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THE clan Mackenzie,
of which the Earls of Seaforth were the chiefs, has been
conspicuous in Scottish history from the days of King Robert Bruce
down to the present century. As is usually the case with Highland
families, there is a
difference of opinion respecting their origin. According to one
account, the Seaforth family are descended from a younger son of
COLIN OF THE AIRD, progenitor of the
powerful Earls of Ross, and their designation was derived from
KENNETH, the grandson of their founder, who received from David
II. a charter of the lands of Kintail in 1362. This view of the
origin of the Mackenzies is corroborated, and, Mr. Skene says,
completely set at rest by a manuscript of date 1450—the oldest
Gaelic genealogical account on record—which states that the
Mackenzies are descended from a certain Gilleon Og, or Colin the
Younger, a son of Gilleon na h’Airde, the ancestor of the Rosses,
and consequently must always have formed an integral part of the
ancient and powerful native Gaelic tribe of Ross. The Mackenzies
held their lands of the Earls of Ross until the forfeiture of
those potent and turbulent chiefs. [See
Mr. Skene’s Highlands of Scotland, pp. 223-5, and Celtic
Magazine, iii. pp.41-9.] On
the other hand, an old and cherished, though erroneous, tradition
represents them as having derived their origin from Colin
Fitzgerald, a cadet of the great house of Geraldine in Ireland,
who, having been driven from his native country, took refuge in
Scotland, and, as a reward for his valour at the battle of Largs,
received from Alexander a grant of the barony of Kintail. [In
confirmation of this statement, a charter has been produced,
professing to be dated at Kincardine, on the 9th of January in the
sixteenth year of the reign of Alexander Ill. But Mr. Skene
declares that ‘it bears the most palpable marks of having been a
forgery of later date and one by no means happy in the execution.’
He is supported in this opinion by Mr. Cosmo Innes. See
Origines Parochiales, ii. pp. 392-3.] He was also appointed
governor of the royal
fortress of Ellandonan. According to a legend handed down from
early times, an important service rendered to Alexander III. by
Kenneth, son of this Colin, greatly advanced if it did not lay the
foundation of his fortunes. That monarch, it is said, on one
occasion held a royal hunting-match in the Forest of Mar. It was
at the season when the deer are fiercest, and the King,
accidentally separated from his attendants, was exposed to
imminent peril by a stag which assailed him, when young Kenneth
hastened to the rescue of the King, exclaiming ‘Cudich an Righ!
Cudich an Righ!’ and sprang between Alexander and the deer, with
his naked sword in his hand, and severed its head from its body at
one stroke. The brave youth was immediately attached to the royal
service and liberally rewarded with grants of land. The
Caberfae (the deer’s head) was taken as his crest, and
Cudich an Righ became
his motto and that of his descendants. [It
is quite possible that the tradition respecting the service which
the ancestor of the Mackenzies rendered to the King may be
substantially correct, though he was certainly the son of Colin of
the Aird and not of Colin Fitzgerald.]
Kenneth’s maternal
grandfather, it is said, was a powerful native chief, designated
Coinneach Grumach — Kenneth the Gloomy or Grim—who had an
only daughter, a lady of great beauty. According to the traditions
referred to above, she was courted by Colin Fitzgerald, but
Coinneach Grumach refused to bestow the hand of his daughter
on her Irish suitor, intending to marry her to a member of his own
clan — the Mathesons — in fulfilment of a vow which he had made.
The gallant Irishman, however, as frequently happens still,
succeeded in gaining the lady’s affections and in persuading her
to elope with him. The clan disliked the alliance as much as did
their chief, and they attempted to carry off by force the eldest
son of the heiress from Ellandonan that he might be brought up
under his grandfather’s roof. In the struggle that ensued the
infant was killed, but the second son, who was named after the old
chief—Coinneach,
or Kenneth—was given up, as the
heir-apparent, to his grandfather’s management According to the
traditions of the clan, Coinneach Grumach was subsequently
assassinated through a perfidious plot of the chief of Glengarry,
with whom he was at feud, and his family, with the greater part of
the clan, were cut off at the same time, having been murdered by
the Macdonalds, in cold blood, in their beds. Young Kenneth alone
escaped through the affection and fidelity of his nurse. The
quarrel contrived to be fastened on
Coinneach
Grumach, in
consequence of which his tribe was massacred, was whether a
certain dish presented at a solemn banquet was goat’s flesh or
lamb’s flesh. ‘One might imagine,’ it has been said, ‘the whole
story fabulous or a stroke of satire upon clan feuds, did we not
know that when the world was five hundred years older a Highland
chief lost his life in a dispute about the proper mode of carving
a duck.’
