Bottom Lining: blood and soil Tories, a mad monarch and debauched Duke of York

The UK is not a migrant friendly country. It says it is. It isn’t. The UK is hostile to migrants. Not all of the UK but certainly that bit that controls migration.

People have migrated. That’s it. People have migrated the whole of human existence. Migrated to find the essentials of living – basically what it takes for survival.

When humans migrated across continents they came from Africa. Oh, yes. Even you racists out there, pucker up because you are basically, African. Learn to love your genes. Of course none of those emigrants who landed on these shore about 1,000,000 years ago would be welcome today. Imagine the scene  – boats loaded with terrified people attempting to make safe landing. But wait, back then there was no evil little Home Secretary shooing them away. There was nobody here at all. And so the British African arrived. And that was that. People forgot who they were. But we haven’t got all day – fast forward to – not Patel but a government not unlike today’s unscrupulous Tory gang of spivs and toffs.

James Gillray’s depiction of British MPs getting ready for the daily grind

The year is 1803. Britain was at war with France. Again. They didn’t want any queer democratic revolutionary happenings in Blighty. So war it was. Tories were in charge. Again. A guy called Henry Addington and a mad King. Just call him George.

The mad king has his sights on Boney

Like most Tories the bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Back in 1803 it was all the rage – on the take, doing a mate a favour, you scratch my back. We’re well acquainted with the idea. Well acquainted. Pub landlords getting squoodles of millions for making virus test tubes. Turns out they were – well not test tubes as science understands the term. But. Well, always a but. Didn’t have viruses back then. They did but didn’t know them as viruses.

Anyway. 1803. War. Tories in power. Tories everywhere. Even those who didn’t call themselves Tories were Tories. Tory = look out for the bottom line. In Tory minds that meant squeezing the last sweat of profit out workers. One of the most horrible jobs back about 1803 was cutting, gathering, laying out to dry, burning and collecting the ash of kelp. Kelp is a type of seaweed that was essential to manufacturing soap and glass. Everyone needs glass and/or soap – except the Hudsons. In-joke involving cruel snorting schoolkids at sight of 19^th century add for Hudson’s soap because of a local family of that name who weren’t too familiar with soap. Enough of this nonsense. Soap and glass back in 1803 delivered excellent bottom lines because so much of the hard graft going into them was done by kids. What do child workers mean? Profits. Kids and their folks were sick of this work. They’d been farmers until thrown out of their homes by their lairds. This is Scotland, in the Union, in 1803. Highland lairds (landowners) found a better bottom line by throwing impoverished natives off the lands of their ancestors and replacing them with sheep. People pay to eat sheep and wear wool and sheep don’t need much looking after. Bottom line, remember.

Where were we? Yes, people were sick of this kelp drudgery. They couldn’t return to their burnt out homes invaded by sheep so many chose to migrate to North America. Migration was quite a thing across the British Isles and families who claimed to own the Highlands were so bottom lining with sheep they’d persuaded lots and lots of people to pile into boats and take their chances in North America where they might eventually be able to farm.  What I mean by persuaded is forced. Some had a choice. Some had no choice. People wept, said their last farewells to any too old or decrepit to migrate. They wouldn’t see them again. Or the land. Or the graves of their families. Choice wasn’t really a thing back then – for the poor.  One way out was to risk everything, basically everything these folk had was their lives, and emigrate. No Union bonus for them.

Pause for a link but come back a’body. Kelp, Clearances, Clanranald, Speculators and Scottish Scoundrel Lairds

Furious lairds did what they could to dissuade them from leaving – apart from paying them properly and improving their working conditions. When this didn’t work they lobbied their friends in government to make it all but impossible for these poor folk to leave the country and so leave proprietors without labour to do their dirty work for them.

The Tory government and the mad king were happy to play their part. The Passenger Vessel Act was quickly pushed through parliament in London. To add insult to injury it was tarted up as being in the interests of migrants – to protect them from being exploited by transportation organisations with less overcrowding and better treatment of passengers. Bunkum, of course. The motivation was entirely to prevent workers leaving the United Kingdom to settle in North America, for example, the fare to Canada tripled from £3 to at least £10 which in today’s money is a hike from £300, still a small fortune back in 1803, to an outrageous £1,000 per person; on a par with people smugglers skinning desperate immigrants nowadays. And we’re talking about the most impoverished folk with virtually no money to their name. It’s worth saying at this point that the Act was repealed in 1827 when prices for kelp plummeted and Highland lairds wanted rid of what had become unwanted workers – 20,000 once employed in the kelp industry. Westminster was only happy to oblige them once again by dropping the cost of migration onboard vessels to North America. Westminster politicians were as unscrupulous then as they are today.  Alexander Macdonell, chaplain of the Glengarry Fencilbes, said the 1803 Act was passed on a

specious pretext of humanity & tender benevolence towards the emigrants.

Passengers were crowded onto vessels

The swiftness of the Act’s passage through parliament took some Hebrideans by surprise. They had already given up their tenancies and were abandoned by the government for a generation.

However – always a however – there were exceptions allowed. What are friends in high places for if not to pull strings. The Earl of Selkirk who had ambitions to resettle Scots in Prince Edward Island in Canada was indulged as was the Hudson’s Bay Company (echoes of PPE contracts). Selkirk set up travel agents at Portree and other Highland ports to collect prospective migrants’ deposits, some very large amounts.

