The Chùil Lodair disaster (and Ulva's clearance)
Charlie the Flop, by William Mosman, around 1750. As you can see, he was pretty cut up about the 1500 or so Scots who died for him, and the couple of thousand transported to the Americas on his behalf. He was about 30 at this time, but he looks a bit "girlish" to me, not that that means anything. Perhaps he's beginning to show some signs of dissolution around his eyes, but maybe I'm just projecting knowledge of his future and my prejudices on the useless prick.
A bit hard to believe this is the same bloke, isn't it. This is Floppy Charlie in 1775. Even a portraitist's attempts at kindness don't show much success here. He's only about 55 at the time of this portrait, but to me (63 and one day at the time of writing), the pusbag looks to be in his 70s. By Hugh Douglas Hamilton Scottish (yep, that appears to be his genuine name!), hanging in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.
Stinking Willy, or Stinking Billy, otherwise the noxious and distinctly unpleasantly aromatic weed also known as "Mare's Fart" in some places, more officially named Flowering Ragwort (jacobaea vulgaris). I'm not sure the Latinised scientific name isn't an attempt to get back at Charles the Pretend Everything's supporters' common name for this plant. I can't find any direct translation of the word "jacobaea", but it's very close to the Catholic Stuarts' supporters' name "Jacobites" from the Latin for "James". "Vulgaris" is Latin for "common".
Stinking Billy in his prime (!). If you saw someone doing this today, you would be obliged to call the RSPCA! I have no idea whether this horse is a mare or a stallion, but I'll bet the poor thing had a heck of a lot of farts squeezed out of it by its gross rider. Mind you, I'll bet it was subjected to a heck of a lot of farts by that same rider!
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At its absolute peak Ulva probably housed somewhere in the order of 800 people. But times were changing. Lachlan's childhood was a tough time for the Macquaries ... well ... tougher than usual.
There are a couple of stories about what led to this state of affairs. First up, as some of you may not know, the island people are generally regarded as highlanders, and their culture, language, and religion were mostly pretty much the same. When I use the term "highlander" I include "islander" unless I mention them separately. According to one story you will see around the traps, in 1745 the Macquaries and, with the great benefit of hindsight, other foolishly and blindly loyal Scottish highlanders, despite severe misgivings by almost all the leaders of the major clans involved, followed a bloke called Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart into disaster. This isn't the place for a discussion of this appalling fiasco and its more appalling consequences. Click here for some information I've put together. I'll try to complete it ASAP! |
In the first story, touched on in my opening paragraph way up above, among the dead and transported after the battle were many Macquaries who had followed their clan chieftain, Major Allan Macquarrie, who in turn followed the Chief of the MacLeans, Sir Hector MacLean, to fight and die, or rot on the plantations of the Americas as white slaves, on behalf of Charlie the Failure and his old man on the Culloden battlefield, designated by the marker on the map below,
Again, the marker on the map below is on Culloden, or more accurately, Drumrossie Moor.
But what's true?
Well, this is a bit hard to tell when the sources differ so markedly. Sadly, what I've written about the battle, its leaders and its consequences are true, albeit wildly slanted by my prejudices (!) and sense of humour (!!).
Oh, what I wrote about Charles speaking with an Italian accent is apparently not true. And while I don't know about his ability at Scottish Gaelic, he could apparently speak Scots (a form of English). His accent was actually described as "English", or, another said, more like "Irish".
I've possibly over-stressed the Roman Catholic nature of the uprising. It was strong, but several Scottish and English nabobs involved were protestants, but seem to have had an ultra-conservative attitude that the Stuarts were the rightful heirs, and the Hanoverians were therefore usurpers.
It's also worth noting here that the Butcher had more Scots in his army than Charles did, and many were from highland clans. Charles also had soldiers in French uniform who were of Irish and Scottish backgrounds, loaned to him by the French king, and while they were already in English prisons by the time of Culloden his army had had an English unit called the Manchester Regiment, which he left to fail to defend Carlisle.
But the crooked sale of Ulva appears to be true. Very true, I'm afraid, if there are levels of truth (?).
And far more sadly, the clearance of Ulva is definitely true. Mind you, apparently some people think better of the landowner than others, but this could just be the modern trend for revisionist history. Not, I hasten to say, that there's anything intrinsically wrong with that. Rethinking accepted "truths" can often lead to better understandings. Truth is rarely so simple as to be a single easily represented thing. "One person's truth is another's lie" may be an overstated maxim, but often true all the same. Or is that a lie to someone? Hmph!
It's like "good" and "bad", or "better" and ... well, whatever the suitable opposite is. "Worse"? Maybe. You see, an irrational "rationalist" economist or "neo-liberal" conservative reactionary might look at the fact highland and island society was mired in a self-destructive medieval feudalism. It needed to move away from the traditional towards a more modern profit-based society. The Stuarts represented the past, the Hanoverians, and more particularly the parliamentary-enforced limitations forced James 2 and 7's daughters Mary Stuart, and her husband William of Orange, and Anne Stuart. Mary and Anne, of course, being Charlie the Useless's dad James's sisters, and therefore his aunts.
Thus a whole plethora of benefits accrued to the descendants of those who suffered the Butcher's post-Culloden depredations and those of his toadies and their successors, and those who suffered the depredations of the highland, island, and lowland nabobs who chose to seek profit by replacing their "children" with sheep. That these "children", particularly in the highlands and islands regarded these nabobs with an almost holy reverence concerned the nabobs not one whit, being taken as nothing but proof of their ignorance, savagery, and difference.