Young Kenneth, thus
saved from the exterminating vengeance of the Macdonalds, became
the ancestor of the house of Seaforth and the founder of Brahan
Castle, the family seat of the Mackenzies, by whom it was regarded
with such reverence that the heads of the different branches of
the clan at one time forcibly interfered to prevent the Earl of
Seaforth from pulling down the roof-tree of Kenneth I.
Whatever may have
been Kenneth’s descent, there can be no doubt that he was a
powerful and popular chief, and held the castle of Ellandonan
against his ‘overlord,’ William, third Earl of Ross, who
endeavoured to carry it by storm, but was defeated with great
slaughter. The Mackenzies embraced the patriotic side in the War
of Independence, and Kenneth’s son JOHN is said to have sheltered
Robert Bruce after his defeat by Macdougall of Lorne, at Dalreigh,
near Tyndrum. There is good reason to believe that the fierce
enmity which afterwards existed between the Mackenzies and the
Earls of Ross, who, like other powerful chiefs of Argyllshire and
the Western Isles, were the determined foes of Bruce, originated
in the part which the former took in the struggle for the
independence of Scotland; and as a reward for their loyalty the
house of Kintail received liberal grants of the forfeited
possessions of their feudal superiors, and ultimately absorbed the
ancient inheritance of all the original possessors of the
district. The Mackenzies, by warlike feats or strokes of policy,
and by fortunate marriages, became numerous and powerful.
Strathconan, Strathbran, Strathgarve, and Strathpeffer, which had
belonged to the Earl of Ross, the sunny braes of Eastern Ross, the
fertile church lands of Chanonry, the barony of Pluscarden, in the
fertile low country of Moray, and even the distant and extensive
island of Lewis (originally the property of the Macleods) were
added to the Caberfae possessions. It is stated by a contemporary
writer that about the beginning of the seventeenth century ‘all
the Highlands and Isles, from Ardnamurchan to Strathnairn, in
Sutherland, were either the Mackenzies’ property or under their
vassalage, some few excepted.’ It is a curious circumstance that
the first six chiefs of Kintail had each only one lawful son to
succeed the father. They seem all to have borne distinctive
sobriquets from some personal peculiarity or incident in their
history. One was named ‘Kenneth of the Nose,’ in consequence of
the great size of his nasal organ. Another was called ‘Black
Murdoch,’ from his complexion. ‘Murdoch of. the Bridge’ was so
designated from the circumstance that ‘his mother, being with
child of him, had been saved after a fearful fall from Conon
Bridge into the water of Conon.’ ‘Alastair lonraic,’ ‘Alexander
the Upright,’ was so called ‘for his righteousness‘—an uncommon
quality among the Highland chiefs in those days. ‘Coinneach a
Bhlair,’ that is, ‘Kenneth of the Battle,’ obtained his cognomen
from the distinguished part he took in the sanguinary battle of
Blair-na-Pare with the Macdonalds in 1491. ‘Coinneach na Cuirc,’
or ‘Kenneth of the Whittle,’ was so called from his skill in
carving on wood.