Highlanders were being pushed from pillar to post. They were despised by most of the rest of the United Kingdom as uncivilised brutes and scum. But uncivilised brutes were exactly what UK military leaders, government, the mad king and the Duke of York (who was involved in sex scandals which seem to be an occupational hazard for Dukes of York) wanted as recruits to fight its wars. A regiment was formed in North America to absorb some of these hulking Highlanders who had proved so willing to spill their blood for king and country; the Canadian Fencible Regiment appeared then disappeared in 1804 when recruits grew disgruntled over their treatment and were condemned by the military authorities, parliament, the mad king and the debauched prince as strìopach (stroppy). The government, mad king and the grand ol’ Duke of York were feargach (angry) and raged at the men they’d soft-talked into signing up for becoming ‘troublesome’. Though not so troublesome they’d leave them be. Parliament and royalty – mad and bad – were desperate for cannon fodder, fit and brave young men they could sacrifice on the altar of Empire. The 1819 Military Register refers to Highlanders’

blood copiously shed in our service.

In 1810 Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register asks why government grants that were provided to the Highlands to keep the young from migrating was not available in Ireland. Perhaps it was something to do with the copious amount of blood shed by the youth of the Highlands and Islands.

So, sheep were moved onto land where once there were people; families and villages and the communities scattered hither and yon. Not untypical were the seven or eight families who lived on a farm in Argyleshire forcibly evicted and the farm let to “a gentleman because he can give more rent” and the 100,000 acres of lands of Glenshiel (then Glen Sheal), Morvich and Dornie on the west coast of Ross-shire once filled with communities of people was advertised in 1810 as pasture for sheep and black cattle, game, fishings, lead and other minerals. 

Oh, why I left my hame by Thomas Faed

There was panic on both sides – months before the Act with warnings over the “destructive depopulation of our island” and calls for “immediate and vigorous interposition of our Legislature” to stop the removal of desperate Highlanders with no means of support by what amounted to ‘unwilling banishment’. Highlanders whose only language was the Gaelic were approached by human traffickers armed with travel documents in English. Some were inevitably duped by them.

Highlanders were the disposable property of landowners in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. After the ’45 uprising and the butchery and cruelty that followed there were Scots desperate to leave to find safety. The Highlands were treated as alien territory by the British army which built forts which it filled with loyal troops to remind Highlanders who was in charge and put down resistance to its hegemony. The incursion of sheep and sporting estates created other incentives to leave. The 1803 Act was another means of controlling Highlanders. And that was another bottom line for the Union.

The destruction of the Highland way of life is a mere footnote in the pages of British history. The last Jacobite hanged.

Dr Archie Cameron stole back to Loch Arkaig in Lochaber to retrieve French gold meant to support the Jacobite cause during the second uprising. It was eight years after the bloody massacre at Culloden, that misbegotten battle to prevent the imposition of a German Protestant on the throne of Great Britain and Ireland following the proscription of Catholics from the monarchy.

Cameron took a calculated risk in returning to Scotland from France where he had sought refuge, and lost. Was he eager to get his hands on the treasure to support his growing family or use it to fund a third uprising against the Elector of Hanover and his heirs? As it happened someone else was eyeing up the cache, fellow Scot and Jacobite, Alastair Ruadh Mac Dohomnuil (Alastair MacDonnell) of Glengarry who turned government informer – his undercover name was Pickle. MacDonnell succeeded in pocketing the gold after tipping off the British government to Cameron’s whereabouts. The doctor was captured by a contingent of redcoats at Innersnaid near Loch Katrine on 20th March 1753 and this was the reason he became the last Jacobite hanged (by the state at least.)

Dr Archibald Cameron

A mere hanging lacked the necessary humiliation required by the English authorities in need of a political message which is why being declared guilty of High Treason 46 year old Dr Archie Cameron found himself bound to and dragged on a sledge through London streets then transferred to a cart to await his execution – a business that was to involve being left to swing till not quite dead before being cut down, his abdomen sliced through so his guts could be removed and burnt and his head  separated from his body and exhibited.  None can say the British state is not savage and bloodthirsty when it comes to revenge.

This son of clan chief, Cameron of Lochiel, who studied medicine at Edinburgh was as ardent a backer of the legal claim of James VII and his heirs to the throne of Gt Britain and Ireland (the one mocked as ‘The Pretender’ although that term would have been more appropriately applied to the German Georges as any in his family.)

In the wake of the failed uprising of 1745/46 Cameron was one of many Scottish lairds and noblemen charged with high treason under the 1746 Act of Attainder (one of the laws brought in to penalise Jacobites [supporters of James].)

Jacobites were not only Scots for theirs was a religious feud between Catholics (Jacobites) and Protestants (German George’s supporters.) However, no English person was listed on the London government’s roll of traitors.

There were many in Scotland opposed to the rising and some places showed their feelings by bell ringing and celebrations when the rebellion reached its bloody conclusion. Then again it is not unusual during times of war to defer to the winning side as an act of self-preservation.

George II’s son, the Duke of Cumberland aka Butcher Cumberland in Scotland and Sweet William in England,* headed the army that ultimately defeated the Jacobites. He was humbly congratulated by Glasgow’s magistrates and merchants following his ‘glorious’ victory at Culloden near Inverness and there was delight that the

‘distressed country which had seen violence and confusion, was restored from slavery and oppression to liberty and tranquillity.’

One woman’s or man’s liberty and tranquillity is another’s repression and torment.

Business people worried that divisions across Britain would interfere with commerce and there were those who were desperate to halt the ‘exorbitant Power of France’ – any of that ring a bell? Butcher Cumberland became British traders’  ‘glorious instrument’ but for great numbers of Highland Scots he was an instrument of terror. 

