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  On Tuesday, 3 October, four sheriff officers came to Invergordon with warrants for two men who had been leading players in the riots. However, word soon spread, a man ran through the town clattering a bell to gather a crowd and forestall the arrests. The suspects were hustled to safety and the mob confronted the sheriff officers. ‘Go home,’ they said, ‘or we will stone you to death.’ The sheriff officers left; the suspects were not arrested.

  For the remainder of that long Tuesday, crowds surrounded the church at Rosskeen in case the Reverend Mackenzie should arrive to take his place. The entire area was controlled by the followers of the Free Church. They had men watching all the local gentry, who remained faithful to the Established Church with its police of patronage, and were aware of every movement. They sent threatening letters to many of the men who remained with the Establishment and made no attempts at disguise.

  There were troubles and rumours of troubles at other places in the area. The Lord Lieutenant had heard a rumour that there would be trouble at Kiltearn on Wednesday, 27 September, so tried to forestall it by posting a notice to the local magistrates commanding in the King’s name that they all attend at the church. The gathering took place, with many of the seceding ministers also there to help keep the peace. The established minister was inducted without any trouble.

  After the partial success at Invergordon, the seceding ministers preached the doctrine of non-violence wherever they could. The Reverend Macdonald of Ferintosh preached to the congregation at Evanton, with the message that anyone who used violence to try and stop the induction of new ministers would not be welcome in the Free Church. The Free Churchmen sent a request to the Duke of Sutherland, one of the largest landowners in Scotland, to supply land on which to build Free Churches, but he refused, saying that the Church of Scotland was the persecuted party and if he consented he would be seen as ‘giving his countenance to its opponents’. He did agree that he might consider giving land for a church if there was no religious building in the area, but any subsequent church would have to follow the rules of the Established Church of Scotland.

  Sutherland was not alone in denying the Free Church any scope on his land. In January 1844, MacLean of Ardgour had an interdict served on the Reverend John Mactavish, prohibiting him from erecting a tent and preaching to a gathering of people at Ballachulish.

  By Thursday, 5 October, the authorities were retaliating. When two young men from Tain had travelled south to Inverness to watch proceedings at the court, Superintendent John McBean recognised them as being involved in the agitation and hustled both to the jail in Dingwall. The Constabulary Committee of Inverness-shire met to decide a course of action and see if the Inverness Police could be employed to help out in Ross-shire.

  Even more emphatically, 200 men of the 87th Foot, the Royal Irish Fusiliers were sent from Paisley to Leith and then by sea to Ross to keep the people in order. Led by Captain Keate, they disembarked at Invergordon from the Duke of Richmond steamer on the morning of Wednesday, 4 October. A crowd watched them march up to their temporary barracks at an old hemp factory, but there was no trouble. Later that same day, Superintendent McBean of the Inverness-shire Police and Superintendent Mann of the Elgin Police arrived with an officer and fifteen men of a revenue cutter. They were there to execute arrest warrants on the people thought to have led the riots.

  Once they had force behind them, the authorities moved quickly. They arrested seven men that same evening and locked them in the guard room under the watchful eyes and glittering bayonets of the Royal Irish. A body of soldiers escorted the prisoners to the jail at Tain.

  The arrival of the military sucked the spirit from the people of Tain. Some asked the soldiers if they would fire at unarmed civilians if they were ordered to, and the Irishmen replied, ‘If you resist, we’ll cut you down like the standing corn.’ There was obviously no pan-Celtic sympathy from the Irish soldiers to the Highland Scots.

  On Saturday, 7 October, the Lord Lieutenant swore in hundreds more Special Constables, many of them tenants of the landowners. There were fifty men from the estate of Sir John Mackenzie alone. Perhaps 300-strong and escorted by a body of the 87th, the combined force crossed the firth from Invergordon to the Black Isle and marched to Resolis to swear in the new Established minister. The soldiers did not approach the actual church but the sixty or so people who gathered made no attempt to intervene this time. The people of the Highlands very seldom opposed the army.