Like the other
Highland septs, the Mackenzies were involved in constant feuds
with their neighbours, and they fought many bloody battles for
supremacy in Ross with the Macdonalds of the Isles, the Macleods,
the Munros, and the Macdonnells of Glengarry, in which they were
generally victorious. They succeeded at last in driving the
Macdonalds, who were once all-powerful there, completely out of
Ross-shire, and became, next to the Campbells, the most powerful
clan in the West Highlands. Though they frequently bearded the
sovereign himself when he attempted to bring the Highland tribes
under subjection to law and order, they were ever ready to take
the field at his call against ‘our auld enemies of England.’ They
fought under the national banner at Bannockburn, Otterburn,
Flodden, and Pinkie. CAILEAN CAM, or ONE-EYED COLIN, the eleventh
Chief of Kintail, supported the cause of Queen Mary, and took part
in the battle of Langside, which ruined her interests in Scotland.
He obtained a remission for this offence from Regent Moray, and
was afterwards made a Privy Councillor by James VI. His eldest
son, KENNETH, twelfth chief, was created a peer, in 1609, by the
title of Lord Mackenzie of Kintail. An earldom was conferred upon
his elder son COLIN, second Baron Mackenzie, by King James in
1623. On Colin’s death in 1633, without male issue, his titles and
estates devolved upon his half brother, GEORGE, second Earl of
Seaforth—a nobleman fickle and changeable in his views and
unstable in his character and conduct. He was at first opposed to
the unconstitutional and high-handed attempt of Charles I. to
force a new liturgy upon Scotland, and in 1639 took the command of
a large body of Covenanters assembled north of the Spey. He soon,
however, became lukewarm in the cause, and in 1640 was imprisoned
as a suspected royalist. In the following year he joined Montrose,
who had now seceded from the Covenanting party, and accompanied
him to Elgin with the avowed object of supporting the King, to
whom he took an oath of allegiance. Shortly after he again joined
the ranks of the Covenanters, and excused himself in a letter to
the Committee of Estates by alleging that he had gone over to the
royalists through fear of Montrose, but declaring that he would
abide by ‘the good cause to his death.’ Seaforth took the field
against the royalist commander at the head of five thousand horse
and foot, and was present at the battle of Auldearn, where the
Covenanting forces were defeated. He is said to have had an
interview with Montrose after the battle, and to have agreed to
join him in supporting the royal cause against the Parliament.
Nothing, however, came of this agreement, for Montrose, having
soon after been ordered by the King to lay down his arms, left the
kingdom, and Seaforth was excommunicated by the General Assembly
for holding intercourse with an ‘excommunicated traitor,’ as
Montrose was termed, and was threatened with forfeiture by the
Parliament He was kept in prison for two years, and was with much
difficulty released from the sentence of excommunication. After
the execution of the King, in 1649, the Earl repaired to Charles
II. in Holland, and was nominated by him Principal Secretary of
State for Scotland. ‘He died in banishment,’ says the Earl of
Cromarty, ‘before he sawe ane end of his King’s and his country’s
calamities or of his own injuries.’ His vacillating and
time-serving career came to an end in 1651. He died at Schiedam,
in Holland, in the forty-third year of his age, and was succeeded
by his eldest son—
KENNETH, third Earl
of Seaforth, who, for his lofty stature, was known among the
Highlanders as Coinneach Mor. Like his father, he devoted
himself to the service of Charles II. during his exile. After the
battle of Worcester, in 1651, he was kept a close prisoner till
the Restoration. He was excepted from Cromwell’s Act of Grace and
Pardon in 1654, and his estates were forfeited without any
provision being allowed from them for his wife and children. After
he regained his liberty, he received a commission of the
Sheriffship of Ross, 23rd of April, 1662. He died in December,
1678, and was succeeded by his eldest son—
KENNETH,
fourth Earl of Seaforth. The
sufferings which his father had undergone in the cause of the
Stewarts did not prevent him from perilling life and fortune at
the Revolution of 1688 on behalf of the expelled monarch, for
whose cause he suffered repeated imprisonment and, ultimately,
died in exile. King James created him Marquis of Seaforth, a title
which was, of course, not recognised by the British Government.