A young Jacobite fighting at Culloden (from Peter Watkins film, Culloden.)

While joy and partying cheered the populace of Glasgow further north government troops including contingents of German mercenaries combed the land for any termed ‘rebels’ and their families who were put to the sword, hanged from trees or shot. Homes were torched, men and women humiliated and mistreated, women and girls raped, families broken up and those fortunate enough to escape with their lives were rounded up, many manhandled onto boats anchored at strategic parts off the Scottish coast then shipped to North America or south to English prisons and trials. Permanent garrisons and forts were built around the Highlands by the London government determined to contain the rebellious north and instil a reign of fear.

Cameron was bound and taken to Stirling then Edinburgh and ultimately London where he was imprisoned in the Tower. A brief appearance before the King’s Bench at Westminster confirmed his identity and a charge of being a key ‘Agent, Actor and Contriver of the Rebellion in 1745 and against whom an Outlawry was issued out in the London Gazette …’ (Caledonian Mercury 24 May, 1753.) From there Dr Archibald Cameron of Lochiel was returned to the Tower of London until his execution a few weeks later.

His death would come slowly. There was the degrading traitor parade on a wooden sledge through London’s streets lined with the curious but it was said there were none of the usual taunts  or items thrown at the man being led to his death for it was widely reported Cameron was a kindly, softly spoken and considerate man condemned on a technicality and he attracted respect. He showed composure during this public ordeal, searching the sea of faces crowded around him for any friends there to share his agony and he smiled at some who caught his eye.

He had not been permitted a quill pen and ink to write down his final thoughts but a blunt pencil and scrap of paper found their way into his hands and this was passed to his wife (who had been able to visit her husband in the Tower.)

At Tower Hill Cameron was helped onto a cart from his sledge and there he talked for a short time with a minister, admitting to him he was ‘a little tired’ but resigned to his fate. The two prayed together and recited extracts of Psalms until Cameron said, I have now done with this World, and am ready to leave it. 

After embracing him the minister tripped as he left the cart and was urged by the considerate man facing death to be careful.

That mood of compassion continued for Cameron was left hanging for 20 minutes to ensure, hopefully, he was dead before his head was hacked from his shoulders. In the event he was not gralloched like a deer as had been the fate of many before him, including famously William Wallace 450 years earlier, nor were his limbs severed from his body or his head placed on a spike on London Bridge but instead it was placed alongside his body when he was buried in the Savoy Chapel at Westminster in London – though I’m sure he would have preferred to lie at Lochiel.

And so with Archie Cameron’s death on the 7th June 1753 the number executed by the British state post-Culloden came to over 90. Archibald Cameron of Lochiel was the last of the Jacobites to be formally executed for High Treason while Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, had been the last Jacobite and last man beheaded in Britain, in 1747.

As for Pickle the Spy, Alastair Ruadh Mac Dohomnuil (ruadh is Gaelic for red as in red-haired), who was responsible for Cameron’s capture, he had spent two years in the Tower of London and on his release in 1747 he went out a snitch – a traitor in other words, though not regarded as such by the British government, of course. He provided the London government with a host of intelligence which resulted in the deaths of several of his former comrades. It is said he dealt directly with Henry Pelham, Whig and prime minister.

On Pelham’s Wiki entry it says:

Pelham’s premiership was relatively uneventful in terms of domestic affairs, although it was during his premiership that Great Britain experienced the tumult of the 1745 Jacobite uprising.

Tumult. And so we get a sense of the insignificance of Scotland’s history within terms of Britain – that the last civil war fought in these islands is designated as insignificant and the deaths, the confiscation of lands, the eradication of the Highland clan system, the burning out of families from their homes, the harrying of the Highlands by British and German troops, the prohibition of the very clothes on the backs of Highlanders (how did poor Highlanders find clothes different from their home-spun traditional garments?), the music and instruments they played even the language they spoke was targeted and outlawed. Quite scandalous. Today this kind of merciless assault on a region’s way of life would be seen for what it is and condemned. Not so in the 18th century. The Highlands had been designated as wild and desolate. Its majestic mountain landscape as ugly and the communities who lived there as savages and not being entirely human it was easy to turn a blind eye to having them systematically cleared from their homes and transported to the Americas and other parts of the world. And all of this disgraceful persecution is summed up as – a tumult (a melee, commotion, ruckus, disturbance.) 

I first encountered Dr Archibald Cameron, Pickle the Spy and other players of the time in D. K. Broster’s fine Jacobite Trilogy. Dorothy Kathleen Broster was an English writer from Garston, Liverpool and academic. The Flight of the Heron, the first tale of her trilogy published in 1925 proved a huge success and no wonder for it’s a wonderful adventure story and Outlander’s Jamie Fraser is a spit for Ewen Cameron in all kinds of ways. Mac Donnell is Finlay MacPhair of Glenshian in Broster’s books. 

It is easy to romanticise the Jacobites, fighting against a British state defended by a large efficient army; well-organised and brutally ruthless. Everything was thrown at the Jacobites – at Catholic Highland lairds and clan leaders – and ordinary clans men and women – doggedly faithful to each other but the Jacobites did not set out to defend a now lost separate Highland identity although their actions quickened the eradication of what distinguished the Highlander from Lowlander. Theirs was a religious campaign.

