Land, Faith and the Crofting Community: Christianity and Social Criticism in the Highlands of Scotland 1843-1893 9780748626748

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LAND, FAITH AND THE CROFTING COMMUNITY

SCOTTISH HISTORICAL REVIEW MONOGRAPHS SERIES No. 14

Scottish Historical Review Monographs are major works of scholarly research covering all aspects of Scottish history. They are selected and sponsored by the Scottish Historical Review Trust Editorial Board. The trustees of the SHR Trust are: Professor C. A. Whatley (chairman), Dr A. Mackillop (secretary), Professor E. W. McFarland, Dr Emma MacLeod, Dr Alison Rosie, Dr Murray Simpson and Mr Alex Woolf. CURRENT AND FORTHCOMING VOLUMES 1 Helen M. Dingwall 2 Ewen A. Cameron 3 Richard Anthony 4 R. Andrew McDonald 5 John R. McIntosh 6 Graeme Morton 7 Catriona M. M. Macdonald 8 James L. MacLeod

9 John Finlay 10 William Kenefick 11 J. J. Smyth 12 Roland Tanner 13 Ginny Gardner 14 Allan W. MacColl

15 Andrew Newby

Physicians, Surgeons and Apothecaries: Medicine in Seventeenth-Century Edinburgh Land for the People? The British Government and the Scottish Highlands, c. 1880–1923 Herds and Hinds: Farm Labour in Lowland Scotland, 1900–1939 The Kingdom of the Isles: Scotland’s Western Seaboard, c. 1100–1336 Church and Theology in Enlightenment Scotland: The Evangelical Party, 1740–1800 Unionist-Nationalism: Governing Urban Scotland, 1830–1860 The Radical Thread: Political Change in Scotland. Paisley Politics, 1885–1924 The Second Disruption: The Free Church in Victorian Scotland and the Origins of the Free Presbyterian Church Men of Law in Pre-Reformation Scotland ‘Rebellious and Contrary’: The Glasgow Dockers, c.1853–1932 Labour in Glasgow, 1896–1936, Socialism, Suffrage, Sectarianism The Late Medieval Scottish Parliament: Politics and the Three Estates, 1424–1488 ‘Shaken Together in the Bag of Affliction’: Scottish Exiles in the Netherlands, 1660–1690 Land, Faith and the Crofting Community: Christianity and Social Criticism in the Highlands of Scotland, 1843–1893 Ireland, Radicalism, and the Scottish Highlands, 1870–1912

LAND, FAITH AND THE CROFTING COMMUNITY Christianity and Social Criticism in the Highlands of Scotland, 1843–1893

ALLAN W. MACCOLL

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS

AIRSON M’ ATHAR IS MO MHÀTHAR

© Allan W. MacColl, 2006 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in 10 on 12pt ITC New Baskerville by Servis Filmsetting Limited, Manchester, and printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN-10 0 7486 2382 5 (hardback) ISBN-13 978 0 7486 2382 2 (hardback) The right of Allan W. MacColl to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Contents Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction 1 The Free Course of Providence: Presbyterian Social Thought in the Age of Disruption and Destitution 2 A Peculiar People: Highland Religion and Identity 3 ‘The Crofters’ War’: Genesis 1880–3 4 The Escalation of Agitation 5 Politics, Presbyteries and ‘The Prophet’ 6 ‘The Crofters’ War’: Disunity and Disorder 1886–8

vi viii 1 19 58 96 126 156 179

Conclusion

212

Bibliography Index

220 234

Acknowledgements Dr Ewen A. Cameron was the first person to suggest that I research this particular area and his patient teaching and encouragement in both my undergraduate and postgraduate years are worthy of my highest esteem. I am also indebted to him for his painstaking and insightful help in producing this book. I owe a great deal to Dr Eugenio F. Biagini who was a friendly, inspiring and supportive supervisor and gave unstintingly of his time throughout my three years at Cambridge. Professor Donald E. Meek and Dr Jonathan Parry examined my doctoral thesis and both have encouraged me to publish my research. I thank them for their helpfulness and good advice. My thanks are due to many other scholars who have contributed to my thinking on nineteenth-century Highland history and Christianity. Amongst such are Rev. H. M. Cartwright, Professor William Gillies, Dr James Lachlan MacLeod and Rev. A. N. McPhail. I am grateful to Dr Andrew Newby and Dr Douglas Ansdell for their comments on draft chapters of this work. Annie Tindley generously shared the fruits of her research on the Sutherland estate papers and Anne MacLeod kindly located a suitable photograph for the cover. The late Dr Frank Hollick, the late James Campbell and Iain Thornber were most helpful in bringing me to study the Highlands from the low-altitude vantage-point of the Cambridge fens. I would also like to thank Roda Morrison and Eddie Clark, for their editorial work, and especially Alasdair MacDonald who very helpfully agreed to read the proofs. I am greatly obliged to the staff of the University Library, the Seeley History Library, and Robinson College Library, Cambridge; the British Library and Colindale Newspaper Library, London; the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; Edinburgh University Library; New College Library, Edinburgh; the National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh; Glasgow University Library, and the Mitchell Library, Glasgow. Thanks are due also to the Senate and staff of the Free Church College, Edinburgh, especially William Anderson, who gave me unfettered access to the extensive library in the College, including the fine collection of nineteenth-century Gaelic material. The Clerk of the Western Isles Presbytery of the Free Church of Scotland, Rev. James MacIver, kindly allowed me to examine the minute books of the Free Church Presbytery of Lewis. The proprietor of the Oban Times, Mr H. G. Bennett, provided access to back-issues of the paper formerly held at John Street, Oban. I have been supported for three years by a senior studentship from the Scottish Student Awards Agency, and have received help from the academic

Acknowledgements

vii

expenses committee of Robinson College and the Prince Consort and Thirlwall Fund, Cambridge. My greatest debt of gratitude is to Ray Rich who has, in the providence of God, been an inspirational and most beneficent supporter of my studies. Without his help this work could never have been written. Gladys MacDonald and Drs Jonathan and Caragh Moore very graciously provided accommodation and encouragement for me in Edinburgh and Cambridge. Hector Campbell and his family have shown me abundant hospitality. Mr and Mrs M. Matheson and Rev. and Mrs A. N. McPhail were very good to me during a research trip to Oban. Finally, it is a real pleasure to acknowledge the great kindness I have received from many friends in the Free Presbyterian congregations of Edinburgh, Fort William, Glasgow, and London, and the Strict and Particular Baptist Chapel at Swavesey, Cambridgeshire. Any errors of fact or interpretation in the following chapters are entirely my own. Thuit mo roinn dhomhsa ann an ionadaibh aoibhneach; seadh, tha oighreachd thaitneach agam.

Salm 16:6.

Abbreviations AGAFCS

Principal Acts of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland

DSCHT

Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology

FC

Free Church of Scotland

FCM

Free Church Magazine

HIES

Highland and Island Emigration Society

HLLRA

Highland Land Law Reform Association

NAS

National Archives of Scotland

NC

Napier Commission

NLS

National Library of Scotland

PDGAFCS

Proceedings and Debates of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland

PP

Parliamentary Papers

RSCHS

Records of the Scottish Church History Society

SHR

Scottish Historical Review

TGSI

Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness

Introduction It is somewhat difficult to discover the principles on which the public draw the line between those practical objects which are deemed suitable for the earnest consideration of Christ’s public servants, and those which are not . . . There are some secular or social arrangements that have such a palpable and undoubted influence on the state of religion, that by universal consent they are deemed worthy of the earnest consideration of all Christians – even the most spiritual.1 In a sermon commemorating the Glencalvie evictions of 1845, the current Principal of the Free Church College is quoted as stating: I represent the Church . . . I confess that it instilled a spirit of resignation which went far beyond Christian humility. I confess its guilty silence. Like the German Christians under the Nazis, the clergy of the Highlands failed to open their mouths for the dumb. Whilst this view of the role of the church in relation to the Highland land question is commonplace, this study suggests that the Principal need not have been so forthcoming with his confessions.2 The land question was the most contentious and problematic issue in the nineteenth-century Gaidhealtachd.3 The ramifications of the problem affected the lives of many hundreds of thousands of people over a number of generations. Amongst other things they encompassed the extent of property rights in land, the widespread implementation of agrarian capitalism, and the social consequences of large-scale eviction, migration, and emigration. The land debate was paralleled by the prevalence of such a radical, powerful ideology as evangelical protestantism. In the Highlands – where the majority of the population existed near subsistence level – economic survival on the land and the Christian religion were the predominating features of everyday life. 1 2

3

‘Peasant Proprietors’, Free Church Magazine [FCM], viii (1851), 302. Donald Macleod, Glencalvie Memorial Sermon, 1995, quoted in Alastair McIntosh, Soil and Soul, People versus Corporate Power (London, 2002 edn), 206. ‘The Highlands’ here primarily refers to the crofting counties of Argyll, Inverness, Ross and Cromarty, and Sutherland, including the Hebrides. Caithness was different, agriculturally, socially, and linguistically, but similar in religious observance to the crofting counties. In those Highland districts outside the above counties, such as northern Perthshire and western Aberdeenshire, (traditionally in the Gaelic-speaking area or Gaidhealtachd) the crofting system was less prevalent.

2

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

The interrelationship between these two prominent areas of nineteenthcentury Highland history is frequently neglected or misinterpreted by commentators. Modern historians have been willing to proffer opinions on the connections between religion and land in studies that have generally concentrated on only one of the issues.4 Yet with the exception of a handful of unpublished theses on the church in the northern Highlands in the period before 1850, a detailed scholarly account of the connections between the church and the land question has not been attempted.5 The present study is addressed to a sizeable gap in the historical understanding of Gaelic society in Scotland during the middle and later decades of the nineteenth century. There has been comparatively little sustained intellectual analysis of the tradition of protestant belief and spirituality which has come to be referred to as the Highland evangelical movement. Indeed, only two comprehensive surveys of modern Highland church history have been written. Rev. John MacInnes dealt with the period from 1688 to 1800, whereas Douglas Ansdell’s work covers the period from 1690 to 1900, but both identify the rise of evangelical presbyterianism as the most significant feature of modern Highland religious history.6 Ansdell importantly delineates three basic views amongst commentators regarding the attitude of the church to the land issue. The first view is that initially advanced by a contemporary eyewitness, Donald MacLeod of Strathnaver, where presbyterian ministers are represented as betraying their people by collaborating with, or not standing 4

5

6

See James Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community (Edinburgh, 2000 edn) (Hunter, Crofting Community); Eric Richards, A History of the Highland Clearances: Agrarian Transformation and the Evictions (London, 1982) and Richards, A History of the Highland Clearances: Emigration, Protest, Reasons (London, 1985) (Richards, History of Clearances); D. E. Meek, ‘The Land Question answered from the Bible’, Scottish Geographical Magazine, ciii (1987) (Meek, ‘Land Question answered from the Bible’), 84–9; A. I. Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism in the Nineteenth-Century Highlands’, in G. Walker and T. Gallagher (eds), Sermons and Battle Hymns, Protestant Popular Culture in Modern Scotland (Edinburgh, 1990) (Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’), 43–68; T. M. Devine, Clanship to Crofters’ War: The Social Transformation of the Scottish Highlands (Manchester, 1994) (Devine, Clanship to Crofters’ war); James Lachlan MacLeod, The Second Disruption: The Free Church in Victorian Scotland and the Origins of the Free Presbyterian Church (East Linton, 2000) (MacLeod, Second Disruption), 14–22. G. E. MacDermid, ‘The Religious and Ecclesiastical Life of the Northwest Highlands 1750–1843: The Background of the Presbyterian Emigrants to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Aberdeen, 1967); A. B. Mearns, ‘Developments within the Evangelical Movement of the Northern Highlands of Scotland, 1750–1860’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Guelph, 1989); D. Paton, ‘The Church in the Northern Highlands 1790–1850: Spiritual Witness and Social Crisis’, Ph.D. thesis (Open University, 2000) (Paton, ‘Church in Northern Highlands’). Rev. John MacInnes, The Evangelical Movement in the Highlands of Scotland (Aberdeen, 1951) (Rev. J. MacInnes, Evangelical Movement); Douglas Ansdell, The People of the Great Faith (Stornoway, 1998) (Ansdell, People of Great Faith). There are two authors named John MacInnes quoted in this work. Rev. John MacInnes is distinguished from Dr John MacInnes.

Introduction

3

against, the landlords during the evictions of the early nineteenth century.7 MacLeod, a Sutherland stonemason, was evicted during the infamous Strathnaver clearances and was an outspoken critic of the policy of ‘improvement’ carried out by the Sutherland estate. According to his account the church actively dissuaded resistance to the clearances by ‘exhorting the people to quiet submission’ on pain of everlasting judgement. This representation of calvinist ministers justifying the sufferings of the people and the actions of evicting landlords by appealing to Scripture – especially the doctrine of passive obedience – has become somewhat stereotypical, having been adopted by many subsequent writers and greatly influencing the popular perception of the role of the clergy.8 Another interpretation sees the evangelical faith as being politically quietist but simultaneously providing, through the influence of revivals, a social leadership which centred on the presbyterian ministers, schoolteachers, catechists, and elders. In the long term this ecclesiastical leadership helped create a ‘political consciousness’ for the wider society which allowed crofters to engage in a ‘prolonged and successful confrontation with the landlords’. This approach is advocated by a substantial number of commentators.9 It is similar to the widely held notion that methodism equipped English working-class men with the qualities necessary to organise trade unions. Robert Moore’s study of the sociology and religion of miners in late nineteenth-century County Durham asserts ‘the incontrovertible fact that Protestant sects were training grounds for working-class leaders’.10 But this indirect empowerment thesis remains largely speculative in the Highland context. To date insufficient research has been done on the actual connections between evangelicalism and the organisation of land 7

8

9

10

Donald MacLeod, Gloomy Memories in the Highlands of Scotland (Edinburgh 1841: Glasgow, 1892 edn). See, for example, John Prebble, The Highland Clearances, (London, 1969 edn); S. MacLean, ‘The Poetry of the Clearances’, in William Gillies (ed.), Ris a’ Bruthaich (Stornoway, 1985), 48–74; Iain Crichton Smith, Consider the Lilies, (Edinburgh, 1987 edn); Fionn MacColla, And the Cock Crew (Edinburgh, 1995 edn). Richards, History of Clearances, ii, 358; Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 60–2; Devine, Clanship to Crofters’ War, 100–9; J. Hunter, ‘The emergence of the Crofting Community: the religious contribution. 1798–1843’, Scottish Studies, xviii (1974), 95–116; Victor Edward Durkacz, The Decline of the Celtic Languages: A Study of Linguistic and Cultural Conflict in Scotland, Wales and Ireland from the Reformation to the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh, 1983) (Durkacz, Decline of Celtic Languages); Callum Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland since 1707 (Edinburgh, 1997) (Brown, Religion and Society), 91. For Brown’s discussion of the social history of Highland religion in this period, see 84–94. Robert Moore, Pitmen, Preachers and Politics (Cambridge, 1974), 3; see also S. Yeo, ‘A New Life: the religion of socialism in Britain, 1883–1896’, History Workshop Journal, iv (1977), 5–56; David Hempton, Religion and Political Culture in Britain and Ireland: From the Glorious Revolution to the Decline of Empire (Cambridge, 1996), 31–8; J. Coffey, ‘Democracy and Popular Religion’, in Eugenio F. Biagini (ed.), Citizenship and Community: Liberals, Radicals and Collective Identities in the British Isles, 1865–1931 (Cambridge, 1996) (Biagini, Citizenship and Community), 93–119.

4

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

reform agitation in specific localities. Such research is largely beyond the scope of this book for a number of reasons. Firstly, there is a scarcity of available sources from which to undertake a full-scale local case study; sadly, this stricture applies to most districts of the Highlands. To give one salient example, the minutes of the Free Church Presbytery of Skye for the 1880s are missing. Secondly, precise genealogical knowledge of the identity of, and connections between, leading individuals in both the churches and the land reform agitation in specific localities is becoming rare as the Gaelic oral tradition declines. Whilst certain areas of the Highlands are given close attention here, the scope extends to a wider survey of churchmen from all parts of the region over half a century. As well as avoiding the frequent problem of the unavailability of localised sources, this approach enables us to observe the longer-term, regional nature of religious involvement in the land question. In contrast to the theory of evangelicalism indirectly awakening crofters’ political consciousness, Donald Meek argues that the Bible was a ‘key document in the success of the movement for crofters’ rights’. Meek draws on the idea of an indirect connection between revivalism and political resistance, maintaining that a covenantal self-perception arose through the dissemination of the Gaelic Bible and that this provided a frame of reference which enabled Highlanders to reify the consequences of social dislocation. But he also suggests that there was an even closer relationship between religion and the development of resistance to agrarian capitalism. He bases his argument on the fact that the Bible, and especially the law of Moses, was widely used by land reformers to condemn the existing order in the 1880s. Meek has focused on two individuals, Donald MacCallum, Established Church minister of Waternish, Skye, in the 1880s, and John Murdoch, editor of the Highlander, indefatigable land reformer and Gaelic revivalist. He argues that the ‘land gospel’ proclaimed by Murdoch and MacCallum, blending the material and the spiritual, anticipated the type of argument which lies at the heart of Liberation Theology . . . Here too we find extensive use of Old Testament parallels, with an emphasis on the Exodus, the Covenant of Promise, and the radical message of the prophets, all pointing towards a coming ‘new creation’.11 The overall picture is somewhat confusing, therefore, and no consensus has emerged as to the role of the churches. Two points which Ansdell makes are particularly relevant here. First of all, ‘there is no agreed standard of what the Churches had to do to escape the charge of having failed the people’, 11

D. E. Meek, ‘The Bible and Social Change in the Nineteenth-Century Highlands’, in D. F. Wright (ed.), The Bible in Scottish Life and Literature (Edinburgh, 1988) (Meek, ‘The Bible and Social Change’), 186; ‘Land Question answered from the Bible’, 88. Murdoch and MacCallum are discussed in chapters two and five respectively.

Introduction

5

and this goes a long way to explaining why a clearer pattern has not emerged in the historiography. Secondly, he notes that the responses of clergymen provide only a part of the response of the churches to the land issue. This work has largely focused on clerical responses simply because the laity left little written evidence to posterity. Notwithstanding, those few accounts given by elders and catechists are a useful and informative supplement to material originating from the ministers.12 This book builds on the idea of an indirect link between evangelical religion and political activism but also emphasises the direct stimulus given to land reformers by biblico-theological arguments. The view which holds that evangelical calvinism engendered a fatalistic passivity and thereby helped facilitate the destruction of Gaelic society is one which has little foundation in historical evidence. It involves an inferential jump between the passive acceptance of tribulation – which has always been commonplace in Christian social teaching – and the collapse of the power structures and cultural values of the old Gaidhealtachd. If anything, passive obedience and cultural modernism were a reaction against, and not facilitators of, the destruction of the traditional kin-based society. As the following chapters demonstrate, evangelicals and other leading churchmen were determined to maintain law and order and this message was largely, but not always entirely, accepted by their congregations. In their encouraging of passivity before the forces of the state, they never wavered throughout the whole of the nineteenth century. What did change, however, was their increased willingness to criticise the existing arrangements of society. A major contention of the present work is that by providing the means whereby a critique of the status quo could be developed, evangelical leaders significantly forwarded the defence of Highland community values. Indeed, as the years passed, the evangelical response to the land problem drew more and more upon the communitarian notion of the people’s right to possess their ancestral land. This reached a crescendo in the 1880s. Such ongoing development of social criticism amongst Highland churchmen discloses a symbiosis between evangelicalism and popular notions of identity and economic justice in the region. As the book’s title suggests, Christianity lay close to the heart of the relationship between the land and the people. This study concentrates on the events of the 1880s that have become known as ‘the crofters’ war’. The existing historiography of this momentous period does not fully address the question of church attitudes to social protest and land agitation. I. M. M. MacPhail’s The Crofters’ War posits the connection between the Free Church and crofting radicalism but he avoids sustained engagement with the question. Allan Macinnes acknowledges the role of evangelical ministers in legitimising the crofters’ protests but considers the Free Church contribution to the land reform movement one that 12

Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 157; see 140–7 for a discussion of the elders’ role and attitudes.

6

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

ultimately hindered a more radical response. The evidence assembled here in chapters three to six suggests, on the other hand, that a large number of Highland clergymen expressed support for crofters’ rights in a variety of ways, which lent moral and intellectual weight to the land reform case. The ministers’ contribution to the success of the crofters’ protests was substantial and has been greatly underestimated. Although subject to self-imposed constraints, the clerical input could often be surprisingly radical in tone. The belief that ministers had a critical impact on the nature of the campaign is another key theme of this study.13 It is necessary to contextualise the events of the 1880s in the wider relationship between the churches and Highland society. The roots of the ‘crofters’ war’ lay ultimately in the sense of grievance nurtured over a century of turbulent social change. Events antecedent to the Disruption of 1843 were fundamental to the emergence of the Free Church as the institutional face of Highland evangelicalism and, indeed, the most common representation of Highland ministers is largely derived from their responses to the socio-economic processes of the pre-1843 period. It must have appeared obvious to these ministers that the landlords’ overwhelming legal and economic strength would inevitably suppress active opposition to clearances. Furthermore, early-nineteenth-century clergymen were only two or three generations removed from the repression which followed the battle of Culloden. They clearly had no wish to provoke directly an establishment which was quite willing to use troops to enforce its property rights, as happened in 1792 in Easter Ross. Nonetheless, evidence exists to show that ministerial attitudes to the earlier clearances – in Sutherland and elsewhere – were less quiescent than Donald MacLeod’s accounts would suggest. Lachlan MacKenzie of Lochcarron’s opposition to sheep clearances during the 1810s is well documented. Other ministers such as Alexander MacLeod, Harris, and Alexander Sage, Kildonan, also opposed evictions in their parishes.14 General David Stewart of Garth reported in 1825 that certain revivalist preachers intermix their spiritual instructions with reflections on the incapacity and negligence of the clergymen of the Established Church and on the conduct of landlords whom they compare to the taskmasters of Egypt.15

13

14

15

I. M. M. MacPhail, The Crofters’ War (Stornoway, 1989); Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 59–62; see also H. J. Hanham, ‘The Problem of Highland Discontent 1880–85’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, fifth series, xix, (1969), 21–65; J. P. D. Dunbabin, Rural Discontent in Nineteenth Century Britain (London, 1974) (Dunbabin, Rural Discontent), 196, 233–5, 269–70. See Iain H. Murray (ed.), The Happy Man (Edinburgh, 1979) for Lachlan Mackenzie of Lochcarron (1754–1819), especially 24–5 for his public opposition to the clearances; Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 142–5. Cited in Hunter, Crofting Community, 146.

Introduction

7

This oft-quoted reference confirms the early link between evangelicalism and a distinctively biblical form of social criticism. John MacDonald of Helmsdale – an evangelical in the Established Church – became renowned for his passionate denunciation of the clearances despite being the son of a Sutherland estate ground officer. MacDonald’s diary entry for 11 August, 1840 – when half of his salary was still paid by the duke of Sutherland – records that he preached at Kildonan from Psalm 75: 8: ‘For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red.’ In this sermon he referred to ‘the judgements of the Lord turning the country (the parish being all converted into sheep-walks) into a desolate waste’. Linking this with Jeremiah 25, he threatened the ‘Lord’s judgements also in his own time against those who were the means of doing so’.16 David Paton has re-assessed the reputation of David MacKenzie of Farr – often regarded as the arch-collaborator – in relation to the Sutherland estate policy of ‘improvement’ through relocation: Once the implied contract of adequate lots in return for evacuation of the glens was shown to be a complete sham, the Ministers, of whom in this regard David Mackenzie of Farr may be taken as representative, withdrew their support. In consequence, attitudes hardened; landowners insisted on their legal rights, to be defended if necessary by military force; the clergy became ever more drawn into conflicts which they were unable to repair.17 These examples demonstrate that clerical attitudes to the clearances within the Established Church in this period were more multifaceted than has generally been believed. But the differing responses of the clergy themselves in the earlier era make generalisation even more difficult.18 Dr John MacInnes has pointed out the diversity of opinion amongst presbyterian ministers: The part played by the Presbyterian clergy during the period of the clearances has often been described and possibly as often distorted. If it has been distorted, this has come about by lumping together a 16

17

18

J. Mackay, Memoir of the late Rev. John Macdonald, A. M., Minister of the Free Church at Helmsdale, with a Selection from his Correspondence, Sermons and Remains (Edinburgh, 1856), 70; see also a sermon on the cholera epidemic first preached in 1832 by John MacDonald of Ferintosh, Daòine air an comhairleachadh an aghaidh bhi deanamh cron orra féin (Dingwall, 1878). Donald Meek’s entries in the Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology [DSCHT] on ‘Clearances’, 189–90, and ‘Highlands’, 402–7, are useful; Ian R. Mowat, Easter Ross 1750–1850: The Double Frontier (Edinburgh, 1981) studies social and economic change in part of the northern Highlands during this period. Paton, ‘Church in Northern Highlands’, 154; see also Paton, ‘Brought to a wilderness: The Rev. David Mackenzie of Farr and the Sutherland Clearances’, Northern Scotland, xiii (1993) (Paton, ‘Brought to a wilderness’), 75–101; A. B. Mearns, ‘The Minister and the Bailiff: A study of the Presbyterian Clergy in the Northern Highlands during the Clearances’, Records of the Scottish Church History Society [RSCHS] xxiv (1990–2), 53–75. The terms ‘clergy’ or ‘clerical’ are used in this study in a sociological sense to refer to church leaders, whether ordained Protestant preachers or Roman Catholic priests. In classical Presbyterian polity there is no distinction between clergy and laity.

8

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community heterogeneous group, composed in reality of men who were frequently of diametrically opposed views and style of life, and representing them under the figure of ‘the Calvinist Minister’.19

This comment refers to the division between moderates and evangelicals in the Established Church before the Disruption. James Hunter views Highland Moderates as, effectively, the spiritual arm of landlord capitalism and thus places great emphasis on the popular discontent levelled against moderatism which culminated in 1843.20 But MacInnes’s point holds true for the remainder of the century, when the debate between evangelicals and moderates – which was transferred to the denominational rivalry of the Established and Free Churches after 1843 – served to classify Highland ministers in the eyes of a crofting population which largely adhered to the Free Church of Scotland. Notwithstanding the diversity of opinion which could exist within the different churches, it is argued below that denominational criteria did have a significant bearing on ministerial attitudes to land reform throughout the period under discussion. The individuals examined in this study are noteworthy principally for their status in Gaelic society. In the wake of evangelical revivals it is certain that both ministers and elders played a vital leadership role in Gaelic-speaking communities which had been radically altered by the impact of social changes.21 The decline of the ‘tacksman’ class in the period before 1830 left Highland society without a recognisable middle class between the landlords and their tenants. In a very important sense, therefore, presbyterian ministers bridged the social chasm between crofting society, the frequently absentee proprietorial class, and the outside world. This role could attract the ire of factors and estate officials, who resented the influence of the ministers over the crofting population. One Sutherland estate official contemptuously referred to evangelicalism as ‘the peasant religion’ and believed that ministers had the potential to ‘make themselves very objectionable’.22 Paton describes the social function of ministers as, in essence, ‘intermediaries or interpreters between an English-speaking state and a Gaelic-speaking community which remained largely outside the state’. This posed a major dilemma for Established Church clergy before 1843: the demands made on Ministers by their position in the establishment and the pastoral demands made by their people in their developing 19

20

21 22

Dr J. MacInnes, ‘Religion in Gaelic Society’, Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness [TGSI] lii (1980–2), 233; R. MacLeod, ‘Ministearan an Arain? A Profile of NineteenthCentury Moderates’, TGSI, lii (1980–2), 243–69. Hunter, Crofting Community, 143–7, 153–7. For an alternative assessment, see Paton, ‘Church in Northern Highlands’, 266–304. Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 54–5. Evander McIver, quoted in MacInnes, ‘Religion in Gaelic Society’, 241; George Henderson (ed.), Memoirs of a Highland Gentleman: Being the Reminiscences of Evander McIver of Scourie (Edinburgh, 1905), 331. McIver was a native of Lewis.

