MACDONALD OF THE ISLES.*
Ir would be bard to find a more picturesque appellation than that of the ancient Highland house which is the subject of this story. To have your patronymic linked, not with this place or that, but with an archipelago, is enough to make a family hold its bead high, and when you add a clear descent for some eight centuries and mythology for some half. dozen more you find that which few reigning houses, in Europe at any rate, can boast of. The disappointing thing about most Highland family histories is that the romance comes to so complete an end—generally about 1745. Thereafter the chiefs are ordinary lairds, with shrinking territories and half their elan in Canada. But in the case of the Macdonalds of the Isles romance comes down to our own days. It was only in 1910 that an old mystery was cleared up and the present holder of the title duly recognized. The author tells her tale with spirit and a fall recognition of every shade of its picturesqueness. She does not attempt to make any original contributions to the elucidation of early Celtic history; which is perhaps as well, for that tangle is beyond the wits of anon. There is a little too much obvious moralizing of the "Vanished.for-ever-are-the-doughty-warriors " type, which might have been omitted with profit, and surely at this time of day it is useless to get angry with Boswell and Dr. Johnson. But we can forgive much to a writer who enters so readily into the spirit of old, unhappy, far-off things. We would suggest, however, that it is scarcely proper for a devoted historian of the Macdonalds to
• Xamlosal4 of the 14.: a Homan. of Out Past and Present. By A.3L W. atleUng. London: John Murray. au. Itat;2
repeat the highly discreditable story of the behaviour. of the clan at Culloden—that since they were not given their hereditary place on the right they refused to charge and sulkily withdrew from the field with lines unbroken. As Andrew Lang has shown, the narratives of the battle left by Cumberland and Colonel Joseph Yorke make it plain that the Macdonalds on the left attacked with the others. They never came to the shock, being outflanked and exposed to a heavy fire of grape which broke their ranks. Not till all their leaders had fallen did their efforts cease. Sir Walter is mainly responsible for the traditional version, which must now be added to the list of historical fictions.
The history begins in the dark ages with the Irish King Conn of the Hundred Fights, from whom descended One Godfrey Macrergus, ruler of the Western Isles. From Godfrey's stock sprang a certain Gillebride; whose son Somerled, for all his Norse name, drove the Norsemen from the Scottish mainland and became Hew:iris of Argyll, and presently Rex Insularum. He was a thorn in the side of the King of Scots, Malcolm the Maiden, by whom he was treacherously put to death after a great battle at Renfrew. His possessions were divided among his three sons, one of whom, Reginald, was the father of Donald, who married a daughter of the High Steward of Scotland and gave his name to the clan. Donald was perpetually at variance with the Scottish King, but his grandsons entered into national politico, Angus being the friend of Bruce and a stalwart warrior at Bannockburn. In return for his conduct on that day the Clan Donald acquired the privilege of being placed in battle on the right of all the clans, that being in their eyes the post of honour rather than the conventional left. His son, John of Isla, embarked upon marriages which were destined fatally to confuse the question of chieftainship. By his first wife be had a son from whom descend the families of Glengarry and Clanranald; but he got rid of the lady by Papal dispensation, and married the Princess Margaret of Scotland. Feudal law did not apply in the Highlands, and under the system of elective chieftainehip Donald, the son of the second wife, was recognized as Lord of the Isles. Hence arose the dispute, never to be settled, between the families of the Isles, Glengarry and Clanrauald, for the headship of the Macdonalds. On such high matters it is not for the stranger to express an opinion. This Donald was the hero of Harlem who "came branking doun the brae with twenty thousand men," but won a doubtful victory. He had married the heiress of the Ross earldom, and he and his descendants stuck manfully to the Lowland title. His grand- son Hugh, the Lord of Bleat, succeeded to the family honours, and from his day Bleat became the seat of the house of the Isles. There, in the north end of Skye, stood the great castle of Duntulro, where they kept up a state which was little short of regal. The new Chief went through a sort of coronation ; he had an immense Court and all manner of hereditary officials; he had