Lands belonging to pro-Jacobite clans were confiscated by the British state in a way many of us would heartily approve of today. In the 18th century these lands, purloined by the German king and his government in London, were then sold off to the highest bidder or dispensed to friends. The clan lands were broken up. That cohesiveness of place was lost. Many Highland lairds of today who flaunt their non-outlawed tartans and hairy tweeds harbour none of the obligations or responsibilities towards the people who live in their communities that pre-Culloden Highland lairds held to. That unique system of life that distinguished the Highlands from the rest of Gt. Britain and Ireland was destroyed on the scaffolds of London.

*The flower Sweet William is not welcome in some Scottish gardens for its glorification of the Butcher Cumberland.

 

https://lenathehyena.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/kelp-clearances-clanranald-speculators-and-scottish-scoundrel-lairds

https://lenathehyena.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/reflections-on-the-highland-clearances-croick-church-at-strathcarron

https://lenathehyena.wordpress.com/2019/02/28/the-church-belongs-to-god-but-the-stone-belongs-to-the-duke-the-highland-clearances-as-told-by-iain-crichton-smith

 

From the Cock o’ the North to Commissioner Jim Gordon via Huntly Castle

Huntly Castle from the mid-15th to early-17th century

Huntly Castle is a ruin but what a ruin. It is big and bold and sits in a green park surrounded by trees and the rivers Bogie and Deveron.

The calm side of the River Deveron

Motte where the first motte and bailey Strathbogie castle was built in the late 1100s

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next to what remains of the castle is part of an extant motte site of the original 12th century Strathbogie castle – built for an earl of Fife. This first castle was wooden and was burnt down by the Black Douglas clan in 1496. Out of the ashes emerged first a tower house built soon after the fire and gradually more buildings were added until the great hulk of castle we see now – bigger and bolder than the earlier one emerged and to be on the safe side it was constructed of stone; mainly sandstone and freestone, altogether more resistant to fire than wood. Practically nothing remains of the tower house but the later castle, though tumbledown, hints at what it must have been like – something pretty amazing.

Stables for the short garron ponies, brew house, bake house and other remains including  the area where the L-plan tower house was erected in the 15th century to replace the lost wooden castle

King James IV used to make annual pilgrimages to the shrine of Saint Duthac in Tain, north of Inverness, and he often stopped off at Huntly en route. During one visit, in 1501, he watched the stonemasons at work building or biggin the castle as they say in the northeast of Scotland and so impressed was he with their handiwork he gave them some tokens in the way of money and I’m not surprised because they made a grand job of it; the stone carving is superb.

A fragment of the original roughly paved road made up of pebbles and boulders which led to the eastern part of the castle constructed in the 17thC

The spectacular ruin that stands in Huntly belonged to the Gordon family. Many of you will know that the name Gordon is very much associated with Aberdeenshire although scratch around and you might disturb some French roots in the guise of Gourdon (there is a place of that name farther down the Aberdeenshire coast) and a nod to Berwickshire where a bloke by the name of Sir Adam de Gordon thought he would like a bit of a change – and having shifted allegiance during the Scottish Wars of Independence he eventually ended up on the right side and was promptly rewarded with parcels of land in Strathbogie by Robert the Bruce. Such is how land came to be distributed – ending up in the hands of powerful families – handed out like sweeties. Cronyism has a long pedigree. Doing someone a favour, raising troops to fight their cause once secured immense tracts of land for families who prided themselves on their ability to accumulate piles and piles of the countryside. Some of them are still determinedly clinging on to land they acquired in all manner of dodgy ways in the past and will fight anyone who suggests they don’t have fair claim to their estates – in the courts not on the battlefield anymore.

The Gordons were proud of their lands and the great muckle house built at Huntly. George Gordon the 1st Marquess of Huntly had pride a-plenty which probably explains why plastered his and hers names right across the front of their impressive pile – akin today of installing neon lighting on the front of your house. The bold inscription reads:

GEORGE GORDON FIRST MARQUESS OF HUNTLY 16
HENRIETTE STEWART MARQUESSE OF HUNTLY 02

Not forgetting the hand of God pointing out each name. Well if you have it, flaunt it, said God.

 

The hand of God points to the names of the Gordons who owned the castle

All generations of Gordons included a George so the story of the George Gordons can get very muddled and as the Gordons were always in the thick of the action, more than your average family, I will avoid going into detail. However, I cannot entirely.

Three storeys of the castle

Original studded oak door

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the several George Gordons – the one who wrote his name across his house – was an influential political figure in Scotland, attached to the royal court, and a nephew of James V. He was no shrinking violet as you may have deduced and earned himself the nickname, the Cock o’ the North.

 

Certainly one of the oldest wooden lavatory seats in Scotland

The great fireplace was disfigured by Covenanters who disapproved of its Catholic imagery

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This epithet transferred to the Gordon Highlander regiment who came to be known as the Cocky wee Gordons and not-so-long-ago a popular ditty was oft sung across Scotland – ask your granny or maybe your great granny and watch her face light up with the memory.

A Gordon for me, a Gordon for me,
If ye’re no a Gordon ye’re no use to me.
The Black Watch are braw, the Seaforths and a’
But the cocky wee Gordon’s the pride o’ them a’.

Mary of Guise, Mary Queen of Scots’ mother, was involved in a plot to clip the wings of the Cock o’ the North. I should have said the Gordons were Catholics and so was Mary of Guise but then she turned on some other Catholics at the time of the Reformation because – well, because that was the politic thing to do – and heads were optional extras in those days.