Introduction

9

crisis were inevitably in conflict. One is impressed by how little sympathy the role of the clergy has attracted from any party.23 The large-scale adherence of the crofting population to the Free Church at the Disruption further emphasised the social significance of the new denomination’s office-bearers. At the same time, evangelical religion became internalised by the crofting population and found a congenial environment in the tightly knit communities of the Gaidhealtachd, as is outlined in chapter two. Indeed, the crofting region represented the last stronghold of a thoroughgoing, socially pervasive calvinism in the British Isles by the end of the period covered by this study. It is no surprise then that the Free Church ministers were regarded as the natural social and intellectual leadership of the crofting communities.24 Yet on account of their education and status, the ministers formed a distinctive elite and were normally respected by outsiders as fairly objective observers of social conditions. This position of social leadership was widely recognised and helps explains why, for example, such a large number of clergymen testified in favour of land reform to Lord Napier’s Royal Commission on crofting conditions in 1883.25 The relationship between theology and social philosophy has attracted the attention of many historians. Donald Smith, writing in the immediate Scottish context, contends that presbyterianism was hindered from developing a theology of social criticism until the orthodox calvinism of the Westminster Confession of Faith was abandoned by mainstream churchmen in the late nineteenth century. Smith, who focuses exclusively on the largest presbyterian denominations, argues that Scottish calvinism, since the midseventeenth century, failed to supply: relevant criteria for a criticism of the developing ethos of economic individualism, but instead offered a rigid, deterministic view of God and the natural order which sanctified the existing arrangements in society and made it easy for churchmen to justify their defence of the status quo on supposedly theological grounds.26 The popular view of the Sutherland clergy propagated by Donald MacLeod has been uncritically adopted by Smith. He uses the example of coercive 23 24

25

26

Paton, ‘Church in Northern Highlands’, 53–4. For a wider discussion of the role of ministers in Scottish society, see R. H. Campbell, ‘The Church and Social Reform’, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, viii (1961) (Campbell, ‘Church and Social Reform’), 137–47; S. J. Brown, ‘Reform, Reconstruction, Reaction: The Social Vision of Scottish Presbyterianism c.1830–c.1930’, Scottish Journal of Theology, xliv (1991), 489–517; C. Brown, Religion and Society, 69–70; for ministers in Highland society, see Dr J. MacInnes, ‘Religion in Gaelic Society’, passim; Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 142–56. Parliamentary Papers [PP] 1884, XXXII–XXXVI, The Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Condition of the Crofters and Cottars in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. For a discussion of the significance of the Napier Commission, see 17–18 below. Donald Smith, Passive Obedience and Prophetic Protest, Social Criticism in the Scottish Church 1830–1945 (New York, 1987) (Smith, Passive Obedience), 109.

10

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

and largely unopposed evictions to justify his contention that calvinist ministers, hampered by their theological outlook, failed to protect the socially vulnerable.27 Smith also contends that the introduction of liberal theological ideas, especially the emphasis on the incarnation and the humanity of Christ, led churchmen to show more concern for human problems in this present world. He regards the support for land reform given by the Free Church General Assembly in the 1880s as a positive consequence of the decline of traditional calvinism within the denomination. The great problem with this interpretation, however, lies in the fact that the Free Church’s support for land reform during the agitation coincided with a concerted attempt by many conservative calvinists to preserve the existing theological position of the Free Church based on the Westminster Confession. Whilst Free Church support for land reform included all wings of the church, it was especially strong in those presbyteries in the Highlands which were, simultaneously, most committed to the defence of calvinist orthodoxy. The evidence presented in this study clearly suggests that an evangelical, calvinist theological position did not preclude a rejection of laissez faire solutions to Highland poverty and even an espousal of state intervention in the redistribution of land for crofters. The interplay between orthodox evangelical belief and social thought is also the theme of a major study by Boyd Hilton.28 Hilton’s thesis is that the influence of evangelical ideas in the period from the French Revolution until the 1850s was so great that the period can be termed an ‘age of atonement’. The central theological concept of the atonement took on a wider resonance and became, Hilton contends, a metaphor for the idea of life as an arena of constant trial. This dominant mode of thought held that the moral welfare of society could only be improved through an acceptance and espousal of suffering and self-denial in the economic sphere. Moreover, since the operations of providence were analogous to the ‘hidden hand’ in Smithian free-market economics, state intervention with the existing economic order was deemed an unwarranted interference with the Divine governance. According to Hilton, this cosmology became the predominant intellectual paradigm of the Established Churches and the upper classes during the early nineteenth century. Thus, there was a real – if not entirely clear-cut – epistemological connection between the ‘moderate’, postmillennialist evangelical theology of 27 28

Smith, Passive Obedience, 129–41. Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford, 1988) (Hilton, Age of Atonement); see also E. R. Norman, Church and Society in England, 1770–1970 (London, 1976); D. W. Bebbington, ‘Religion and National Feeling in Nineteenth Century Wales and Scotland’, Studies in Church History, xviii (1982), 489–503 and Bebbington, ‘Religion and Society in the Nineteenth Century’, Historical Journal, xxxii (1989), 997–1004 for cogent criticism of Hilton; A. M. C. Waterman, ‘The Ideological Alliance of Political Economy and Christian Theology 1793–1833’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, xxxiv (1983), 231–44 and Waterman, Revolution, Economics and Religion: Christian Political Economy 1798–1833 (Cambridge, 1991).

Introduction

11

Thomas Chalmers and his contemporaries and the harsh social and economic climate of the period before 1850.29 Hilton’s work deals admittedly with an ‘amorphous’ and loosely defined evangelicalism within which it is frequently difficult to distinguish the reality from the metaphor. Part of the problem is that he uses the term ‘evangelical’ in a number of ways and with regard to different categories of people: firstly, a theological tradition and its adherents; secondly, those who were or had been influenced by this tradition despite not sharing it, such as Peel and Gladstone; and thirdly, the general Zeitgeist affecting the whole of society. Such ambiguities reinforce the need for an examination of the social thought of a clearly defined group of educated, ‘middle-brow’ evangelicals operating in a context where conservative ‘atonement’ theology was deeply rooted. In analysing Highland calvinist ministers of the second half of the century, this work deals with the thought and actions of evangelicals whose theology retained the earlier emphasis on Christ’s vicarious sacrifice but whose attitude to poverty calls into question the links between retributive social attitudes and ‘atonement’ theology adduced by Hilton.30 It is fitting therefore that the Disruption – the event most associated with the evangelicalism of Chalmers and his followers – marks the starting point for the present work. The year 1843 saw the crofting population largely opt to join an institution which was, to a large extent, born out of the desire to restrain the power of landlords and the state over local congregations. As such it placed the Free Church in a different social relationship to both the crofting population and the lairds than had prevailed in the old Establishment. The ramifications of this new order of things are explored in chapter one. That the present study highlights the role of Free Church ministers more than other clergy is merely a reflection of the Free Church’s dominance in the crofting communities after 1843. The contributions of the other main denominations are not overlooked; indeed, the following chapters represent the first comparative analysis of the views of Free Church ministers, Established Church ministers, and Roman Catholic priests. Again, Donald Meek’s extensive work on the baptist and independent contribution to Highland evangelicalism has produced some important insights into the relationship between religious culture and social change at a local level which have been helpful in the development of my conception of evangelical social thought. This denominational approach throws into relief the varying responses among the clergy and enables us to elucidate 29

30

Hilton uses the term ‘moderate’ to distinguish Chalmers et al. from more radical premillennialist evangelicals such as Edward Irving, not in reference to the Moderate party in the Church of Scotland, Age of Atonement, 7–26. For Chalmers’s role in mediating laissez faire ideology to the evangelical world, see B. Stanley, ‘ “Commerce and Christianity”: Providence Theory, the Missionary Movement and the Imperialism of Free Trade 1842–60’, Historical Journal, 26 (1983), 74. Hilton, Age of Atonement, 7, 30.

12

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

the contrasting theological, political, and even generational factors which influenced churchmen.31 Rowan Strong has made a valiant attempt to draw attention to ‘Gaelic episcopalianism’ and argues that the indigenous episcopalian tradition of the Gaidhealtachd has for too long been marginalised by presbyterian and evangelical writers. The fact that this book makes little reference to that denomination does not imply a necessarily one-eyed view of Highland ecclesiastical history, rather it emphasises the weakness of episcopalianism in the period under discussion and the absence of any social criticism emanating from episcopalian clerics. As Strong concedes, the philanthropic contribution of episcopalians in the famine era was limited and, as we shall see, their voice on crofting issues during the 1880s was silent.32 A note on sources A foundational source for the immediate post-Disruption period is the 1844 report of the Poor Law Commission.33 This report clearly reveals the attitudes of the clergy to the problem of pauperism and its relief. Many Highland ministers were reticent to engage with the issue other than to stress their support for voluntary, non-assessed poor relief. Others, however, believed that the policy of clearance had created overcrowding and was responsible for much of the pauperism in their parishes.34 The plentiful popular historiography inspired by the Disruption emphasises the intransigent behaviour of landed patrons who refused sites for Free Church buildings and reflects the strength of feeling aroused by the ‘site controversy’. A parallel was thus drawn between the land question and the struggles of the fledgling denomination.35 This is also revealed in evidence taken by the Parliamentary committee on sites for churches. The new church’s mouthpiece, the Free Church Magazine, adopted 31

32

33

34 35

Meek, ‘The Bible and Social Change’, 179–91; ‘Evangelicalism and Emigration: Aspects of the Role of Dissenting Evangelicalism in Highland Emigration to Canada’, in G. W. MacLennan (ed.), Proceedings of the First North American Conference of Celtic Studies (Ottowa, 1988), 15–35; see also R. Pope (ed.), Religion and National Identity, Wales and Scotland c.1700–2000 (Cardiff, 2001). Rowan Strong, Episcopalianism in Nineteenth-Century Scotland: Religious Responses to a Modernising Society (Oxford, 2002) (Strong, Episcopalianism), 70, 133. Alexander Ewing, Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, however, preached on Highland emigration; see Alexander J. Ross, Memoir of Alexander Ewing, (London, 1877), 206–12 and Strong, Episcopalianism, 130, also 49 below. As a descendent of the very people championed by Strong ‘who retained their traditional Episcopalian faith in the glens of Appin and Lochaber’ (but who became presbyterians some time between 1746 and 1800), I strove in vain to find evidence of episcopalian social comment. PP, XXI, 1844, Report of Royal Commission for inquiring into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws in Scotland; see also The New Statistical Account of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1845), vol. vii, Renfrew – Argyll; vol. xiv, Inverness – Ross and Cromarty. See 35–6 below. See, for example, J. Graham, Disruption Worthies of the Highlands (Edinburgh, 1877); Thomas Brown, The Annals of the Disruption (Edinburgh, 1893).

Introduction

13

a distinctly anti-aristocratic tone linking criticisms of the landowning establishment to a wider espousal of free-trade and Whig-Liberal politics.36 The reactions of ministers to the famine crisis of 1846–55 are notable. The Free Church, alongside some notable ministers of the Established Church, was in the van of organising charitable relief. The reports of the Central Relief Board and of the Free Church’s destitution committee demonstrate the extent to which Christian philanthropy helped avert a large-scale loss of life.37 Sir John McNeill’s 1851 report on emigration contains many statements by ministers, a number of whom were supportive of state-sponsored emigration as the only remedy to the grave demographic situation which prevailed in the western Highlands and Islands during that period.38 Nevertheless, the pages of the Witness, a pro-Free Church newspaper, underline the support of many clergymen for land reform as a preferable alternative to emigration. Hugh Miller, editor of the Witness, was himself a Highlander and was strong in his advocacy of the Highland poor during this period. The mainstream newspapers of the 1840s and 1850s were generally less willing to engage with social issues. The period from the mid-1850s until the mid-1870s has been seen by many commentators as a time of slow recovery in the Highlands. During this period the land issue received less attention from the clergy and in the press than it had during the 1840s. Relevant sources are scanty and this has led some writers to suggest that the Free Church’s implicit opposition to landlords gradually diminished, particularly when sites for churches were eventually granted.39 In actual fact the land problem was merely less obvious during this period; it certainly did not disappear. The fact that crofters had no security of tenure and that large tracts of land were being converted into deer forests ensured that crofters and cottars were still profoundly affected by the issue in the period before 1880. This study centres on the 1880s since that decade saw the land question at the top of the political agenda for the first time. This was true not only in the Highlands, but also in Wales, in the form of the anti-tithe campaigns, and in Ireland through the activities of the Irish Land League and its successor 36

37

38

39

FCM, ii (1845), 20–4, 368–73; PP, XIII, 1847, Reports from the Select Committee on Sites for Churches (Scotland). The FCM continued under the various titles listed in the Bibliography; the Free Church also published two Gaelic periodicals, An Fhianuis (1845–8) and Iomradh air Craobhsgaoileadh an t-Soisgeil leis an Eaglais Shaoir (1875–80). Proceedings and Debates of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland [PDGAFCS], 1847, including Appendix II, Report by the Committee on the Destitution in the Highlands and Islands, by Mackintosh Mackay, Convener; Reports of the Edinburgh Section of the Central Board for the Relief of Destitution in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland for 1848 (Edinburgh, 1848). PP, XXVI, 1851, Report to the Board of Supervision by Sir John McNeill on the condition of the Western Highlands and Islands. Hunter, Crofting Community, 216–17; S. MacLean, ‘Vale of Tears: A View of Highland History to 1886’, in M. MacLean and C. Carrel (eds), As an Fhearran, From the Land: Clearance, Conflict and Crofting, A Century of Images of the Scottish Highlands (Edinburgh, 1986) (MacLean, ‘Vale of Tears’), 18.

14

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

body, the Irish National League. Indeed, the 1880s were a troubled decade for the landed elite in the United Kingdom. The egalitarian offensive on aristocratic privilege was greatly facilitated by the prolonged agricultural depression of the late 1870s and 1880s, which substantially reduced land values and rentals, and also encouraged by the radical popular press. It involved an assault on both the aristocratic political influence and the fundamental economic bulwark of the elite – hereditary property in land. Cannadine states that ‘during the 1880s, the landlords of Britain – as landlords – were the object of unprecedented criticism, hostility, and abuse’.40 The body politic was thus forced to acknowledge and attempt to remedy land grievances by means of legislation. Consequently, there is a far greater availability of relevant source material in newspapers, church records, the findings of Royal Commissions, Parliamentary debates, and, to a lesser extent, sermons and ministerial correspondence. Manuscript sources from this period are limited. Only one set of private papers of a contemporary Highland Free Church minister is extant.41 James Cumming, Free Church minister of Melness, Sutherland, took an active part in encouraging the land agitation and his papers contain manuscript versions of several lectures which he delivered to his congregation on the land question. These papers have never been cited in the existing literature. It is greatly to be regretted that the papers of the leading Highland ministers of the period have largely disappeared. Access to the papers of figures such as John Kennedy or Gustavus Aird would potentially shed further light on the attitudes of Free Church leaders to the land agitation. Nonetheless, the biographies of these two men both contain important evidence of their commitment to the social welfare of the crofters. It is recorded in Aird’s biography that he frequently made mention of the land issue and the crofters’ poverty from the pulpit; sadly these references are mostly lost to posterity.42 Again, it is regrettable that so few of the sermons preached by such men have been preserved, although a number of Kennedy’s English sermons have been published since his death in 1884. The sermon in Gaelic religious culture was primarily an extempore production, and emphasis was placed on spontaneity of delivery. This has 40 41

42

David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (London, 1992 edn), 61. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland [NLS] MS Acc. 5931, Papers of Rev. J. Cumming. The papers of Rev. James M. Joass, Established Church minister of Golspie, Sutherland, are also in the National Library of Scotland; NLS MS Acc. 10225, Sutherland Estate Papers, Joass Papers (four boxes). With the exception of an undated petition by the Free Church congregation of the Strath of Kildonan for a site for a new church and manse (ref. no. Joass 15), the contents of the collection are almost entirely antiquarian and mainly deal with the genealogy of the Sutherland family. Alexander Auld, The Life of John Kennedy, D.D. (London, 1887: 1997 edn) (Auld, Life of Kennedy), 179–80, 311–15; A. MacRae, The Life of Gustavus Aird, A.M., D.D., Creich (Stirling, 1908) (MacRae, Life of Aird), 175–94; [-], Biographies of Highland Clergymen (Inverness, 1889) contains little on social issues but has some useful biographical material relating to the leading ministers of the period.

Introduction

15

resulted in the survival in print of very few of the Gaelic sermons preached in the nineteenth century.43 The records of the presbyterian churches are, naturally, of vital importance. The General Assembly proceedings and debates are the most significant of the church records. They show the overall mind of each denomination with regard to the land question and related issues such as the site controversy, famine relief, and wider social welfare. In the case of the Free Church it is clear that while these issues were debated throughout the period in question, the land question assumed greater significance in the 1880s, coinciding with the crofters’ agitation. The Established Church General Assembly scarcely debated social issues in the period before 1888, and even at the height of the agitation the denomination’s response was muted. The Synod of the United Presbyterian Church, which as a denomination had very little presence in the Highlands, did not debate the land issue at all in the 1880s. The minute books of synods and presbyteries can contain useful comment on the land question; in the 1880s they frequently record resolutions and motions on the matter, and also debates held in response to the agitation. It is abundantly clear though that the business transacted in these courts was overwhelmingly procedural and administrative. Kirk-session minutes are the least informative of the official church records, mainly because they deal even more exclusively with administration and discipline and were very often inadequately recorded or are now missing. Consequently, it is impossible to reconstruct the precise response of individual ministers and congregations to the land issue in specific localities solely on the basis of church records. There is, on the other hand, no dearth of relevant material in contemporary newspapers. Amongst other titles the Times and the Scotsman covered the agitation extensively, as did the more radical North British Daily Mail, owned by Charles Cameron, an advanced Glasgow Liberal MP who supported the crofters’ agitation and the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland. In the Highlands a number of local papers reported not only on the major incidents of the agitation but also on the meetings of the Highland Land Law Reform Association branches. These reports have proved highly important to this study since they reveal the extent of ministerial and lay involvement in the land campaign, and also reveal the presence of an anti-clerical strain in the land reformers’ rhetoric on occasion. Speeches were generally reported in detail, often, it would seem, nearly verbatim. Such reports are doubly useful because the land reform bodies have left very little documentary evidence of their own organisation and activities. 43

The most notable collection of nineteenth-century Gaelic sermons was published in 1916: A. Cook, Searmoin Ghàidhlig (Inverness, 1916: 1946 edn) (Cook, Searmoin Ghàidhlig); see D. E. Meek, ‘Preaching: Themes and Styles, (Gaelic and Highlands)’, DSCHT, 671–2.

16

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

The two most informative newspapers were the Highland News and the Oban Times. Politically, both publications advanced a mainstream Liberal programme, supported the aims of the Highland Land Law Reform Association, and remained loyal to Gladstone after 1886. Sermons by leading Highland ministers regularly graced their pages, a number of which referred directly to the land issue.44 The Northern Chronicle was a Conservative paper which was generally hostile to the land agitation. Initially adopting a paternalistic standpoint, the Chronicle, more than the other Highland newspapers, used Gaelic articles – editorials and dialogues – to reinforce bonds of loyalty between tenants and lairds. Although coverage of land issues is less prominent in the Chronicle, the paper is a useful source because of its espousal of the Conservative view of Church establishments, a major political issue in the 1880s. The defence of the ‘establishment principle’ became a central feature of conservative Free Church ‘constitutionalism’, which had its ecclesiastical heartland in the Highlands and Islands. Two other newspapers are noteworthy, not least for the fact that they represent the beginnings of a distinctive, radical Highland journalistic tradition. The Highlander, published in Inverness by John Murdoch between 1873 and 1882, was the first newspaper which sought to place the land question at the centre of the political and ecclesiastical discourse of the region. Murdoch used the columns of his paper as a platform for his vision of a revitalised Gaelic-speaking Gaidhealtachd based on a communal landholding system. Following the demise of Murdoch’s paper in 1882, the establishment of the Scottish Highlander in 1885 by Alexander Mackenzie represented a further attempt to reinforce the notion of Gaelic cultural solidarity through the advocacy of ‘the land for the people’. Although Mackenzie’s paper was a much more conventional publication than the Highlander it sheds important light on the land reformers’ perception of the role of the clergy, and is particularly useful in elucidating the events of the later stages of the agitation.45 Contemporary pamphlets and essays related to politics, ecclesiastical issues, and the land question also form a significant body of evidence. Often striking a highly polemical note, such works illustrate the breadth of opinion and depth of feeling generated in the debate. The paucity of private manuscript sources and local church records is, thus, more than compensated for by the substantial amount of material gleaned from newspapers and pamphlets. Gaelic poems on the land agitation were frequently published in the columns of Highland newspapers. Poetry, in the form of popular song, was 44

45

A. G. Newby, ‘The Oban Times and the early land agitation in the Highlands, 1877–1881’, Scottish Local History, 54 (2002), 13–21 delineates the gradual change of the Oban Times from an anti-Irish, anti-land reform, Whig position to one which was in the van of the crofters’ movement. The Scottish Highlander was also a vehicle for the political aspirations of Charles Fraser Mackintosh, Liberal MP for Inverness Burghs from 1874, and a ‘crofter’ MP for Invernessshire after 1885.

Introduction

17

very important in the everyday lives of crofting communities. Donald Meek’s anthology, Tuath is Tighearna, contains an impressive selection of protest poems which shed light on the attitude of the crofting communities to the events of the 1880s, which Meek refers to as ‘the last great heroic struggle of the Highland people’. Some poems refer either positively or negatively to the behaviour of the clergy during the agitation and a small number of clergymen composed political poetry themselves. The value of such oral evidence has been disputed by some commentators, but Meek points out the value of poetry to the historian: As there are very few Gaelic [prose] commentaries which survive from this significant period in Highland history, such verse is of great value in allowing us to see how Gaelic poets, who were often the spokespersons of the crofting communities of the Highlands and Islands, reacted to events around them.46 The other main body of primary source material is found in official government publications and reports. The most significant of such is the report and evidence of the Napier Commission, which has been referred to as ‘the single most important source of information about the social and economic situation in the Highlands in the later nineteenth century’.47 Eighty clergymen and numerous elders testified to the Commission in 1883, providing the historian with the largest corpus of social comment from church figures during the period.48 Remarkably, this evidence has never been fully scrutinised to determine the responses of the churches to the land issue in the early stages of the agitation. The findings of chapter three thus represent the first systematic attempt to collate and analyse the clerical evidence to Napier. Examination of the evidence given to the 1881 Bessborough Commision on tenant right in Ireland and the 1894–6 Royal Commission on Land in Wales and Monmouthshire highlight the unique status of Napier as a source for clerical information. The Bessborough Commission, which itinerated widely throughout Ireland, heard evidence from just forty-seven clergymen. The Bessborough evidence suggests that neither roman catholic priests nor presbyterian ministers in Ireland held more radical views on land in 1880 than Highland clergymen did in 1883. Unlike Highland ministers, Irish clergymen had been actively involved in politics for decades, yet their responses to the land war in the Bessborough evidence were neither more sophisticated nor politicised. Moreover, the 1894–6 Commission evidence shows that Welsh nonconformist ministers in general were no more radical on the land question than their Highland counterparts of the previous 46

47 48

Donald E. Meek, Tuath is Tighearna, Tenants and Landlords (Edinburgh, 1995) (Meek, Tuath is Tighearna), 10, 16. For a discussion of land agitation poetry, see 147–54 below. Hunter, Crofting Community, 160. It is very difficult to identify those who were elders or not, as it is usually not stated in the evidence.

18

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

decade despite the wide impact of liberal theology on religion in the Principality.49 The police reports of the various expeditions to the Hebrides are also valuable, especially those concerning the arrest of Donald MacCallum, the outspoken land reformer and Established Church minister. MacCallum achieved iconic status as the ‘prophet’ of land reform and has frequently been held up as virtually the only clergyman who took an active interest in the crofters’ agitation. But the exclusive lionising of MacCallum is unwarranted since many other ministers played a significant role during the campaign. Whilst MacCallum’s experiences as the most radical and prominent clerical activist were atypical of Highland ministers, his arrest demonstrates how much religion and the land question were bound up together in the Highlands during the late nineteenth century.50

49

50

PP, 1881, XVIII, XIX, Report of Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Working of the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, (Bessborough Commission); PP, 1894, XXXVI–VII; 1885, XLI; 1896, XXXIII–V, Royal Commission on Land in Wales and Monmouthshire; see also PP, 1895, XXXVIII–XXXIX, Royal Commission (Highlands and Islands, 1892), Report and Evidence, (Deer Forest Commission). Edinburgh, National Archives of Scotland [NAS], HH1/125–7, Scottish Office, Home and Health Department miscellaneous files, Reports from Skye, 9–15 Nov. 1886.

CHAPTER ONE

The Free Course of Providence: Presbyterian Social Thought in the Age of Disruption and Destitution [Y]our petitioners, fully aware of their unfavourable position, under hostile proprietors, and their equally hostile agents, opposed by alien sheep and corn farmers – who acquired power and influence in the country as adventurers for worldly gain – and surrounded as the petitioners were, by a disheartened and poverty-stricken population, felt deep anxiety as to the effect of the Disruption amongst them; yet persuaded of the truth of the principles for which the Church contended, of the decided and deep attachment of the native and Christian population to these principles, and of the Lord’s own gracious interposition on behalf of His own cause, and witness . . . they felt no misgivings as to the issue . . . and the whole population, with the exception of a very small and special minority, became adherents of the Free Church.1 The Disruption of the Established Church of Scotland in 1843 and the misery which followed the widespread failure of the potato crop in the years after 1846 had the effect of bringing social and religious matters together more closely in the minds of many Christian leaders, as can be seen in the quotation above from the Free Presbytery of Dornoch’s petition to the Free Church General Assembly. This chapter discusses the opinions of leading ministers in order to gain a fuller understanding of the presbyterian response to the social crisis. Particular emphasis is given to the views of two prominent Highlanders who were deeply engaged in the amelioration of destitution, Mackintosh Mackay, minister of the Free Church at Dunoon, Argyll; and the Established Church minister Norman MacLeod, of St Columba’s Gaelic congregation in Glasgow. A central issue addressed here is the role of the doctrine of providence in shaping presbyterian attitudes to the causes of famine, the provision of philanthropic relief, and the necessity of emigration. Donald Smith has argued that

1

Free Church Assembly Papers, 1845, paper no. 9, Petition of the Free Presbytery of Dornoch, 1, concerning translation of ministers outwith the bounds of Sutherland (italics in original).

20

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

all the clergy – even those most sympathetic with the sufferings of the poor Highlanders – were the victims of a disastrous theological error brought about by their rigid, deterministic understanding of God’s providence. This was the error of regarding every temporal event and activity – including all the evil and injustice caused by human wickedness – as somehow the positive expression of the will of God. Boyd Hilton has described the prevailing evangelical social philosophy as incorporating a ‘laissez-faire or neutral conception of providence’ whereby evangelicals ‘wished to make society operate as closely to “nature” as possible by repealing interventionist laws’. This so influenced evangelical attitudes to philanthropy – deeply grounded in individualism and moralistic assumptions – that the amelioration of material deprivation was relegated as a principal end of charitable endeavour. He argues that evangelical-influenced equivocation about philanthropy was particularly manifested at the time of the famine. Following Hilton, Peter Gray argues that British famine relief policy in Ireland was greatly constrained by evangelical fears about the demoralising effects of state intervention. Whilst ‘[n]o relief system could have coped fully with the scale of social catastrophe of 1846–7 . . . the power of providentialism was strong enough to hinder and qualify philanthropic reactions’. In contrast to the view of Smith and, to a lesser extent, those of Hilton and Gray, it is suggested here that Scottish presbyterian ministers were not constrained by ‘rigid, deterministic’ interpretations of providence in their responses to the great subsistence crisis of the nineteenth century. On the contrary, presbyterians were reluctant to moralise over the causes of the famine, but showed alacrity in attempting to remedy its consequences.2 The legacy of the Disruption The Disruption of the Church of Scotland is a vitally important landmark in the religious and social history of the Highlands. Prior to 1843 most congregations had been forced to accept a high degree of landlord control over the appointment of ministers, a situation which became increasingly intolerable to the evangelical party in the Church during the ‘ten years conflict’ of 1833–43. The Free Church was, therefore, born out of an ecclesiastical struggle that pitted the rights of aristocratic patrons against evangelical sentiment. It is altogether unsurprising that the issues at stake struck a resonant note in the Highlands, where popular evangelicalism largely alienated the crofting population from Moderate ministers. Preceded in many localities by spiritual awakenings and revivals, the Disruption had the effect of sweeping Highland evangelicalism into the institutional setting of the Free Church. Indeed, the predominance of the evangelical movement was such 2

Smith, Passive Obedience, 138–9; Hilton, Age of Atonement, 15–17, 100–14; Peter Gray, Famine, Land and Politics, British Government and Irish Society, 1843–1850 (Dublin, 1999) (Gray, Famine, Land and Politics) 268.

