a carved Latin inscription. The text commemorated the events of the 19th of August 1745, when Prince Charles Edward Stuart began the last Jacobite rising. The discovery fuelled debate about whether the famous ceremony took place where the 1815 monument now stands, or upon that exposed hillock where the inscription was found.

MDCCXLV IN NOMINE DOMINE VEXILLA TANDEM TRIUMPHANTES CAROLI EDUARDI STUART ERECTA 1745.

In the name of the lord, the Standards of Charles Edward Stuart Triumphing at last were set up 1745.

The journey to Glenfinnan had begun weeks earlier. Charles Edward Stuart sailed from Nantes aboard the frigate Du Teillay on the 5th of July 1745, accompanied by a small group of supporters later known as the Seven Men of Moidart. A second vessel, the Elisabeth, a sixty-four-gun former Royal Navy ship, carried arms, am******on and seventy Irish volunteers from Lord Clare’s regiment in French service. The two ships had rendezvoused at Belle-Isle after Charles boarded at St Nazaire on the 7th of July.

On the 9th of July 1745, some 117 miles west of Lizard Point in Cornwall, the squadron was intercepted by HMS Lion, a fifty-eight-gun Royal Navy ship commanded by Captain Piercy Brett. At around five o’clock in the afternoon, Lion closed with Elisabeth and opened fire. The action lasted five hours. Elisabeth’s captain, D’Eau, and his brother were killed by roundshot early in the engagement, and the French ship suffered severe damage to her hull and rigging. Du Teillay, with Charles aboard, attempted to assist but was driven off by Lion’s stern-chasers. By ten o’clock, Elisabeth had broken off and limped back to Brest, taking with her most of the expedition’s supplies: some 1,500 muskets, 1,800 broadswords, eight artillery pieces, and the surviving Irish volunteers. Lion was too badly damaged to pursue; her mizenmast, main yard, fore-topsail yard and main-topsail mast had been shot away, and she suffered forty-five men killed and one hundred and seven wounded, including Captain Brett and all three of his lieutenants. Brett put into Plymouth for repairs, apparently unaware that he had engaged Charles Edward Stuart’s expedition. Du Teillay, though lightly armed, escaped and continued northward.

Charles landed on Eriskay in the Western Isles on the 23rd of July. Despite advice from several clan chiefs to abandon the enterprise, he pressed on to the mainland, anchoring in Loch nan Uamh near Arisaig and sending summons to the Highland chiefs to meet him at Glenfinnan(Glen of MacKinnon)on the 19th of August.

Glenfinnan was chosen with care. It lay on the border of Cameron and MacDonald territory, was shielded from the sea by mountains, and could be reached on foot by the largest number of clansmen. The weeks preceding the gathering had been discouraging. The French king had not provided the promised troops, the Skye chiefs refused to join, and even those sympathetic to the Stuart cause insisted that an invasion without French support was hopeless. Charles persisted, and by mid-August he had secured pledges from Ranald MacDonald of Clanranald and, crucially, from Donald Cameron of Lochiel. Lochiel’s commitment gave the rising its first substantial military backbone.

On the morning of the 19th of August, Charles and his party rowed up Loch Shiel from Dalilea, where the ladies of the MacDonald house had lately sewn the standard: a large banner of red silk with a white square at its centre. They came ashore at Glenfinnan shortly after one o’clock, expecting to find an army waiting. Instead, only about two hundred men were present, mostly MacDonalds of Clanranald and Morar. By three o’clock the promised clans had still not appeared, and the enterprise seemed finished. Then, from the high ground to the north, came the sound of bagpipes. Cameron of Lochiel descended the slopes with some six or seven hundred men. Soon after, Alexander MacDonell of Keppoch arrived with around three hundred and fifty of his followers, and MacDonald of Morar brought another hundred and fifty Clanranald men. Government soldiers(81) captured a few days earlier at High Bridge over the River Spean were also marched into the gathering as prisoners.

With over twelve hundred men now assembled upon the hillside, the ceremony could proceed. The standard, described as about twice the size of an ordinary pair of colours, was unfurled and held by William Murray, Marquis of Tullibardine and the Duke of Atholl, an elderly veteran of the 1715 and 1719 risings who was so frail that he required the assistance of two men to steady the pole. Tullibardine read aloud the proclamation declaring Charles’s father, James Francis Edward Stuart, to be James VIII of Scotland and III of England. A commission was then read appointing Charles as Prince Regent. Charles himself addressed the gathering, setting out his manifesto and his father’s claim to the throne. Since he spoke in English and most of the assembled Highlanders spoke Gàidhlig, his words were translated, possibly by the poet Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, who had lately been living at Dalilea and was to serve as the prince’s Gàidhlig tutor. The ceremony concluded with cheers, the distribution of brandy, and the Highlanders throwing their bonnets into the air, shouting for King James and Prince Charles, for the prosperity of Scotland, and for No Union.

The question of exactly where upon the hillside this took place has never been fully settled. The Glenfinnan Monument, an eighteen-metre tower erected in 1815 by Alexander MacDonald of Glenaladale and topped in 1835 with a statue of a kilted Highlander, has long claimed the site. Yet the 1988 fire revealed evidence on the hillock that suggested otherwise. Along with the Latin inscription, there were said to be carved footprints and socket holes that might have held the standard pole.

After the gathering, the Jacobite army marched east. Charles spent the night at Fassfern House on Loch Eil, where he plucked a white rose and pinned it to his bonnet, making the white cockade an emblem of the cause. The rock uncovered by the 1988 fire remains a quiet but potent reminder that the precise ground upon which the standard was raised may yet lie not beside the monument on the loch shore, but upon that windswept hillock where the inscription still stands the test of time.

References

- Duffy, Christopher, The '45: Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Untold Story of the Jacobite Rising (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003)

- Forbes, Robert, The Lyon in Mourning, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1895)

- O'Sullivan, John William, 1745 and After, ed. Alistair Taylor and Henrietta Taylor (London: The Cayme Press, 1938)

- The National, Historians claim Glenfinnan Monument is in the wrong place, 30 August 2015