Gordon the Catholic was ambushed by a party of royalist Stewarts and he was killed. His corpse was then embalmed and put on trial for treason. I can assure you stranger things have happened. His castle was looted and religious carvings relating to the old faith found there, including two medallions above his front door – most unusual in Scotland, were destroyed.

The main doorway beautifully carved

 

Oriel window high up on the south-facing wall with spectacular views across the countryside

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you will have gathered people, let’s be clear men, were pretty bloodthirsty all those centuries ago – and that’s without video nasties – and there was a definite trend for Scotland’s landed families to go at it hammer and tongs against their neighbours. You would think history has been a constant power struggle for land and political influence and you’d be right.

A remnant of ornate plaster work. The whole castle once was adorned with such intricate craftsmanship

Back to the castle. Medieval palaces tended to expand over the centuries ending up in a melange of architectural styles. Huntly Castle is no different. Building was still going on when the Scottish civil war broke out in the 17th century. All these centuries on and the Gordons were still fighting anyone and everyone; family, strangers, neighbours – everyone.

 

Graffiti is there in abundance in the castle with some beautifully written letters

At the Battle of Aberdeen in 1644 at the time of the Scottish Civil War the Gordon clan fought on both sides – Covenanters and Royalists so that at least some of them would be on the winning side.

Another fireplace with medallions of George Gordon and Henrietta Stewart

George Gordon, 2nd Marquess of Huntly, (son of George Cock o’ the North and Henrietta Stewart) brought up a Protestant Episcopalian at the court of James VI, was on the winning, royalist, side at the Battle of Alford in 1645 at which he fought alongside his son, also George, who was killed. George the 2nd Marquess had, in 1639, been secretly appointed to oppose the Covenanters in the north of Scotland and at Turriff he led a force of 2,000 in a show of strength against a gathering of 800 men led by the Marquess of Montrose (then in support of the Covenanters.) The two sides sized each other up but a tense situation passed without the spilling of blood.

 

Stone stairs lead to all kinds of interesting nooks and crannies. Some original joist ends have survived and the later castle from the north side

The peace was not to last and there followed a game of cat and mouse between Montrose and Gordon who was none too keen on getting dragged into the whole difficult affair with the Covenanters.

One day Montrose said to Gordon, “Do you fancy a trip to Edinburgh?”

Gordon smelling a rat replied, “No, not really.”

Montrose, however, wouldn’t take no for an answer and so Gordon was taken to the capital to intimidate him into behaving but he shrugged off the threat and travelled north again and fought in a battle at the Brig o’ Dee at Aberdeen. As a punishment Huntly Castle was plundered and the fate of both castle and the Gordons thereafter followed a downward trajectory. Gordon/Huntly was again a wanted man who embarked on the 1640s equivalent of trains, planes and automobiles to make his escape – by horse, foot and boat. He kept on the move – all around the north of Scotland but was captured at Strathdon in a violent incident that saw both his servants and friends killed. Gordon ended up back in Edinburgh, locked up in the tolbooth until in March 1649 he was beheaded.

Prisoners abandoned in a deep, dark hole beneath the castle had no chance of escape

Life was one long power struggle for wealthy families in past centuries but there were occasional intermissions when peace broke out long enough for a game of football to take place or even a marriage. Football was a popular pastime with the rich and powerful in Scottish society in past centuries – less so today.

 

The Gordons enjoyed a game of fitba and like most landed gentry they also liked to keep their options open by shifting allegiances according to where their interests happened to lie on any particular day. They were split as a family during the Jacobite risings in 1715-16 and 1745-46 when once more royalist/government troops took over Huntly Castle and the gentle decay that had begun in the previous century continued apace following the unfriendly attentions of anti-Jacobite government troops.

It’s hard to get an impression of how opulent Huntly Castle must have been in its heyday – reputedly no expense spared and very grand indeed with all the main rooms highly decorated and beautifully painted ceilings. John Anderson was the painter responsible for some of the ceiling work, not sure if he was local, might have been and so impressive were his efforts he was commissioned to work on Falkland Palace and Edinburgh Castle. Of course Huntly Castle set the standard. The few remaining carvings tease us into regretting what has been lost but Historic Scotland have done a grand job both with the preservation of the place and a highly informative glossy booklet available in the shop.

As for the Gordons they were scattered across the country and the Continent some settled in Poland. There are still an awful lot of Gordons around Aberdeenshire and some famous ones around the world – and the most famous of all surely Commissioner Jim Gordon of Gotham City unless you think Lord Byron better known – he was half-Scottish – a Gordon through his mother’s family and known as – well what else but George Gordon before England claimed him.

The castle is now home to nesting swallows

Enjoy Huntly Castle.

Old Glenbucket’s land need reforming

Glenbuchat is stunning. More rolling countryside than majestic mountains it sweeps and dips and is a tonic to the eye. But behind the magnificence lurks a darker tale.

Raptor Persecution UK mentioned in a blog in 2014 that the Convenor of the Cairngorm National Park Authority (CPNA), Duncan Bryden, wrote to the Environment Minister about incidents of raptor persecution and “disappeared birds” – notably the first fledged sea-eagle for 200 years in Scotland had disappeared over the eastern area of the Park and such incidents he said, “threatens to undermine the reputation of the National Park as a high quality wildlife tourism destination.” Perhaps this is the point it should be pointed out North Glenbuchat Estate operates a grouse moor within the National Park.