His elder son—
WILLIAM, fifth
Earl, known among the Highlanders as ‘William
Dubh,’ was brought up in France,
and imbibed strong Jacobite feelings from his parents. When the
Earl of Mar raised his standard at Braemar, in 1715,
Seaforth was one of the
nobles who repaired to the Jacobite gathering. He lost no time in
calling forth his clan, but he was detained for some time in the
north by the Earl of Sutherland and the chiefs of the Mackays and
Munros, until his followers amounted to three thousand men, when
he attacked and dispersed the Whig clans who had hindered his
march to the south to join the Earl of Mar. On Seaforth’s arrival
at Perth, the incompetent Jacobite leader made up his mind to
proceed towards the Lowlands, a movement which led to the battle
of Sheriffmuir. The Earl fought at the head of his clan, and four
of his kinsmen, who had greatly distinguished themselves in the
conflict, were slain. After the Chevalier St. George quitted the
country, Seaforth retired to France. He was attainted by Act of
Parliament, and his estates forfeited. In 1719, along with the
Marquis of Tullibardine and the Earl Marischal, aided by three
hundred Spanish soldiers, he made another and final attempt to
‘bring the auld Stewarts back again;’ but he was dangerously
wounded in an encounter with the Government troops at the Pass of
Strachell, near Glenshiel, in the midst of his own estates, and
was compelled to abandon the enterprise. The Highlanders retired
during the night to the mountains, carrying their wounded chief
along with them, and the Spaniards next morning surrendered
themselves prisoners of war. Seaforth was carried on board a
vessel which lay off the coast, and, along with Marischal and
Tullibardine and the other principal officers, made his escape to
the Western Islands, and afterwards found his way to France.
The Earl was
attainted by Act of Parliament, and his estates were forfeited;
but all the efforts of the Government to penetrate into Kintail or
to collect any rent in that remote district were baffled by the
tenantry, ‘the wild Macraes,’ the faithful vassals of the house of
Seaforth, under whom they had fought in many a bloody conflict
from the battle of Bannockburn down to the Jacobite rebellion. The
soldiers who were sent on several occasions to take possession of
the forfeited estates were encountered and driven back with some
loss of life, and the attempt was at length relinquished in
despair. The Commissioners of Inquiry reported, in 1725, that they
had not sold the estate of William, Earl of Seaforth, ‘not having
been able to obtain possession, and, consequently, to give the
same to a purchaser.’ The rents of the Seaforth estates in Kintail
were, however, duly collected among the devoted clansmen, and, by
some means or other, regularly transmitted to their exiled chief
in France. The person who managed the Seaforth estates and drew
the rents for ten years during the Earl’s absence was Donald
Murchison, who had acted as lieutenant-colonel of the regiment
which Seaforth led to fight for the Stewarts in 1715. He was the
son of the Castellan of Ellandonan, but had been bred a writer in
Edinburgh, and had, for a short time, acted as factor to Sir John
Preston, of Preston Hall, in Midlothian. He is described in the
notes to a poem published in 1737 as ‘a kinsman and servant to the
Earl of Seaforth, bred a writer, a man of small stature, but full
of spirit and resolution.’ He headed the clansmen who defeated the
royal troops at the pass of Aa—na-Mulloch, near the end of Loch
Affaric, and compelled the royal commissioner who accompanied
them, and whose son was killed in the conflict, to give up his
papers, and to promise, under a penalty of five hundred pounds,
not to officiate again as factor on the forfeited estates. The
tenantry, without hesitation, continued to pay their rents to
Donald for the benefit of their exiled and forfeited chief,
setting at naught all apprehension of being compelled to pay the
money a second time to the Commissioner.
General Wade,
writing a report to the King, in 1725, which is published
in the Appendix to Burt’s ‘Letters,’ says, ‘The rents continue to
be collected by one Donald Murchison, a servant of the late
Earl’s, who annually remits or carries the same to his master into
France. The tenants, when in a condition, are said to have sent
him free gifts in proportion to their several circumstances, but
are now a year and a-half in arrear of rent The receipts he gives
to the tenants are as deputy-factor to the Commissioners of the
forfeited estates, which pretended power he extorted from the
factor (appointed by the said Commissioners to collect these rents
for the use of the public), whom he attacked with above four
hundred armed men, as he was going to enter upon the said estate,
having with him a party of thirty of your Majesty’s troops. The
last year this Murchison marched in a public manner to Edinburgh
to remit eight hundred pounds to France for his master’s use, and
remained fourteen days there unmolested.’