The Free Course of Providence

21

that Free Church leaders were able to claim the allegiance of nine-tenths of the Highland populace. As Mackintosh Mackay, editor of the Free Church’s Gaelic publication An Fhianuis, commented, I feel the strongest conviction that never since the first light of the Reformation dawned on the land of our fathers, has there been such a universal religious movement over the whole of the Highlands and Islands as there is at this day.3 The precise extent of the Highland exodus into the Free Church in 1843 is open to debate. In certain areas of the Highlands, such as Argyll, the Established Church retained considerable strength. Some remote areas where the impact of the Reformation had been minimal, such as western Inverness-shire, remained strongly roman catholic, and certain of the Inner Hebrides, such as Tiree, had significant numbers of baptists.4 In the north and west of the region, though, where the crofting system prevailed most strongly, the Free Church became the church of the vast majority. In some areas, notably Lewis, Harris, Sutherland, and Ross-shire, the Free Church attracted over ninety per cent of the people.5 Yet it is significant that only seventy-two ministers from the Highland synods of Argyll, Glenelg, Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness joined the Free Church whilst seventy-nine remained in the Establishment. This demonstrates that the ministry – unlike the general Highland population – was fairly equally divided between evangelicals and moderates in 1843.6 It was reported in 1845 that only thirteen Free Church ministers were stationed in the Hebrides and the adjacent coast between Kintyre and Sutherland, at a time when the population of the crofting parishes in the four north-western counties has been conservatively estimated at 167,283 souls.7 The initial reaction of the landed elite in the region towards the Free Church was, with very few exceptions, one of hostility. Many landlords 3

4 5

6

7

M. MacKay, quoted in Thomas Brown, The Annals of the Disruption (Edinburgh, 1893), 665. For the sociological debate on the success of Evangelicalism, see Hunter, Crofting Community, 96; S. Bruce, ‘Social change and collective behaviour: the revival in eighteenth-century Rossshire’, British Journal of Sociology, xxxiv (1983), 554–72; Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 54; Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 43–54; Devine, Clanship to Crofters’ War, 106. For more on the strength of the various denominations, see 65–7 below. Free Church dominance is acknowledged by all leading commentators including Hunter, Crofting Community, 154–7; Brown, Religion and Society, 84–92; see also D. Ansdell, ‘The 1843 Disruption of the Church of Scotland in the Isle of Lewis’, RSCHS, xxiv (1990–2), 181–97. Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 62–5. This figure does not include the Synod of Moray or the Highland districts of Perth and Stirling Synod. It is also important to remember that a small number of evangelicals remained in the Established Church after 1843. T. M. Devine, The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1988) (Devine, Highland Famine), 73. The total figure in the 1841 census was 298,637 for Argyll, Inverness, Ross, and Sutherland, J. G. Kyd, Scottish Population Statistics (Edinburgh, 1975 edn), 83–4; B. R. Mitchell and P. Deane, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1962), 20–3. Devine gives a lower total of 288,507 in 1841, Highland Famine, 73.

22

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

considered the Free Church movement to be a challenge to the status quo and, specifically, to their proprietorial interests. Hence, a considerable number of congregations were denied ground on which to build churches and were forced to worship in the open air. The duke of Sutherland initially refused to provide sites on any part of his extensive property, although he subsequently changed his mind.8 In Lochaber, the Lochiel estate threatened eviction to any tenant found sheltering Thomas Davidson, the Free Church minister of Kilmallie, and his family. The Free Church congregation of Strontian, in north Argyll, when confronted with the intransigence of the landlord, Sir James Riddell, were forced to worship in a custom-built boat, which subsequently became known as An Eaglais Iarainn, or ‘the Floating Church of Loch Sunart’.9 Indeed, not until the mid-1870s did every Free Church congregation in the Highlands receive a site. In 1847 Mackintosh Mackay gave evidence to the Commons Select Committee on Sites. Questioned by Sir James Graham whether site refusal had exacerbated the existing divisions between the gentry and the crofting population, Mackay replied: Certainly the refusal of sites, where they have been refused, has that tendency, no doubt of it; but the estrangement goes much deeper than that . . . I consider the root of all the evils to be the absence of the proprietors from their properties, and their ignorance of the people’s manners, their modes of living, and also of their feelings and their circumstances.10 Further tension was created by the eviction of tenants ostensibly for their adherence to the Free Church. In 1844, John Mactavish, the newly ordained Free Church minister of Ballachulish, Argyll, was involved in a site dispute with Colonel Maclean of Ardgour, a local proprietor. Mactavish stated in the Free Church General Assembly that ‘thirteen families had been removed for adherence to the Free Church’.11 In his evidence to the Parliamentary Select Committee on sites, a prominent Free Church minister, John Macrae, reported that in Harris in 1845, ‘threat upon threat was circulated among the people that any person actively engaged in the cause of the Free Church was certain to lose his croft’.12 In Skye and North Uist it was reported that 8

9

10

11 12

See Hugh Miller’s pamphlet Sutherland as it Was and Is; or How a Country May be Ruined (Edinburgh, 1843) for the refusal of sites by the Sutherland estate. Literally translated ‘the Iron Church’. In 1847 thirty-five congregations were still without sites, representing 16,000 adherents; see L. A. Ritchie, ‘The Floating Church of Loch Sunart’, RSCHS, xxii (1984–6), 172. The fact that only a relatively small percentage of Free Church worshippers were refused sites serves to emphasise the success of the Free Church’s campaign to publicise site-refusal. PP, 1847, XIII, Reports from the Select Committee on Sites for Churches (Scotland), Mackintosh Mackay (Select Committee on Sites), qq. 3782, 3798. FCM, i (1844), 25. Select Committee on Sites, 318–20. A native of Wester Ross, Macrae – known as MacRath Mòr (Big Macrae) – was an influential Free Church minister in Lewis.

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families were evicted for actively espousing the Free Church cause.13 The Free Church Magazine queried, Dare man insult His Maker, by rendering the laws of property stronger than the laws of God? Again we earnestly implore our landed aristocracy, for their own sakes, to change their course, lest their bands be made strong till the hour of retribution come.14 In 1845 the eviction of eighteen families from their ancestral holdings in Glencalvie, Easter Ross provoked a public backlash in which the local Free Church ministers Gustavus Aird, Hector Allan, and George Kennedy took a prominent role, raising money for the destitute families who had been forced to shelter in the churchyard at Croick. The Times sent a ‘special commissioner’ to investigate the case – which became one of the most infamous incidents in the history of the clearances – and this led to the discussion of the evictions in the House of Commons. The public interest in the case, however, could do nothing to prevent the removal of the Glencalvie people.15 The Free Church General Assembly met in Inverness in August 1845 – the first time such a gathering had taken place in the Highlands. A great deal of the motivation for the Inverness Assembly lay in the determination of the Free Church leadership to show solidarity with those congregations denied sites. Although questions of social arrangements and land reform were not explicitly discussed, the site issue – which may have served in some Highland minds as a cipher for the wider discussion of landlord policies – was the major topic of debate. Much contemporary comment centred on the desire of the Free Church to show solidarity with the people of the Highlands, whose loyalty to the new denomination in the face of many difficulties must have even taken Free Church leaders by surprise.16 Such was the vehemence of some of the leading younger ministers that Mackintosh Mackay feared privately that more harm than good might be done to the Free Church cause: You will have seen the proceedings at Inverness. I scarcely know what to say as to the probable effect. The affairs went off certainly as well as I expected, if not better, but I see not much practical business that was done at all. The effect will, in some respects, I hope, be good, in giving 13

14 15

16

See Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 68–9. In 1883 James Reid, Free Church minister of Portree, testified to the Napier Commission concerning these events, PP, 1884, XXXIII, Report of the Commission of Enquiry into the Condition of the Crofters and Cottars of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland [NC Report, Appendix and Evidence], Evidence, 37. Reid’s recollections were disputed by an Established Church minister, Duncan MacCallum, Duirinish, see NC Appendix, 36–7; for more on Duncan MacCallum, see 49 and 120–1. FCM, ii (1845), 178. Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, LXXXI, 12 Jun. 1845, 408–15; Scotsman, 19 Apr. 1845, p. 2; 14 May 1845, p. 1; 24 May 1845, p. 2; 4 Jun. 1845, pp. 2–3; Times, 20 May 1845, p. 6; 2 June, 1845, p. 6; MacRae, Life of Aird, 180–1. PDGAFCS, 1845, 76, for James Begg’s speech; see also 48.

24

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

increased confidence to the Highland folks – but in other respects much evil will be done by scurrilous wicked speeches, such as Begg’s – which I consider absolutely heretical and punishable! Indeed Candlish’s was not much better – the lairds and lords will be irritated and incensed much more than ever before – and truly could the Free Church command success in its objects by such a spirit – I would prefer defeat to such success . . . such speeches will put it by a generation or even perhaps farther off!17 Notwithstanding his caution, Mackay was himself quite capable of forcibly stating his views on the existing order in the Highlands, as his evidence to the Commons Committee on Sites demonstrates. When he left Scotland for Australia in 1853, in order to help provide the thousands of Gaelicspeaking emigrants with suitable gospel ministrations, he mentioned the cruelty and oppression which have driven them from their native land . . . God grant the country which has cast them out, may not ere long feel that its doings have been suicidal.18 Indeed, substantial evidence exists to clearly demonstrate the antipathy between the Free Church and the landed elite in this period. Although Thomas Chalmers, as a Tory, was content to leave the existing order well alone, the pages of the Free Church Magazine and the Witness frequently contained radical criticisms of the status quo.19 Such Free Church anti-landlord rhetoric was founded on a wider critique of the existing social structure, seeking a more egalitarian order through free trade in land, a widening of political participation, and a greater emphasis on philanthropic benevolence towards the poor. In its rural application this programme was partly informed by the unfavourable comparisons which Free Church commentators drew between the state of the rural population of Britain and that of agricultural populations elsewhere: It is surely deserving of notice, that not only France, but Belgium, Switzerland, Rhenish Prussia, Bavaria, the finer districts of Holland, and America, are all under a system such as we contend for, and it may be inferred from the general condition of these countries, that it is not unfavourable to the temporal welfare of the community.20 17

18 19

20

NLS, MS 10997 fo. 288: letter from Mackintosh Mackay to nameless correspondent, 18 Sep. 1845; see Scotsman, 30 Aug. 1845, p. 4 for the speeches of James Begg and R. S. Candlish. PDGAFCS, 1853, 148. For Chalmers’s social thought, see Hilton, Age of Atonement, 61–3; Smith, Passive Obedience, 3–4; D. Macleod, ‘Thomas Chalmers and Pauperism’, in Stewart J. Brown and Michael Fry (eds), Scotland in the Age of the Disruption (Edinburgh, 1993), 63–76. Chalmers opposed legislative intervention to relieve general poverty and sought to encourage Christian philanthropy through the institutional church instead. ‘The Emancipation of the Soil, by a Landed Proprietor’, FCM, ii (1845), 155.

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The abolition of hypothec, primogeniture, and entail legislation was seen as fundamental to the reduction of aristocratic monopolies in wealth and power.21 Indeed, the Free Church saw herself as a defender of protestant, bourgeois, and liberal values during the uneasy period of the 1840s, positioning herself between the forces of the aristocratic elite and the impoverished proletarian masses. An article in the Witness on the ‘Rustication of the Poor’ by ‘B’ exemplifies this notion: A great flight of aristocratic paupers from above, and a growing swarm of idlers and criminals from below, have gradually placed the middle classes between two fires, which equally threaten to consume them. Self defence, if no higher motive, loudly calls them to arouse, ere the confiscation of their property and the downfall of the nation be complete. ‘B’, who was almost certainly James Begg, the minister of Newington Free Church, Edinburgh, refers to the ‘criminality of our nobility, who forced on the Disruption, by which the ancient parochial arrangements of Scotland were overthrown’.22 Like Chalmers, he regarded the older, non-assessed provision of welfare as encouraging a more benevolent social order. In ‘Notes of a recent journey through part of the Highlands of Scotland’, Begg blamed landlord ‘feudalism’ for the travails of the Free Church and for the poverty of the people he witnessed in Lochcarron: The neighbourhood is beautiful; but the houses of the people are generally poor huts, and the country bears strong marks of the tyranny of the feudal system . . . But little effectual good will be done in the Highlands, we fear, until the tenant at will system is overthrown, and the law of entail altered. It is the feudal system that presses like a black nightmare on the energies of the Highlands. Landlords deep in debt, and yet brimful of pride – land uncultivated – people starving – houses sometimes worse than south country pigsties – abject prostration of mind, and horrible oppression . . . these are some of the crying evidences that the feudal system ought to be swept away as a public curse.23 A direct connection clearly existed in many Free Church minds between the widespread poverty and deprivation in Scottish society during the 1840s and 21

22

23

The Scots law of hypothec was derived from Roman law granting landlords priority over the assets of indebted tenants. Witness, 24 Jan. 1849, p. 2. Begg was a frequent correspondent in the Witness, and the article is very similar in its recommendations to Begg’s pamphlet on Pauperism and the Poor Laws (Edinburgh, 1848). For more on Begg’s work as a social reformer, see Thomas Smith, Memoir of James Begg D.D., 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1885, 1888); D. H. Bishop, ‘Church and Society: A Study of the Social Work and Thought of James Begg, D.D. (1808–1883), A. H. Charteris, D.D., LL.D. (1835–1908), and David Watson, D.D. (1859–1943)’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Edinburgh, 1953). J. Begg, ‘Notes of a recent journey through part of the Highlands of Scotland’, FCM, ii (1845), 368–73.

26

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

aristocratic monopoly on power, notwithstanding the effects of the 1832 Reform Act. With the Disruption clearly in mind, it was asserted that lairds conspired through Parliament and the judiciary to ‘deprive the people of their rights, whether civil or ecclesiastical . . . [and] they crush the . . . liberties of the people’.24 As a consequence, legislative reform was believed necessary to curtail aristocratic power over the land. Of course, the figure of the upstanding, independent-minded, presbyterian tenant farmer was one that obviously appealed to an urban, middle-class Free Church audience since it represented an ideal bulwark against both the aristocratic monopoly of power and the swelling masses of the urban working class. At the same time, much Free Church advocacy of land law reform stemmed from the belief that laissez faire was the best system for dispensing with corruption and vested interest as it allowed ‘the natural laws of Providence to operate’. Hence the need for the abolition of entail and hypothec which bolstered proprietorial privileges. In another article critical of the existing distribution of land in Britain and advocating the application of free-market principles to land (written at the height of the Famine crises in Ireland and in the Highlands) it was suggested that ‘the ordinary laws of Providence will maintain a just and wholesome equilibrium’.25 Such views were consonant with the position of most land reformers and radicals at this time. Indeed, Roy Douglas has characterised a great deal of the land reform rhetoric of this period as little more than the removal of obsolete legal restrictions on land transfer; perhaps some facilitation of the means by which land could be acquired for public purposes; and a vague nostalgia for yeomenfarmers.26 Yet at the same time in the Free Church there existed a penetrating criticism of the treatment of the poor that was rooted in a deeply philanthropic spirit and which can be viewed as a reaction to the worst consequences of laissez faire. Leading Free Church figures, after extensive first-hand exposure to conditions in the Highlands and Islands when engaged on preaching tours, came to advocate a curtailment of the landlords’ monopoly on economic power in favour of the crofters. Such opinions contrast sharply with the widespread malthusian-influenced pessimism about the future of the indigenous population. Men such as Begg, Mackintosh Mackay, and Thomas MacLauchlan – a leading Gaelic scholar and minister of the Edinburgh Free Church Gaelic congregation – criticised the consolidation 24 25

26

‘The Scottish Poor Laws’, FCM, ii (1845), 20. A Landed Proprietor, ‘The Emancipation of the Soil and Free Trade in Land’, FCM, ii (1845), 185–91; ‘The Division of Land in France and Britain’, FCM, iv (1847), 94; see also Hugh Miller’s pamphlet, The Tenant’s True Quarrel (Edinburgh, 1846). Roy Douglas, Land Reform in the British Isles (London, 1974), 1. For more on the wider land reform movement, see Jamie Bronstein, Land Reform and Working Class Experience in Britain and the United States, 1800–1862 (Stanford, 1999).

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27

of smallholdings into large sheep-farms and argued that the clearances had impoverished the Highland population. The following quotation is typical of such attitudes to poverty and landholding in the Highlands: With us, during the last fifty years, the universal tendency has been to the accumulation of property; our already overgrown proprietors have been increasing their estates; the small free-hold proprietors have been gradually disappearing; small farms have been thrown into large ones; and in many sad cases, thousands of our Highland farmers and crofters have been swept away, to make room for colossal sheep-farms. In our own history as a Free Church, we have had some pretty plain proofs of the serious evils of this system. We have found, in cases not a few, that when the whole property of a district was in the hands of a single siterefusing proprietor, he was invested with a power of persecution which enabled him to laugh to scorn all our boasted laws of toleration and freedom. We have seen, too, as the fruit of the clearing system, the mass of our Highland population gradually sinking deeper and deeper into a condition of abject poverty and helpless misery; and it is very certain, that while nothing effectual has yet been begun for remedying their condition, it has not by any means reached the climax of misery towards which it is hastening . . .27 Mackintosh Mackay went so far as to blame landlord pessimism on prejudiced views of Highlanders which stereotyped them as lazy. Drawing a distinction between the poverty created by industrial depression in the cities and that in the Highlands, Mackay blamed lairds for causing widespread destitution in the region through evictions. He argued that by giving incentives, such as leases, to the people to improve their conditions, the problems of mass destitution could be overcome. Not being greatly sanguine about the prospects for proprietor-led improvement, Mackay anticipated the need for state intervention in order to resolve the land issue: But the pauperism of the Highlands and Islands differs exceedingly from that of a town or city population; in the latter cases benevolence . . . must wait for the evolution of events, the springs of which are beyond personal control, to lighten, or remove, or mitigate, the pressure that may be temporarily experienced. In the Highlands and Islands the possessors of lands have decidedly and clearly the power at once to relieve the pressure, by elevating the condition of the bulk of the population . . . Give them but elbow-room – which might so easily be given – and they will become very speedily an industrious, contented, and well-conditioned race. But the truth is that under the present system of management in those parts, dictated by the cupidity of needy but ignorant landlords, and seconded by the interested 27

‘Peasant Proprietors’, FCM, viii (1851), 304–5 (italics in original).

28

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

selfishness of agents – a worse kind of ‘middle-man’ than Ireland has ever seen – men are considered the country’s nuisance; and the cry is, rid us of these men! I am thoroughly persuaded the state of matters existent now, to be healed, will one day demand the interference of legislative authority. Proprietors themselves cannot bestow adequately on a wholesale emigration. Surely Government will not, at their bidding, without previous investigation. The depopulation of a country is a matter of national concern. Let the national councils consider it in time.28 This interest in the welfare of the poor is also revealed in the evidence given by some ministers to the Poor Law Commission shortly after the Disruption in 1843. Many did not advocate land reform and could see no alternative to increasing poverty, rising population and pressure on resources but emigration. Some noted that one effect of assessed poor rates would be to encourage landlords to use eviction and emigration as a strategy for dealing with pauperism. A number of Free Church ministers, however, testified to a decline in living standards since the first wave of clearances and blamed this more on the sheep-farming system than on the growth in population or the lack of economic opportunity in the region. Finlay Cook, the highly respected Free Church minister of Reay, stated: I think that the poor in this parish are very ill off. Since the introduction of sheep farming, they have been crowded into small bothies, which are generally not very comfortable. They are at times not well supplied with food – some of them are half starving . . . Within my remembrance, in that part of my parish which is in Caithness, many of the small farms have been turned into sheep-walks. In consequence of this change, it is my decided opinion that the people are much worse than they were formerly. Those of the small tenants who still remain in the country are crowded into corners, and have to apply themselves to the cultivation of waste land. They do not, so far as I know, get leases on such outskirts . . . I do not think, however, that even those of the small tenants who are in full employment as day labourers, have near so many of the comforts of life as they could command while in possession of their little farms. There may be two or three exceptions, but, on the whole, their circumstances are deteriorated.29 It is instructive to note the opinions of David Mackenzie, the minister castigated at the time of the Strathnaver clearances in 1814–19 and later in Donald Macleod’s Gloomy Memories, for his alleged collusion during the Sutherland clearances. He remembered 28 29

Witness, 17 Jun. 1848, p. 1. PP, 1844, XX–XXVI, Report of Royal Commission for inquiring into the Administration and Practical Operation of the Poor Laws in Scotland, 358–9. For Cook’s place in Highland evangelical circles, see A. McPherson (ed.), Sidelights on Two Notable Ministries (Inverness, 1970).

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very well the change which took place in removing the small tenants from the interior to the sea-shore. In my opinion the people have been decidedly the losers by the change. They cannot command the same amount of the comforts of life as they did formerly. It is clear that many ministers during this period, Cook and Mackenzie being good examples, were content with identifying the problems which surrounded them but were less willing to suggest practical solutions.30 Given the traditionally poor reputation of the Established Church as a defender of the indigent in this period, it is noticeable that a small number of Establishment ministers were prepared to go further than some of their Free Church counterparts and suggest positive remedies to poverty and land hunger. The parish minister of Glenshiel, Farquhar MacIvor, envisaged the redistribution of land as a viable means of combating poverty. He believed that the lots of the working classes are too small; they do not furnish full employment to the occupiers. If the lots were enlarged, by subtracting a portion of the land now let as sheep-walks, for agricultural purposes, I should not consider our population redundant.31 In a similar vein, Angus Martin, Established Church minister of Duirinish, Skye, maintained: if they had land enough from which to pay their rents, and give them something to spare after maintaining their families, the landlord would hear no more of destitution amongst the poor. Generally the crofters have at present no leases, and it is vain to expect improvement without granting them leases of considerable endurance . . . if they had portions of land of a proper size let to them . . . [this would] ultimately be very advantageous to the landlord.32 It was abundantly clear to all observers that the existing population and the available land in the crofting areas were stretched to their limit of endurance during the 1840s and 1850s. Yet this did not preclude the Free Church Magazine from asserting that ‘[o]ur strong conviction is, that under skilful, and spirited, and considerate management, the Highlands might be made to support, in comfort, at least the present population’.33 Thomas MacLauchlan went even further in a series of articles published in the Witness on ‘The Depopulation of the Highlands’: [t]he idea of the over-population of the Highlands and Islands is a gross delusion. The fact is, that in many parts of the Highlands [there] 30 31 32 33

Poor Law Report, 305. For more on Mackenzie, see Paton, ‘Brought to a wilderness’, 75–101. Poor Law Report, 442. Poor Law Report, 393. ‘Public events of the month – Highland Evictions’, FCM, vii (1850), 26.

30

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

are not people at all, and we doubt not, from close observation, that ten times the present population could be maintained by the soil under a proper system.34 MacLauchlan drew attention to the connections between evictions and the introduction of compulsory poor law assessments, believing that many landlords depopulated their estates in order to avoid paying heavy poor rates. Although himself concerned about the burden which poor relief imposed on the middle classes, MacLauchlan discerned that a great deal of the increase in pauperism in the Highlands – and consequently in the cities – was a result of earlier waves of clearance.35 The implementation of such a ‘proper system’ in the region as MacLauchlan advocated would, however, have involved a large-scale relocation of population from the overcrowded crofting areas back into the more expansive and sparsely populated inland glens and straths. This would have involved a major degradation of the sheep-farming system and a reversal of the clearances. The Free Church naturally had an interest in maintaining a high level of population in the Highlands but it is highly unlikely that there was sufficient political support for such a scheme beyond her immediate sphere of influence. Begg, who engaged in social questions more than most, was himself realistic about the extent of ministerial influence on social and economic reform at this juncture. He believed that Free Church ministers . . . will aid in any plan by which the interest of the working classes, may be promoted, but they can do little. All that ministers can do in the secular field is only to throw out suggestions. Others must execute.36 The debate on the origins and consequences of the Disruption has attracted comment from many historians and it is generally agreed that the events of 1843 had a more intense and prolonged impact in the Highlands than in other areas of Scotland. Hunter sees this as proof that the Disruption in the Highlands was a class conflict, with lairds, factors, and Moderate ministers on one side, and crofting tenants, Evangelicals, and the Free Church on the other. Socio-economic factors, he argues, played a primary motivational role in a fashion not replicated so markedly in the 34

35 36

Witness, 15 Sep. 1849, p. 2. These comments are directly reproduced in Thomas MacLauchlan, The Depopulation System in the Highlands (Edinburgh, 1849) (MacLauchlan, Depopulation System); see also MacLauchlan’s Recent Highland Evictions Considered: In Five Letters (Edinburgh, 1850); William Leask, Dr Thomas MacLauchlan (Edinburgh, 1905). Krisztina Fenyo˝, Contempt, Sympathy and Romance: Lowland Perceptions of the Highlands and the Clearances during the Famine Years, 1845–1855 (East Linton, 2003) (Fenyo˝, Contempt, Sympathy and Romance), 108–11, discusses MacLauchlan’s Witness articles. MacLauchlan, Depopulation System, 16, 23. Witness, 10 Feb. 1849, p. 3.

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Lowland cities.37 Ansdell, on the other hand, cautions against materialist interpretations of the Disruption. He notes the difficulty in sustaining such a view from the evidence, since some evangelicals appeared ambivalent about land issues. Conversely, a few that remained in the Established Church were remembered for their advocacy of the crofters’ grievances. He observes furthermore, it did not follow that Free Church people opposed landlords as a class. The Disruption, it could be said, was a specific challenge to landlords from people who generally respected their rights.38 John Macrae was asked by the Select Committee on Sites whether the granting of sites for churches by the proprietor of the Isle of Lewis had ‘done anything to diminish the attachment of the people to the resident landlord’. Macrae believed that this ‘had increased their attachment to him’ and answered affirmatively as to whether Free Church influence and teaching ‘had been to encourage the people to good order, to respect for their superiors, and to obedience to the laws’.39 Whilst social factors certainly heightened tensions to a far greater pitch than in the Lowlands, it remains true that the chief motivation for those Highlanders who left the Establishment en masse in 1843 was, as they claimed it to be, the spiritual independence of the Church of Christ. The most important social consequence of the Disruption was the bond formed between the Free Church and the Highland people. 1843 marked the institutionalisation of the Highland evangelical movement in the shape of the Free Church. Loyalty to the Free Church cause was reinforced by the strenuous efforts made to supply ministers to preach to the many pastorless congregations, and, as is highlighted in the second section of this chapter, by Free Church philanthropy during the crisis years after 1846. As Ansdell has perceptively noted, the relatively new and liberating phenomenon that was evangelicalism had to be maintained and supported regardless of the costs or sacrifices necessary. Hunter sees this process as a defining step in the creation of a modern Highland identity forged by the crofters themselves in the furnace of poverty and evangelical revivalism. This sense of ‘peoplehood’ was nurtured by cultural and religious developments in the following decades and became the defining ideological factor behind the ‘crofters’ war’ in the 1880s.40 37

38 39 40

Hunter, Crofting Community, 154–7. See P. L. M. Hillis, ‘The Sociology of the Disruption’, in Stewart J. Brown and Michael Fry (eds), Scotland in the Age of the Disruption, 44–62. Allan A. Maclaren’s Religion and Social Class: The Disruption Years in Aberdeen (London, 1974) argues that the Disruption in Aberdeen was largely a class-based assertion of emergent bourgeois values. See Ian R. Macdonald, Aberdeen and the Highland Church 1785–1900 (Edinburgh, 2000) for a refutation of Maclaren’s thesis with reference to the Aberdeen Free Gaelic congregation. Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 85. Select Committee on Sites, qq. 5006, 5027. For a fuller discussion of this theme, see chapter two.