The “disappeared” young sea eagle, hatched miles away on the northeast coast, is not the only victim to fall prey to Strathdon’s equivalent of the Bermuda triangle. Other satellite-tagged eagles have also perished here, in a National Park of all places, just vanished – well, not just vanished. The remains of one eagle was discovered, poisoned, in 2011.

http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/news/police-raid-estate-in-sea-eagle-enquiry/0010759/

Eagles are not its only victims. Various species have suffered a similar fate including the protected short-eared owl whose numbers are at risk – one was found shot dead here, its corpse hidden beneath a boulder. Another way of disappearing. Courts are still unwilling to curb the behaviour of rural criminals who wilfully destroy the nation’s wildlife.

Bellcote at Old Glenbuchat Church with unusual draped urn

Land reformer and now Green MSP, Andy Wightman, investigated the North Glenbuchat Estate, also in 2014, “one of a number of notorious hotspots of wildlife crime”. Andy has worked tirelessly to throw light on the shady world of land ownership in Scotland and delving into the murky world of who owns Scotland – precious few it seems – he found that in 2008 the Estate was purchased by the 4th Marquess of Milford Haven, George Ivar Louis Mountbatten. Take a few minutes to read Andy’s work on this area: From Glenbuchat to the Turks & Caico Islands.

It is odd to think, perhaps not odd in post-Panama Paper times, that Scottish glens can be owned by companies registered in far-away places with exotic names – such as the case with North Glen Estate Ltd. There is a deceptively similarly named company North Glen Estates Ltd which is registered in the UK.

Tracking down who owns what in Scotland would put a le Carré novel to shame.  It is high time land ownership in this country was simplified and out in the open. Andy’s  well-researched informative articles are illuminating which is more than can be said for our current land registration. Also please read the comments that follow his blog on Glenbuchat.

http://www.andywightman.com/?s=glenbuchat

http://www.glenbuchatheritage.com/picture/number404.asp

The North Glenbuchat Estate takes up part of the glen. In the 1960s death duties forced the break-up of Glenbuchat Estate and this is when the North Glenbuchat Estate was created and bought by a Major Michael Smiley of Castle Fraser who was connected by marriage to the Cowdrays of Dunecht, also into buying up properties in the area. Part of the original estate was retained by the Sole family, whose most prominent member is possibly David Sole, former Scottish rugby captain. In 2015 the Soles sold off their holding and so, too, did the Dunecht estate. 

Z-plan Glenbuchat Castle rubble-built with beautiful stone

Glenbuchat lies between the River Don and the Ladder Hills, 6 miles west of Kildrummy and just over 30 miles west of Aberdeen and was once a Gaelic-speaking area. At the end of the 16th century the estate incorporated Glen Nochty in Strathdon and at the end of that century John Gordon of Cairnborrow had a Z-plan tower house or castle built on a magnificent site over the Don whose crumbling remains are now in the hands of Historic Scotland, Alba Aosmhor.

The Bonny Earl o’ Moray died from horrific wounds

Gordon was implicated in the murder of the Bonny Earl o’ Moray (Murray as in Andy not as in the eel) that gave rise to the popular ballad.

Ye Hielands and ye Lawlands
Oh whar hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl o’ Moray
An’ layd him on the green

He took part in the Battle o’ Glenlivet at which Catholic clans resisted attempts to curb Catholicism during the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Huntly Gordons, Hays, Comyns, Camerons and Cummings though greatly outnumbered by troops led by Protestant forces under the Campbells of Argyll along with Murrays, Stewarts, Forbes, Macgillivrays, Macleans, Grants and Chattans appear to have been the victors. 

The last Gordon to own the castle was the famous Jacobite general, “Old Glenbucket” the mispronunciation coming from the German prince who became King George II of Great Britain and the monarch Jacobites hoped to throw out in favour of the Catholic James Francis Edward Stuart. Apparently “Old Glenbucket” gave the Elector of Hanover nightmares from which he woke up screaming “De great Glenbucket be coming” although I have to say that sounds like German via a Holywood interpretation of a house maid from Alabama.

Glenbuchat Castle remains hint at its once grand turrets and towers

Glenbuchat then became Glenbucket. It has since recovered its softer pronunciation with a “ch” as in loch not as in lock. Take your time to pronounce it and keep the throat open, don’t close it and you too can say it as it without sounding like some cranky old monarch. 

William Duff aka Lord Braco aka Earl Fife bought the estate in 1737. Duff was on the opposite side from Old Glenbucket, and an enthusiastic supporter of George II’s son the notorious Butcher Cumberland  whose troops tirelessly hunted down and savagely killed men, women and bairns following the Battle of Culloden – for decades. The flowers known as Sweet Williams were named after him, a name hugely offensive to many Scots, but here in Scotland, they are still sometimes referred to as Stinking Willies.

Glenbuchat Castle

Angle turrets contained turnpike stairs and turrets were supported by flying arches

The Duffs built up a fortune through acquiring land across Scotland; a quarter of a million acres in and around Aberdeen, Banff and Moray. They were not alone. By the end of the 18th century land ownership was concentrated in the hands of a few families. Though the Duffs acquired Glenbuchat Castle their seat of power was Duff House at Banff, to the east, not in Glenbuchat.

The isolated glen was opened up when a military road was pushed through early in the 19th century. Previous to this there were only tracks and drove roads used to walk cattle over the hills to markets, across to Speyside and farther down country to the south. Agriculture was, of course, the main occupation of glen folk. Their isolation from markets forced them into self-sufficiency which restricted the population the glen could support and delayed its adoption of modern agricultural practices when most other areas were responding to innovations of the Agricultural Revolution. In the glen animals continued to roam freely and improved crops were slow to replace traditional bear and oats.

