Massacre Of Glencoe

13th February 1692

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While you are visiting the area, go up to the http://www.glencoemuseum.com/ Glencoe Folk Museum to learn more.

The MacDonalds and Campbells had been feuding for centuries - each bringing down death and damage to each others people, crops and livestock over the years.

The early Jacobite activity caused concerns in the weak hold of power in the British throne. To attempt to control the activities:

It was decreed that all clan chiefs must take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary by New Year 1692. Delayed by a snowstorm and by having found the wrong government official to take his oath, the chief of clan MacIan (a sept of the MacDonalds) missed the crucial date.

He found a way to sign a few days later, and thought his oath had been accepted.

Campbell of Glenlyon led a group of some 128 soldiers of his own company and that of Drummond, who stayed with the MacDonalds townships for some 12 days before the orders for the massacre were given. Glenlyon is made welcome as he is related by marriage to the MacDonalds.
of the 128 Soldiers only 11 were Campbells

Of several hundred people living in the townships of Glencoe, up to 40 were killed, including MacIain as he rose from his bed.
Many fled out of the glen down into Glen Etive, to the Strath of Duror and Appin, and down into the Benderloch area.

12th February 1692
Hamilton writes to Duncanson, at Ballachulish, telling him to being the killing at seveon o'clock the next morning
Duncanson writes to Glenlyon in Glencoe, ordering him to begin the massacre at five o'clock the next morning, nad to spare none under seventy.
13th February
The massacre begins at 5 am
7 am Duncanson arrives with command from Ballachulish
11 am James Hamilton comes over the Devils Staircase with 400 men of Hills regiment.
These 2 both being hours after the start of the massacre allowed many to flee to safety around them

14th February
John Hill writes to Earl of Tweeddale "I have ruined Glencoe"

27th February
News of the massacre reaches London
one of MacIain's sons hears noises early in the morning of the 13th and goes to Glenlyon, who reassures him that they are preparing for action against GlenGarry and, if there had been anything with MacDonalds, he would have ensured the safe haven of his neice who was married into the MacDonalds. The son returns to bed, but is woken again as action begins and flees for the hills, to safety, where he is joined by his brother.

"Such was the public outcry that the Scottish parliament was forced to react when it met in March 1693. A committee was appointed to look into the Massacre, but its report was not published and nothing was done. Two years later, as public revulsion showed no signs of abating, a royal commission was appointed to examine the chain of events leading up to the events at Glencoe. It published its report a month later, in June 1695. This time there was no cover-up: the Massacre had been an act of murder, and the government was condemned for having 'barbarously killed men under trust'. There had to be a scapegoat; the blame was laid squarely at the door of Dalrymple, who resigned his office as secretary of states, unrepentant but totally discredited" (Magnusson, p. 525).

there are also stories of soldiers billeted with the MacDonald Households finding ways to warn the families they were staying with that night

One story concerns the stone shown below, which stands at Glencoe, and is today known as the Henderson Stone, after the MacEanruig or Henderson clan that also lived in Glencoe, with the Macdonalds. The day before the massacre happened, one of these Hendersons was standing by the stone with an Argyll soldier, watching a game of shinty, when the soldier suddenly struck the stone and said, ‘Great stone of the glen, great is your right to be here! But if you knew what will happen this night you would be up and away’.

Another story tells of a soldier billeted on a family of Macdonalds who, sitting with the family around the fire on the evening of the 12th of February, patted a dog on the floor and said to it, ‘grey dog, if I were you I would make my bed in the heather tonight’. The soldier then pretended to fall asleep, and the family, taking the warning, left the cottage and escaped to the hills, saving their lives.

A third story has a Campbell soldier, again sitting with the family with whom he had been billeted, admiring his host’s plaid, and saying to him, ‘were this good plaid mine, I would put it on and go and look after my cattle, I would put it on my shoulders and I would take my family and my cattle to a safe place’. Again, it is said that the family took the hint and saved themselves.

