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At the upper end of Kincardine,
there is a projecting crag, on the face of Pytoulish hill, which is called
"the Baron’s Chair." From this vantage ground there is a wide outlook. No
fairer scene can be found in all Strathspey. Immediately below is Loch
Pytoulish, bounded by the meadows of Guislich and the romantic height of
the Callart. To the west are the sombre forests of Duthil, backed by the
broad Monaliadhs. Southward is the grand entrance to the Strath, with
Tulligru and the Ordbain on the left, Craigellachie and Kinrara on the
right, the rich haughs of the Dell and the Doune in the centre, with the
Spey sweeping past, and Loch-’n-Eilan and Loch Alvie sparkling like jewels
in the rich setting of the woods and mountains, while behind the hills of
Badenoch and Lochaber rise dimly in the distance. Loch Pytoulish bounds
the lands of the Barony, which lie along the Spey to the eastward. First
there is a moor ending in clumps of oak and hazel, beyond are the
birch-clad heights and warm hollows of Pytoulish, with the sunny fields
and pastures of Drumclune, Clachglas, and Achgourish stretching away
towards the dense woods of Garten and Tulloch. Then to the east are the
hills of Craigowrie, with the grand pass of the Sluggan leading to the
forest of Glenmore, famous for its loch, and pines, and hunting grounds.
For three hundred years the land was possessed by a branch of the Royal
Stewarts, and tradition says that the successive Barons loved to repair to
this spot, and to look abroad with pride and delight on their fair
inheritance. Cicero said of Ulysses, that he loved Ithaca, not because it
was broad, for it was small and not big, but because it was his own.
Touchstone, in the play of "As you like it," has a similar sentiment.
"An ill-flavoured thing, Sir, a poor virgin, but mine own." So
might the Barons have said of Kincardine. We can imagine one and another
sitting in the chair and musing sometimes in joy, sometimes in sorrow; and
it may be at times pacing to and fro, like the Baron of Bradwardine with
offended pride and indignation, "measuring and re-measuring with swift and
tremendous strides the length of the terrace" at Tullyveolan.
Walter, the first Baron, was the
third (natural) son of Alexander, Earl of Buchan, better known as "The
Wolf of Badenoch." He got a charter of the lands of Kincardine from King
Robert the Third at Perth, in the tenth year of his reign (1400). This
Walter was knighted for his valour at the battle of Harlaw
(1411), and was called "an Ridir ruadh,"
or Red Knight. He married Isobel Fenton in 1436. The pedigree of the
family, as given by Duncan Stewart in his History of the Stewarts (1739),
is as follows :—1, Walter; 2, Alexander, married Mary, daughter of
Maclean; 3, James, m. daughter of Lachlan Mackintosh; 4, Donald, m.
daughter of Lochiel, said to have died 1518;
5, Donald, m. daughter of Laird of Macgrigor and widow
of the Laird of Mackintosh; 6, James, m. daughter of the Laird of Grant;
7, James, m. daughter of Rose of Kilravock; 8, Walter, m. Margaret,
daughter of Robertson of Calvin or Clunie, ancestor to Robertson of Lude.
He had three sons, John, James, and Robert. John m. Janet, sister of
Mackintosh, commonly designed Sheriff Bane. 9, James, who succeeded, m.
daughter of Shaw of Dell, representative of the Shaws of Rothiemurchus,
and by her had Donald, to, who m. first, his cousin, Marjory Stewart, d.
to Robert Oig, and second, Barbara, d. of John Shaw of Guislich, and by
her left an only son, well-known by the name of John Roy. Stewart
says—"Robert, third son of Walter, had a son called Robert Oig, who
married a daughter of the famous Angus Williamson, tutor of Mackintosh,
and by her had three sons—Alexander, John, and Angus, Alexander was father
of Bailie Stewart, late Collector in Inverness; and Angus had several
sons, one of them Commissary John Stewart in Edinburgh. Most of the
Stewarts in Strathspey, Murray, and Inverness are come of Kincardine, and
some of them are settled about Kelso. There is one near Newcastle who has
a fine estate." It will be seen from this pedigree that the Kincardine
Stewarts married well. Perhaps their royal blood made up for their lack of
broad lands. As Burton says—"These Stewarts went forth like others,
wandering unfortunates, with no hold upon the world but that which their
heads and hands and perhaps the lustre of their descent gave them, and in
the end they rooted themselves as landed lords and princes." So it was
with the Stewarts of Kincardine. For ten descents they held their place
and prospered fairly. But then came evil times. The family fell into
difficulties. Poverty came like an armed man. Shaw says that they
"continued in good repute till about the year 1683. John Roy, the last
Baron (a silly ignorant man), was in a manner cheated out of his estate by
his brother-in-law, Alexander Mackintosh, Sheriff Bain, who made him sell
it to the Marquis of Huntly for a very trifle, and the family is extinct."