Donald visited
Edinburgh a second time about the end of August, 1725. Lockhart of
Carnwath, writing to the Chevalier St George, mentions, amongst
other news, that Murchison had come to Edinburgh on his way to
France. They had missed each other; but Lockhart states that he
expected to see him in a day or two at his country house, where he
would get time to talk fully with him. ‘In the meantime,’ he adds,
‘I know, from one that saw him, that he has taken up and secured
all the arms of value in Seaforth’s estate, which he thought
better than to trust them to the care and prudence of the several
owners; and the other chieftains, I hear, have done the same.’
It is very painful
to relate that Seaforth proved unworthy of the devotion which his
heroic clansmen had shown to him, and treated Murchison with
shameful ingratitude. When the Earl obtained possession of his
estates, which Donald had been the means of preserving for him, he
discountenanced and neglected him. He had promised Murchison a
handsome reward for his services, but, according to the
traditional account, he offered him only a small farm called
Bundalloch, which pays at this day to the proprietor no more than
sixty pounds a year; or another place opposite to Inverinate
House, of about the same value. Donald refused these paltry offers
and shortly after left Seaforth’s country. His noble spirit pined
away under this treatment, and he died in the prime of life, near
Conon, of a broken heart. On his deathbed Seaforth went to see
him, and asked how he was. ‘Just as you will be in a short time,’
he replied, and then turned his back. They never met again. He was
buried in a remote little churchyard on Cononside, in the parish
where the late Sir Roderick I. Murchison, the distinguished
geologist, great-grandson of John Murchison, Donald’s brother, has
erected an appropriate monument to the memory of the devoted
clansman. [See Chamber's Domestic Annals of Scotland,
iii.pp. 459-71].
Lockhart mentions
that after the passing of the Disarming Act of 1725, General Wade
was waited on by a body of about fifty gentlemen of the name of
Mackenzie, headed by Lord Tarbat, Sir Colin Mackenzie of Coul, and
Sir Kenneth Mackenzie of Cromarty, who informed the General that
the rent of Seaforth’s tenants and vassals had for several years
been uplifted by Donald Murchison, and that they were not able to
pay them a second time, but if they were discharged of these rents
they would pay them in future to his Majesty’s receiver for the
use of the public, deliver up their arms, and live peaceably. Wade
at once acceded to this request, and informed the deputation that
if the clan fulfilled what they had promised, he would use his
influence in the next session of Parliament to procure a pardon
for their chief and his friends. Accordingly, on the 25th of
August, 1725, the General, accompanied by the deputation and a
small body of dragoons, proceeded to Castle Brahan, where the clan
marched in procession along the great avenue that leads to the
mansion, and laid down their arms in the courtyard. But it turned
out that all the weapons of any value had been secreted by Donald
Murchison, and only the worn-out and worthless arms were given up.
General Wade was as
good as his word, and his intercessions on behalf of Seaforth were
successful. In July, 1726, the Earl was relieved by George
I. from the penal consequences of his attainder so far as he was
personally concerned, and George II. made him a grant of the
arrears of feu duties due to the Crown out of his forfeited
estates. Seaforth died in the island of Lewis in 1740.
KENNETH MACKENZIE,
his eldest son, who held the
courtesy title of Fortrose, was elected member of Parliament for
the burgh of Inverness in 1741, and for Ross-shire in 1747 and
again in 1751. The Seaforth estates, including the lands of
Kintail and the barony of Islandonaan, were sold by the Crown in
1741, and were purchased on behalf of Lord Fortrose for the sum of
£25,909 8s.3d., under the burden of an annuity of £1,000 to the
Countess-Dowager of Seaforth. When the Jacobite rebellion broke
out in 1745, warned by the sufferings which adherence to the cause
of the exiled family had already brought upon his ancestors, he
kept aloof from the ill-fated enterprise. As a reward of his
loyalty at that critical period, the honours of his house were in
part afterwards restored. He died in London, in 1761, and was
succeeded by his only son—
KENNETH MACKENZIE,
who from his small stature was commonly
known among the Highlanders as the ‘Little Lord.’
