Massacre at Glencoe
On 13 February 1692 the Macdonalds of Glencoe were put to the sword by troops loyal to William III. Nobody was held to account.
On 1 February 1692 a 120-strong detachment from the Argyll regiment under Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon approached Glencoe in Scotland’s western Highlands. Glenlyon had orders to quarter his men among the Macdonald families in the glen, in lieu of unpaid taxes. Traditional rules of hospitality meant that they were welcomed. Iain MacIain, elderly head of the local Macdonald clan, was wary however. He ordered the young, unmarried women to be sent away. And, fearing that Glenlyon’s purpose might be to disarm the clan, he had their weapons hidden elsewhere.
By late 1691 William III had barely been on the throne for three years. The staunchly Jacobite Highland clans were given a deadline of 1 January 1692 to submit. MacIain waited until 31 December. He struggled through the snow to Fort William, only to discover that no one there had the authority to accept it. It was 6 January before he found someone competent. He begged in tears, it was said. But the government wanted to make an object lesson of someone. And the Macdonalds of Glencoe – little more than a ‘nest of thieves’ they thought – were ideal.
Glenlyon received his written orders on 12 February. At 5am the following day he was ‘to fall upon the rebels … and to put all to the sword under seventy’. MacIain was shot in the back as he struggled to dress. His wife was stripped naked, her rings pulled from her fingers by the soldiers’ teeth. She died of exposure. Nine men who had been tied up were shot one by one. Glenlyon finished each with a bayonet. Some 44 died in all.
Outrage in Scotland was such that by 1695 William was compelled to order a commission of enquiry. There was blame to be shared. The king himself had signed an order ‘to extirpate’ the Macdonalds. But William had only meant that ‘to be proceeded against in the way of public justice’, the commission ruled.
Instead, blame fell on John Dalrymple, secretary of state for Scotland. William pardoned him anyway. ‘Being … many hundreds of miles distant, he could have no knowledge of, nor accession to, the method of execution’, the king said.