Hugh Mackenzie, piper to Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, is also said to have tried to let the Glencoe people know what was about to happen; on the evening of the 12th, he stood on the Henderson Stone and played a lament called ‘Women of the Glen’ on his bagpipes, knowing that the Macdonalds could take this as a warning of something terrible about to happen.1

https://digital.nls.uk/scotlandspages/timeline/16922.html
1692 - Order for the Massacre of Glencoe
This is the original order sent to Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, instructing him to kill the MacDonalds of Glencoe. He was to spare none below the age of seventy. The resulting massacre is remembered not just for its premeditated brutality but for its violation of an unwritten code of conduct: the perpetrators of the deed had enjoyed the hospitality of their victims for twelve days before turning on them.

In 1688 the removal of James II and VII in favour of William of Orange had led to the first ever Jacobite uprising. Its leader, Viscount Dundee, died at the battle of Killiecrankie and the rebellion broke up. All that remained was to pacify the Highland chiefs who had joined the enterprise. To this end a proclamation was issued in August 1691 requiring clan chiefs to take the Oath of Allegiance to King William by Hogmanay that year. By the accident of reporting to the wrong official at the last possible moment, Clan MacDonald of Glencoe missed the vital deadline. Secretary of State James Dalymple, Master of Stair, was no friend to the MacDonalds. This was the excuse he had been waiting for. The order for the massacre went ahead.

Read contemporary reports about the massacre

Presented in 1925 by the Rt Hon James Ramsay MacDonald. Adv. MS. 23.6.24

the orders for the Massacre
https://www.nls.uk/exhibitions/jacobites/william-and-mary/glencoe-massacre/
order-glencoe-massacre2.jpg
The order for the massacre of the MacDonalds at Glencoe, 1692.
This document contains the order for one of the most infamous acts in Scotland's history — the massacre in Glencoe.
In 1692, government troops, loyal to King William, killed 38 MacDonalds, after having accepted the hospitality of the men they would murder. Forty women and children died of exposure after their homes were burned.

A few days after the massacre Breadalbane sent Campbell of Barcaldine, his chamberlain, to the men of Glencoe to say that if they would declare under their hands that his lordship had no concern in the massacre, they might be assured the Earl would procure their ‘remission and restitution.’ It was not until 1695, three years after the Glencoe massacre, that a commission was appointed to inquire into the shocking affair. They reported that they did not find it proved that Breadalbane was implicated in the slaughter, but they discovered that the Earl had laid himself open to a charge of high treason by the manner in which he had acted in his negotiations with the clans; that he had professed to be a zealous partisan of James, and had recommended the chiefs to accept the money offered them by the Government, but at the same time to be on the watch for an opportunity of taking up arms in favour of the exiled monarch. The Parliament immediately committed Breadalbane a prisoner to the Castle of Edinburgh, but he was speedily released by the Ministry on the plea that the treacherous villain had, as he alleged, professed himself a Jacobite merely in order that he might discover and betray the plans of the Jacobite chiefs.2


suggested Bibliography

  • The massacre of Glenco, being a true narrative of the barbarous murther of the Glenco men in the highlands of Scotland by way of military execution on the 13th of Feb. 1692, George Ridpath, London 1703 (attributed variously to George Ridpath or Charles Leslie)
  • Memoirs of the Lord Viscount Dundee, the Highland clans and the massacre of Glenco, 'An officer of the army', London, 1714
  • Glencoe the story of the massacre, John Prebble, London, 1972 : https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UkDSdQ1SqOwC
  • Slaughter under trust - Glencoe 1692, Donald MacDonald, London, 1965
  • In famed Breadalbane, William A. Gillies, Perth, 1938

websites
https://discoverglencoe.scot/key-information/history/about-glencoe/glencoe-massacre/
https://www.nts.org.uk/visit/places/glencoe/the-glencoe-massacre
http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/GrD1115.html


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