I have a strong belief, probably overly so, but that's just me, that benefits accruing in the far distant future don't necessarily justify extraordinarily cruel sufferings in the past. Of course, what's happened, quite clearly, has happened. But if we're to learn anything from the past it's what not to do in order to achieve whatever it is we want to achieve. To utlise another much over-used maxim, I do not believe "the ends justify the means".
Anyway, back to the point.
The other story of Clan Macquarie's history differs quite markedly in several details. According to this tale, the 16th clan chieftain, Lauchlan Macquarrie, the bloke who was to be the last clan chieftain, inherited his "title" and lands in 1735, after his father's death. His father was not a Major Allan Macquarrie, and as he died in 1735 and Culloden was in 1746, his father definitely did not lead a contingent of Macquaries to that appalling disaster. While a contingent of MacLeans was there, I have no information regarding any Macquaries at all, although I've not gone over the material with a fine toothed comb. It's possible some Macquaries may have been slaughtered at Culloden or in the butchery of the following days, but if so they made their way there without the clan leadership.
Lachlan's mother's father was a younger son of Maclain of Lochbuie, and the latter most certainly did not go to Culloden. He and a number of his ilk were persuaded by Duncan Forbes, Lord of Culloden, to stay well away from Charles and his cause. Lauchlan the clan chieftain was also related to the Maclains of Lochbuie, and could be expected to have been notified of the persuasive arguments put forward by Forbes.
Further, most of Mull was controlled by the Duke of Argyle, the leader of the English-supporting Campbells, and in fact the chieftain of his clan. Access to the mainland could certainly be made by sea, but this Campbell was a powerful man, with access to great resources. His capacity to destroy the Macquaries by hook or by crook was very high, being not only significantly more militarily powerful than Lauchlan and his ilk, but significantly more economically powerful.
Thus, in this story, the clan chieftain, in this case Lauchlan (note the "u" in that name - try not to get confused between Lachlans and Lauchlans) resolved to sit this one out. The loss of people and land after Culloden was mainly driven by Lauchlan's rapidly decreasing wealth, not that he had ever been what one would call "wealthy", and his over-expenditure. However, according to our Lachlan this over-expenditure was principally expended on helping his people. Ultimately, he ran up significant debts he was unable to pay, hence his need to sell land to meet his contractual obligations.
Get to the point. What the heck is true?
All right, keep your hair on. Well, what can I say? Umm ... nothing! The fact of the matter is truth is not always a simple thing to discern from this distance. And especially not with the small amount of research I've been able to do. So I would like to encourage you to think about it. Which story rings more true to you?
Come to a conclusion yet? No, no, don't give up. Oh, all right, if you insist. I'll give you my opinion, for what it's worth. Having spent most of my life reading this sort of stuff, I like to think I can at least occasionally sniff out a more likely story, even if I can't certify it as the absolute truth. In this case, bits of both stories are true, I believe. The main difference is in the matter of a presence at Culloden. In regard to this, I think the second story has a more likely-type of smell, flavour, feel, whatever about it, to the extent that I can say quite definitely that without any evidence of Macquaries at Culloden as a group within the party of Maclains (or anyone else, for that matter), I have to treat the first story with a heck of a lot of caution.
There, that's the best I can do.
Come to a conclusion yet? No, no, don't give up. Oh, all right, if you insist. I'll give you my opinion, for what it's worth. Having spent most of my life reading this sort of stuff, I like to think I can at least occasionally sniff out a more likely story, even if I can't certify it as the absolute truth. In this case, bits of both stories are true, I believe. The main difference is in the matter of a presence at Culloden. In regard to this, I think the second story has a more likely-type of smell, flavour, feel, whatever about it, to the extent that I can say quite definitely that without any evidence of Macquaries at Culloden as a group within the party of Maclains (or anyone else, for that matter), I have to treat the first story with a heck of a lot of caution.
There, that's the best I can do.
OK, so what's this got to do with our Lachlan?
Yes, well, I can quite understand that you may quite reasonably be wondering what all this guff has to do with our Lachlan Macquarie. Actually, it's very important if we're to gain any understanding of our man and some of the things he was to get up to. For as time showed, the loss of Macquarie land, wealth, and clan connectedness preyed on our Lachlan's mind. This should be remembered through the sometimes rather odd story we have to tell. But it's also worth noting that the dispossession of his people apparently didn't always enable him to identify or empathise with actions of those suffering dispossession in what whites called New South Wales.
When Macquarie did express some understanding and empathy, it was in a very patronising way, as of a Scottish clan chieftain to his "children", his simple, misled people. But sometimes, albeit rarely, his response was more like Butcher Cumberland. In particular, he seems to have had difficulties understanding or empathising with the occasional outbreak of violence, and one wonders what he might have thought if Scottish highlanders had reacted with any form of organised violence against the depredations of those treachorous clan chieftains and other property "owners" who "legally" treated their tenants as less than sheep.
Yes, well, I can quite understand that you may quite reasonably be wondering what all this guff has to do with our Lachlan Macquarie. Actually, it's very important if we're to gain any understanding of our man and some of the things he was to get up to. For as time showed, the loss of Macquarie land, wealth, and clan connectedness preyed on our Lachlan's mind. This should be remembered through the sometimes rather odd story we have to tell. But it's also worth noting that the dispossession of his people apparently didn't always enable him to identify or empathise with actions of those suffering dispossession in what whites called New South Wales.
When Macquarie did express some understanding and empathy, it was in a very patronising way, as of a Scottish clan chieftain to his "children", his simple, misled people. But sometimes, albeit rarely, his response was more like Butcher Cumberland. In particular, he seems to have had difficulties understanding or empathising with the occasional outbreak of violence, and one wonders what he might have thought if Scottish highlanders had reacted with any form of organised violence against the depredations of those treachorous clan chieftains and other property "owners" who "legally" treated their tenants as less than sheep.