32

Land, Faith and the Crofting Community

The famine years The repeated failure of the potato crop throughout the crofting region in the years between 1846 and 1855 occasioned a period of great suffering and deprivation. Whilst events in the Highlands are not comparable to the Irish famine with respect to the numbers of people threatened with starvation, nor in respect to mortality levels, there were close parallels between the impact of such devastating crop failures in the two societies. In his authoritative work on the social and economic effects of the famine in the Highlands, Tom Devine has adumbrated the important role played by the Free Church in the initial relief efforts during 1846–7. The Free Church was the first body to survey the region and assess the extent of the threat; the denomination also led the field in organising a widespread provision of relief.41 The Irish and Highland famines touched the whole British nation and it is significant, in view of later cultural and ecclesiastical developments, that many of the ministers most prominent in charitable efforts were Lowlanders, or Highlanders with charges in the cities. This section scrutinises the responses of leading ministers to the crisis to evaluate the effect of the famine on ministerial attitudes to the land question. In a subsistence agricultural economy the prospect of crop failure leading to food shortages or even famine conditions was an ever-present reality. The Highlands had been exposed to such on a number of occasions in the early nineteenth century, notably in 1836–7. In scale and intensity, however, the destitution of the late 1840s and early 1850s was unprecedented. All over the crofting districts the scarcity of arable land forced crofters, and especially landless cottars, to rely on potatoes more and more exclusively, buntàta being particularly suited to conditions in the region. This dependence accounted for as much as nine-tenths of the normal diet in many localities, especially in the islands. When the potato crop was destroyed by fungal blight, therefore, it was calculated by a Free Church survey that as many as 200,000 people were rendered destitute and a further 200,000 were threatened by the effects of the potato blight. Whilst the survey overestimated the population of the region considerably – 298,637 lived in the four main crofting counties at the 1841 census – it is clear that many tens of thousands of lives were imperilled. The combined population of the parishes seriously at risk was 66,705 and the total population living in parishes that needed consistent support throughout the crisis was around 117,000.42 41

42

Devine, Highland Famine, 116–23, 158–60; Hunter and Ansdell also acknowledge the importance of Free Church philanthropy, Hunter, Crofting Community, 107; Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 145–9. For the Irish famine, see Cormac O’Grada, The Great Irish Famine (Cambridge, 1995 edn). Devine, Highland Famine, 46; he defines ‘seriously at risk’ as those parishes where a third or more of the population were reliant on relief at any point between 1847 and 1850.

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From the onset of the crop failure, in late summer 1846, the Free Church responded with alacrity. Already by September the Free Synod of Argyll was raising money and distributing food supplies. In November a Free Church Destitution Committee was established in order to co-ordinate the Church’s charitable efforts throughout the crofting areas. The survey of ministers in the region helped determine the extent of the crop failure and the levels of dependence on the potato. As a result the Free Church readily appreciated the nature of the crisis and targeted efforts to the most needy areas. The sum of £15,000 was raised by December and the Free Church yacht, Breadalbane, which normally conveyed ministers to remote locations on the west coast, was used to distribute meal and provisions efficiently throughout the affected areas without any religious discrimination. The swiftness of the Free Church response was doubtless highly significant in ensuring that thousands of Highlanders did not starve to death in 1846. The government’s response in early September was to send an official to organise a meal distribution system based on the principles of the state’s relief programme operated in Ireland. The meal depots established at Tobermory and Portree, however, were not properly functioning until December. At the same time, many landlords were lobbying for a comprehensive state-organised scheme of relief and public works and consequently did not apply for government loans under the Drainage Act (to provide work for destitute able-bodied crofters) until January 1847. Having learned through experience in Ireland, though, the state’s response in the first months of the famine was sufficient to ensure a regular supply of meal and prevent mass starvation. Additionally, the relatively wealthy condition of some Highland proprietors, at least in relation to their Irish counterparts, was an important factor in the funding of the relief. This was especially apparent on those estates where landlords established public-works schemes on their own initiative, such as MacLeod of MacLeod’s on Skye, and the properties of the second duke of Sutherland, the marquis of Breadalbane and Sir James Matheson on Lewis.43 In December 1846 and January 1847 meetings were held in Edinburgh and Glasgow in order to form a charitable body which would act as an umbrella organisation for the relief effort, representing the interests of the churches and other philanthropic institutions and individuals. At a meeting in Edinburgh, called by the Lord Provost on 14 December 1846, the first resolution was couched in notably providentialist language: It having pleased Almighty God, in the mysterious workings of His Providence, to visit our land with an almost total failure of a very important article of food . . . This meeting express their opinion, that it is the Christian duty of the inhabitants of Edinburgh, and of all whom it has pleased God to surround with more favourable circumstances, to adopt 43

MacLeod of MacLeod was ruined, however, by his relief expenditure.

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such measures as may be calculated to afford immediate relief to our suffering and starving countrymen, and alleviate, if not prevent, the impending calamities.44 Similar sentiments were expressed by the prominent Established Church minister Norman MacLeod at a meeting in Glasgow on 12 January 1847. MacLeod, known as Caraid nan Gàidheal (the friend of the Gaels), moved the first resolution: That the calamity with which it has pleased Divine Providence to visit these lands, in the almost total failure of the potato-crop . . . call for the deepest commiseration, and require the most immediate and urgent attention at the hands of their fellow-countrymen.45 This statement demonstrates that MacLeod did not regard the famine primarily as a retributive act of Divine vengeance against the Highlanders. If he had held such a view, he would undoubtedly have considered it highly presumptuous and dangerous to alleviate the effects of what was intended to inflict maximum suffering. It is clear from the reports of these meetings that MacLeod’s judgement was widely shared by his colleagues in the ministry. The objects and philosophy of the new Central Board for the Relief of Destitution in the Highlands of Scotland were clearly outlined at the Edinburgh meeting. In the first place food was to be given in exchange for work. The relief was thus given a teleological bent; its administration would be directed to engineer the Highlanders into industriousness. Related to this idea, but articulated more ambiguously, was the intention that the funds raised would be used as the catalyst for a thoroughgoing transformation of the region’s economy: while the Board thus look to their funds being made to relieve a greater number of persons, their primary object in so requiring labour in return for food supplied is to foster and encourage habits of industry and self-exertion, to improve the condition of the people, and to develop the resources of the country, and especially, by increasing the productiveness of the distressed districts, so far as in them lies to prevent the recurrence of so great a calamity, and convert the sufferings of the people into the germ of their future amelioration . . . The Local Committee should hold it as a general rule, that payment is to be made, or work given in exchange for relief, and shall impress upon the 44

45

Reports of the Edinburgh Section of the Central Board for the Relief of Destitution in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland for 1848, (Edinburgh, 1848) (Reports of Central Board ), 14–15. Reports of Central Board, Document III, Appendix, ‘Copy resolutions passed at a Public Meeting of the Inhabitants of Glasgow’, 25. For more on MacLeod and his background, see the fine collection of his writings edited by Archibald Clerk, Caraid nan Gaidheal (Glasgow, 1867: Edinburgh, 1899 edn); Phillip Gaskell, Morvern Transformed: A Highland Parish in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1968), 248.

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people, that food is given not as a gratuitous gift, but to be paid for one way or another.46 Krisztina Fenyo˝ argues that these two features of the relief effort were intended by Free Church figures in the Lowlands as methods of ‘improving’ the Highlanders in 1846–7.47 As we shall see, however, these two interrelated strands of the Board’s programme, namely, the food for work principle and the wider aim of social and economic rehabilitation, would come into conflict in the minds of a number of clergymen when the crisis continued during the following years. The Board were concerned from the outset that private benevolence alone would be insufficient to cope with the full extent of the crisis. They recognised that a tripartite strategy needed to be developed between themselves, the government, and the landlords. Robert Buchanan, a Glasgow Free Church minister, moved the following resolution at the first Glasgow meeting: That while this meeting is impressed with a strong and decided conviction that, in order to meet the exigencies of a case so unusual and so extensive as that of the destitution now existing, and which will continue for many months to increase in these districts, no effort of private benevolence will suffice; and therefore, while they emphatically disclaim the idea of attempting any thing that can absolve either the Government of the country or the local proprietors from adopting such remedial measures competent to them respectively as the emergency requires, they at the same time feel themselves emphatically called upon to come forward on so calamitous an occasion to aid in relieving the existing distress; and with this view they resolve to appeal to the liberality of their fellow-citizens and the community at large.48 Whilst many Highland landlords expended considerable effort and resources in providing relief during the early period of the famine, the response of certain other proprietors was less than satisfactory. Col. John Gordon of Cluny, owner of South Uist and Barra, evicted large numbers of impoverished tenants and sent them to Canada. But Gordon’s initial reluctance to purchase meal for his tenants or to organise a scheme of public works aroused fears of mass starvation and provoked the Witness into a sweeping denunciation of Highland landlords. An article written by ‘A Highlander of the Old School’ traced the origins of the famine destitution to an unequal distribution of land: It is assuredly a monstrous abuse of the rights of property, and an equally monstrous neglect and omission of its duties, to depopulate 46 47 48

Reports of Central Board, (Proceedings of Edinburgh meeting), 17. Fenyo˝, Contempt, Sympathy and Romance, 57–9. Reports of Central Board, (Resolutions of Glasgow meeting), 25–6.

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whole islands and entire parishes, which contained a dense population, and to lease them out to one man – to drive scores and hundreds of families out into bays and creeks of the sea to starve . . . we cannot fail to place the Highland proprietary in general before the public in not very attractive or amiable light.49 Norman MacLeod, a staunchly conservative figure, defended the reactions of both Peel’s Tory and Russell’s Whig administrations and the responses of the more active landlords, such as the duke of Sutherland and Sir James Matheson. He maintained the need for large-scale public works throughout the affected areas as a pre-requisite of relief operations. MacLeod also believed that the Highlanders had a greater claim on government benevolence than ‘the excited sons of Erin’ by virtue of their ‘calm Christian fortitude and resignation’ in the face of destitution and starvation. Nonetheless, MacLeod, who supported the inviolability of landlords’ property rights and the need for emigration, was brought to question the underlying environmental causes of the famine, and this led him to question both the wisdom and morality of evictions.50 He attacked the precariousness of the Highland economy, dependent as it was on the two main props of seasonal migration and the potato. Seasonal migration was an evil, he believed, because it divided families. Blaming dependence on a single crop for creating such a fragile economy and society in the crofting region, he identified the potato as ‘the prop and stay of this crazy edifice’. Unlike many contemporaries who attributed the famine to overpopulation and the evils of a ‘redundant population’, MacLeod queried the root causes of the ‘redundant’ population: And why is it so? Because vast sections of that country have been given in tack to sheep graziers, some of whom pay from near L.2000 to L.3000 a year of rent, grazing, some of them, 20,000 sheep, and from these grazings the population have been driven to America and Australia; or, what is worse, to a comparatively useless corner of the estate, where they are allowed to build their turf huts in the midst of an uncultivated waste, and seek subsistence as they best may; or, worse still, compelled to take up their abode in some wretched Highland village, where there is no regular work of any kind . . . Despite such overt and uncharacteristic criticism of landed proprietors, MacLeod was relatively sanguine about the prospects for the Highlands if appropriate action could be co-ordinated by the various parties involved in the relief effort. He expressed the hope that this wretched system has got a severe blow . . . by the Drainage and Cultivation Act. Without that Act the population must have continued redundant, driven to a foreign land, or forced to starve. 49 50

Witness, 6 Jan. 1847, 2; see also Fenyo˝, Contempt, Sympathy and Romance, 106. PP, 1841, VI, Reports from the Select Committee on Emigration, Scotland, 74–5.

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MacLeod recommended both emigration and the stringent prevention of subdivision and squatting by cottars as a future means of limiting land shortage and the consequent dependency on potatoes.51 His vision can be seen as quintessentially conservative, advocating a regulated smallholding regime, and in this he was possibly influenced by European systems of ‘peasant proprietorship’. MacLeod’s ideas contained much that was also found in Free Church rhetoric on the land question, and only substantially differed from John Stuart Mill’s solutions to the Irish land question in that he stressed the fundamental importance of a paternalistic landowning class for rural societies.52 Perhaps of all the ministers in Scotland, the man most capable of assessing the overall situation throughout the Highlands was Mackintosh Mackay, not only the convener of the Free Church Assembly’s Highland Committee but also convener of that church’s Highland Destitution Committee. In a letter to the Witness dated 26 January, 1847, Mackay cautioned against selfcongratulation regarding the generosity of private philanthropy in light of the fact that but little yet has been done to make even an efficient commencement of adequate relief . . . now, at this hour, multitudes are without food. It is amazing how slow we have been to realise that they have lost the whole of their food. While recounting some examples of extreme distress in the islands, he quoted from a letter he had received from an anonymous ‘respectable dissenting minister’ in Skye: The state of the country is most alarming. Unless supply soon come, the people must suffer. I never witnessed such distress. All the meal appointed for this place is now given out. This very day, my house was crammed with people in distress; and what will be done? I am afraid, that after all that can be done . . . many will die for want. May the Lord look in mercy upon us! This is a most gloomy season.53 In early 1847 Thomas Chalmers wrote to the Witness to commend the Central Board’s principles and exhorted the general public to do their utmost to prevent starvation: Whether the Government will hear or will forbear, it is our clear and imperative business to see that not one of our fellow-countrymen, be 51 52

53

Witness, 16 Jan. 1847, p. 4. John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, (London, 1848: 1849 edn), 310–60, 382–416; L. Zastoupil, ‘Moral Government: John Stuart Mill on Ireland’, Historical Journal, xxvi (1983) (Zastoupil, ‘Moral Government’), 707–17. Witness, 27 Jan. 1847, p. 3. This may have been written by Alexander Adams, United Presbyterian minister of Portree. Mackay’s use of the term ‘dissenting’ would more likely refer to a United Presbyterian than to a fellow Free Churchman.

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they men, women, or children, shall die of hunger . . . Even though our subscriptions should be enlarged so as to land our own households in a somewhat shorter allowance, this is no greater sacrifice than what the crisis seems imperiously to demand. Inevitably many were striving to work out some sense of rationale for the successive calamities in Ireland and Scotland. Since providentialist belief was a generally important component of British public doctrine in the 1830s and 1840s it is not surprising to find conflicting explanations being given for the crop failure in terms of Divine dispensations and chastisements. Chalmers no doubt felt led to provide guidance to perplexed Christians on the interpretation of such mysterious and terrifying events: let us offer one remark on these visitations regarded as judgements from Heaven. We hold it to be extremely hazardous, nay often presumptuous and unwarrantable in the highest degree, to pronounce on the special delinquency that may have called forth some temporal infliction in the form of a penalty or chastisement. But it is not unwarrantable, nay, to us it seems consistent with the soundest and most enlightened piety, to deduce from such an event the very moral which our Saviour himself propounded on the fall of the tower in Siloam: unless we repent we shall all likewise suffer – suffer, it may be, in like manner with our now famishing countrymen in the Highlands and Ireland. If the agonies and cries of these dying creatures do not reach our ears to the awakening of an effectual compassion, it may be that they shall reach the ears of Him who sitteth above, to the effect of a fearful retribution upon ourselves . . . We believe in the special providence of God, and that it is now putting us to the test; and the lesson which it seems to be giving forth is, that we should spare, for the relief of these sufferers, out of our comparative abundance, lest in the re-action of a similar calamity, some worse thing should befall us. He who hath all the powers and elements of nature at His command might stretch forth His hand on other crops of the earth, or the other forms of vegetation, so as to descend in successive blights on all the varieties of staple food in our land. It is thus that the cup of vengeance might pass round the whole of our British territory; and it were well that we stood more in dread of such a consummation, – well, if, when these judgements are abroad over the face of our country, the inhabitants thereof should learn righteousness – learn to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with their God.54 It is highly significant that Chalmers referred to the blights as acts of special providence and not as part of a more general providence of secondary causation whereby the Divine ‘hidden hand’ sustained the world and the 54

Witness, 6 Mar. 1847, p. 3.

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existing order. It was characteristic of Chalmers, however, to caution against the adoption of prescriptive interpretations of the cause or provocation of such a terrible act of judgement. Stewart Brown has suggested that Chalmers’s reactions to the famine crisis amounted to a repudiation of his previous social philosophy and a re-espousal of economic paternalism through state intervention, a notion that Hilton cannot accept. The latter prefers to view Chalmers’s reaction to the famine as remaining within the bounds of his general laissez faire approach. But only by viewing the famine as a special act of Divine warning, Hilton argues, could Chalmers advocate an interventionist response from government. The crisis affected Ireland and the Highlands, and not the whole nation directly, therefore ‘it fell outside the ordinary, mechanical, natural law course of providence’. It was right and proper at such a time to intervene in the ordinary, providential laws of supply and demand. Whatever the case may be, Chalmers unequivocally demanded a compassionate and energetic response to the crisis from both the Christian public and the authorities, which extended to recognition of the need for government interference in the food supply.55 The royal proclamation of a general fast to be observed on 24 March, 1847 has been regarded as the high-water mark of providentialist thinking in official circles. Peter Gray has viewed providentialist ideas as providing, in the absence of scientific explanations, ‘a mental and emotional framework by which that unforeseen natural catastrophe and its social consequences could be rendered comprehensible’.56 Gray further argues that British clerical and lay opinion saw the Irish crisis through the lens of theodicy. Out of the short-term evil of famine, it was contended, a greater good would flow, so long as this was not impeded by human resistance to Divine intentions. From this preconception flowed the dogmatic certainties that underlay the appalling failure of British famine relief policy. Nonetheless, he draws a distinction between ‘liberal’ and ‘moderate’ providentialism amongst clergymen.57 Liberal interpretations viewed the crisis as a direct and natural consequence of ordinary providence with the merciful intention of a moral improvement in the condition of Ireland at the conclusion of a period of chastisement and purging. Moderates, on 55

56

57

Stewart J. Brown, Thomas Chalmers and the Godly Commonwealth in Scotland (Oxford, 1982), 367–9; Hilton, Age of Atonement, 111. Peter Gray, ‘National Humiliation and the Great Hunger: fast and famine in 1847’, Irish Historical Studies, xxxii (2000), 193. This article presents a more sophisticated analysis of evangelical providentialism than Gray’s earlier monograph, Famine, Land and Politics, which tends to portray evangelicalism in a rather monochromatic fashion. Gray, Famine, Land and Politics, 216. These labels refer primarily to political and economic responses to the famine and are not to be confused with theological terminology or ecclesiastical affiliation, as in the Moderate Party in the Church of Scotland, or alternatively, Hilton’s ‘moderate Evangelicals’.

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the other hand, were less doctrinaire and more reluctant to moralise over the causes and intentions of the famine, believing ‘that the visitation could be traced to an act of Divine providence, but that its purpose could not be known with any certainty’.58 If we accept this characterisation, Scottish presbyterians – both Established and Free – generally adopted a ‘moderate’ position. This stands in contrast to English nonconformists, whom Gray believes overwhelmingly adhered to the ‘liberal’ interpretation of events. Presbyterians were thus led to advocate national solidarity with the starving in both Ireland and Scotland through both public and private charity.59 Indeed, while many contemporary commentators sought to apportion blame specifically, either on the laziness of the Celts or on wider British sins and provocations, presbyterian ministers were generally reluctant to identify dogmatically the assumed causes in public. As Alexander MacGregor, parish minister of Kilmuir, Skye, told Norman MacLeod, ‘[t]he present visitation of Providence is equally sudden as it is distressing. It is of an extraordinary nature, and requires an extraordinary remedy.’60 It is undeniable that many ministers compared the pacific behaviour of the Highlanders favourably with that of the Irish. But the prevalence of famine conditions amongst protestant communities in the Highlands ensured that presbyterian responses were never solely conditioned by a simplistic model of anti-Celtic prejudice. Furthermore, presbyterian reluctance to pre-judge the causes of the famine ensured that many ministers retained a humanitarian concern for the victims of the famine long after ‘compassion fatigue’ had set in amongst both administrators and the general public alike. The willingness of ministers to criticise the policies of the Central Board of Relief in 1848–9 and their fund-raising for the destitute in 1851 are good examples of this attitude.61 Hilton regards the Irish famine as a watershed in the mentality of the ruling elite. He maintains that upper-class confidence in the doctrine of general providence was profoundly shaken by the crisis.62 In the immediate Highland context, however, there is no evidence of any questioning of the doctrine of providence among ministers, either during or after the famine. It is, of course, impossible to fully reconstruct the theological response to 58 59

60

61 62

Gray, Famine, Land and Politics, 205. Bebbington has suggested that Anglicans’ social attitudes may have exhibited a greater resistance to laissez faire nostrums than nonconformist views. This feature may have generally characterised those Christian traditions, like Scottish presbyterianism, which held to notions of Establishment and a paternalist social order, D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (London, 1988), 121. MacGregor to MacLeod, 29 Dec. 1846, quoted in S. M. Kidd, ‘The Prose Writings of the Rev. Alexander MacGregor, 1806–1881’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Edinburgh, 1998) (Kidd, ‘Prose Writings’), 247–50. Witness, 12 Mar. 1851, p. 4; see 51–2, 55. Hilton, Age of Atonement, 112–14.

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the situation in afflicted parishes in the absence of a substantial corpus of Gaelic sermons from the famine period. Paton describes how passive submission to the Divine will was ‘internalised by the people’ and had the ‘concomitant implication that providence is a judgement on men for their sins’. This, he maintains, ‘was not a matter of useful policy in a crisis; it was a fundamental and accepted part of the Presbyterian ideology’.63 The most tangible and poignant examples of this deeply rooted sense of self-abasement are the self-accusing etchings on the windows of Croick parish church by the Glencalvie people, ‘the wicked generation’ of 1845. No doubt similar ideas filled the minds of many of those afflicted by famine in the following years. So, despite their general reluctance to specifically apportion blame for the potato blight, we know that Presbyterians believed the calamity to be a Divine chastisement for sin. Yet since the Divine will in providence worked through the liberty and spontaneity of secondary causes and free agents, providence was compatible with moral responsibility.64 Their reluctance to specify the primary causes did not dissuade ministers from questioning the human failings that may have exacerbated the crisis. Whilst landlord oppression, national covetousness, or the individual sins of crofters might all have played a role, providence ultimately was mysterious and inscrutable. Holding this position could potentially enable Highland ministers to reconcile some of the criticisms of landlords expressed in the Witness, for example, with the remarks of the episcopalian Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, Alexander Ewing: He is sending scarcity on these [Scottish Highlands], that, by the rod of famine, the Celtic races may be driven out to other lands . . . They are a religious, reverential people – a people of deep piety. Is it not for the regeneration of the coming time such men go forth, that the Providence of God selects such for the heads to future nations.65 James Begg adopted a different tone to Ewing, affirming that the causes which led to the present depressed state of the Highlands were such as could be removed, and that it was the duty of all to use every means in their power to do so. Donald MacLeod, the Strathnaver stonemason, also criticised fatalistprovidentialist interpretations of the famine and blamed the calamity solely 63

64

65

Paton, ‘Church in Northern Highlands’, 37, 153. Paton is obviously referring only to afflictive dispensations of Divine providence here. Westminster Confession of Faith, (Glasgow, 1997 edn), chapters v and ix. For more on providentialism, see 208–9; for Free Church subscription to the WCF, see 58–9. A. Ewing, ‘Lochaber No More: Sermon on Highland Emigration’ (1852), in Alexander J. Ross, Memoir of Alexander Ewing, Bishop of Argyll and the Isles (London, 1877), 212; quoted in Hilton, Age of Atonement, 75. Strong regards Ewing as a Malthusian-influenced Lowlander fundamentally distanced from the Gaels in outlook despite having romantic ideas about them, Episcopalianism, 108, 130.

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on the conduct of clearing landlords.66 A Free Church minister from Highland Perthshire, Eric Findlater, shared this view and published a pamphlet entitled Highland Clearances the Real Cause of Highland Famines. Despite conveying the inaccurate impression that the region had been more populated at the turn of the century, Findlater presented a powerful picture of oppression, arguing that the clearances were a disaster for the Highlands and the nation generally: Do we regard that which has come in the place of the old system to be a sin? We answer No – ie, in the abstract neither sheep-farming, nor deer-stalking, nor grouse-shooting, nor large farming are in themselves sinful; but they may become, as in the present case, a national sin, owing to the manner in which they are attained. It is a scriptural maxim, that we are not to do evil that good may follow. And we hold the sin of this system to be in the oppression of the poor which it has caused – in the ties it has broken – in the hearts it has torn – in the hearths it has quenched – in the family altars it has trodden down – in the tabernacles of praise it has silenced – in the justice and judgement it has perverted – in the hearts it has made callous – in the fortunes it has made on the ruins of those of others – in its having traversed laws, natural, social, and moral – and in having made a comparative wilderness of a land once full of inhabitants, and filling it, not with brave men who in the hour of the nation’s danger were its boldest defenders, but with the lower animals that minister to men’s appetites or pleasures; and if this be not enough to stamp a system as a national sin, we know not what is.67 In light of the famine, it is probable that many Highland ministers, rather than alter their beliefs in providence, followed Findlater and began instead to question the wisdom of allowing landlords arbitrary power over their tenants. In the cauldron of the late 1840s, however, most Highland clergymen were confronted by the immediate circumstances of their flocks, and by the effects of the increasingly rigid and parsimonious administration of the Relief Fund. Although over £200,000 was raised in voluntary subscriptions, the administration of relief was characterised by strict adherence to a means test and the distribution of just enough meal to prevent starvation. Yet, in response to disgruntlement from a number of sources in the Lowlands, especially the Scotsman, the Board sought to take an even tougher approach to the provision of relief.68 The fear that widespread reliance on charity would demoralise the population was commonly held and caused the Board to restrict the distribution of meal solely to those bereft of all alternative means of support. Known as the ‘less eligibility’ principle, this 66 67 68

Witness, 12 Mar. 1851, p. 3; MacLeod, Gloomy Memories, x–xi. Eric J. Findlater, Highland Clearances the Real Cause of Highland Famines (Edinburgh, 1855), 10. Fenyo˝, Contempt, Sympathy and Romance, 74–5.

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view assumed that poor relief had to be made less appealing, or ‘eligible’, than any other potential source of sustenance. Consequently, the ration of one and a half pounds of meal a day per adult male and correspondingly less for females and children was to be paid for by eight hours of labour on the Central Board’s public works schemes. Not surprisingly the stringency of these regulations was bitterly resented by many of the recipients, who had to exhaust their supplies of seed corn and sell their remaining livestock before they could apply for relief. Charles Trevelyan, the influential Assistant Secretary to the Treasury, feared that the relief effort was in danger of indulging the natural indolence of the Celt, and adamantly maintained the necessity of providing only the most limited amount: I hold in the strongest manner the opinion, that the relief ration should be confined to a bare subsistence and that the necessity the applicant is under of having recourse to it should be tested by the exaction of a full day’s work. Upon this depends whether the people shall daily become more pauperised in mind and habit, and more helplessly dependent upon this temporary extraneous resource, or whether they shall be made to feel that this is a precarious accidental charitable supply, and shall have a force put upon them to exert themselves for their own subsistence . . .69 The report of Captain Edward J. Fishbourne, the Central Board’s resident Inspector on Skye, clearly demonstrates the attitude of Central Board officials to the recipients. It is noticeable that his frame of reference is providentialist and prescriptive, highlighting his belief in the afflictive nature of the famine. Additionally, Fishbourne’s account reveals something of the bewildered response of famished, Gaelic-speaking people to a time-work discipline which mitigated, in many ways, their traditional Highland conceptions of honour and charity: Skye, 6th January, 1848, . . . The too general impression of every body here, with such exceptions only as a child could number, is, that though there was a scarcity of provisions, yet, as the money was subscribed, each should have been fed to the full by the ‘Society,’ as well as during any former year; that all those who might, by any possibility, be called poor, and who has lost potatoes, should be placed by the Society’s funds as though they had not lost them; as if it were intended that the burden of the afflictive dispensation with which the country has been visited should be borne by the ‘Society’ only, and that the hand of the ‘Allwise Disposer’ should be entirely hid from those over whom it had been 69

‘Appendix to the Report on the Sufficiency of Allowance’ – letter from Trevelyan to Skene, 2nd March, 1848, Reports of Central Board (Edinburgh, 1848), 70–1 (italics in original). For more on Trevelyan, see R. A. C. Balfour, ‘The Highland and Island Emigration Society 1852–1858’, TGSI, lvii (1990–2) (Balfour, ‘Highland and Island Emigration Society’).

