Legend cattleman, outlaw, clansman, Jacobite, latter-day Robin Hood, Rob Roy was many things to many people, but I'm going to break him down into one man with three lives and what made him change from one to the next. If you're interested in the people, places and events in Scottish history, then hit the subscribe button at the
bottom right hand side of the screen anytime, and click the notification bell to make sure they tell you when I bring out new videos. In the meantime, let me tell you a story. Now Rob Roy was the younger son of a Duine Uassal of Clan MacGregor. He was born at the head of this loch. Glengyle is at the western end of Loch Katrine. You could treat yourself to a boat trip from Trossachs pier here to Stronachlacher, then walk to the top of the loch. Three miles to the west is Loch Lomond, seven miles to the south is Ben Lomond. Ben Lomond is the first Monroe that you come to in the Highlands. Now for foreigners, our mountains have been classified, so that all those above 3000 feet are called Monroes, the point is that this is border country between Highlands and Lowlands. Here they spoke Gaelic. 10 or so miles that way they spoke English. These were a martial people who carried weapons to protect themselves. They were farmers who carried scythes and lawyers who carried pens. The military in the state was their protection. Now it'd be a gross oversimplification to say that down there there was arable land, and up here was cattle country, so let's just say that up here there was cattle country and down there there was arable land, but they had some cattle as well and no weapons, easy pickings. So let me show you Rob Roy country. Loch Lomond, the MacGregor Clan were proscribed, banned, persona non grata. Now I'm going to make a video about that, and there'll be a link at the end as always, but if I was going to be proscribed anywhere, I think this would be the place. Anyway, let's focus on Rob Roy's first role as a cattleman. Highlanders reared Highland cattle,
Lowlanders ate beef. Now obviously they couldn't come up, put a cow on the roof rack of a camper van, then drive back down south, not with Covid restrictions, so
you need men like Rob Roy; cattlemen. Perfectly positioned on that border, he spoke English and Gaelic, he could use a sword on this side of the Highland line and he could use a pen on that side of the Highland line. He reared cattle and drove them south to market each year, but more than that, he'd collect other folks cattle and drive them with his own. Traders in the south would commission them each year to deliver a certain number of head of cattle. He'd source them up in the Highlands and then he'd take them south receive payment and duly pay the Highlanders whose cattle he'd sold. He was like a cowboy clansman, yeee haaaa! He was a businessman and it seemed a successful one at that, but he was still a MacGregor. Sometimes Lowland cattle went missing, so Rob Roy offered a service to protect the Lowland farmers from cattle theft. They paid him rent and he
made sure that their cattle weren't stolen. Now the Gaelic word for rent is 'mal' and the Gaelic word for black is 'dhu' black rent mal dhu or as the English speakers called it black mail. Here are your cattle, he traded cattle, he protected cattle he stole cattle, but to Highlanders lifting cattle wasn't thieving, it wasn't like stealing sheep the point is as he carried out rôle number
one, business was booming and life was good, until it wasn't. Rob's business was under strain throughout 1711. He took orders and payments for much larger numbers of beasts than normal, he even took orders right up until April 1712, but that spring time there was no sign of cattle, not
one single cow and in spite of bold words, Rob didn't seem to have the money to repay his
creditors. Now this wasn't the first time that somebody had got into financial difficulties, or even bankrupt and some arrangement would be made they could continue if not quite in good standing then, at least walking with a slight stoop, neither was it the first time that cattle had
gone missing in the hands of a MacGregor, but this time was different. You see, in the
winter of 1711, before the outside world realised, the crisis that spring would bring Rob Roy had transferred his assets into the names of friends and relatives without registering the transfer in Edinburgh, that would raise suspicions! He'd taken cash and issued bonds which had been transferred on to others, leaving them with the liabilities. No this wasn't like other
collapses for two very important reasons; the first reason was that Rob Roy hadn't come south and lifted Lowland cattle at the end of a sword, it was far worse than that, he'd plundered
Lowland bank accounts with a Highland pen. Secondly, the victims weren't ordinary folk who could suffer all sorts of losses and the world would keep turning, the victims included the Duke of Montrose, a politically powerful noble who owned lands south of Loch Lomond,
Dunbartonshire, Stirlingshire and townhouses in Glasgow and London. This was a man who'd been raised to the level of a Duke as a reward for his parliamentary