  That same evening, three more suspected rioters were arrested as they lay in bed in Jemimaville, and were taken to the jail in Dingwall. A few days later, three men were arrested in Cromarty, suspected of being involved in the jailbreaking there. Others who were known to have taken part in the riot fled the area. The authorities debated raising a force of constables or even a troop of yeomanry to keep order in the north of Scotland.

  After about a week the bulk of the infantry were withdrawn to Fort George, east of Inverness, and only a token force of thirty under the command of Lieutenant Turner remained at Dingwall, ready to march wherever they were required. A steamer named Modern Athens berthed at Invergordon, in case she was needed to carry the troops at Fort George to any possible trouble spot.

  By December, six of the arrested men were out on bail, but were summoned to the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh. Their trial took place on Wednesday, 10 and Thursday, 11 January 1844. On 10 January, John Urquhart, Donald Urquhart and a fisherman named Robert Hogg were put on trial for breaking open Cromarty Jail and freeing Margaret Cameron. Others also appeared. There was Andrew Holm, a fisherman and labourer of Ferrytown in Resolis parish, a labourer named Andrew Fraser, the stone-thrower Elspet Aird, a shoemaker named William Fraser and David Mackenzie, a crofter from Bog of Cullicudden. The latter three chose not to appear and were subsequently outlawed.

  Andrew Holm and Alexander Fraser pleaded not guilty to a charge of mobbing and rioting and disturbing the Presbytery of Chanonry. When witness after witness reported seeing them heavily involved in the riot they changed their plea to guilty. They both were given six months in jail, while John Urquhart was given nine months for his involvement in breaking Margaret Cameron from the jail at Dornoch.

  Overall, the sentences were fairly moderate considering the trouble and expense the government had been to, but the moral seemed fairly clear: be careful when meddling with the religious feelings of the Highlanders.

  12

  Poaching

  Poaching was endemic across the nineteenth-century Highlands and Hebrides, but there were many different types of poaching. There was the refined hunting of deer with rifles; there was the less refined driving of deer into ambushes. There were a dozen methods of poaching for salmon and trout, from using lanterns to ‘burn the water’ to hooks and nets. The movement of game birds such as partridge could be studied, for if disturbed but not panicked a covey would follow a recognised path and into a skilfully laid net. Nets could also be used for rabbits, while there could be wholesale attacks on pheasants, which roosted fairly close to the ground. Highland poachers probably utilised all of these methods at some point in the century. Most poaching was small-scale and simple.

  The Highland historian Dr I. Grant mentioned poaching in her classic book Highland Folk Ways. Grant stated that she was ‘lucky enough to have been given the rifles of three noted poachers’: one was a long-barrelled flintlock, another a weapon that could be broken in two so the barrel was concealed down the owner’s trouser leg and the third was an ex-army rifle from the mid-1850s. She also mentions various methods for poaching for trout or salmon, such as using torches on the surface of the river; using leisters, or three-pronged iron forks; or an otter board, a board with lines attached; wickerwork traps; or simple guddling, when somebody would lie on the bank of a river, place both hands in the water and tickle a fish into submission. There follows a number of examples of Highland poaching.

  Destroying the Yairs

  There was a stir of interest at Inverness Circuit Court in Sept
ember 1833 when a number of fishermen from Ullapool appeared for poaching. They were Alexander Matheson; Donald Mackenzie, also known as Andrew Roderick Macgregor; Allan Campbell, also known as McIvor; Murdoch Urquhart; Colin Macleod; and John Cameron, known as Castle, together with Donald Fraser, who was the agent for the British Society for the Encouragement of Fisheries at Ullapool; Norman Macdonald; and Colin Ross. All were charged with destroying the yair, or fish trap, on 24 September 1832 on the shore of Loch Broom that belonged to Sir George Mackenzie of Coul and removing the materials that made up the yair. The yair was designed to catch salmon. They were also accused of destroying a yair at the mouth of the River Broom that belonged to Reverend Thomas Ross, the minister of Loch Broom.

  Only Colin Ross, Norman Macleod and Allan Campbell appeared and pleaded guilty. The others were outlawed. The defence said that the offences were committed at a time of extreme poverty and the men were facing starvation and they were not aware they were breaking the law. To his credit, Sir George Mackenzie agreed that the men had not realised they were breaking the law, and the judge, Lord Meadowbank, ordered them to have two months’ imprisonment in Tain.