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more immediately stretched out; and, as a consequence, the lesson of wisdom – the lesson of prudence – the knowledge that there was a God that would be acknowledged in the assemblies of men, with which the chastisement was fraught, has practically passed unheeded, has left no such instructions behind . . . In proportion as these notions are extravagant, is the difficulty of dealing with the people; and it is observable, that where true principles have been most departed from, then these notions are most extravagant.70 Closely adhering to his ‘true principles’, Fishbourne attested to his rigour in applying the means test even in the face of ministerial pleas for a more lenient approach. The Witness reported that Fishbourne had forwarded a letter to the Central Board’s Committee received from ‘a clergyman of a distressed district in the Western Highlands’. The anonymous minister complained of the strictness of the Board’s procedures: I am continually troubled with complaints of absolute want and starvation from every quarter of the parish; the poor people come to me in the vain expectation that I can do something for them, and I am grieved when I hear their tales of woe. Let me assure you it is exceedingly painful for me to write to you at all on this subject. I know how unpleasant it must be to you that anyone should interfere with you in the discharge of your arduous duties; but, I cannot refrain from remarking that, in my opinion, the rules of the Central Board, which I have lately read, should not be too rigidly adhered to, especially during the winter and spring, when the people cannot work regularly. Nor do I think they can at any time work on 1lb. of meal a day. The Board cannot reasonably expect that food, even should they give a full allowance of it, is all that a labouring man requires . . . Does he not require also clothes and shoes? The Central Board seems to me to be too strict in exacting work. Although work was expected by subscribers to the Destitution Fund, yet this was merely a secondary consideration, the primary object was to provide food.71 The practical effect of the Board’s policy was to deprive crofters and cottars of ‘the germ of their future amelioration’ as the original Edinburgh meeting had so sanguinely hoped. Alexander MacGregor argued that if crofters receiving aid were allowed to work and improve their holdings, in addition to building roads, then a lasting benefit to the agriculture and economy of the region could result. MacGregor had offered a substantial portion of ground to local crofters for cultivation but was dismayed because the ‘want of food urges them to adhere to the daily test-operations’. 70

71

Reports of Central Board, Appendix, 33–4; see PP, 1841, VI, Select Committee on Emigration, 195, for the testimony of Rev. R. Macpherson, Inverness, concerning traditional Highland attitudes to beggars, for example. Witness, 19 Jan. 1848, p. 3.

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MacGregor perceived that land hunger and lack of economic incentive was the root of crofter poverty: I would be delighted to see that relief would be allotted to crofters for trenching, fencing and draining their land . . . the cultivation of the soil is the most important subject that can engage the Committee’s attention. – Until that be resorted to here on a large and judicious scale, poverty will ever exist . . .72 In 1849 MacGregor published an important essay on slavery, ‘Gearr Chunntas mu Thraillealachd, no Daorsa ann an Caochladh Linnean agus Chearnan de’n t-Saoghal’, which translates as ‘A short account of slavery, or bondage, in different ages and parts of the world’.73 He criticised American ministers for not speaking out on behalf of the slaves: tha iad a’ diùltadh facal a ràdh as leith nan tràillean, a’ cumail a mach gu bheil iad anns an t-suidheachadh ’s an d’ fhàg an rìoghachd iad, agus mar an céudna gur h-e an dleasnas faraon a bhi umhail do na laghannan sin.74 [Translation:] They refuse to say a word on behalf of the slaves, making out that they are in the situation in which the nation has left them, and also that it is the duty of all to be obedient to these laws. It is ironic that this is more or less the same criticism which has been levelled at nineteenth-century Highland ministers. Sheila Kidd argues that whilst this article might be interpreted as providing Highland readers with ‘a precedent in social criticism, against which their own experiences could be compared’, MacGregor’s probable intention was to divert attention away from the famine crisis in the Highlands.75 What is incontrovertible, however, is the fact that ministers like MacGregor held a less rigid view of the outworking of providence than men such as Trevelyan and Fishbourne. This accounts for their desire to see the Board adopt a more constructive and flexible approach to relieving destitution. The Central Board, meanwhile, was forced to continue its operations until 1850, by which time the political and financial goodwill of the British ruling class and general public was largely at an end. The relief effort had been remarkably successful in averting such massive mortality as was experienced in Ireland. But the devastating combination of famine, mass destitution, and the counterproductive strictures of the Central Board’s programme undoubtedly left the Highlands more pauperised in 1850 – after 72

73

74 75

MacGregor to Captain Smith, R.N., Portree, 24 Feb. 1849, quoted in Kidd, ‘Prose Writings’, 249. ‘Gearr Chunntas mu Thraillealachd no Daorsa ann an Caochladh Linnean agus Chearnan de’n t-Saoghal’, Fear-Tathaich nam Beann (two articles in vols. xviii, 535–46 and xix, 567–76), 1849 (‘Gearr Chunntas mu Thraillealachd’). ‘Gearr Chunntas mu Thraillealachd’, 573. Kidd, ‘Prose Writings’, 111–13.

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nearly four years of outside intervention – than they were in early 1846. Whilst crop failures were to prove a continued menace until the mid-1850s, the attention of politicians, landlords, and churchmen alike was increasingly turning from amelioration towards a more radical solution. The emigration debate If the debate on the causes of the famine was not straightforward, neither was there any consensus regarding the best answer to the problem of mass poverty. A wholesale policy of eviction and emigration was increasingly seen by many as the only alternative to continued destitution – this view became widespread among those landlords with properties in the Hebrides or on the western seaboard, where famine conditions had been most widespread. This policy was resolutely opposed by advocates of a wider reform in the social and economic structure of the region. Numerous articles in the Witness criticised the emigration strategy as being solely for the convenience of lairds, and against the wishes and best interests of the people. By attempting to explode the view that the Highlands had a ‘surplus’ or ‘redundant’ population, Miller and others sought to undermine the foundations of the emigrationist argument. Emigration had been a major feature of Highland life since the 1770s and was initially opposed by landlords and the government. Indeed, it has been argued by J. M. Bumsted that before 1815 many Highland emigrants were motivated by the desire to preserve their pastoral lifestyle and their culture. They opted to do so in North America rather than remain in the hands of improving landlords who needed a plentiful supply of labour for the kelp industry and to provide recruits for the army. These early waves of emigration might even be conceived as a form of anti-landlord protest.76 The end of the Napoleonic wars, however, hastened the collapse of the kelp industry and the descent of the west Highland economy into decades of relentless population increase, land shortage, rack-renting, and over-reliance on the potato. Landlords in this period became more and more convinced that emigration would be the most efficient and advantageous remedy to such a precarious social arrangement. The potato failure in 1836 encouraged this trend, and in 1841 a Parliamentary Committee investigated the possibility of organising a scheme of colonial settlement through emigration.77 Norman MacLeod gave evidence at this time and argued strongly in favour of a state-assisted emigration scheme, also admitting that a principal aim in his writings in the Gaelic periodicals he established, An Teachdaire Gaelach 76

77

J. M. Bumsted, The People’s Clearance (Edinburgh, 1982), ix–xiv, 216–21; Marianne McLean, The People of Glengarry: Highlanders in Transition, 1745–1820 (Montreal, 1991), 206–8, 264. Marianne McLean broadly agrees with the notion of emigration as a form of radical protest but is more concerned to demonstrate that direct economic pressure from the traditional elite was the catalyst for the outflow of Highland emigrants in this period. PP, 1841, VI, Reports from the Select Committee on Emigration, Scotland, (London, 1841).

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and Cuairtear nan Gleann, was to promote emigration as a remedy for Highland poverty.78 Clearing the ‘redundant population’ to the colonies became an increasingly appealing alternative to proprietors, not least in view of the burdens of famine relief and the heavy assessments which the poor-law amendment had laid on them. In 1847 the Marquis of Lorne, who that year became 8th duke of Argyll, transported 340 tenants from the isle of Tiree to Canada. In 1849 he shipped a further 364. The total number that emigrated from the island between 1847 and 1853 was 1,354, which represented 27% of Tiree’s 1841 population of 4,391 people. From Lewis 2,337 emigrants, representing 14% of the population, were assisted by Sir James Matheson between 1851 and 1855.79 All over the western Highlands and Islands large numbers had little alternative but to leave their homes and seek a new life overseas. At least 16,000 received assisted passages during this period and a substantial but unquantifiable number migrated to the Lowlands. These ‘depopulation’ policies attracted the fierce opposition of a considerable body of Christian opinion. The Witness frequently resounded with angry denials of the necessity for sweeping reductions in the Highland population. The following extract of a letter from ‘A Highlander’, dated 26 April, 1847, is an early example, aroused by Argyll’s intentions towards the Tiree crofters: Verily, verily, Highland lairds of the present enlightened age, no less than the old Norman conquerors of England, will have a terrible day of reckoning before an infinitely higher tribunal than any tribunal of public or private opinion of this transitory scene.80 There were genuine fears that great swathes of the Highlands would be forcibly emptied of their human inhabitants. Comparing emigration with ‘shipping kidnapped negroes from the coast of Africa’, a report in the Witness desired ‘to hear the other side before attaching any credit to assertions about the Highlanders leaving “of their own free will and accord” ’. Thomas MacLauchlan’s series of articles on ‘The Depopulation of the Highlands’ drew attention to the ‘gradual extinction of a high-spirited, loyal and Christian people’.81 Roderick Balfour, in his study of emigration policy in the 1850s, has emphasised the important influence of a petition from the Edinburgh Presbytery of the Free Church to the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, in forcing the government to confront Highland destitution. Russell’s administration duly commissioned Sir John McNeill to tour the distressed districts of the Highlands with a view to proposing remedies to 78

79 80 81

Reports of Committee on Emigration, 82. For a discussion of the role of MacLeod’s publications, see S. M. Kidd, ‘Caraid nan Gaidheal and ‘Friend of Emigration’: Gaelic Emigration Literature of the 1840s’, SHR, lxxxi (2002), 52–69. Devine, Highland Famine, 212–42. Witness, 1 May 1847, 3. Witness, 8 Sep. 1849, p. 3; 12 Sep. 1849, p. 2; 15 Sep. 1849, p. 2; 19 Sep. 1849, pp. 2–3; 22 Sep. 1849, p. 2.

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the situation. His appointment was questioned by anti-landlord voices, such as Miller and Begg, who believed him overly close to the landed interest and not to be relied on to investigate the problem impartially. In late January 1851 the Destitution Committee of the Free Church sent Mackintosh Mackay and Begg to London to lobby against Parliamentary sanction for large-scale clearance and emigration policies. There they were to lobby MPs and, in particular, to press the necessity of extending the inquiry into those causes in the past history of the Highlands and Islands out of which the present famine has arisen, and to protest against any forced emigration. When asked of the necessity of emigration, Mackay said that there was ‘no necessity whatsoever, the very idea is monstrous’.82 Contrary to the Free Church’s preferred solution, the McNeill Report considerably boosted the formulation of a radical emigration strategy. A son of the laird of Colonsay, Sir John McNeill was the chairman of the Board of Supervision for the Poor Law in Scotland and a close confidant of Charles Trevelyan. Unsurprisingly, McNeill’s recommendations were wholly in favour of large-scale emigration and had nothing to say about the reform of landholding patterns or the policies of landlords before the famine. Assisted emigration certainly did have significant clerical backing at this point and McNeill took evidence from several ministers. In the absence of landlord initiatives to enable crofters to improve their holdings and livestock at home, many of these men could see no viable alternative solution to the destitution other than emigration. The evidence of Donald MacVean, Free Church minister of Iona and the Ross of Mull, exemplifies this: I am of opinion that the character and condition of the people have deteriorated since 1846. The relief afforded from the destitution fund has averted much misery, and saved many lives, but it has had, on the whole, a bad effect on the character of the people . . . In these circumstances, unless capital can be provided to enable the people to cultivate the uncultivated land, or to engage in fishing, I do not think that there is any alternative but emigration. MacVean, however, expressed his anxiety about the spiritual and educational provision overseas for emigrants and stated what many pastors must have felt when he said, ‘I feel it very trying to live in the midst of so much destitution.’ He confessed that ‘seeing no other alternative reconciles me to the promotion of emigration under proper regulations’.83 Similar sen82

83

Balfour, ‘Highland and Island Emigration Society’, 431; Witness, 22 Jan. 1851, pp. 2–3; 29 Jan. 1851, p. 3; 26 Jul. 1851, p. 2. Mackay’s comment is quoted in Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 149. PP, 1851, XXVI, Report to the Board of Supervision by Sir John McNeill on the Western Highlands and Islands, 952, 962 (Report to Board of Supervision).

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timents were expressed by John Macrae, the Established Church minister of Stornoway, who believed that even the most indulgent proprietor would never be able to support the large population of Lewis on such a limited area of land: ‘no reduction of rent would enable the crofters to subsist upon their present holdings’. He stressed the necessity of emigration: ‘I can suggest no means by which the people of the Lewis can be made selfsustaining, unless the number of inhabitants is diminished.’84 Even more explicit was the statement of the parochial board of Duirinish, Skye, which included the Established Church minister, Duncan MacCallum. They were categorical in their belief that emigration was absolutely imperative: ‘We are of opinion, that this parish cannot be made self-sustaining, unless a part, from a third to a fifth, of the population remove elsewhere.’85 Although the tenor of the McNeill Report is thoroughly sympathetic to emigration, this did not prevent the inclusion of statements by some ministers advocating a fairer distribution of land for the crofters. According to the Free Church minister of Portree, Duncan MacEacharn, ‘one of the means of extricating the people from their present difficulties, would be to enlarge their holdings of land’. MacEacharn maintained that if crofters were ‘to subsist in any measure of comfort, the crofts should not be less than such as are now let for £10, and that they ought to have leases’.86 More cautious were the views of David Ross, Establishment minister of Tobermory, who advocated leases being given to crofters paying more than £10 rent per annum for larger holdings to provide incentives towards agricultural improvements. Ross argued that with encouragement, ‘the crofters would, in any circumstances, be self-sustaining’. But he cautioned, I cannot see how employment can be provided in this island, out of its own resources, for the whole of its present population. I therefore see no hope of their extrication from their present difficulties, unless a portion of the working classes can be induced and enabled to go elsewhere to seek their subsistence.87 Alexander Adams of Portree, one of the few united presbyterian ministers in the Highlands, was positively in favour of granting more land to the crofters: I am of opinion that one of the means by which the people might be extricated from their present difficulties, is the enlargement of their lots – granting of leases, and the establishment of a model farm, with other means of agricultural instruction – also encouragement of fisheries.

84 85

86 87

Report to Board of Supervision, 1042. Report to Board of Supervision, 1002; see 120–1 for the change in MacCallum’s attitude by 1883. Report to Board of Supervision, 987. Report to Board of Supervision, 962.

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But he noted that emigration was an appealing prospect to some of the poverty-stricken destitute: ‘I have reason to believe that there are a number of persons in Skye who would readily emigrate if they could find the means.’88 The most influential evangelical minister on Skye in the nineteenth century was Roderick MacLeod, the Free Church incumbent of Snizort, popularly known as Maighstir Ruairidh. Balfour has referred to Roderick MacLeod as a ‘vigorous campaigner against sheep-farming and emigration’ and in this ‘he was vociferously abetted by the Revds. Alexander MacColl, Duirinish, and Peter MacLean, Tobermory’.89 MacLeod’s comments demonstrate marked sympathy with the suffering of the crofters and a desire that they might hold their land on more secure and equitable conditions. He urged landlords to increase the amount of land available for crofts and to help crofters by funding improvements and granting leases: I am of the opinion that, if the holdings of the people were enlarged, and means could be found to provide for them, by loan or otherwise, with the funds necessary to bring these lands into a proper state of cultivation, and to stock them, it would go far to mitigate the existing distress; but without aid to enable them to bring the land into cultivation and to stock it, there is a large proportion of the population who are not in a condition to take lands. I am of the opinion, from observation, that to enable a man to maintain his family, he would require to have not less than ten acres of arable land, besides grazing. I do not see, upon any equitable principle, how a lease can be refused to a small tenant when it is granted to a tacksman. I have no doubt that, if the smaller tenants could obtain leases, they would work their holdings more industriously, and produce from the land they occupy a larger amount of food. I am aware that industrious tenants of irreproachable character, who had bestowed much labour on their crofts, have been dispossessed of their lands for causes unconnected with their relations as tenants to the landlord, and that such proceedings have produced feelings of great dissatisfaction on the part of the people generally . . . The cases above alluded to, however, have produced a general feeling of the insecurity of the tenure, which cannot be overcome unless by granting leases.90 One outcome of the McNeill Report was the 1851 Emigration Advances Act, which diverted government loans under the Drainage Act to subsidising emigration. A major objective was to divert Highlanders from their traditional destination of Canada instead to Australia and to this end the Highland and Island Emigration Society was established in 1852. It soon came under the 88 89

90

Report to Board of Supervision, 986–7. Balfour, ‘Highland and Island Emigration Society’, 484. For more on Alexander MacColl, later of Lochalsh, see 72–3, 91, 125. Report to Board of Supervision, Appendix A, 48.

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sway of Trevelyan, who believed that at least 40,000 people would have to be removed from the west Highlands and the Hebrides if a more stable and prosperous society was to develop in the aftermath of the famine. Such ambitious levels of depopulation were never realised and only 5,000 Highlanders were settled in Australia by the time the Society was wound up in 1858.91 Trevelyan’s own attitude to Highland ministers at this point may be detected from a letter to his aunt, Miss Neave, in which he advised her to cease raising funds for destitute Highlanders and instead advocated emigration as the only remedy. ‘Charity,’ he believed, ‘has converted the people of Skye from the clergy downwards into a mendicant community and its demoralising effect upon the lower classes is extremely painful.’92 Although Trevelyan had little dealings with Highland ministers he was, as a practising Anglican evangelical, aware of the influence of the clergy – especially in influential city charges – and corresponded with a number of leading preachers in London. He hoped they would use their pulpits to encourage their congregations to give generously to the emigration scheme.93 Seeking to gain favourable publicity for the scheme, Trevelyan wrote the editor of the Daily News to inform him that Norman MacLeod had visited one of the society’s ships at Greenock and preached to the emigrants prior to their departure. MacLeod ‘minutely examined all the arrangements, conversed with the people who declared their entire satisfaction with what had been done’. Longstanding supporter of emigration that he was, MacLeod gave a favourable impression of the people’s state, which caused an irrepressible Trevelyan to claim: Not one bitter word was spoken against landlords or factors. They declared in very touching language that they went forth trusting in God, as did Abraham of old, not doubting that he was sent of God for purposes of good.94 A number of Free Church ministers followed the flock and left Scotland at this time, including John Mactavish, who was aboard the infamous Hercules when typhoid and smallpox broke out and a good number of lives were lost. Mactavish changed direction and went to Canada instead from where he subsequently returned to Scotland and became a prominent advocate of 91

92

93

94

Amongst this number were many roman catholics from western Inverness-shire. Ronald Rankin, priest of Moidart, encouraged this emigration and went himself to Geelong in 1855, see Balfour, ‘Highland and Island Emigration Society’, 484–5. NAS, HD4/1, Highland and Island Emigration Society Letterbook, Trevelyan to Miss Neave, 19 Jan. 1852, 1, quoted by Balfour, ‘Highland and Island Emigration Society’, 442; see also Mitchell Library, MS 21506, Sir John McNeill Letterbook on Highland Emigration, 1852. Amongst others, Trevelyan corresponded extensively with H. Mackenzie, vicar of St Martinin-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, and also with Baptist Noel, a leading London nonconformist preacher, with John Cumming, the Scottish presbyterian minister of Crown Court, Covent Garden, and with Bishop Alexander Ewing of Argyll and the Isles, see NAS, HD4/13, HIES Letterbooks. NAS, HD4/2, HIES Letterbook, Trevelyan to the editor of the Daily News, 20 Jul. 1852.

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land reform.95 Mackintosh Mackay himself left for Australia in 1853 but not without bringing the whole clearance and emigration debate to the attention of the Free Church General Assembly. Delivering the 1853 Highland Committee report, he referred to emigration and the accompanying clearances as ‘a disturbing force upon the social and economic temporal condition of our adhering population’. He suggested that with the poor laws on the one hand . . . and the profits, as they are thought to be, of sheep-farming on the other, there seems practically a crusade against the whole population of the Highlands and Islands set in. Mackay was careful to stress it is not our province as office-bearers of the Church of Christ, and far less in Church courts, to adjudicate upon temporal rights, or temporal controversies between man and man. Yet he barely concealed his personal sympathies: there is indeed strong temptation to enunciate our own judgements upon such points, especially when we see such controversies waged between the rich on the one hand, and the poor on the other. And, were mere feeling to be our guide, we could scarcely refrain from pronouncing such judgements. He called on Free Church ministers to dissuade their congregations from a confrontational or violent reaction to the evictions: But we hold it as duty rather to make our appeal to Him who judgeth righteously in all things. ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord’ – and whatever scenes, of what we may call dire cruelty and oppression, we may see going forward, and which we have no means to prevent, we trust it now is, and shall ever be, the principle and the practice of the ministers of the Church to inculcate upon their people – ‘Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath, recompense to no man evil for evil’. ‘Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good’ . . . It is not, indeed, our province to deal in temporalities. But whatever be our exemption from that duty, we have to remember that the sign of the kingdom of Christ, given by the great Head himself, was, ‘To the poor the Gospel is preached’.96 Other prominent ministers echoed Mackay’s sentiments in the Assembly debates. Alexander Duff, a Perthshire Highlander and leading missionary, referred to ‘the dire oppression of a whole century’. He reckoned that evicted Highlanders 95

96

For Mactavish’s correspondence with Trevelyan, see NAS, HD4/2, HIES Letterbook; see below 98–100, 128–9 for Mactavish’s support for land reform. For the voyage of the Hercules see Devine, Highland Famine, 252–8. PDGAFCS, 1853, Appendix, 230–6 (emphasis in original).

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in these circumstances . . . might reasonably have expected the paternal interference of Government, at least to the extent of seeing that all the profit were not on one side, and all the loss on the other. Duff ridiculed fashionable theories of racial superiority: . . . if some Saxon John Bulls were subjected to his management – if he had them just two months, settled on one of those bleak western isles, and fed on wretched shell-fish, he would bring the stoutest and most active of them into a lazy and lean Celt. Robert Candlish, a Lowlander, who replaced Mackay as Highland Committee Convener for one year, referred in his 1854 report to ‘forced removals [which] are attended by circumstances creditable to neither our Christianity nor civilization’. Like Mackay, he was gratified by the passivity of the evicted crofters and cottars: ‘amidst the whole of these transactions there has been nothing on the part of the people that was not worthy of a Christian profession . . .’97 Whilst individual Established Church ministers, such as Norman MacLeod and Alexander MacGregor, may have spoken of the Highlanders as worthy objects of charity or of the need for increased holdings and provision of leases, there are no records in this period of Establishment ministers providing a more radical, sustained critique of the landlords and the prevailing economic system. Indeed, apart from a pastoral letter sent down by the 1848 General Assembly, the Established Church as a body made no reference to the famine, destitution, or the evictions in the years after 1846.98 These issues were not discussed in Assembly debates or referred to in Committee reports. While Free Church ministers were anxious to ensure that Church courts did not interfere in temporal matters unduly, it is obvious that the desperate social and economic condition of so many Free Church adherents in the Highlands forced ministers to bring these issues into their discussions. Despite Begg’s view that the General Assembly could not ‘take up the discussion of legislative questions’, many would have agreed with his idea to petition the government, ‘leaving on them the duty and responsibility of meeting the call and remedying the evil’.99 * The years between 1843 and 1855 were difficult and traumatic in the Highlands. From 1843 ministers and private Christians alike had to cope with the impact of a full-scale rending of the national Establishment of reli97 98

99

PDGAFCS, 1853, 148–50; PDGAFCS, 1854, Appendix, 80–1. Principal Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, with the Abridgement of the Proceedings of that Assembly and of the Commission, 1844–53, 37–40. PDGAFCS, 1852, 208.

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gion. The consequences of this on the spiritual and ecclesiastical life of the region were numerous and far-reaching and a lot has been written about the effects of the Disruption on parochial structures – the hastening of state intervention in poor relief and education, for example. Yet it must never be overlooked that, at the most fundamental level, the Free Church existed because evangelicals could not accept the encroachments of the ruling elite into the jurisdiction of the Church. The fact that Free Church ministers now stood in a completely different position to the parochial and central authorities was hugely significant. Had the clash between the evangelicals and the ‘forces of the establishment’ – in other words, the Moderate Party, the civil courts, Parliament, the landlords – been less acrimonious and divisive, the intensity of Free Church anti-landlordism would have been correspondingly less. It is possible to argue that had there been no Disruption, ministers would have been less likely to criticise land distribution or perhaps even famine relief operations in the manner they often did. Nevertheless, we know that Established Church ministers periodically spoke out on social issues before the Disruption. Furthermore, some of those who remained within the Establishment in 1843 recommended that landlords provide more land, or leases, or that the Central Board allow crofters to work their holdings and still receive aid. Established Church ministers, such as Norman MacLeod and Alexander MacGregor, were circumscribed in their criticisms and recommendations, but not to the point of complete submission to the opinions of those in authority. Had there been no separation in 1843, many evangelicals would have been equally moved by the conditions around them, and no doubt would have spoken out against oppression. But it is unlikely that the sustained critique of landed proprietors which developed in the pages of the Witness and the Free Church Magazine would have developed so fully and so freely. The Free Church provided Highland Christians for the first time with a vehicle for articulating an anti-landlord viewpoint. Although primarily an ecclesiastical issue, the controversy over sites was also a confrontation between lairds and popular sentiment. The parallel between the refusal of sites and the refusal to grant more land to crofters was readily apparent. When Begg encouraged the Free Assembly to meet in Inverness he stated that it would be partly for the reason of teaching the Highland proprietors that we are determined to stand by the people of the north [and] partly for the sake of the people themselves in regard to temporal things, but still more for the sake of promoting their spiritual interests.100 Free Church rhetoric was, of course, polemical and semi-politicised and this could lead to exaggeration. It is notable, however, that in the debates of her 100

PDGAFCS, 1845, 76. The precise title for the 1845 Assembly minutes is Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.

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Church courts, as opposed to the columns of sympathetic publications, the discussion of social questions was characterised by moderation and restraint. The very fact that these issues were regularly coming to the attention of the Free Church General Assembly in this period is one of the major divergences between the two denominations, and also of the years before and after 1843. The Assembly might have felt unable to recommend policy, or be seen to politicise its agenda, but it provided a forum whereby Highland social problems could be brought into the discussions of the Church more formally. This process culminated in the Assembly debates of the 1880s discussed in later chapters. The whole emigration debate was, and still is, capable of generating tremendous emotion. It is not surprising that many churchmen felt compelled to support emigration. Ministers, perhaps more than most, observed their flocks barely enduring year after year of grinding poverty and hunger and many must have despaired of their prospects in the Highlands. This did not necessarily involve collusion with landlords on the part of such men, many of whom – both as pastors and as fellow Highlanders – would have been reluctant to lose their people. In the face of the economic disintegration of west Highland society, however, emigration was viewed by many ministers as a last resort, a necessary evil which at least held out the hope of better prospects in the colonies. It was, of course, in Free Church interests that a high level of population be retained in the Highlands, especially in the crofting areas of the north and west, where evangelical religion, and consequently the Free Church, was strongest. Yet financial reasons cannot solely account for their resistance to emigration. The Free Church in the Highlands was subsidised by wealthy Lowland congregations and, as such, Highland Free Church ministers were not dependent on their own congregations for their stipends. The fear that Highlanders were being driven away from communities where evangelical religion was prevalent to colonies where their spiritual needs would probably be neglected was a fear repeatedly expressed. But the most important factor was the ministers’ belief that the Highland people had been badly treated and denied the opportunity of improving their own conditions at home. This injustice was largely the fault of the landlords, and not a natural consequence of race or the Highland temperament. Of course, it remains unclear whether the west Highlands could have supported the mid-century population comfortably through a wider distribution of arable and grazing land, security of tenure, and investment in ancillary occupations. What is certain, though, is that numerous contemporary evangelicals believed that the maintenance of a large smallholder population was possible by these means without recourse to ‘the cruelty and oppression which have driven them from their native land’.101 Hugh Miller used rhetoric more reminiscent of the land 101

PDGAFCS, 1853, 153.