support for the Act of Union in 1707. I thought you'd say that!! Rob might have expected to negotiate one of those reductions in debt in lieu of settlement, you know the ones they advertised on the telly, and then he would have gone back to trading, but the Duke of Montrose made it his business to humiliate himself by being outsmarted by Rob time and again making a famous hero out of Rob and an infamous buffoon out of himself. Other political opinions are available your
social standing will go down as well as up. Now there were three men of great
position and power around at the time; the Duke of Montrose was to the south at Loch Lomond, to the north and the west where the Campbells of Glen Lyon and the Campbell, Duke of Argyll, and to the north and the east was the Duke of Athol. Now each was king in his own clan lands and Rob played one political rival off against the other, thus escaping justice from any. Rob was now firmly established in his second career, Rob Roy the outlaw. Now there are stories of his capers, too numerous to mention, but I can recommend the book 'The Hunt for Rob Roy', there's a link in the description below, obviously. Now my favourite story is when he escapes from imprisonment under the Duke of Athol only to find that the Duke of Montrose has sent troops to take possession of Rob's own lands, so Rob went all the way south to Montrose's Buchannan Castle and he stole 30 of the Duke's best cattle from under his nose! Oh the indignity! Troops were sent out to chase him and they followed him back up here to his home country and commandeered houses for the night, leaving Rob Roy and his men out in the hills, but the next day they found to their disappointment, that Rob had returned back to the unprotected Buchannan Castle and emptied 16 bolls of wheat from the Duke's grain store, but he did leave a receipt for the grain as payment for the rents that Rob had
lost while the Duke took his lands. Of course the tenants on his land continued paying rent to Rob Roy, whilst pleading poverty to the Duke, but Rob Roy was still an outlaw, so when
Queen Anne died in 1714 to be replaced by the Hanoverian George the First, Rob
Roy's third role was almost inevitable. Rob Roy, the Jacobite. Now if there was an uprising and you were an outlaw, you certainly wouldn't take the Government side. Now don't get me wrong, Rob Roy is recorded as a youth as being at the Jacobite side at the Battle of Killiecrankie in the first
Jacobite uprising. Incidentally I've got a really popular video about that folks, really enjoy it, and surprise surprise, I'll leave a link at the end, but now Rob took a prominent role in the
Jacobite agitation of 1715 that ended at the Battle of Sheriffmuir, although
he didn't quite make it to the battle. He was at the battle of Glenshiel during
the Jacobite rise in 1719, that doesn't really get talked about, but if you ever pass Eilean Donan Castle you'll see that it's always swamped by tourists. It's a stunningly mystical castle in that beautiful setting at the junction of Loch Duich, Loch Long and Loch Alsh, but the thing is that the current castle wasn't built until the 1920s. You see when Jacobites took control of it along with Spanish troops in 1719, the British Navy came up Loch Alsh and bombarded them. After the Jacobite loss at the Battle of Glen Shiel that followed and to prevent the castle and supplies
falling into British Government hands the job of blowing up the gunpowder, stores and the castle with it was given you've guessed it to Rob Roy. The life of Rob Roy was far too
eventful to cover in a short video. As I say, if you want more detail you can read 'The Hunt for Rob Roy' the link's there. Eventually he threw off the title of outlaw and settled
here at Balquidder just over the hill from his birthplace where we started, but he was still no stranger to disputes and his quarrelling continued to the end. At the age of 63, Rob Roy fought
a duel with a young Stuart of Appin man. Now there are various stories about the cause and nature of this duel, but one tells that after much drink they teased each other about whether the Stuart of Appin's father was worse for his poor performance at the Battle Sheriffmuir or Rob Roy was worse for not making it there at all. Things got heated and it ended in a duel the next day. They say it was the first of more than 20 duels that Rob Roy fought that he ever lost. Now he didn't die in that duel, Highland duels were to the first cut, but he did suffer a cut and gradually as the days went on infection took over. He probably died of septicaemia in his bed on the 28th of December 1734. He was buried here in the kirkyard at Balquhidder as they played Maccrimmon's lament. Now if you don't know the story in Maccrimmon's lament let me know, I'll maybe make a video about that. I'm certainly going to make a video about why the MacGregors were outlawed. That should appear down there, until then why not find out about the Battle of Killiecrankie, that'll be there and if you're ever passing Balquhidder, why not come and pay your respects to Scotland's most famous Jacobite cattleman and outlaw. In the meantime, tha mi an dochas bum bith lath math leibh. Tiorridh an drasda.