Glenbuchat Castle   remains of one of the two square towers

While cattle were raised in the glen they were rarely eaten by its tenant farmers whose diet was mainly restricted to cereals and vegetables. Animals were reared to sell to those who had the money to afford meat and went to markets in the south for their flesh as well as for their leather hides and the sheep’s wool. Limestone quarrying was also carried out in the glen and remains of old lime kilns still exist.  

It was possible to earn money while living in the glen but as incomes improved so their lairds realised an opportunity to squeeze more from their tenants and rents were increased. Of course during economic depressions rents did not go down but inflicted greater hardship on the poorest of communities scraping a living in Glenbuchat. 

Glenbuchat Castle

Glenbuchat Castle was protected by a heavy wooden door and a yett and set at an angle in the building to secure the house from enemies. Over the door was inscribed  Nocht on Earth Remain Bot Fame. Its ground floor housed the kitchen and cellars while the laird’s accommodation was on the upper floors.

The nature of their existence forced people to co-operate with one another and farming in the glen was organised as self-sustaining communities – sharing tasks, equipment and animals in their ferm touns or clachans.

Late in the 17th century the glen had one shoemaker, a miller, one walking mill (a process in cloth-making – here it was woollen cloth from their sheep and linen from locally grown flax or lint), and three weavers. There were four weavers working in the 1840s as well as three wrights, three masons, three blacksmiths, two shoemakers, tailors and two wood manufacturers (perhaps carpenters?). Three meal mills operated early in that century and two waulk mills. The last of the mills finally closed in 1927.

http://www.buildingsatrisk.org.uk/details/893497

It was into the 1960s before mains electricity made it into the glen. Up till then heating and cooking was by open fire – peat, timber and presumably later coal once roads permitted the transportation of imported supplies from Aberdeen harbour.

Lighting at one time when no wax candles were available was by burning roots, sliced into strips and dried. As with every impoverished and isolated community the people of the glen were dependent on their immediate environment for all their needs, certainly in the days before roads. Apart from the castle and homes of wealthier individuals, buildings were constructed from dug-up turf, divots,  piled on top of each other and so too were roofs covered with divots over a timber framework. Tiny homes of two rooms, the but and ben with earth floors and an open fire where smoke eventually found its own way out through the opening in the roof, the lum. No luxury and certainly no privacy and horribly smoky.

When wine became taxed beyond the pockets of all but the wealthy in towns and cities so a taste for whisky grew and here lay opportunities for glen-dwellers to enhance their paltry incomes. Or would have done but then the potential of taxing whisky meant the government went to great lengths to ensure no ordinary spirit producer in the glen made anything from it. In 1821 a raiding party searching for illicit stills charged and took away 39 Glenbuchat men – some to jail. Imagine the impact this would have had not just on individual families but on the work of the glen. Not everyone was prosecuted for producing whisky locally, only the poor and vulnerable folk – ’twas ever thus.

Of the 138 people who lived in the glen in the 1960s only 91 remained ten years later. Making a living was more difficult than ever in a world of changed consumer habits. 

But one person’s problem is another’s opportunity. What was big in the glen? -apart from its hills and they aren’t that big. Wildlife. Which brings us back to where we started.

Some people value our wildlife and others say they do but what they really mean is they value it for the buzz they get from destroying it. Hunting stirs the blood of some. They lust after the brutal pastime. Birds and animals in their gun sights are not, well birds and animals, but game. Game was not/is not for ordinary people to take and eat, no matter how destitute they may be, game is property – of the laird and for entertainment or sport.

By 1820 Glenbuchat had become a shooting and hunting paradise – and co-incidentally a good earner for the laird – better than impoverished tenant farmer rents.

With property comes laws and regulations to limit who can get access to wildlife – and to preserve these laws and regulations gamekeepers were hired to look after the interests of the laird’s nice little earner.

Go into Glenbuchat and admire the scenery, the little old kirk and churchyard and the remains of Gordon’s castle but leave the wildlife alone, please.

Finally, let us push for major land reform that is in keeping with the 21st century and stop tugging the forelock as though we still exist in the 19thC.

The local Rev. Robert Scott was a collector of local ballads – see The Glenbuchat Ballads – https://folkloreforum.net/2008/11/05/david-buchan-and-james-moreira-eds-the-glenbuchat-ballads/

Tonley House, the Jacobite Major and the Roman Antiquarian

Tonley House is little more now than a rickle o stanes. What’s left standing, not much, hints at the once grand Scottish baronial residence and estate of around 5000 acres belonging to the Moir-Byres family.

When Robert Byres was accidently drowned in Dublin Bay his widow,  Jean Sandilands from Cotton, at Aberdeen, bought the Tonley estate c.1716 and moved in with her young family.

There were two pretty illustrious Byres: Patrick and James.

Patrick Byres was an ardent Jacobite and Major in the Tonley company of Stoneywood’s Aberdeen Regiment, raised by his brother-in-law Moir of Stoneywood in support of the ’45 Rising which ended at the Battle of Culloden. More of the Moirs later.

Patrick survived the slaughter on the muirs of Culloden (pronounced Cullawden not CullUden), evading death and capture he escaped back to Aberdeenshire where he hid in Cluny Castle until able to escape to France where he joined the Royal Scotch regiment led by Cameron of Locheil.