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agitation of the 1880s than the 1850s when he wrote: ‘There is but one remedy for it, and that is, to restore the land to the people.’102 The years of Disruption and destitution were, therefore, of vital importance in the development of Christian responses to the Highland land question. This period left an indelible mark on those who had lived through it. We have observed how such influential Free Church figures as Chalmers, Candlish, Begg, and Hugh Miller were drawn into the debate at national level. Leading Highland ministers such as Mackintosh Mackay and Roderick MacLeod contributed to the growing awareness of the social crisis which had engulfed the region through their statements in print, in church courts, and in their evidence to official enquiries. Also, a number of young men who began their ministries at this point, such as John Kennedy, Thomas MacLauchlan, and John Mactavish, became noted for the interest they took in the land issue throughout their lives. Gustavus Aird of Creich, Sutherland, was eyewitness to major clearances as a young Free Church minister in the 1840s and 1850s. In a letter written during the Crimean War, Aird wrote that the eviction of unoffending people, now so fashionable . . . when seriously pondered, even by the most frigid and unfeeling, may well be thought to be, at least, more than questionable policy. Considering the solemn circumstances in which our country is placed, the day may not be far distant when, even, in the Highlands of Scotland, men shall be looked upon as of more value than beasts.103 Indeed, when the land question was forced onto the national political agenda in later years these men were willing to identify with the demands for crofters’ rights. The significance of the 1840s and 1850s lies, therefore, in the formulation of a body of opinion that began to publicly identify the land question as the most important social issue affecting the Highlands. It has been observed that a firm belief in the doctrine of providence, manifested both in general and extraordinary events, did not preclude presbyterians from playing a leading role in the amelioration of extreme suffering during the famine. The position broadly outlined by Smith, Hilton, and Gray does not apply to presbyterian responses to the Highland famine. Evangelical providentialism per se did not hinder a compassionate response to human misery and material deprivation in the Highlands; on the contrary, evangelical activism was critical in saving thousands of lives. More significant than this, however, is the fact that influential Christian leaders were questioning the social costs of the introduction of unbridled agrarian capitalism to the Highlands. When the existing distribution of land became recognised by ministers as the main reason for endemic poverty, they could turn their attention back to the clearances in a critical light and seek to 102 103

Witness, 22 Mar. 1851, p. 2. Aird to Donald Ross, 22 Apr. 1854, quoted in MacRae, Life of Aird, 185.

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learn lessons, hoping that the future would bring a more equitable social arrangement. The introduction of land as a social issue into the ecclesiastical discourse of this period undoubtedly paved the way for a more active espousal of land reform principles in later years. Another significant feature of the middle years of the century is that it was often the leading figures in the Free Church based in the Lowlands who took the initiative in addressing these issues. This was part of the wider process whereby the Highlands were brought to the attention of the nation and became less isolated from the wider world – a phenomenon which is further discussed in the following chapter.

CHAPTER TWO

A Peculiar People: Highland Religion and Identity As long as Gaelic sermons are preached in Highland parishes the Highlanders will have good reason to say that they are a peculiar people.1 This chapter is divided into two main parts. The first part comprises a theological and cultural analysis of the Highland evangelical movement. Evangelical Christianity and its social effects lie at the heart of this book and, therefore, an examination of the nature of Highland evangelical belief and culture is of paramount importance to the whole study. The second main division of the chapter enquires into the development of Highland ‘peoplehood’ and the cultural awakening of pro-Gaelic sentiment. The social and economic aspects of these processes are examined and there are case studies of the contribution of two prominent Highlanders, the journalist John Murdoch and the leading Free Church minister, John Kennedy. 1. Evangelicalism in the Highlands 1843–88 Calvinist, covenant theology, ‘linking land and people in a powerful grip’ is one of the factors that maintained the long-term hegemony of presbyterianism in the modern Scottish Gaidhealtachd.2 Highland presbyterianism was rooted in the Genevan Reformed tradition and refined by the growth of the British Puritan movement in the seventeenth century. This calvinism was distinctly evangelical in ethos. Ansdell holds that the beliefs and spirituality of a characteristically Highland presbyterianism in the nineteenth century were given ‘form and substance by the Westminster Standards and emotional intensity by the Evangelical impulse’.3 Much of this ‘impulse’ was initially imparted from the south, where the influence of the great evangelical revival was dominant until the 1850s. But, as we shall come to notice, the success and longevity of this gospel religion was greatly facilitated by the cultural environment which evangelicalism shaped for itself in the Gaidhealtachd. Callum Brown has asserted, somewhat pejoratively, that Evangelical religion in the Highlands was ‘an oppressed culture of puritanical and semimillenarian presbyterianism’. Brown here falls into the trap of viewing 1 2 3

J. S. Blackie, speech before the Gaelic Society of Inverness, Highlander, 15 Jul. 1876, p. 5. D. E. Meek, ‘Highlands’, DSCHT (Edinburgh, 1993), 405. Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 136.

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nineteenth-century Highland evangelicalism through the lens of presentday models of religious culture. His position is not strengthened by erroneous conceptions of calvinist theology, especially concerning the doctrines of election and assurance. He fails, for example, to recognise the compatibility between an indiscriminate offer of salvation in the gospel and the limited nature of the atonement, which were maintained simultaneously by Scottish presbyterians until the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Brown’s unsympathetic view of calvinism has been shared by many writers over the years and a distorted picture of Highland evangelicalism has often emerged. The following sections, however, examine the main features of Highland calvinism and aim to present a more accurate assessment by considering, firstly, the doctrines held by Highland presbyterians and, secondly, the distinctive aspects of the Gaelic protestant experience.4 Calvinist doctrines Every ordained minister and lay office-bearer in both the Established and the Free Churches in this period was obliged to subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith as the confession of his faith simpliciter – without mental reservation or theological scruple. Late-nineteenth-century Highland presbyterians avowed not a latitudinarian creed but a detailed, comprehensive theological and ecclesiastical system. The Confession emphasised the plenary inspiration and sole authority of the Bible, an evangelical soteriology, and a presbyterian ecclesiology. In theological terms, the sovereignty of the Triune God dealing with sinful men in covenant was the most notable feature of the Confession. This federal, covenant theology, also expressed in the Westminster Assembly’s Shorter Catechism, exercised an unparalleled influence over religious life in Scotland until the late nineteenth century. These documents were translated into Gaelic and, through the agency of catechists, played a vital role in the inculcation of Reformed doctrine in the region.5 In addition, this religion was revivalist and was integrally linked to the wider international Evangelical awakening of the mid-eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries.6 The period from 1790 until 1843 witnessed dynamic missionary activity spurred on by renewed evangelical fervour in 4

5

6

Brown, Religion and Society, 84, 180–4; see also A. L. Drummond and J. Bulloch, The Church in Late Victorian Scotland 1874–1900 (Edinburgh, 1978), 153; Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 49–51, 59. The Westminster Assembly’s Shorter Catechism was first published in Gaelic in 1653 and was reprinted on numerous occasions. The Westminster Confession of Faith and Larger Catechism was first published in Gaelic in 1725; see K. D. MacDonald, ‘Catechisms (Gaelic)’, DSCHT, 143–4; also 64, 74 below. See Mark A. Noll, David W. Bebbington, George A. Rawlyk (eds), Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, the British Isles and Beyond, 1700–1990 (Oxford, 1994); George A. Rawlyk, Mark A. Noll (eds), Amazing Grace: Evangelicalism in Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States (Montreal, 1994).

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the Established Church and among smaller dissenting groups throughout the region. Much of the powerful influence that this distinctive protestantism exerted over the Gaidhealtachd in the nineteenth century must be attributed to the fusion of calvinist theology and spirituality – which had been disseminated in the southern and north-east Highlands since the seventeenth century – with the new wave of evangelical revivalism.7 David Bebbington has outlined four key axioms central to Evangelicalism in Britain since the awakenings of the 1730s. These were biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism.8 Bebbington’s conception of evangelicalism as a distinctively eighteenth-century development which broke away decisively from earlier Puritan calvinism may be legitimately questioned from the perspective of Scottish presbyterianism, and especially when considering the evangelicalism of the Highlands. As Leigh Eric Schmidt and John Coffey point out, revivalist evangelistic preaching was an important feature of Scottish presbyterian culture from the 1620s at least.9 The Highland evangelicalism of the nineteenth century was heir to both calvinist doctrine and covenanting piety from the seventeenth century, and the influence of the eighteenth-century evangelical revivals. In contrast to Bebbington’s dichotomy between puritanism and evangelicalism, we can view Highland presbyterianism in the nineteenth century as both calvinist and evangelical. Nevertheless, it is also helpful to consider Highland evangelicalism as a movement which exhibited Bebbington’s four axiomatic features throughout the period 1843–93. Evangelical presbyterians were thoroughly biblicist and held to a high doctrine of Scripture. The Gaelic translation of the Word of God was prized by protestant Highlanders. The Bible was regarded as the sole revelation of God’s will for salvation, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In the realm of ethics, the personal, communal, and national application of this doctrine was centred on the moral law as summarised in the Ten Commandments. The most notable feature of this biblicist ethical framework was sabbatarianism. Sabbath observance was a popular concern amongst ordinary people in the Highlands. For example, in 1883 at Strome Ferry, Wester Ross, two hundred fishermen took possession of the Railway terminus in order to prevent the loading of fish on the Sabbath. A fracas involving the police ensured that ten of the fishermen received four 7

8

9

See, for example, Donald Beaton, Some Noted Ministers of the Northern Highlands (Glasgow, 1985 edn), 1–42; J. Dawson, ‘Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd in Scotland’, in A. Duke, G. Lewis and A. Pettegree (eds), Calvinism in Europe 1540–1620 (Cambridge, 1996 edn) (Dawson, ‘Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd’), 231–53; Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 36–55; Meek, ‘Highlands’, DSCHT, 404–6. David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (London, 1988) (Bebbington, Evangelicalism in modern Britain), 2–55. Leigh E. Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scotland and the Making of American Revivalism (Grand Rapids, 2001 edn) (Schmidt, Holy Fairs), 21–41; John Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions, The Mind of Samuel Rutherford (Cambridge, 1997), 39.

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months’ imprisonment in Calton Jail, Edinburgh. Nevertheless, James Begg and John Kennedy, Free Church minister of Dingwall, publicly feted and supported the Strome men, organised petitions on their behalf, and collected money to cover their legal expenses. Kennedy criticised both the Highland railway company for running trains on the Sabbath and the government for tolerating Sabbath desecration. In the same speech he took the opportunity to attack the social system in the Highlands, including the deer forests which encroached on crofters’ holdings, stating ‘it was remorseless cruelty that a pampered aristocracy should have their desired amusement at the expense of the people’.10 The observance of the Sabbath was thus a highly conspicuous feature of Highland evangelicalism which affected whole communities; and although the obligations of the fourth commandment were rigidly enforced, sabbatarianism had deeper theological foundations than mere legalism. Amongst the many reasons advanced for strict Sabbath keeping were the commemoration of the resurrection of Christ, the need for a day of spiritual and physical rest and the permanent, universal nature of the Ten Commandments. Calvinists also regarded the Lord’s Day as a foretaste of the eternal Sabbath of Heaven. But it is incorrect to regard Highland evangelicals as observing the Sabbath as a discipline ‘to atone for sin’ as one historian has suggested. In common with evangelicals elsewhere, Highland calvinists looked to the blood of Christ alone to take away sin.11 In keeping with such strong emphasis on the merits of Christ’s sacrifice, Bebbington highlights crucicentrism as another constant feature of evangelical religion. From the point of view of the present study this is perhaps the most important formal aspect of nineteenth-century Highland evangelical belief. In The Age of Atonement, Hilton sees the doctrine of the atonement as providing the core for the retributive, expiatory mode of thought which characterised the early nineteenth century and which was fostered by the dominant evangelical movement. There was a direct link, he argues, between ‘enthusiasm for the cross’ and a ‘harsh attitude to social underdogs’. Hilton has noted a paradigm shift in theology in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, which was connected to a wider rejection of the providentialist, biblical worldview. He suggests that the ‘age of atonement’ was superseded by an ‘age of incarnation’ in which a less retributive and providentialist outlook was adopted. Theological liberalism and new developments in scientific theory created an intellectual climate where state intervention ultimately came to be acceptable as a remedy for social ills. Donald Smith believes that the ‘rediscovery of the historic Jesus’ by late-nineteenth-century biblical critics facilitated the development of ‘a 10

11

David McConnell, The Strome Ferry, Skye Railway Riot of 1883 (Bracknell, 1997) (McConnell, Strome Ferry Riot); Auld, Life of Kennedy (Lewes, 1997 edn), 161–6; Times, 25 Sep. 1883, p. 3. Devine, Clanship to Crofters’ War, 102.

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Christian ethical criterion for judging society’ that was previously absent because of the dominance of Calvinist orthodoxy.12 Highland evangelicals, however, consistently adhered to the Anselmic view of Christ’s sacrifice as the only ransom capable of satisfying Divine justice and making atonement for sin. Following the Puritans, they held that it was all-sufficient for justification, permanently efficacious, and solely limited in application to the elect. The cross was the only place where a sinner could find reconciliation with God. John Kennedy stated that ‘none can know, appropriate, or taste His love, but such as have come, because He brought them, to Himself in Christ’. Kennedy continued: It is on the ground of the work finished on the cross, and on that ground alone, that a sinner can attain in Christ, a right to salvation. This is all I can find even in Him on which to rest my hope of peace, and to claim a right to everlasting life. The place which His death occupied in the gospel, and its important bearing on the destinies of men, tends to induce special attention to our relation to the atonement, and to beget a desire to enjoy the hope of an interest in it.13 In his moderatorial sermon, Thomas MacLauchlan, the moderator of the Free Church General Assembly in 1877 and convener of the Free Church Highland Committee from 1855 until 1882, declared: ‘on this cross He wrought deliverance from wrath, and that is the first step in the great process of salvation’. MacLauchlan continued his theme by likening the salvation of the soul to rescuing a man trapped in a fire: ‘You must first pluck a man out of the flames ere you begin to feed and clothe him.’14 Although this phrase is analogously redolent of many mid-century views on the link between the gospel and the worthy objects of charity, MacLauchlan, as we have seen in the previous chapter, was by no means a proponent of laissez faire attitudes to the land question. These quotations from Kennedy and MacLauchlan highlight the centrality of the atonement to Highland evangelical theology and this, as we shall come to see, has significant implications with regard to the links between calvinist theology and social philosophy. Conversionism is another axiomatic constant of evangelical religion and, certainly, the doctrine of the new birth was integral to Highland evangelical preaching and religious life. McPhail states that a ‘conversionist element is fundamental to the tradition’. He also links a strong emphasis on the fall and ruin of mankind through sin with the conversionist imperative in Highland evangelicalism. Allan Macinnes has criticised Highland evangelical preaching for being ‘elitist’ in its stress on ‘individual religious experience’. Despite a paucity of printed Gaelic sermons from this period, the evidence suggests that Highland evangelical preachers were indiscriminate, 12 13 14

Hilton, Age of Atonement, frontispiece, 12, 255–372; Smith, Passive Obedience, 255, 257. John Kennedy, Man’s Relations to God (Edinburgh, 1869), 78, 95. Thomas MacLauchlan, The Wrath and the Refuge (Edinburgh, 1877), 9.

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rather than elitist, in their setting forth the free offer of Christ’s salvation to sinners in the gospel.15 Allan Macinnes has further attacked the ‘dictatorship of the putative elect’ that was preserved by the ‘Free Church’s rigid sacramental demarcation between members and adherents’. Highland Freechurchmen generally held a subtly divergent view of the Sacraments from their Lowland brethren, regarding the qualifications for baptism and communion as distinctly different.16 Differing professions of faith were consequently required in order to partake of the two different sacraments and this tended to produce a large base of baptised adherents and a much smaller group of members in full communion. Unlike communicants, the adherents did not profess saving faith when they received baptism for their children on the basis of their ‘uncontradicted’ profession. They were, however, recognised as members of the visible church and the wider religious community.17 As Archibald Cook, the Free Church minister of Daviot, Inverness-shire, stated in a sermon: ‘Chan eil iad ach tearc anns an àite so nach lùb an glùn’ [They are rare in this place who will not bend their knees]. However, Cook went on to question, ‘ach am bheil iad a’ faicinn am feum air bàs Chriosd?’ [But are they seeing their need of the death of Christ?]18 The conversionist challenge was thus never far from the surface in evangelical preaching. An experience of spiritual renewal was certainly required for admission to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. But the Free Church was not unusually sectarian in restricting full membership of the church to an accredited group of believers. This position was originally shared by the Dutch and Scottish Reformers, and was, on one level at least, not altogether removed from the baptists’ insistence on a conversion experience for admission to the sacraments and church membership. Rev. John MacInnes, anticipating some of Schmidt’s insights into the Scottish sacramental tradition, also emphasised the intimate relationship between evangelism, revival, and the high position occupied by the communion sacrament in Highland presbyterianism. ‘A revivalism that was divorced from the sacrament,’ MacInnes wrote,

15

16

17

18

A. N. McPhail, ‘Trends in Highland Evangelicalism: Attitudes to Religious Observance and Christian Living in a Group of Churches’, M.Th. dissertation (Oxford University, 1999) (McPhail, ‘Trends in Highland Evangelicalism’), 35; Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 49; see, for example, Cook, Searmoin Ghàidhlig, 295 and Rev. J. MacInnes, Evangelical Movement, 177–80, 184–8 for the gospel call, conversionism, and the influence of infralapsarianism. Allan Macinnes misunderstands the nature of grace and election in relation to the doctrine of assurance. Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 49–51. He fails to grasp the theological and sociological ramifications of this teaching sufficiently. John Kennedy, The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire (Inverness, 1861; 1979 edn) (Kennedy, Days of the Fathers, 110–25; Rev. J. MacInnes, ‘Baptism in the Highlands’, RSCHS, xiii (1957–9), 1–24. Cook, Searmoin Ghàidhlig, p. 22.

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was unthinkable to these Evangelical ministers and people. It is to this latter fact, above all others, that we owe the sanity, strength, and enduringness which was characteristic of the Highland revivals. As Schmidt makes clear, one of the central transformations that took place during the communion season was the process of conversion. During these solemnities people regularly closed with Christ for the first time. Sinners, long strangers to the fullness of evangelical faith, were transformed into saints.19 Bebbington has argued that the stress on subjective assurance during the Puritan era inhibited the development of the outward-looking evangelical activism characteristic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.20 This assertion is difficult to sustain given the high degree of political and social involvement among the Puritans and Covenanters in the seventeenth century. Nonetheless, it is debatable whether the Free Church in the Highlands in the 1880s fits Bebbington’s definition of ‘activist’ for two reasons. Firstly, Highland evangelicals did not develop a culture of social activity in their congregations. The plethora of social and charitable parachurch organisations which sprang up in the southern cities was not replicated in the Highlands. Secondly, the influence of Puritan teaching was retained to a far greater degree than in the urban centres. Indeed, Puritan theology was the most widely read theological literature in Gaelic. Of Gustavus Aird it was said: ‘Dr Aird was a Puritan . . . he had a love for Puritan and Covenanting Experimental theology . . . his mind was stored with the best thoughts of the Puritan divines’. Another clerical biographer wrote: ‘The Puritan theology is the theology of the Highlands.’21 Highland evangelicals, following the Puritans, drew a distinction between actual possession of saving faith and the assurance of it. As John Kennedy stated, ‘Christians in the Highlands had been taught to distinguish between doubting the safety of their state and doubting the truth of the Word.’ In both theory and practice, this distinction made self-examination and a measure of subjective introspection a constant feature of the Christian life. It has been suggested that such subjectivity had a negative effect on the outward life of the Church in the region since, if a believer lacks assurance of salvation, that person is far less likely to have the confidence to engage in Christian social activity. McPhail, in his consideration of the doctrine of assurance 19

20

21

Schmidt, Holy Fairs, 87, also 21–68; Rev. J. MacInnes, Evangelical Movement, 166 and 5, 190–1; H. Cheape, ‘The Communion Season’, RSCHS, xxvii (1997), 305–16. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 35–50, especially 42–3. For a summary of the debate over the doctrine of assurance in orthodox calvinism, see Joel R. Beeke, The Quest for Full Assurance (Edinburgh, 1999). MacRae, Life of Aird, 99, 129, 162; J. Macaskill, A Highland Pulpit: Being the Sermons of the late Rev. Murdoch Macaskill (Inverness, 1907), viii.

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and its effects on evangelical activism, regards a public activism as ‘inconspicuous’ in the Highland evangelical tradition after the mid-nineteenth century.22 Yet this position is difficult to sustain on closer examination. It is clear that the Free Church in the Highlands exhibited a good deal of activist energy by providing religious ordinances and elementary education even in the most remote localities. We have also noticed that Highland ministers were active in the amelioration of famine conditions in the 1840s and 1850s. At a less conspicuous level, the Free Church exerted a large measure of social control in the region; Highland kirk-sessions generally succeeded in maintaining a vigorous spiritual and moral authority in their communities and over the lives of individuals. For example, the rate of illegitimacy in Rossshire in 1861–5 was 4.24%, which was less than half the Scottish average of 9.79%.23 Ecclesiastical activism is also evidenced by the exceptionally large increase in ministerial settlement over the forty years from the Disruption to 1883. As the previous chapter makes clear, the Free Church initially struggled to find ministerial supply for its numerous Gaelic-speaking congregations. But over the intervening years it successfully increased the number of pastors settled in congregations from seventy-two in 1843 to one hundred and fifty-four within the four Highland Synods of Argyll, Glenelg, Ross, and Sutherland and Caithness. With the addition of six largely Highland presbyteries in the bounds of the Synods of Moray and of Perth and Stirling, the total rises to two hundred and seven in 1883. Since there were two hundred and eleven charges in twenty-three presbyteries this figure represents a settlement rate of over 98%. The figures for the Established Church in the same period are even more impressive. From seventy-nine ministers in the four Highland synods in 1843, the Establishment was able by 1883 to achieve a figure of one hundred and seventy-eight. Again, the addition of the figures for the Highland districts of the Moray Synod and the Perth and Stirling Synod increase the final figure to two hundred and fifty-six in two hundred and fifty-eight charges across the twenty-three Highland presbyteries.24 Although the number of Established Church ministers was greater than for the Free Church and points to the efficacy of established status for the maintenance of staffing levels, a high number of Establishment ministers were resident in their parishes for considerable periods. Incumbencies of forty years and more were common, which gives the impression that the Established Church ministry in the Highlands – despite the highly increased rate of settlement – was generally 22

23

24

Kennedy, Days of the Fathers, 104, also 102–9 for Kennedy’s views on public activism; McPhail, ‘Trends in Highland Evangelicalism’, 28. Michael Flinn (ed.), Scottish Population History from the Seventeenth Century to the 1930s (Cambridge, 1977) (Flinn, Population History), 350–1; T. C. Smout, A Century of the Scottish People 1830–1950 (London, 1987 edn) (Smout, Century of Scottion People), 173. Alexander Ewing, Annals of the Free Church of Scotland, ii (Edinburgh, 1914) (Ewing, Annals); Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae (Edinburgh, 1915–61).

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not as energetic nor as youthful as that of the Free Church in 1883. This rapid growth in settlement was part of a general increase in ministerial numbers in mid- to late-nineteenth-century Britain and is indicative of the prestige which the ministry held during this period.25 By contrast, the United Presbyterian Church in 1873 had seventeen settled and three vacant congregations roughly coterminous with the twenty-three Presbyteries of the Established and Free Churches. In 1883 the congregationalists had nine chapels with settled ministers. United Presbyterian and congregationalist churches were predominantly on the peripheries of the region nearer the Lowlands. The United Presbyterians were strong in the Northern Isles, having thirteen congregations in Orkney and four in Shetland. There were four settled congregationalist ministers in Orkney and ten in Shetland. The roman catholic Church had thirty-two clergymen resident in the region, including the Bishop of Argyll and the Isles. There was also a parish priest stationed at Kirkwall, Orkney.26 Both the Free Church and the Established Church increased their membership in the Highlands in the last three decades of the nineteenth century despite a falling population level. According to Macinnes’s statistics, Free Church membership and adherence in the Synods of Argyll, Glenelg, Ross, and Sutherland and Caithness rose from 43,481 in 1871 to 74,771 by 1891. It seems likely that these figures underestimate the strength of the denomination. In 1881, for example, a petition against disestablishment organised by Highland conservatives was signed by over 80,000 Free Church communicants and adherents. This figure does not include, of course, the minority in the Highland Free Church who favoured disestablishment. The Established Church in the period from 1881–91 increased its membership by around 8%. A survey in the mid-1880s put the figures for the Established Church at 23,000 communicants in the Highlands with an unspecified number of adherents, whereas the Free Church had 21,000 communicants out of an adhering population of 84,000.27 The estimated episcopalian 25

26

27

Kenneth D. Brown, A Social History of the Nonconformist Ministry in England and Wales 1800–1930 (Oxford, 1988) (Brown, Nonconformist Ministry), 11–12. It ought also to be remembered that those ministers who formed the Free Church in 1843 were a relatively youthful group in comparison with those who remained in the Establishment. William MacKelvie, Annals and Statistics of the United Presbyterian Church (Edinburgh and Glasgow, 1873), 247–63, 550–7; R. Small, History of the Congregations of the United Presbyterian Church from 1733 to 1900, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1904), i, 622–57, ii, 161–8; William D. MacNaughton, The Scottish Congregational Ministry: 1794–1993 (Glasgow, 1993); Christine Johnson, Scottish Catholic Secular Clergy 1879–1989 (Edinburgh, 1991), 111–20, 135–42; David M. Bertie, Scottish Episcopal Clergy, 1689–2000 (Edinburgh, 2000), 537–48, 613–26; Donald E. Meek, Island Harvest: A History of Tiree Baptist Church, 1838–1988 (Edinburgh, 1988) (Meek, Island Harvest) and Meek, ‘The Highlands’, in D. W. Bebbington (ed.), The Baptists in Scotland: A History (Glasgow, 1988), 280–380. Auld, Life of Kennedy, 200; Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 62; Northern Chronicle, 5 Jan. 1887, p. 5. These latter statistics were taken from a pro-Established Church magazine, The Scottish Church, and include the Synod of Moray, not counted by Allan Macinnes.

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population of the main Highland diocese was no more than 2,099 in 1847 contained within seven charges; by the 1880s it was likely to have decreased further. The United Presbyterian population is difficult to quantify but it is likely that the baptist and congregational populations – given the small number of chapels they possessed – could be counted in hundreds rather than thousands. The number of roman catholics in the region is uncertain. Roman catholic areas of Inverness-shire experienced very high levels of emigration in successive waves. The figure of 23,000 in 1764 given by Kathleen Toomey must have been reduced by the late nineteenth century to less than 12,000.28 Like most Scottish presbyterians, Highland evangelicals held a postmillenialist eschatology and this produced a positive outlook with regard to the evangelisation of the world. Consequently many Highlanders, or their descendants, became involved in missionary activity throughout the world, with David Livingstone and Alexander Duff being the two most notable examples. And, as the following chapters show, Highland evangelical ministers at home were more engaged in socio-economic and political debate than has often been believed. In a society where the evangelical worldview had attained both theological and cultural dominance, the Highland calvinists were perhaps as activist as they needed to be.29 Thus, ‘Highland religion’ in the period from the Disruption through to the 1880s was doctrinally Reformed and, in emphasis, evangelical. On the purely formal level then there were few differences between the evangelical presbyterianism of the Highlands and that of other areas – that of the Lowlands or Ulster. The following section examines those distinctive features of highland evangelicalism that made it a unique religious and cultural phenomenon.30 Highland spirituality Historians are agreed that there were certain spiritual idiosyncrasies that distinguished the evangelical piety of the Gaidhealtachd. Ansdell has referred to it as an ‘indigenous spirituality’. Most commentators have emphasised a 28

29

30

Strong, Episcopalianism, 103; K. Toomey, ‘Emigration from the Scottish Catholic Bounds, 1770–1810, and the Role of the Clergy’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Edinburgh, 1993), 4. One-third of Highland roman catholics left for North America between 1770 and 1810, 256; large numbers emigrated in the early 1850s, see above 57 n. 93. R. MacDonald, ‘The Catholic Gaidhealtachd’, Innes Review, 29 (1978) (Mac Donald, ‘Catholic Gaidhealtachd’), 62 quotes a contemporary roman catholic figure of 13,000 adherents in the Highlands in 1838. For the links between postmillennialism and the missionary movement, see Iain H. Murray, The Puritan Hope (Edinburgh, 1971). The presbyterianism of Ulster and the Lowlands was officially calvinist, although arminian tendencies became apparent in the second half of the century. In the wider context, many evangelicals were theologically anti-calvinist in their synergistic view of the role of the human will in salvation.