He entered the army at an early age, and in recompense of his
father’s support of the Government during the troubles of 1745
and his own loyalty, he was
raised to the peerage in 1766,
by the title of Viscount Fortrose and Baron Ardelve, in the
kingdom of Ireland, and in 1771 he was created Earl of Seaforth,
in the peerage of the same kingdom. In 1771 he raised a regiment
of eleven hundred and thirty men from his own clan, being five
hundred of that number the tenantry on his own estates, a large
portion of whom were Macraes of Kintail. The regiment was
designated the 78th or Ross-shire Regiment of Highlanders, and
Seaforth himself was appointed their colonel. While they were
lying at Leith a mutiny broke out among them on account of the
infringement of their engagements, and some pay and bounty which
they alleged was due them. They refused to embark for the East
Indies, and marching out of Leith with pipes playing, took up a
position on Arthur’s Seat, where they remained for several days.
After a good deal of negotiation an arrangement was made for the
removal of their grievances, and they marched down the hill with
pipes playing and the Earls of Seaforth and Dunmore and General
Skene at their head. They entered Leith and went on board the
transport with the greatest readiness and cheerfulness. The
intention of sending them to India was in the meantime abandoned.
After spending some time in Guernsey and Jersey, they embarked for
that country in June, 1781, but suffered so much from scurvy
during the voyage that before they arrived at Madras no fewer than
two hundred and forty-seven of them died. Their colonel and chief
himself died before they reached St. Helena, to the great grief of
his clansmen, who were well aware that it was for their sake alone
that he had resolved to sacrifice the comforts of home, and to
encounter the privations of a long voyage and the dangers of
military service in a tropical climate.
As Lord Fortrose
left an only daughter, but no male issue, his titles became
extinct. In 1779, finding his property heavily encumbered with
debts from which he was unable to extricate himself, he conveyed
his estates to his cousin and heir-male, Colonel Thomas F.
Mackenzie Humberston, on payment of £100.000. The Colonel was the
great-grandson of Kenneth, fourth Earl of Seaforth, and the eldest
son of Major Mackenzie by the daughter and heiress of Matthew
Humberston, of Lincolnshire, and assumed that name on succeeding
to his mother’s estate. He held the rank of lieutenant colonel in
the 78th regiment, and succeeded to its command on the death of
Seaforth. On his arrival in India he was appointed to a separate
command on the Malabar coast, where he greatly distinguished
himself, and inflicted a severe defeat on Tippoo Sahib. In 1782 he
served under General Mathews against Hyder Ali, and when that
officer was superseded for misconduct and incapacity, he
accompanied Colonel Macleod, who was appointed to succeed him,
when he sailed from Bombay to assume the chief command. On their
voyage the sloop Ranger, in which they had embarked, was
attacked by a squadron of large ships of war belonging to the
Mahrattas. All the officers on board were either killed or
wounded, among them the gallant young chief of the Mackenzies, who
was shot through the body, and died of the wound at Geriah, a
seaport of the Mahrattas, 30th April, in the twenty-eighth year of
his age. Dying unmarried, he was succeeded in his estates by his
brother—
FRANCIS HUMBERSTON
MACKENZIE, twenty-first chief of the Mackenzies, who was created a
peer of Great Britain in 1797 by the title of Lord Seaforth and
Baron Mackenzie of Kintail. Under this nobleman, who was in many
respects a very able and remarkable man, occurred the predicted
downfall of this great historical house, which was attended with
circumstances as singular as they were painful. ‘The last Baron of
Kintail, Francis, Lord Seaforth,’ says Sir Walter Scott, ‘was a
nobleman of extraordinary talents, who must have made for himself
a lasting reputation had not his political exertions been checked
by painful natural infirmities.’ Though a severe attack of scarlet
fever when he was in his twelfth year deprived him of hearing, and
for a time almost of speech, he was distinguished for his
extensive attainments as well as for his great intellectual
activity. He took a lively interest in all questions of art and
science, and especially in natural history, and displayed both his
liberality and his love of art by his munificence to Sir Thomas
Lawrence in the early straits and struggles of that great painter,
and also by his patronage of other artists. Before his elevation
to the peerage, Lord Seaforth represented Ross-shire in Parliament
for a good many years, and was afterwards nominated
Lord-Lieutenant of that county. During the revolutionary war with
France he raised a splendid regiment of Rossshire Highlanders, the
second that had been raised among his clan, of which he was
appointed lieutenant-colonel, and he ultimately attained the rank
of lieutenant-general in the army. He held for six years the
office of Governor of Barbadoes, and by his firmness and
even-handed justice he succeeded in putting an end to the practice
of slave-killing, which was at that time not unfrequent in the
island, and was deemed by the planters a venial offence to be
punished only by a small fine. He held high office also in
Demerara and Berbice.