  Famous Poachers

  Two of the most famous poachers of the central Highlands were John Farquharson and Alexander Davidson. The careers of these two men spanned the central decades of the nineteenth century, with Davidson in the ’20s and ’30s and Farquharson in the ’40s and ’50s.

  Davidson was a gamekeeper turned poacher who roamed the braes of Atholl, yet he was also a man of honour. Before he encroached on anybody’s land, he would send warning in advance. He died in 1843.

  Like Davidson, Farquharson was a name redolent of the sweet heather of Badenoch, and like Davidson, he poached at will around Atholl. Another keeper turned poacher, he was an expert shot but fell foul of the law from time to time. In 1884 he was caught shooting and selling grouse and fined £25, six months’ wages for a skilled man. He lived until 1893 and died in his own bed.

  Two Small Examples

  On the night of 25 October 1874 an old man named William Jack was poaching in the Perthshire hills. He roamed the fields around Kilmadock and Lecroft with nets and sticks and eventually slipped onto the farm of Thomas Reid. However, Reid was a watchful man and recognised Jack as a habitual night poacher. In April next year Jack stood before the circuit court in Perth. The Lord Justice Clerk awarded him two months in jail.

  At the beginning of August 1886, a gang of salmon poachers fought with Lord Middleton’s gamekeepers at the mouth of the Applecross River in Wester Ross. The poachers were local crofters from Lochalsh and had put a splash net across the mouth of the river to catch the salmon when the keepers arrived. Both sides fought and the result was a draw; the keepers prevented any salmon being poached and got possession of the net, but the poachers escaped.

  At other times what started out as a simple attempt to lift game could end in bloody violence, and gamekeepers were known to carry weapons for their own defence.

  Poaching Lord Lovat’s Lands

  In one case in February 1887, Donald Macdonald, Lord Lovat’s gamekeeper, was patrolling the Inchberry Estate near Inverness. He had experienced trouble with poachers, and a few days previously somebody had sent him hate mail and a death threat, so he carried a revolver. Nevertheless, rather than live cartridges, he had it loaded with blanks; his purpose was to scare and capture the poachers, not kill them. He did not patrol alone, for William Logan, the coachman and gamekeeper to another local landowner, Major Gordon, and a third keeper named William Fraser, also came to help.

  Macdonald was not just doing his normal patrols but was actively searching for poachers on Lovat’s land. It was a dark night, sharply cold, and not long after midnight he heard the sound of footsteps. He peered through the dark and saw a large group of men, nine or ten strong, about 100 yards away. They were walking slowly and purposefully into a field. As the keepers hid behind a drystane dyke and watched, the men began to set a net across the field, with the obvious intention of trapping rabbits.

  Despite the odds against them, Fraser and Logan dashed into the field and grabbed the nearest two of the poachers. As soon as the gamekeepers came into the field, the poachers began to throw stones at them. Two or three hit Logan on the body and one split open his skull so he was nearly blinded by the blood that poured over his eyes. In that state it was difficult for him to see who had thrown the stones, but nevertheless, he lifted his stick and closed with the poachers. As he grappled them he identified one as a plasterer named Robert Johnston, while the others were John Carr and James Chisholm, all three from Inverness. He thumped one poacher with his stick, knocking him down, and then heard the triple bark of Macdonald’s revolver.

  Inchberry House on Inchberry Estate, where Donald Macdonald fought the poachers in 1887

  © Author’s Collection

  While Logan and Fraser had been battling against odds, Macdonald had snatched the centre of the net from the field. He had no sooner done this when he heard the sounds of combat from his two companions, and he hurried to help them. Dim in the dark, he saw two of the poachers lying prone on the ground; one was Robert Johnston, but he could not recognise the other.

  Macdonald arrived at the scene at the same moment as five of the poachers, and a second battle began. The poachers lifted stones and again began to pelt the gamekeepers. One poacher named Allan Johnston threw a large rock that smashed into Macdonald’s mouth and knocked him, bleeding, to the ground. He spat out a dislodged tooth. As he lay there, one of the poachers, possibly Carr or a man named William Downie, shouted, ‘Finish him! Finish him!’