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discontinuity between the traditional Gaelic cultural outlook and the new perspective engendered by evangelicalism in the century between 1750 and 1850.31 The impact of a specifically calvinist evangelicalism on Highland society was massive and far-reaching. Its ‘uncompromising modernism’ fundamentally altered the beliefs and value-system of individuals and communities throughout the region. Perhaps the most obvious example of such modernism was the development of formal schooling to facilitate religious instruction. The spreading of literacy and the availability of the whole Bible in vernacular Scottish Gaelic for the first time in 1807 were critically important in fostering outbreaks of spiritual awakening and revival which gave further impetus to the evangelical movement. The real link between revivalism and literacy, Dr John MacInnes plausibly suggests, was more than the widening of the people’s horizons, although that was indubitably one effect. The ability to read increased ‘their desire for knowledge, especially for the certainties of some creed or philosophy that would explain the cataclysmic break-up of their traditional world’.32 Into the spiritual and social crisis stepped a wave of revivalist preachers who were received as bringing manna from Heaven. Indeed, Allan Macinnes believes these charismatic itinerant evangelists were an even more important factor in furthering the acceptance of the evangelical message than the widening level of literacy. In those localities where revivalism had yet to penetrate the Established Church, the appearance of powerful evangelical lay preachers frequently left a permanent change. Evangelicalism thus became identified with revivalism at a communal level. The phrase ‘when the gospel came to the island’, to give one example which is still used in Hebridean evangelical circles, refers to the time when evangelical preaching powerfully impacted upon a specific community such as Arran or Skye in 1812, or Lewis in the early 1820s. Often accompanied by tremendous heights and depths of spiritual and emotional intensity, these revivals left an indelible mark on the first generation of converts. In giving evidence to Lord Napier’s Royal Commission on crofting conditions in 1883, ninetyyear-old Donald MacQueen, a catechist in Bracadale, Skye, remarked, ‘I have seen a great deal of the power of the gospel.’ He continued: I saw at first a revival begin at Trotternish, and spreading through the island. I have seen again the Rev. Mr Shaw in Bracadale – it was he who brought me here – and then I saw the Rev. Mr MacLeod, and in his time 31

32

Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 213; Hunter, Crofting Community, 152; see also Donald E. Meek, The Scottish Highlands, The Churches and Gaelic Culture (Geneva, 1996) (Meek, The Scottish Highlands); Durkacz, Decline of Celtic Languages 122–33; Charles W. J. Withers, Gaelic Scotland, The Transformation of a Culture Region (London, 1988) (Withers, Gaelic Scotland), 145–56, 173–81. Rev. J. MacInnes, Evangelical Movement, 14; Meek, ‘The Bible and Social Change’, 179–91; Durkacz, Decline of Celtic Languages, 52–72; Dr J. MacInnes, ‘Religion in Gaelic Society’, 238–9.

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the gospel had great power, and was spreading through the district in Trotternish and MacLeod’s country and Duirinish and over other places.33 It is understandable, therefore, that these nineteenth-century evangelicals stressed the momentous changes which the gospel brought to their communities and in their own personal experiences. At the level of the individual, evangelical conversionism was associated with the notion of a clean break with the past. This was often accompanied by a repudiation of many traditional cultural activities, especially those connected with the secular arts, dancing, and excessive drinking.34 Hunter and Bruce have, in different ways, put the case for regarding the rapid success of evangelicalism as being an effect of widespread economic fragility and the accompanying social dislocation and cultural alienation which characterised Gaelic society in the period from 1746 until 1850. While Macinnes acknowledges that there are no clear temporal links between evictions and outbreaks of revival, he maintains that ‘revivalism cannot be disassociated from the social restlessness occasioned by Clearance and by rural congestion and deprivation within the crofting communities’.35 While it is probably true that the destruction of the traditional society and the concurrent socio-economic crisis played some role in preparing many communities for the reception of evangelicalism, we must be wary of an overly mechanistic interpretation. Revival was a spiritual phenomenon for those involved and it is enormously condescending to suggest that the people caught up in these movements were unable to form a realistic psychological apprehension of their experiences, or that their true motivations were sublimated. If anything, the triumph of evangelicalism was more likely facilitated by the lack of any convincing ideological or spiritual alternative in Gaelic society. Ansdell has convincingly argued that the Gaidhealtachd lacked any firm religious notions with which to counter evangelicalism. It also lacked any focus of authority or centres of learning from which an alternative community could derive direction and consolidate resistance. Highland society was poorly equipped to resist evangelical Christianity in the early nineteenth-century.36 Yet in spite of the decisive transformation which evangelicalism entailed at the individual and community level, its converts were not entirely divorced from the cultural legacy of previous generations. In his important article on religion and Gaelic society, Dr John MacInnes highlights the continued 33 34 35

36

Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 53–4; NC Evidence, 339. Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 136. Hunter, Crofting Community, 142–57; Bruce rejects Hunter’s approach in a sophisticated sociological article, ‘Social Change and Collective Behaviour’, 554–72; Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 54. Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 54.

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importance of the Gaelic language and cultural tradition when attempting to outline the salient features of Christianity in the modern Highlands. There is, for example, a deeply rooted ‘Gaelic anti-modernist tradition’ which exhibits distinctive spiritual continuities reaching back to the medieval period. The Gaelic predilection for allegorical interpretations of Scripture is one example of such spiritual and philosophical antimodernism. Again, linguistic conservatism was important in the development of an ecclesiastical register of vernacular Scottish Gaelic which was influenced by late-medieval ‘classical common Gaelic’.37 Gaelic spiritual poetry was crucial in popularising the gospel message and in winning ‘the battle for the soul of the Highland people’, and there were noticeable rhetorical similarities between secular Gaelic literature and Gaelic preaching and hymnody.38 Congregational singing of the Psalms was also heavily influenced by traditional styles of Gaelic folk-song. Of course, in examining such continuities it must always be remembered that the evangelical movement of the nineteenth century flourished in a society that had been widely exposed to protestantism of varying emphases since the sixteenth century. Evangelicalism may have triumphed in a maelstrom of social change and psychological insecurity but it would be misleading to suggest that it operated in a cultural vacuum, or – even worse – that it created such a vacuum.39 Most commentators agree that there was a mystical element in Highland religion. A definite preference for typological and allegorical allusion was a characteristic of religious discourse and homiletics. Indeed, Highland evangelicals often conversed in an allegorical fashion. The piety of the leading evangelical laymen, known as na daoine or ‘the men’, has attracted wideranging comment. It has been described by James Hunter as ‘of the most elemental type, combining a harsh and pristine puritanism with a transcendental mysticism that had less to do with nineteenth-century protestantism than with an older faith’.40 The language of mystical experience Hunter regards as an assertion of crofters’ spiritual and personal autonomy from the constricting influence of lairds, factors, and Moderate ministers; but he overstates the syncretism of popular belief in order to reinforce his view that na daoine represented an anti-authoritarian challenge to the existing order before 1843. Ansdell has also noted an ambiguity in the Highland 37

38

39

40

Dr J. MacInnes, ‘Religion in Gaelic Society’, 223, 228; Dawson, ‘Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd’, 235–53; Meek, The Scottish Highlands, 13, 37. ‘Common’ refers to mutual intelligibility in Scotland and Ireland. Rev. J. MacInnes, Evangelical Movement, 1–2, 262–94; K. D. MacDonald, ‘Na Marbhrannan Soisgeulach’, in William Gillies (ed.), Scotland and Gaelic, Alba agus a’ Ghàidhlig (Edinburgh, 1989), 175–84; D. E. Meek, ‘Preaching: Themes and Styles, (Gaelic and Highlands)’, DSCHT, 671–2. See Dawson, ‘Calvinism and the Gaidhealtachd’, 238, 252; D. C. Fraser, ‘Gaelic Religious Verse from the Fernaig Manuscript’, TGSI, lvii (1990–2), 73–99. McPhail, ‘Trends in Highland Evangelicalism’, 47; Rev. J. MacInnes, ‘The Origins and Early Development of “the Men” ’, RSCHS, viii (1942–4), 35–6; Hunter, Crofting Community, 151–2.

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presbyterian attitude to the supernatural. Highland presbyterians were committed to the eradication of superstitious traditions and the vestiges of pre-Christian or roman catholic belief in keeping with their emphasis on specifically protestant biblical doctrine and practice. At the same time, however, there was ‘a measure of uncertainty’ concerning visions, miracles, and ‘second sight’. Whilst not formally denying Reformed teaching on the ceasing of miracles and the apostolic gifts, the ‘ability to foretell future events has been both shunned and applauded by the Highland church’. John Kennedy of Dingwall gave a Christian rationale to a certain type of such revelation which he described as ‘the secret of the Lord’. Kennedy believed that some Christians who had attained a rare eminence in godliness were given prior intimations of future providence directly through the scriptures.41 Hunter sees the denigration of aspects of secular culture by some evangelicals as a more coherent response to the reality of social and economic change than the nostalgic naiveté of many nineteenth-century Gaelic secular poets and tradition bearers. Allan Macinnes continues this theme, regarding the use of biblical rhetoric as a more realistic ideological platform for the 1880s land agitation than ‘[r]ecourse to the mythical golden age of clanship as advocated by secular Gaelic poets’. What seems clear from these complex responses to traditional culture, custom, and belief is that Highland evangelicals could manifest attitudes characteristic of both radical change and long-term continuity, often at the same time.42 A number of scholars have written about na daoine. They formed a powerful spiritual spearhead for the developing evangelical movement in many communities, especially in the northern part of the Highlands, in Ross-shire and Sutherland. By the 1880s, the influence of na daoine was strongest in Skye and the Outer Hebrides, but had diminished somewhat by this time on the mainland. Most of ‘the men’ were elders in the Free Church and were often active as lay-preachers or catechists. Devine makes much of their role as an elite ‘spiritual aristocracy’ but Hunter goes even further, stating that ‘the men’ ‘constituted the first leadership of any sort to emerge from the crofting population’s own ranks’.43 The temptation to exaggerate the social status and exclusivity of ‘the men’ has been noticed by Dr MacInnes, who maintains that ‘they did not form the homogenous social institution that the English appellation connotes’. David Paton similarly cautions against overemphasising the social importance of ‘the men’. He points out that only 41

42

43

Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 134–6; Kennedy, Days of the Fathers, 201–15; M. Campbell, Gleanings of Highland Harvest (Inverness, 1989 edn); Hunter, Crofting Community, 151–2. Hunter, Crofting Community, 152; Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 60. This social realism is also recognised by Donald E. Meek, Caran an t-Saoghail, The Wiles of the World, Anthology of 19th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse (Edinburgh, 2003), xxxv–vi. Hunter, Crofting Community, 150–4; see also Rev. J. MacInnes, ‘The Origins and Early Development of “the Men” ’, 16–41; Devine, Clanship to Crofters’ War, 103–4; Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 122–4.

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when the relationship between Minister and people became entirely dysfunctional was there the opportunity for ‘The Men’ to impose any kind of discipline or leadership of their own . . . ‘The Men’, in the northern Highlands, were critical of Ministers, but not of the ministry. Dr MacInnes does, however, see ‘the men’ as a profoundly populist religious movement with important social implications in that they constituted a ‘reaction against the Established clergy’. The populist ethos of the early revivalism was sustained in the second half of the century when ‘the movement produced its own ministers: on the whole men of the lower ranks of Gaelic society’. Allan Macinnes has also commented on the social significance of ‘the men’ and has described them – in the context of the collapse of the traditional society – as ‘the self-perpetuating spiritual tacksmen for the north and north-west Highlands’. Their standing was further enhanced by the fact that they ‘tended to be drawn from the peasant elites of small farmers and craftsmen rather than the poorest orders of cottars and squatters’.44 The social origin of the ministers themselves is a very important subject but sadly the evidence that remains is scanty. The Fasti entries and more especially Ewing’s Annals tend to bypass the issue, except perhaps to give the place of birth or to record the names of the parents particularly if the entrant’s father was also a minister. Most ministers went straight to University upon leaving school and progressed into their first pastorates during their mid-twenties. We cannot deduce from the ministers’ previous occupations what their social standing would otherwise have been, as we can for English nonconformist pastors. Like many of their contemporaries elsewhere in Britain, a good percentage were sons of the manse. John Kennedy of Dingwall, John Mactavish, Inverness, and Donald Sage, Resolis, were amongst this group.45 Many others were from agricultural (farming or shepherding) backgrounds such as Alexander MacColl, Lochalsh, and John Macrae, Lochs. Donald John Martin, Stornoway, was the son of a small Inverness-shire landlowner and a nephew of Dr Nicol Martin, the proprietor of Husabost in Skye. Gustavus Aird, Creich, was the son of a retired Army officer and gentleman farmer.46 Although a very small number of proprietors, such as the marquis of Breadalbane and G. H. Rainy of Raasay, supported the Free Church, there is scarcely any evidence to suggest that Free Church ministers retained close social connections with the landed 44

45

46

Dr J. MacInnes, ‘Religion in Gaelic Society’, 232, 235; Paton, ‘Church in Northern Highlands’, 297; Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 52. See Brown, Nonconformist Ministry, 95; Auld, Life of Kennedy, 1; Mactavish’s father had been a minister on Jura and Islay, Ewing, Annals, i, 259; Donald Sage wrote a classic eyewitness account of a Highland eviction in his Memorabilia Domestica (Wick, 1889: Edinburgh, 1975 edn), 214–22. Ewing, Annals, i, 217, 258; see also Norman C. MacFarlane, Donald J. Martin (Edinburgh, 1914), 9–16. Martin, it is recorded, was heir to an 8,000-acre estate but was disinherited by a close relative (probably his uncle) on deciding to enter the Free Church ministry, 23–4; MacRae, Life of Aird, 17.

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class. Men like Aird were not cast in the same mould as the older type of Highland minister. Their agricultural experiences were too mixed up with the observation of social dislocation for them to retain the close connection with the lairds which Highland ministers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries seem often to have had. Alexander MacColl, for example, opposed eviction and emigration despite being the son of a sheepfarm manager. MacColl is similar in this regard to John MacDonald of Helmsdale, the son of an estate official who was, however, vehemently opposed to clearances. The Disruption, of course, drove in another wedge between evangelical ministers and landowners.47 Some of the younger ministers in the 1880s were clearly from a crofting background. Men such as Murdo Macaskill, Greenock, Alexander Mackay, Rogart, John Murray, Clyne, and the brothers Donald, Malcolm, and Colin MacCallum were fully aware of the distress endured in the 1840s and 1850s. This should be remembered when we come to examine their responses to the land agitation of the 1880s.48 It seems likely then that Highland Free Church ministers in this period were increasingly drawn from crofting families. This ensured that Free Church ministers in the 1880s were more intimately acquainted with crofters’ poverty than at any previous period and helps explain their support for the crofters during the agitation. Whilst this is no doubt also true of some of the Established Church clergy in the 1880s, it appears to be the case that many older Establishment ministers retained close links with the gentry, factors, and large farmers. Prominent figures such as Donald Mackinnon, Strath, and Archibald Clerk, Kilmallie, were no doubt conscious of their social status and, as well as taking an active interest in agriculture, they retained much of the outlook of the older tacksman-class ministers.49 Given the marginalised position of roman catholics, baptists, and native episcopalians in the region it is probable that their clergy were preponderantly drawn from smallholding backgrounds. Strong maintains that, until anglicisation began to change the face of Highland episcopalianism after 1850, most episcopalian clergymen ‘came from the lower orders, such as sons of poorer tenant farmers and shopkeepers’. He makes an observation that could well be applied to other denominations, namely that the poverty of the clergy acted as a disincentive to those from wealthier backgrounds, whilst ‘the social status of clergymen as gentlemen . . . was probably an incentive to lower-class families already used to meagre wealth’.50 Above all else, the Gaelic language was the principle cause of Highland religious distinctiveness. James Lachlan MacLeod cogently argues that conservative Highland ministers in the 1880s ‘viewed Gaelic not only as a 47 48

49 50

See Richards, History of Clearances, i, 484 for George Rainy. Ewing, Annals, i, 214, 233, 281; Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, iv, 101, 118; vii, 204–5; D. E. Meek, ‘The Prophet of Waternish’, West Highland Free Press, 8 July, 1977, pp. 2–7. See 118–19, 171–4 for Mackinnon and Clerk. Strong, Episcopalianism, 88.

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particularly suitable language for the propagation of the Gospel – but as being extra-resistant to the “poison” of Biblical critics and the New Theology’. The notion of Gaelic being a theological and spiritual barrier to the inculcation of innovatory beliefs is given extra credence when the preponderance of translations of Puritan divinity in Gaelic is considered. For example, the Westminster Assembly’s Shorter Catechism went through almost one hundred Gaelic editions between 1659 and 1951. This corresponds with Robert Pope’s observation that the Welsh language acted as a barrier to the erosion of nonconformist Christianity and hindered the development of class-based political allegiances in Welsh-speaking areas in comparison with the more anglicised areas of the Principality in the early twentieth century.51 Thus, the religious tradition that was followed by most Highlanders in the nineteenth century, Evangelical presbyterianism, had also become intrinsically identified with the cultural identity of the region. This piety was both calvinist and evangelical and, critically, was deeply rooted in the communal life of the people. Through the medium of Gaelic-language preaching, the dissemination of the Gaelic Bible, catechising, and formal education, an activist evangelicalism transformed Highland society on reformed Christian principles in and through the language and cultural parameters of the nineteenth-century Gaidhealtachd. 2. Highland identity and culture 1855–80 Economic recovery and cultural assertiveness The decades between the famine and the crofters’ war were a time of relative economic stability and prosperity in the Highlands in comparison with the chronic destitution of previous decades.52 The chief cause of this upturn was the strength and success of the wider British economy in the period. Certainly the agricultural and commercial prosperity of Britain ensured a marked rise in the price of crofters’ livestock and, crucially, the increased potential for wage earning on a seasonal basis in the factories and farms of the Lowlands. The rise in crofters’ disposable incomes was supplemented by the expansion of the fishing industry, which allowed men 51

52

J. L. MacLeod, ‘The Influence of the Highland-Lowland Divide on the Free Presbyterian Disruption of 1893’, RSCHS, xxv (1995), 410; K. D. MacDonald, ‘Catechisms (Gaelic)’, DSCHT, 143. For a further discussion of the Puritan influence on Gaelic publications, see D. E. Meek, ‘Protestant Prose Publications in Gaelic’, DSCHT, 347–9; R. Pope, Building Jerusalem, Nonconformity, Labour and the Social Question in Wales, 1906–1939 (Cardiff, 1998), 117–20. For a fuller discussion of the economic condition of the region in the period 1855–80, see Hunter, Crofting Community, 158–86; I. M. M. MacPhail, ‘Prelude to the Crofters’ War 1870–80’, TGSI, xlix (1974–6), 159–88 and Crofters’ War, 1–24; T. C. Smout, ‘Scotland 1850–1950’, in F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain, (Cambridge, 1993 edn), 258–64 deals more generally with the Highland economy after the famine.

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from the crofting areas to work as crew on herring boats in the summer months (often women were employed as herring gutters). The white-fish industry was centred around the Outer Hebrides and employed considerable numbers of men, especially the virtually landless cottars, to fish for cod and ling throughout the winter. Economic growth was given added encouragement by developments in the communications infrastructure of the region. More frequent steamer services were operated between the northwest coast and the Clyde, which opened new markets for fish caught in the Minch. Railways were extended into the eastern Highlands in the 1860s, reaching the west coast in 1870, and telegraph services were introduced in the same period. The effect of these developments was to make the Highland economy more integrated with that of the south, and to introduce an element of material possession and financial self-reliance hitherto unknown in the region. As Hunter has demonstrated, however, the gains of the postfamine decades were relative to the absolute poverty of preceding years and also to the rising living standards elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Indeed, Devine has called into question the real extent of the economic recovery witnessed in this period. Michael Flinn has written of the region continuing to experience ‘the most acute social and economic problems’ throughout the second half of the century.53 Certainly, conditions in the crofting communities were still extremely poor, with standards of housing especially low. The majority of crofters still lived in poorly ventilated, thatched ‘black houses’, which were often shared with livestock during the winter. Estates used the threat of eviction widely and marriage among crofters’ sons was frequently forbidden in order to prevent the subdivision of holdings. Many – particularly those engaged in fishing – were constantly in debt to merchants, which, no doubt, bred a sense of insecurity. Above all, crofters were still denied security of tenure and the distribution of land was firmly in the favour of landlords, large tenant farmers, and, increasingly, sportsmen who rented vast tracts of land as deer forests. Although rentals remained fairly constant, there was a widespread shortage of arable and grazing land for crofters and cottars alike. But in spite of these caveats, the rise in living standards – although based on precarious foundations – was instrumental in raising expectations among younger crofters and in giving them a determination not to be plunged back into the misery of the destitution years. Simultaneous to economic stabilisation was the rise of a number of political, educational, and cultural factors which shaped the formation of a distinctively Highland voice on a range of issues. This trend is more noticeable in the 1870s than during the 1860s. For example, the spread of literacy increased through the widening of educational provision and 53

Hunter, Crofting Community, 163; Devine, Great Highland Famine, 273–300, and Devine, Clanship to Crofters’ War, 192–207; Flinn, Population History, 438.

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greatly encouraged the development of the vibrant local press, which existed in the region by the end of the 1870s. Indeed, it was in the realm of education that much pro-Gaelic sentiment was stirred up during the 1870s. The 1872 Education Act ignored the need to provide Gaelic in state schools and was the object of much criticism on this account from Highlanders and those sympathetic to the Gaelic language. The Liberal MP for Inverness Burghs, Charles Fraser Mackintosh, pressurised the Scottish Education Department into limited concessions over the teaching of Gaelic in Highland schools.54 The reluctance of the government to acknowledge the status of the language united pro-Gaelic sympathisers around the issue. Another related matter was the campaign to establish a Chair of Celtic at Edinburgh University. The campaign was spearheaded by John Stuart Blackie, professor of Greek at Edinburgh. Blackie indefatigably roused public sentiment in favour of the proposed Chair and was eventually successful in gathering £14,000 as an endowment. The campaign was widely publicised in Highland newspapers and seems to have excited considerable interest from many ordinary Highlanders. The churches had a keen interest in the establishment of the Celtic Chair since Thomas MacLauchlan and Alexander Cameron had lectured on Gaelic for a number of years in the Edinburgh and Glasgow Free Church Colleges. At the 1875 Free Church General Assembly, Blackie solicited Free Church support for the Chair, which was welcomed by John Kennedy of Dingwall and Robert Rainy of New College, Edinburgh. Kennedy stated, ‘I like to see the language prized in which I prefer to speak to God.’ Referring to Blackie’s labours on behalf of the Gaelic cause, Kennedy stated that ‘his warm heart could not but open up to us when he knew that so many of us were oppressed and poor’.55 Another concurrent development was the formation of Gaelic and Highland societies in the Lowland cities and towns. These associations were often ‘territorial’ – membership being open to natives of particular Highland districts – and reflected a partly sentimental attachment to ‘the land of the bens and glens’ and partly the philanthropic spirit of the mid-Victorian bourgeoisie. More importantly, the Highland societies were the means whereby the Gaelic diaspora of industrial Scotland began to articulate a more assertive cultural – and eventually political – vision of the Gaidhealtachd. MacPhail states that, in the 1870s, ‘there was a tremendous upsurge of Gaelic sentiment and a growing awareness of their Gaelic heritage among the exiled Highlanders and Islesmen in the large cities’.56 Indeed, a Federation of Celtic Societies was formed in 1878 as an umbrella organisation for the growing 54

55

56

Ewen A. Cameron, The Life and Times of Fraser Mackintosh, Crofter MP (Aberdeen, 2000) (Cameron, Fraser Mackintosh), 68–72. PDGAFCS, 1875, 197; see Blackie’s Gaelic Societies, Highland Depopulation and Land Law Reform (Edinburgh, 1880) and The Scottish Highlanders and the Land Laws (London, 1885). MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 7–8.

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proliferation of Gaelic and Highland organisations. Despite internal tensions between radicals and moderates, the Federation of Celtic Societies quickly gained a reputation for promoting land reform in the Highlands. As Andrew Newby observes, this body was in existence before the formation of those organisations which lay behind the outbreak of the Irish Land War in 1879.57 City-based ministers were often involved in these associations and very frequently gave speeches at formal dinners and gatherings. Ministers from the actual areas in the Highlands represented by the territorial associations were rarely involved, however. John Kennedy, Dingwall, for example, declined an invitation to chair a meeting of the Glasgow Ross-shire Association in early 1875.58 This reluctance probably reflects a combination of the distances involved in travelling and, perhaps more importantly, unwillingness among conservative Highland ministers to become involved in mixed worldly social activities. The growing pro-Gaelic and pro-Highland feeling fostered by the urban Highland associations was vital, MacPhail argues, for indirectly ‘bringing the condition of the crofter before a wider public and eventually towards the rectification of their grievances’. He concludes that ‘[t]he agitation of the 1880s in favour of land law reform started mainly in the cities’. Hunter’s Marxist-influenced account, on the other hand, concentrates rather on the economic situation of the crofting region, and he prefers to emphasise the role of the crofters themselves as opposed to that of the urban, émigré Gaels.59 The renewed appreciation of peasant communities and customary social organisation in this period led many to adopt a more positive view of contemporary Gaelic society and culture. Although it was not universally accepted, this view was disseminated in Scotland through the influential writings of W. F. Skene and paralleled the economic apologia for peasant proprietorship that had been offered by John Stuart Mill and William Thornton since the late 1840s. This trend accompanied a revived interest in ancient Celtic customary law stimulated by the publication of the Brehon law tracts from 1865.60 Clive Dewey draws attention to the links between the agitation of the 1880s and the ‘rehabilitation of the customary and the collective at the expense of the contractual and the individual’ which occurred in the 1860s and 1870s. In the Scottish context, he argues, these links were demonstrated by the prevalence of ministers and lawyers in the Celtic revivalism of the 1870s and in the agitation of the 1880s: ‘the Land Leagues of the ’eighties . . . were led by clergy and lawyers who were members of 57

58 59 60

A. G. Newby, ‘ “Shoulder to Shoulder”? Scottish and Irish Land Reformers in the Highlands of Scotland, 1878–94’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Edinburgh, 2001) (Newby, ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’), 40–2, 353. Highlander, 6 Mar. 1875, p. 6. MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 8, 88; Hunter, Crofting Community, 158–86, especially 185–6. William F. Skene, Celtic Scotland: A History of Ancient Alban, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1876–80); for J. S. Mill, see Zastoupil, ‘Moral Government’; for William Thornton’s advocacy of peasant proprietorship, see Gray, Famine, Land and Politics, 12–13, 155–6.

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Celtic societies co-ordinated in a concerted drive for land reform in a national federation’.61 John Shaw has been concerned to analyse the outside influences on the creation of a distinctive Highland ‘peoplehood’ in the period. Like Dewey, he draws on historicist-inspired reconstructions of the benefits of peasant proprietorship and intertwines these with Celtic cultural revivalism. Shaw correctly identifies land as the foundation for the developing ideology of crofters’ grievances: ‘It connected a “volk” concept of “the Highland people” with the people that lived in the Highlands.’ The result was a marriage of ‘land and community and this fusion structured and filled out political argument’.62 Communitarian ideologies were fostered by Celtic revivalism in the cities and given historical credence by the identification of the Highlanders as the last vestiges of the ‘Celtic nation’. A weakness in Shaw’s analysis, however, is his unwillingness to attribute weight to the traditional patriarchal notion of duthchas, which, as Withers has shown, became a potent selfjustificatory weapon in crofters’ hands during the 1880s. Duthchas is perhaps best described as complex admixture of familial and cultural affinity, atavistic attachment to the inherited patrimony of the kindred, and loyalty to an aristocratic elite who had been viewed in the past as the protectors of the people. This concept provided the crofters with a definite sense of their historical and moral claim to the land. Furthermore, Shaw regrettably does not address the extent to which Christianity influenced notions of Highland ‘peoplehood’.63 It is undeniable that a major factor in the development of resistance to landlord power in the Highlands was the Celtic revival and its concomitant political influence upon an educated and sympathetic group in the cities. The dialectical tension between an internal or external origin for the resistance of the 1880s can best be resolved, perhaps, by not regarding the cultural, externalist argument and the materialist, internalist case as being incompatible. Only when economic conditions in both Lowlands and Highlands seriously affected the crofting economy in the early 1880s were distinctively Gaelic notions of identity, such as duthchas, harnessed with radical, activist solutions to the region’s problems. In early 1874 the first signs of the growing impatience with the existing order were seen at Bernera, a small island lying off the west coast of Lewis. The Bernera dispute centred upon grazing land which had been taken from the crofters and had been replaced with inferior land twice within the previous two years. On 24 March, when more than fifty eviction 61

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63

Clive Dewey, ‘Celtic Agrarian Legislation and the Celtic Revival: Historicist Implications of Gladstone’s Irish and Scottish Land Acts 1870–86’, Past and Present, lxiv (1974), 55. John Shaw, ‘Land, People and Nation: Historicist Voices in the Highland Land Campaign 1850–83’, in Biagini, Citizenship and Community (Shaw, ‘Land, People and Nation’), 306. For more discussion of duthchas, see Withers, Gaelic Scotland, 77–8, 330–2, 414–15; Devine, Clanship to Crofters’ War, 214–15; Sharon MacDonald, Reimagining Culture, Histories, Identities and the Gaelic Renaissance (Oxford, 1997), 76; Smout, Century of Scottish People, 62–78.