Lord Seaforth was
the happy father of four sons and six daughters, all of high
promise, and it seemed as if he were destined to raise the
illustrious house of which he was the head to a height of honour
and power greater than it had ever yet attained. But the closing
years of this accomplished nobleman were darkened by calamities
and sufferings of the severest kind. The mismanagement of his
estates, combined with his personal extravagance, involved him in
inextricable embarrassments. When he exposed to sale the fine
estate of Lochalsh his tenants unanimously addressed to him the
pointed and significant remonstrance, ‘Reside amongst us and we
will pay your debts.’ His lordship’s improvidence, however,
rendered this expedient hopeless. A part of the barony of Kintail,
the ‘gift-land’ of the house, was next disposed of, a step which
the Seaforth clansmen in vain endeavoured to avert by offering to
buy in the land for him that it might not pass from the family. In
deference to this strong feeling on the part of the clan, the
intended sale of the estate was deferred for about two years. The
Earl had previous to this time been bereaved of three of his sons,
but one—Frederick William, a young man of marked ability and
eloquence—still survived, and was the representative in Parliament
of his native county. He, too, passed away in 1814, unmarried,
like his brothers. The heart-broken father lingered on a few
months longer, and died 11th
January, 1815, in his sixtieth year; and thus, as Sir Walter Scott
expressed it,—
‘Of the line
of Fitzgerald remained not a male
To bear the proud name of the chief of Kintail.’
This sad event is
thus mentioned by Scott in a letter to his friend Mr. Morritt of
Rokeby:-
‘You will have
heard of poor Caberfae’s death. What a pity it is he should have
outlived his promising young representative! His estate was truly
pitiable — all his fine faculties lost in paralytic imbecility,
and yet not so entirely lost but that he perceived his deprivation
as in a glass darkly. Sometimes he was fretful and anxious because
he did not see his son; sometimes he expostulated and complained
that his boy had been allowed to die without his seeing him; and
sometimes, in a less clouded state of intellect, he was sensible
of and lamented his loss in its full extent. These, indeed, are
"the fears of the brave and the follies of the wise," which sadden
and humiliate the lingering hours of prolonged existence.’
The character of the last Lord
Seaforth and the extinction of the male line of his house seem to
have greatly interested Sir Walter. In his ‘Lament’ for the last
of the Seaforths he says—
‘In vain the
bright course of thy talents to wrong,
Fate deadened thine ear and imprisoned thy tongue;
For brighter o’er all her obstructions arose
The glow of thy genius they could not oppose;
And who in the land of the Saxon or Gael
Could match with Mackenzie, high Chief of Kintail?
‘Thy sons rose
around thee, in light and in love,
All a father could hope, all a friend could approve;
What avails it the tale of thy sorrows to tell,
In the spring-time of youth and of promise they fell !
Of the line of MacKenneth remains not a male
To bear the proud name of the Chief of Kintail.’
The most remarkable
circumstance connected with this sorrowful tale is the undoubted
fact that centuries ago a seer of the clan Mackenzie predicted
that when there should be a deaf and dumb Caberfae the
‘gift - land’ of their territory (Kintail) should be sold, and the
male line become extinct.