The Byres family lived on the Continent for as long as Patrick was a wanted man in the period the British Crown and government were taking their bloodthirsty revenge on the people of the Highlands, laying down Draconian laws to further subjugate Scots, destroying property and confiscating land. Tonley escaped that fate through subterfuge, well lies, over Patrick’s identity. Friends of his persuaded the government’s agents that the Byres on their list of wanted men was Peter Byres whilst the owner of Tonley was Patrick and in time Patrick judged it safe to return to the Vale of Alford. His family motto was Marte suo tutus – Safe in his own prowess – and so it proved.

Patrick’s son James had attended drawing classes as a child in Aberdeen and when the family fled to the Continent he continued his education there, becoming a member of the academy of artists, Accademia di San Luca, in Rome – as an architect; architectural drawings exist of his for rebuilding King’s College in Aberdeen. He also designed a mausoleum for Castle Fraser. As a painter he was largely a landscapist and portraitist and a copy he made of Jameson’s Dr Dun which hangs in Aberdeen Town House.

James became an antiquarian and art dealer during his forty years in Rome and it was to him the wealthy young of Britain and America went to for instruction when taking in the Grand Tour as part of their education.

For all the times I came across mentions of these Grand Tours I never did come on the name James Byres which is surprising since I was studying at Aberdeen University and he was a local loon fa did weel.

Among those he instructed and conducted around Italy’s classical and Renaissance masterpieces was the historian Edward Gibbon. In fact Byres knew everyone who mattered in the world of academia and the arts. It was Byres who secured the early Roman Portland vase for his friend Sir William Hamilton which became so influential in the development of Wedgwood china.  

Byres was hugely respected for his erudition and encyclopaedic knowledge of the arts and built up am extensive collection of paintings and sculptures several of which he took back with him to Tonley in 1790 to live out his remaining thirty years of his life post-retirement, dying at home on 3 Sept 1817.

This very good portrait of his sister Isabella Byres, Mrs Robert Sandilands, by Pompeo Batoni was owned by James Byres and hung at his house in Rome and afterwards Tonley.

James himself is second from the left next to his sister in this group portrait by Franciszek Smuglevicz. Byres’ parents are the couple in the centre and a colleague on the right.

This oval round portrait of James Byres in Rome was painted by Irish artist Hugh Douglas Hamilton.

How do the Moirs fit in? you’re asking.

Robert Byres who drowned in Dublin Bay and Jean Sandilands, his widow who bought Tonley in 1718, were the parents of the aforesaid Patrick Byres, also known as Peter, who was born on 13 May 1713.  Twenty-year old Patrick married the daughter of James Moir of Stoneywood.

James Moir’s older brother Charles, a shipmaster in Aberdeen, fought alongside Patrick for Prince Charlie in the Jacobite Rising of 1745 and like Patrick went into hiding afterwards.

Moir is a good old Aberdeen name though its provenance is lost in time. For any not familiar with the name it is pronounced Moyr. In the many disputed versions of the name’s derivation one suggestion is it is an adaption of the Gaelic mhor meaning big and it’s as good as any since Moir is said to mean mighty one.

The Byres are thought to have come here from Hungary – by way of France in the company or thereabouts of Mary of Guise, mother of Mary Queen of Scots. Interestingly there is a place called Guise at Tough which features in a bothy ballad – The Guise o’ Tough (Tough pronounced Tooch or Tyooch as in loch not Tuff and definitely not Took).

Back to the Moirs. A Kenneth Moir accompanied Lord James Douglas (the Good Sir James) c. 1330 to Spain when he carried with him the heart of Robert the Bruce inside the Monymusk Reliquary.

Monymusk is a stone’s throw from the estate of Tonley and the Reliquary or Brechbennoch, is an ancient yew, silver and bronze casket decorated with Pictish-worked animals and red enamel. It was given to the monks of Arbroath by King William the Lion as a good luck charm on the battlefield and was carried on a leather halter around the neck of its keeper, the deoradh (giving us the name Dewar) …and so it was at Bannockburn when Bruce’s army secured victory in 1314.

Kenneth Moir, while in Spain, killed and beheaded three Moors on the battlefield hence the Moir family coat-of-arms featuring three Moor heads dripping blood.

At some point the intermarrying of Moirs and Byres led to the two names being adopted as Moir-Byres.

There were lots of Moirs and Byres and some Byres lost fortunes investing in Darien, when the English state sought to and succeeded in closing down international trade with Scotland so ensuring the failure of the enterprise but enough of that, back to Tonley.

Tonley  or Kincraigie, was built in the 18thC and added to over time as a two-storey, grey granite mansion house with towers, turrets, corbels and corbiesteps.  Aberdeen architect John Smith had a hand in it, as had A. Marshall Mackenzie. The lost interiors included a panelled ceiling by Hay & Lyall of Aberdeen with pendent centres and the family motto of the Moir-Byres’ crests were depicted in high relief on the surrounding frieze.

During the Second World War the house was used as a hostel for young women in the land army working on local farms. During a storm in January 1953 Tonley was destroyed by fire but by that time it was out of the hands of the Moir-Byres and has been left derelict. 

Tonley or Kincraigie – a farm of that name still remains, as does Tillymair and Tonley Mains, in the parish of Tough a few miles east of Alford but not, I think, the wonderfully named Acheynachie. (Although I have discovered a district of New York called Auchinachie)

Also survived is the estate’s former gardener’s cottage and walled garden, a little distance away to the south. The cottage, thought to have been designed by John Smith, is now a very fine house and the garden with its impressive course rubble wall is still home to some old varieties of apples and pears.