A MS. genealogical account of the family (about 1720), somewhat mutilated,
gives a different account—"John, who succeeded him (Walter, his father),
married a daughter to the Laird of Grant, by whom he had Patrick, who was
a weak man, and married a sister to Alexander Mackintosh of Connadge,
called Sheriff Bain, which Sheriff, being an artfull, treacherous man
imposed upon the weakness of Baron Peter, his brother-in-law, and in place
of a Factory which he pretended was to doe the Baron great services, he
betrayed him to sign a full and formall disposition of all his Estate,
which disposition he soon after assigned to the Duke of Gordon, who now
possesses Kincardine in virtue of said disposition. This Peter had
children by Sheriff Bain’s sister, but all are dead and extinct." That the
Barons had been in pecuniary difficulties is undoubted. Lorimer says in
his notes that Laird Lewis was pressed by his friends to buy Kincardine,
but that he refused out of a point of honour
that he would not take advantage of his neighbour’s distress.
The Gordons were not so scrupulous. There is a
tradition in the country that certain of the Kincardine Stewarts who had
prospered in America remitted money for payment of the debt upon the
estate, but that it was appropriated by Sheriff Bain, who alleged that he
had invested it in houses till the mortgage fell due, and that the houses
had been destroyed by fire. Shaw says that the family became "extinct,"
and this was true as regards Kincardine; but they had, and have still,
representatives both at home and abroad. Colonel John Roy Stewart of the
‘45, and Sir John Stuart, Count of Maida, belonged to the family. In our
own time, the late Rev. H. C. Stuart, Vicar of Wragby, claimed to be a
lineal descendant. He stated that his grandfather came from America, where
his ancestors had found a home, and that the late Sir John Stuart was a
cousin, whose sister married into a branch of the Tweedale family; that
his father was in India (where he himself was born) with the Marquis of
Tweedale, who was his intimate friend. Mr Stuart gave his pedigree, taken
chiefly from papers in the Charter Chest of Stuart Hay of Newton Hall, as
follows:—Starting from the 9th in Duncan Stewart’s Book—Walter had three
sons, John, James, and Robert. 10. Robert had a son, Robert Oig Stewart.
11. Robert Oig had three sons, Alexander, &c. 12. Alexander was
father to John, a merchant in Inverness. He married twice. By his first
wife he had two daughters, Margaret and Marion. Margaret married Captain
Wedderburn, and Marion a Mr Reid. By his second marriage, to Christina
Macleod, d. of Macleod of Macleod, he had seven sons, John, Henry,
Francis, Patrick, Norman, Allan, and William, and one daughter, Anne. John
was the father of Sir John Stuart, who died unmarried. Anne married
Richard Hay of Newton. John, the eldest son, was a Colonel in the Guards,
and afterwards Superintendent of Indian Affairs in America. 13. Henry, the
second son, was father of Charles Swede Stuart. 14. Charles Swede was
father of Henry William; 15, and Henry William was father of Henry
Cumberland Stuart, late vicar of Wragby. Mr Stuart had a great love for
the land of his fathers, and visited Kincardine several times. Sir Bernard
Burke tells that in searching out the pedigree of the Fyndernes, he
visited the village of Fynderne, near Derby, but could find no trace of
the family. No stone of the Hall remained. The Church contained no brasses
or records. At last he fell in with an old man, and questioned him. "Fyndernes,"
he said, "we have no Fyndernes here, but we have something that once
belonged to them, we have Fynderne Flowers." The old man then led him to a
field where there were faint traces of terraces. "There," said he,
pointing to some garden flowers growing wild, "there are the Fynderne
Flowers, brought by Sir Geoffrey the Crusader from the Holy Land, and do
what we will we cannot get them to die." So it was with the Stewarts of
Kincardine. Their memory and their name is gone. There are, indeed, some
memorials. The names of places associated with their history remain. There
is the site of the Baron’s House, with one old apple-tree to mark where a
garden had been. There are also Straan-nan-Laogh, the little Strath
of the Calves; Cat-nan- Caorach and Cat-nan- Gobhair, the
Cot of the Sheep and the Cot of the Goats, telling of their flocks and
herds. There is also Cuil Bhardidh, the Bard’s Croft, where the
Bards who sung their brave deeds dwelt. There are also Tom-Mhoid,
where they held their Courts, and Tom~na-Croiche, the Gallows-hill,
where justice was executed. And to mention but one more, there is Lag-nan-Cusbairean,
where the archery buchts stood. But there is no stone, no
coat-of-arms, no memorial tablet of any kind, to mark that such a family
had ever held sway in the district. What brings them nearest, and what
touches our feelings most, is the plant in the Churchyard called the Baron
Lady’s Flower—the Dwarf Elder. Mr Stuart, when he visited the home of his
ancestors, was much distressed that there was no proper memorial of the
Kincardine Barons, and be resolved to have this want supplied. His early
death prevented this, but through the kind offices of Miss Winn, of
Nostell Priory, the wish which he had fondly cherished was carried out. In
1885 a granite monolith was erected in the Churchyard where the Barons
buried their dead. The monument bears at the top the motto, " Dominus lux
Nostra," and on a polished shield, the following inscription —"Sacred to
the memory of Walter Stuart, grandson of Robert II. of Scotland; and his
family, who possessed the Barony of Kincardine - 1374 1683, Also of H. C.
Stuart, vicar of Wragby, one of their descendants, who died 16th
September, 1884. To fulfil his wish this memorial is erected." |