This prophecy was
well known in the north long before its fulfilment, and was
certainly not made after the event. ‘It connected,’ says Lockhart
in his ‘Life of Sir Walter Scott,’ the fall of the house of
Seaforth not only with the appearance of a deaf Caberfae,
but with the contemporaneous appearance of various different
physical misfortunes in several of the other great Highland
chiefs, all of which are said to have actually occurred within the
memory of the generation that has not yet passed away.’ These
peculiarities were, that there would at that time be four great
lairds, of whom one would be bucktoothed, another hare-lipped,
another half-witted, and the fourth a stammerer. It is asserted
that contemporaneous with the deaf Caberfae were Sir Hector
Mackenzie of Gairloch, who was the buck-toothed laird, Chisholm of
Chisholm the hare-lipped, Grant of Grant the halfwitted, and
Macleod of Raasay the stammerer.
The story was
firmly believed not only by Scott, but by Sir Humphrey Davy also,
who mentions it in one of his journals, and by Mr. Morritt, who
testifies that he heard the prophecy quoted in the Highlands at a
time when Lord Seaforth had two sons alive and in good health. The
late venerable Duncan Davidson, Esq., of Tulloch, Lord-Lieutenant
of Ross-shire, in a letter to Mr. Alexander Mackenzie, author of
the ‘History of the Mackenzies,’ of date May 21st, 1878, states
‘that he heard of these prophecies upwards of seventy years ago,
when two of Lord Seaforth’s sons were still alive, and there
appeared to be no probability that he would survive them.’
On the death of
Lord Seaforth his titles became extinct. The chiefship of the clan
passed to Mackenzie of Allengrange, but the remaining estates of
the family, with all their burdens and responsibilities, devolved
upon Lord Seaforth’s eldest daughter, MARY ELIZABETH FREDERICA
MACKENZIE, born in 1783, widow of Vice-Admiral Sir Samuel Hood.
She took for her second husband (21st May, 1817) the Hon. James
Alexander Stewart of Glasserton, a cadet of the Galloway family.
Sir Walter Scott, who held Lady Hood in high esteem, expressed his
sympathy for her on the loss of her husband, father, and brothers
in the well-known lines—
‘And thou,
gentle dame, who must bear to thy grief
For thy clan and thy country the cares of a chief,
Whom brief rolling moons in six changes have left
Of thy husband, and father, and brethren bereft;
To thine ear of affection how sad is the hail
That salutes thee the heir of the line of Kintail!’
Sir Walter, in his
letter to Mr. Morritt on the death of Lord Sea-forth, says, ‘Our
friend, Lady Hood, will now be Caberfae herself. She has
the spirit of a chieftainess in every drop of her blood, but there
are few situations in which the cleverest women are so apt to be
imposed upon as in the management of landed property, especially
of a Highland estate. I do fear the fulfilment of the prophecy,
that when there should be a deaf Caberfae the house was to
fall.' Scott’s forebodings proved only too well-founded. One
section after another of the estates had to be sold. The remaining
portion of Kintail, the fairest portion of Glenshiel, the church
lands of Chanonry, the barony of Pluscarden, and the island of
Lewis—a principality in itself—passed in succession into other
hands. The late non-resident owner, who was under trustees,
attempted, in 1878, to dispose of the remnant of the patrimony of
the house of Seaforth, which, according to the Doomsday Book,
comprises 8,051 acres, yielding a rental of £7,905, but was
prevented by the interposition of his two daughters—one the widow
of the Hon. Colonel John S. Stanley, the other the dowager
Marchioness of Tweeddale. He succeeded, however, in bringing to
the hammer the family portraits and other precious heirlooms.
The Hon. J. A.
Stewart Mackenzie—who was held in great esteem by the clan, and,
indeed, by the whole county—represented Ross-shire in Parliament
for several years, and was afterwards successively Governor of
Ceylon and Lord High Commissioner to the Ionian Islands. The
accomplished Lady Ashburton was his sister. He died on the 24th of
September, 1843. His widow, the chieftainess, survived till the
28th of November, 1862. Of their son and successor there is
nothing creditable to be recorded. The remnant of the Seaforth
estate is now in the possession of his only son, an officer in the
army. |