  Not surprisingly, with half a dozen angry and violent men surrounding him, Macdonald became frightened. He pulled out his revolver and fired a couple of shots. The poachers hastily retreated into the dark, but Macdonald heard them arguing, with one man accusing the others of cowardice. ‘He’s firing blanks,’ somebody said.

  Macdonald shouted to Logan to also use his gun, and Logan fired into the ground to make sure the poachers did not recover their courage; there was a lull and the gamekeepers withdrew to Inverness. They told the police and Macdonald had a doctor see to his injured mouth.

  That was not the only time poachers struck at the Inchberry Estate. About ten days later Macdonald was again on patrol and he found a game bag concealed in a ditch. When he opened the bag he found over thirty poached rabbits.

  When the poaching case came to the circuit court in spring 1887, all the accused – James Chisholm, John Carr and Robert Johnston – denied poaching at the Inchberry Estate. They put forward various alibis that neither the judge nor the jury found credible, so all were handed nine months in jail.

  The Glenelg Hunt

  The Highland Clearances are well known, with the indigenous population being evicted by the hundreds to make way for sheep. However, there is an even more sinister side to the Clearances than alterations to farming practices.

  When the Australian wool industry erupted in the nineteenth century, demand for Scottish wool plummeted and the landowner had to search for an alternative source of income. Sometimes the people were cleared so the landowner could indulge in a pastime that was growing in popularity in the nineteenth century. The people were removed so the upper classes could enjoy the sports of deer stalking and grouse shooting. Land that had been carefully tendered for generations was allowed to descend into moorland so bracken and heather spread over the countryside. It is deeply ironic that heather is now often seen as a symbol of Scotland when it was once kept under control by hardworking Highlanders.

  Deer were probably as unpopular as sheep had been, possibly because the landowners prevented the crofters from defending their crops from them. Deer were nearly as sacred to the landowners as cows were in Hindu India. However, there was resistance. There had always been poaching in Scotland, but in the Highlands it now increased.

  In 1887 in Glenelg in Skye the local crofters combined in a massive deer hunt that drove hundreds of deer into th
e sea. Naturally, the landowners sought revenge and had the leaders of this resistance movement arrested. The High Court in Edinburgh found them not guilty and a crowd carried them down the high street of the capital, chanting, ‘Down with the tyrants.’ It was a long way from the early days of Clearance.

  The Pairc Deer Raid

  Although some aspects of Highland crime are similar to crime elsewhere in Scotland, others are unique to the time and place. The deer raid on Pairc, Lewis, also known as Lochs, was one such. It is unfair to call the raiders poachers, for at no time did they hide their actions.

  In 1887 the Gaelic communities of the Hebrides were no longer willing to accept the abuses that had been piled on their ancestors. They had seen the results of land grabs in Skye and Tiree, while the Crofting Act of 1886 had created a measure of stability and security of tenure. However, things in the Crofting Counties were far from perfect. The people of Pairc in Lewis were a case in point. For generations their land had been squeezed by the local landowners. In their case, it was the Matheson family who were turning large acreages of what had been productive farmland into deer forest for the sporting interest. The 1880s was a bad decade for the Hebrides, with crop failures, foul returns at the fishing, falling cattle prices and fewer jobs on the mainland. People in the overcrowded crofts faced destitution.

  Donald Macrae, a schoolmaster from Balallan and formerly a maths teacher at Inverness Academy, was allegedly the leader of the six men who decided to fight against the loss of their land. Retaliation of some sort was necessary. With a growing population and a limited supply of land, the crofters and cottagers were living on the cusp of starvation. As the indigenous population suffered, Lady Matheson leased another twelve square miles of hill to a sportsman named Joseph Platt. The local crofters believed this land would be better utilised for crofting and they had hoped to have it returned to ease the burden of overcrowding and lack of land. The Pairc forest had been started at the beginning of the century but as deer hunting became a popular sport for the wealthy, the landowners had gradually expanded the forest at the expense of the surrounding crofts until thirty crofting communities were cleared.