his own code of laws and his own judges and tribunals. A. Spanish traveller in the time of James I. of Scotland declared on his return that the greatest wonder he had seen was not the King, "but a grand man called Macdonald with a great train of men after him, that was called neither Duke nor Marquis." With their neighbours the Macleods they fought" bitter and regular," and we have the hideous story of the two hundred Macdonalds smoked to death in the cave of Eigg. Early in the sixteenth century the Chief became a Baronet of Nova Scotia. The Sleet of the '45 espoused half-heartedly the Hanoverian cause, but it was his wife, Lady Margaret, of the house of Eglinton, who did much to make Prince Charles's escape possible, and who interceded later for her heroic clanswoman, Flora Macdonald, His son was given an Irish peerage—a downcome for so proud a race—and by his marriage with a Beeville of Yorkshire he gave his house that Yorkshire connexion which it has since retained. The lady had, according to the author, been the object of the unrequited attachment of James Boswell, and the pique of a disappointed lover is the explanation of the acidulous comments in the Tour to the Hebrides. But there is a more creditable and more obvious explanation. Johnson and Boswell were on the quest for novelties, and had invented a romantic clan system, like Rousseau's Golden Age. When they found a host who had been at Eton and wrote Latin verses, they experienced the dissatisfaction of the mountaineer who on a summit which he had thought virgin, disooveis i
tin-opener. A. very different account is that given by young Mr. Stanhope, who journeyed to Skye in 1806. His vivacious narrative, which the author prints, is an excellent picture of Highland life a hundred years ago, as seen through the eyes of impressionable youth.
With the sons of the first Lord Macdonald begins one of the most curious of modern peerage tales. The second son. Godfrey, an Ensign in the 60th, fell in love with a beautiful girl whom he saw at Esher, and who turned out to be the daughter of the Duke of Gloucester and Lady Almeria Carpenter. The two lovers were married according to Scots law, and though they intended to have the religious ceremony . performed, service in Ireland postponed it, and it was not till four years later, after the birth of a son, that they were remarried according to the rites of the Church of England. In time Colonel Macdonald succeeded to the Beeville estates of his maternal uncle, and settled down at Thorpe, in Yorkshire. In 1824 his elder brother died and he succeeded to the peerage and the headship of his branch of the clan. He had no doubt about the legitimacy of his eldest son, for he believed that his domicile bad always been Scottish. Bat on his death it appeared that he bad been wrong, and Alexander, the eldeat eon, inherited the Yorkshire estates, and the second son, Godfrey, born after the celebration of the English marriage, succeeded to the peerage, which was governed by the English law of succession. The question became more complicated when Godfrey attempted to sell part of the Scottish estates, and was told that he had no title to them, as he had a brother living who was legitimate by Scots law. The upshot was a private Act of Parlia- ment to deal with the landed property. The elder line were now only Yorkshire squires, and their surname was Bosville, not Macdonald. But the son of Alexander was gradually led to believe that his father had acquiesced too readily in the view taken by the English lawyers, and many pieces of evidence came to light which seemed to prove beyond doubt the Scottish domicile of Colonel Godfrey. Accordingly a suit was raised in the Court of Session, and in 1910 judgment was given establishing the Scottish domicile and declaring all the children of Godfrey equally legitimate. The baronetcy of Sleet, the Macdonald surname, and the chieftainship of the Isles were metered to the family at Thorpe; while, of course, the Irish peerage and the Scottish estates remained with the younger branch. It is pleasant to record that the rival chiefs of Clan Donald took the occasion of this happy restitution, not indeed to settle the question of the chieftainship, but to provide a working rule about precedence. It was agreed between Sleet, Clanranald, and Glengarry, "without prejudice" to their respective claims, that, since the clan was scattered and could not decide the headship in the old Highland fashion, each Chief should refrain from contro- versy, and that in the event of more than one of them being present on any occasion precedence should be decided by lot. A most sensible compromise, which may be recommended to the imitation of other houses.
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