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summonses were served on the Bernera crofters, the sheriff officer was involved in a scuffle with some men and later reported to the authorities that he had been assaulted. At the subsequent trial the three accused Bernera men were acquitted of assault. Although churchmen took no part in the events surrounding the case, the Bernera incident engendered sympathy from beyond the crofting community, and thus marks the embryonic beginnings of the rapprochement between the crofters and outside sympathisers which characterised the agitation in the 1880s. Devine stresses the importance of such external support to counteract landlord eviction policy: Only in the second half of the nineteenth century, and particularly from the 1870s could the Highland people count on vigorous support from external political forces and by then mass clearance had come to an end.64 Economic recovery, however fragile, could only have the effect of raising crofters’ expectations, especially when combined with a more confident cultural voice. The stage was gradually being set for a political assertion of Highland rights. John Murdoch and the Highlander Sheila Kidd’s analysis of the prose writings of Alexander MacGregor, Established Church minister of Kilmuir and latterly of Inverness, highlights the 1870s as the peak period for the publication of Gaelic prose in the second half of the century. Social and demographic change affected Gaelic literary output at this time and Kidd maintains that: ‘It is no coincidence that the change in the distribution of Gaelic speakers coincided with the emergence of a Gaelic press.’ The political significance of the new, popular press is discussed by Kidd: The press must be seen as one of the single most important factors in achieving a heightened profile for the Highlands in the 1870s and in increasing the confidence of the pro-crofter voice. The importance of the press has also been noted by other historians.65 Whilst the increase in Gaelic literary output was a manifestation of the social and cultural awakening of Gaelic society, Kidd believes that the outward show of confidence exhibited by this apparent Gaelic revival . . . was arguably a manifestation of a certain lack of confidence, since the focus of this revival was very much on the past, indicating a need to seek 64 65

Devine, Clanship to Crofters’ War, 214. Kidd, ‘Prose Writings’, 31; Hunter, Crofting Community, 185; Iain Fraser Grigor, Mightier than a Lord: The Highland Crofters’ Struggle for the Land (Stornoway, 1979), 35–6; MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 10–12.

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reassurance, instead of consciously looking to the present and the future. She maintains that the salient exception to the nostalgic literature was the Highlander, a weekly newspaper published in Inverness and edited by John Murdoch. Although primarily an English-language publication, the paper also contained many Gaelic articles and leaders.66 The Highlander certainly presented an optimistic view of the future of the Gaelic people, having the specific aim of enthusing them with a revitalised sense of the importance of their culture and effecting their political and economic emancipation. Hunter sees Murdoch as the linchpin in uniting urban and crofting Gaels alike in favour of land reform during the 1870s. According to Shaw, Murdoch went beyond traditional defences of the customary rights of Highland tenants and ‘addressed the Highland land question in ways that assumed continuity between the land and a putative nation’.67 Murdoch’s prescription for the Highlands was for the people of the region to take control of their own destiny through land reform and a renewed appreciation of their Gaelic heritage. Indeed, it is probably true to suggest that Murdoch was responsible for nurturing the cultural reawakening of Gaelic Scotland more than any other individual. Murdoch’s childhood exposed him to conditions across a wide area of the Highlands, and his career as an exciseman enabled him to compare the Highlands with his experiences in Ireland and England. These encounters contributed to Murdoch’s radicalism, especially his sympathy for Irish nationalism. Although Murdoch was influenced by the Kilsyth revival of 1839 and had a deep reverence for the Bible, he distrusted organised religion and especially the credal and denominational structures of ‘establishmentarian’ Christianity. James Hunter has written of Murdoch’s ‘profound, if idiosyncratic, Christian faith’.68 It is hard to pin Murdoch down theologically since he avoided identifying himself with one particular body. Although it seems that he was thoroughly committed to maintaining the traditional protestant emphasis on the centrality of biblical exposition, he was undoubtedly more tolerant of liberal biblical criticism than Highland Free Church ministers. It is often difficult to distinguish between the theological and political aspects of Murdoch’s thought, since he maintained very strongly that politics and social questions ought to be viewed through a biblical lens: ‘the Bible is really the best text book in political and social matters as well as in moral and spiritual’.69 Certainly, there are 66 67

68 69

Kidd, ‘Prose writings’, 43. Shaw, ‘Land, People and Nation’, 308; Cameron, Fraser Mackintosh, 45–50; Hunter, Crofting Community, 185–6; see also Hunter (ed.), For the People’s Cause: From the Writings of John Murdoch (Edinburgh, 1986) (Hunter, For the People’s Cause), drawn from Murdoch’s MS Autobiography, Mitchell Library, Glasgow. Hunter, For the People’s Cause, 11. Highlander, 21 Nov. 1874, p. 4.

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many analogies with the evangelical scheme of redemption in Murdoch’s theories and his writings are suffused with biblical allusion and argument. One example of this feature is his belief that the Gaels were in a state of bondage and slavish fear of landlords and factors. In April 1875 he complained, ‘tha eagal nan uachdran, nam baillidh, ’s nam maor a lionadh cridheachan ar luchd duthcha’ [fear of the landlords, factors and bailiffs fills the hearts of our countrymen]. He went on to allege that he was the recipient of many anonymous letters complaining of the oppression endured by the crofters: Tha litrichean againn às a h-uile cearn d’ an Ghaidhealtachd a’ gearran air a chruadail a tha daoine bochd a fulann, ach tha na sgriobhaichean a’ guidhe oirnn gun fhios a leigeil do dhuine tha beo cò sgriobh, air eagal ’s gu’m bi iad air an cur às an cuid fearainn! [Translation:] We have letters from every part of the Highlands complaining of the hardship that poor people are suffering, but the writers plead with us not to reveal to anyone who wrote for fear that they will be evicted from their holdings! Yet Murdoch suggested the answer was in the Gaels’ own hands, ‘feumaidh na Gaidheil dusgadh suas agus an tamailt a chrathadh dhiu’ [the Gaels must wake up and shake this oppression off]. He pointed to the case of a widow from Assynt to demonstrate the importance of religion in steeling the hearts of the Highland people to face up to their landlords: Anns a chùis a th’ againn an so, chi sinn air an laimh eile mar a chur eagal agus urram Dhè gaisge ann an cridhe na bantraich. Ann an lathair Dhè, cha ’n fhac ise ach duine gle shuarrach anns a bhàillidh; ’s mar so, cha robh aona chuid meas aic’ air, no eagal oirre roimh . . . sann a dh’fhàs ise mòr ’na shuilean-san, ’nuair a chunnaic e mar a bha i air a cumail suas . . .70 [Translation:] In this case, we see on the other hand how the fear and honour of God put courage in the heart of the widow. In the presence of God she saw the factor to be a most dishonourable man and so, she had absolutely no respect for him or fear of him . . . then she grew in his estimation, when he saw how she was [being] upheld . . . It was thus apparent to Murdoch that religion had a very important role to play in enabling Highlanders to resist oppression and he frequently linked the land question with religious debates. His attitude to the churches, and to ministers in particular, was less straightforward. Whilst recognising the positive moral effects and the potential political influence of presbyterianism, Murdoch used his editorials to extensively criticise the institutional religion of the Highlands. Murdoch reckoned 70

Highlander, 3 Apr. 1875, p. 3.

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if the one-tenth part of what reaches us on the state of the clergy be true, they are doing more than their fair share to send people elsewhere in quest of righteousness and truth.71 Again, he stated in 1876: ‘It is notorious how little the voice of the Scotch clergy, Established or Free, has been raised against the high-handed work of depopulation which has desolated the land’. The Highlander’s district correspondents similarly echoed Murdoch’s criticisms. For example, ‘W’ from Durness, Sutherland, commented that some ministers had forgotten the rock from which they were hewn, and they prefer to rub shoulders with gentlemen farmers, factors and the like, to giving a cup of water, or a morsel of aid to one of the poor crofters. A correspondent from Applecross, Wester Ross, wrote: there are thousands of acres of valuable land between Cruarie, Hartfield, and Hartfield Glen that could be converted into a perfect paradise in comparison to what it is. Our clergy are ‘dumb dogs’ so far as this is concerned.72 A central plank in Murdoch’s critique was his contention that Highland Evangelicals were overly concerned with theological and spiritual abstractions and with ecclesiastical debate. This tendency made Highlanders ‘very orthodox theologians, tenacious in their opinions and narrow in their sympathies; but they find nothing in all this church teaching which comes to bear upon the practical concerns of life’. The solution, he argued, was for the churches to take a more active role in practical and social concerns. He advocated, for example, a ‘short, sharp and vigorous campaign carried on by the clergy with a view to a change in the land laws’. Murdoch believed this ‘would do more to raise the spirits and improve the character of the people, than all the church schemes have done since the Disruption’. He was fairly critical of the past role of ministers during the clearances, but noted that ministerial attitudes to landlords frequently became more critical after the Disruption.73 There is evidence that Murdoch was influenced by premillennialist ideas with regard to the return of the Jews to Palestine and the coming of Christ’s kingdom on earth. At the height of the eastern crisis between Russia and Turkey, Murdoch (in common with many radicals) took a distinctly hostile attitude to Turkey: The Turk must be suppressed, his power in Europe must be dried up; and he must be removed out of the way of the fulfilment of the purposes of God in regard to his own people. 71

72 73

Highlander, 30 Oct. 1875, p. 4; see also 7 Jun. 1873, p. 8; 10 Jan. 1874, p. 9; 26 Sep. 1874, p. 5; 16 Oct. 1875, p. 4; Meek, ‘Land Question answered from the Bible’, 84–9. Highlander, 30 Sep. 1876, p. 5; 20 Oct. 1877, pp. 7–8; 27 Oct. 1877, p. 7. Highlander, 6 Apr. 1878, p. 4; see also 16 Oct. 1875, p. 4; 6 May, 1876, p. 5.

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He also praised the Tsar for the emancipation of the serfs.74 The concept of a people’s restoration to ancestral lands, whether Jews or Gaels, was highly significant for Murdoch. His anti-Ottoman outburst was soon followed by a letter in the Highlander from ‘MacNicol’ which used striking eschatological imagery to link the conversion of the Jews and the Highland land question: When these things come to pass Highlanders will share the benefits promised; they will be God’s people, and He will be their God. Christ Jesus is now about to appear to those that look for Him, not as the sinbearer, but as a Saviour from temporal adversity. The moment the restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel to Palestine takes place, that moment will begin the final struggle between iniquity and righteousness. With the beneficent rule of the Prince of Peace all iniquitous land laws will cease. It is our duty to look with longing expectation for the return of Christ, whom we shall see, when we have learned to cry in sincerity, ‘Blessed is He who cometh in the name of the Lord.’75 Another theme from biblical redemption which Murdoch employed was that of ‘liberation’ from bondage and oppression. Using the Exodus narrative analogously for the land question, Murdoch characterised landlords as tyrants in the manner of Pharaoh and crofters as the oppressed children of Israel. This theme is not as clearly developed in his writings of the 1870s as it was by the early 1880s and this reflects the changed political circumstances of the latter decade. His criticisms of ministers in the 1870s are frequently an attempt to cajole them into adopting the land reform agenda and this partly explains the abundance of scripture proof-texts in his writings; Murdoch was attempting to convince ministers and others of the theological soundness of his opinions. By the 1880s, however, with the eruption of disturbances in the crofting areas there was less need to appeal to the ministers. In 1883 Murdoch published a land reform pamphlet, Iubile nan Gàidheal, Fuasgladh an Fhearainn a-réir a’ Bhiobuill, or ‘The Highlanders’ Jubilee: The Land Question answered from the Bible’. This tract could be read as an attempt to demonstrate the intrinsic scriptural validity of land reform to a crofter audience without recourse to the teaching authority of the ministry.76 In the 1870s, nevertheless, Murdoch did use ‘liberationist’ language to encourage ministers to play an active role in the future of the Highlands. He was convinced that the clergy needed to preach a message which placed as much emphasis on optimistic, ‘practical issues of the soul’ as much as on sin and redemption. If they combined this with leading a land 74

75 76

Highlander, 8 Sep. 1877, p. 4. Premillennialist eschatology was rare in the Highlands and is further evidence of Murdoch’s religious eclecticism. Highlander, 13 Oct. 1877, p. 6. Ian MacMhurchaidh, Iubile nan Gàidheal: Fuasgladh an Fhearainn a-réir a’ Bhiobuill (Glasgow, 1883) (MacMhurchaidh, lubile nan Gáidheal). For more on this subject see 161–3 below. ‘Liberationist’ has no reference in this context to the Liberation Society and the campaign for church disestablishment.

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reform campaign, he believed the ministers ‘will have a brave and independent people to lead into Canaan’.77 Murdoch heavily condemned the Free Church leadership in the Highlands for their attitude to the Union controversy in the early 1870s and during the heresy trial of William Robertson Smith during 1878–80. Whilst Murdoch professed great admiration for the Lowland minister James Begg and described him as ‘one of the ablest and most enlightened social and economic reformers in Scotland’, he deprecated Begg’s conservative approach to ecclesiastical politics.78 John Kennedy of Dingwall, who co-operated very closely with Begg during the Union controversy, was also the recipient of severe criticism in the Highlander. Murdoch even accused Kennedy of ‘bearing false witness against his neighbour’ and of ‘trying to poison the public mind’ after Kennedy’s condemnation of articles written by Robertson Smith for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.79 Murdoch charged the Free Church leaders in the Highlands with diverting the people from practical issues and with fostering an uncharitable attitude to ecclesiastical and wider political issues. He expected prominent ministers to speak out against imperialistic wars in Afghanistan and Zululand and was savage in his condemnation when criticism of Beaconsfield’s policy was not forthcoming: Of what use is all they say and do to keep up a pure system of theological opinion, so long as they cherish a thirst for blood, or so long as they have not the courage to speak out if they do not approve.80 Most ministers, including Kennedy, would likely have regarded Murdoch as something of a maverick and were generally silent regarding his criticisms. Such an absence of correspondence defending the ministers may be attributable to the fact that the Highlander had a low circulation and was probably rarely read by ministers. Alternatively, Murdoch may simply have refused to print replies. Yet, notwithstanding his trenchant criticisms, Murdoch recognised that the moral weight of the ministers was vital to future hopes of land reform. When the wider question of the condition of Scottish agriculture became the subject of both political and ecclesiastical concern in 77 78

79 80

Highlander, 6 Apr. 1878, p. 4. Highlander, 18 Apr. 1879, pp. 4–5. Murdoch had previously suggested that Begg should be invited to stand as a candidate for Inverness-shire in the 1874 General Election, Highlander, 21 Mar. 1874, p. 9. For Begg’s social and political views in the 1870s, see The Ecclesiastical and Social Evils of Scotland and How to Remedy Them (Edinburgh, 1871); Scottish Public Affairs, Civil and Ecclesiastical: A letter to the Right Hon. the Earl of Beaconsfield, with special reference to the coming General Election, and the advent of Mr Gladstone to Scotland (Edinburgh, 1879). Highlander, 18 Aug. 1880, p. 4. Highlander, 25 Apr. 1879, p. 4. For a fine example of Kennedy’s political views couched in imperialist and militaristic metaphor and contained within an evangelical homily, see An Address to Volunteers, delivered at the opening of the new Drill Hall, Bonar Bridge, in April 1880 (Edinburgh, 1886). Kennedy touches on the need for political and social reform in this pamphlet, 6; see also ‘Society examined by Conic Sections’ in Auld, Life of Kennedy, 311–15.

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light of the depression of the late 1870s, Murdoch was ‘glad they are moving in the matter’ and hoped they will work their way to the root of the evils complained of. We may differ with ministers sometimes, but we are always mindful that of all men, their business, and as a rule, their aim, is to do good.81 Despite its limited readership the Highlander was recognised as vital in enthusing Gaels with a sense of the importance of taking action in the political sphere to defend their cultural heritage. To accomplish this task Murdoch was aware of the need to enlist the support of the institutional churches and of the ministers in particular. His criticisms of the clergy reflect the impatience of a radical critic of not only the social status quo but also the religious situation in the Gaidhealtachd. Nonetheless, Murdoch was quick to recognise the potential of the ministry as an agent for social reform and was quite certain of the positive effects of Evangelicalism in encouraging Highlanders to criticise the actions and motives of landlords and factors. It is ironic that by the time the Gaelic people finally arose from their passivity the parlous finances of Murdoch’s visionary publication had forced it out of business and silenced its voice. John Kennedy and the Highland Host John Murdoch was pre-eminent among those who grounded their political vision in concepts of the distinctiveness of the Gaelic people. Another prominent figure – in this instance within the religious sphere – was John Kennedy, Free Church minister of Dingwall, Ross-shire. Kennedy’s contribution to the articulation of Highland distinctiveness in this period was massive. Kennedy’s views were adumbrated in a number of books and pamphlets, the most expansive of which was The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire, originally published in 1861.82 Although semi-biographical sketches of past evangelical leaders comprise a great deal of the work, The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire was essentially an apologia for contemporary Highland Presbyterian spirituality. Kennedy was obviously attempting to define the distinctive features of Highland evangelicalism in order to defend it from corrosive outside influences. Donald Meek argues that Kennedy, like many others before and after, was highly influenced by romantic ideas of a spiritual golden age in his portrayal of Ross-shire Presbyterianism.83 In The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire Kennedy drew a clear distinction between the religion of the Lowlands and that of the Highlands; the former 81 82

83

Highlander, 14 Mar. 1879, p. 4. For an overview of Kennedy’s publications, see Alan P. F. Sell, Declaring and Defending the Faith, Some Scottish Examples 1860–1920 (Exeter, 1987) (Sell, Defending and Declaring the Faith), 17–38. Donald E. Meek, The Quest for Celtic Christianity (Edinburgh, 2000), 214–21, 229.

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he regarded as inferior to the more intensely subjective spirituality of the latter. In an uncompromising chapter on the distinctive nature of Highland piety and religiosity, Kennedy accused ‘the southrons’ of misrepresenting Highland spirituality. Although Alan Sell has written that Kennedy ‘did not encourage undue introspection’, he did characterise Lowland religion as tending to ‘an arid objectiveness’ in the contemplation of Divine truth. Kennedy defended Highland Christians from accusations of gloominess, suggesting that they were ‘grave not gloomy’ and ‘free from frivolity’. Regarding those who raised such accusations, Kennedy believed ‘if they had more true godliness, and some common sense, they would refrain from casting aspersions on the memories of these men of God’. Similarly, he defended the practice of granting baptism to the children of parents who were not communicant members of the Church. In the discussion of this point he referred to ‘the hosts across the Spey who are marshalled against him’.84 Bombastic rhetoric of this kind indicates that Kennedy was acutely aware of his own position as leader of a rearguard action being waged against modernising trends. This can further be seen in a letter which Kennedy wrote in reply to a request from John Stuart Blackie concerning the historical reasons for the distinctive teachings on admission to the sacraments defended by Kennedy in The Days of the Fathers in Ross-shire: I must say that your letter, anent the decision of last assembly, in the Smith case, marred as it is by flagrant uncharitableness, immaturity of thought quite embryonic, and strength of statement ludicrously extreme, affords sufficient proof of your unfitness to form a wise estimate of the state of religion in the Highlands or elsewhere . . . The advocate of theatric [sic] exhibitions and of Sabbath amusements – the man whose code of morals seems to be ‘the book of sports’ and, who once and again, has given from a pulpit, on a Sabbath evening, a sample of stage antics – cannot be tolerant of a religion marked by earnestness of feeling, and by holy walking in the fear of God.85 Kennedy’s bellicosity also demonstrates a shift in emphasis in Highland evangelicalism in the second half of the century. The period from circa 1780 to 1850 was a time of tremendous expansion for evangelical religion in the Gaidhealtachd. Once the challenges of the Disruption were overcome, however, Highland evangelical religion entered into a period of consolidation and, perhaps, defensiveness, in the face of the rapid changes affecting Scottish society in the second half of the century. Evangelicalism had ceased to grow in strength through mass revivalism and ‘awakenings’, such as had 84 85

Sell, Defending and Declaring the Faith, 33; Kennedy, Days of the Fathers, 103, 113. NLS, MS 2634 fo 74, Blackie Correspondence, Kennedy to Blackie, 25 July, 1881. Blackie frequently lectured from Free Church pulpits in Edinburgh and elsewhere. His theatrical behaviour aroused controversy. These strong words must be set against the friendly remarks which Kennedy offered about Blackie in the 1875 General Assembly, see above 76.

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characterised the earlier period. In 1861 Kennedy was deliberately evoking the ‘days of the fathers’ in order to preserve and recapture the spiritual energy which had once conquered Gaelic society. In spite of his desire to re-awaken his countrymen, Kennedy did not, of course, hold to a synergistic conception of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, whether in individuals or in the kind of larger revivals which could transform whole societies. A number of his published works drew him into controversy, especially when he criticised the methods of Moody and Sankey’s mission in 1874 for tending towards Arminianism. Kennedy was distinctly aware that a more liberal form of evangelicalism was developing in the southern Free Church and that this was accompanied by an assault on the theological, liturgical, and ecclesiological standards of the Church of 1843. In his vigorous rebuttal of liberalising tendencies Kennedy was firmly identifying Highland evangelicalism with the defence of traditional Scottish presbyterian calvinism.86 The effect of this was to alienate Lowland progressive sentiment from the Highlanders. Simultaneously, Highland evangelicals became increasingly sceptical about the virtues of Lowland religion. In theological terms, the Highlands remained a bastion of the conservative, evangelical emphasis on the atonement. In his study of Scottish evangelical homiletics W. G. Enright noticed that the period from 1855 until 1880 witnessed a subtle shift towards a more liberal evangelical incarnationalism in many urban, Lowland Free Church pulpits.87 This movement was paralleled by the growth of higher critical views of scripture largely introduced by Professors influenced by German philological and archaeological opinion now teaching in the Free Church’s seminaries. At the 1878 Free Church General Assembly, while the disestablishment debate was raging, John Mactavish – by now a prominent Free Church minister in Inverness – seconded Begg’s motion censuring a heterodox sermon by the radical biblical critic Marcus Dods. Mactavish stated that although he was a supporter of disestablishment, the Dods case was much more important because it related to ‘the accuracy of the Word of God and its inspiration’. Whilst Dods had referred to ‘inaccuracies in the gospels and 86

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John Kennedy, Hyper-Evangelism ‘Another Gospel’ Though a Mighty Power: A Review of the Recent Religious Movement in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1874); A Reply to Dr Bonar’s Defence of HyperEvangelism (Edinburgh, 1875); also The Distinctive Principles and Present Position and Duty of the Free Church (Edinburgh, 1875). For more military metaphor, see Air Coimh-Suidheachadh Eaglais na h-Alba, agus a Daimhibh ri Eaglaisibh Cleireach Eile ann an coimh-cheangal ris an Achd leis an do chuireadh a’ Phatronachd air chul (Edinburgh, 1876), 3, where Kennedy deals with the repeal of patronage in the Established Church; Letter to the Members of the Free Church in the Highlands (Edinburgh, 1876); An Gluasad airson an Eaglais a’ Dhealachadh o’n Staid: Earail do Mhuinntir na h-Eaglais Shàoir anns a’ Ghaidhealtachd (Edinburgh, 1882). See also J. A. Smith, ‘Free Church Constitutionalists and the Establishment Principle’, Northern Scotland, 22 (2002), (Smith, ‘Free Church Constitutionalists’); 99–119. W. G. Enright, ‘Preaching and Theology in Scotland in the Nineteenth Century: A Study of the Context and Content of the Evangelical Sermon’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Edinburgh, 1968), 383.

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elsewhere’ in his sermon on ‘Revelation and Inspiration’, Mactavish vehemently defended the verbal inspiration of the autographs of scripture from the floor of the Assembly.88 In doing so he was articulating the horror felt by Highland evangelicals at the latitudinarian approach to the doctrine of scripture which was becoming manifest in certain sections of the Free Church by the late 1870s. As James Lachlan MacLeod has demonstrated, these divisions were largely a result of changed intellectual, religious, and social currents affecting the Lowland Free Church. Lowland receptivity to innovation widened the existing cleavages with the Free Church of the north. Social and cultural differences did not threaten the unity of Lowland and Highland presbyterians in the Established Church before 1843, or in the Free Church afterwards, until the intellectual and theological changes of the latter decades of the century transformed the nature of Lowland presbyterianism. MacLeod shows that the Lowland acceptance of Darwinian theory and the rise of higher critical methods of biblical interpretation were most apparent during the 1880s and 1890s. Yet it is important to see the longer-term reactions of the two sections of the Free Church to modern science, culture, and religious sentiment as being well established from the 1870s at least. MacLeod nonetheless cautions against seeing every debate and divergence as simply a manifestation of an irreconcilable Highland–Lowland, conservative–liberal dichotomy. Noting the presence of a substantial body of middle-ground opinion in most of the debates, he argues: ‘the presence of two increasingly divergent points of view was becoming more and more obvious, although what was actually happening was the fragmentation of a denomination into many different groups’.89 Despite such caveats MacLeod’s thesis is predicated on the underlying historical alienation of the Highlands from the Lowlands which, he believes, was exacerbated in the Victorian era. This position seems rather shaky, however, in view of the further integration of the Highlands into the wider Scottish society and economy in this period. Notwithstanding, MacLeod is correct to stress the alienation felt by many in the Highlands towards Lowland religious culture and the incomprehension with which Lowlanders – frequently buttressed in their opinions by theories of economic, social, and even racial superiority – looked upon Highland society and religion. Although MacLeod somewhat overstates the race issue in his argument, he is no doubt justified in drawing attention to the importance of perceived racial differences in the formation of Lowland attitudes: ‘Race became the key whenever the Highlanders acted in a way which the Lowlanders in the Free Church could not explain.’ He claims that 88

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PDGAFCS, 1878, 248. For a discussion of Dods’s views, see MacLeod, Second Disruption, 63–73. MacLeod, Second Disruption, 50; see also A. C. Cheyne, The Transforming of the Kirk: Victorian Scotland’s Religious Revolution (Edinburgh, 1983), 37–59.

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the language, the religion and the race became inexorably linked, and prejudice towards the one often accompanied hostility towards the other two. By the nineteenth century, rigorous Westminster Calvinism, the Gaelic language and the Highland Celtic race were tied together in a doomed triplicity. If one went they all went.90 The Highland–Lowland cleavage became apparent during the ‘Union controversy’ from 1863 to 1873. The majority of the Lowland Free Church came to desire union with the United Presbyterian Church. This was opposed by a minority led by Begg and Kennedy primarily on the grounds that the United Presbyterian Church had adopted a voluntary position on church–state relations and had consequently rejected the establishment principle. There were also objections to the teaching of certain United Presbyterian ministers regarding the doctrine of the atonement. Kennedy especially objected to the idea that there was in any sense a ‘double reference’ to the non-elect in the atonement. In other words, whilst agreeing that the atonement of Christ ‘is sufficient for all, is adapted to all, and is offered to all’, Kennedy rejected the view held in some quarters of the United Presbyterian Church ‘that the Lord Jesus made satisfaction to the justice of God for the sins of all men without exception’. After Begg resigned from the Free Church’s committee on Union in 1867, he enlisted Kennedy’s support in a campaign of organised resistance to the Union proposals, especially in the General Assembly. This minority campaign was successful enough to defer the Union for nearly thirty years – the Free Church did not unite with the United Presbyterians until 1900.91 Since the bulk of the anti-Unionist, ‘constitutionalist’ support came from the Highlands, Kennedy and Begg became known as the leaders of the ‘Highland host’ after the uncomplimentary term originally given to a Royalist force stationed in Galloway and Ayrshire during the persecution of the Covenanters in the 1670s. The notion of reactionary and intransigent Highlanders retarding the development of a ‘progressive Church passing through the transitions of the nineteenth century’ was apparent in statements made by many Lowland Free Church leaders in this period.92 Patrick Carnegie Simpson, the biographer of Robert Rainy, in a condescending and unsubstantiated fashion attributed the differences between the two sections in the Free Church to race: ‘The conflict within the Free Church,’ he asserted, was one ‘of two races, two worlds, of what many forces were 90

91

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MacLeod, Second Disruption, 155; MacLeod, ‘The Influence of the Highland–Lowland Divide on the Free Presbyterian Disruption of 1893’, RSCHS, xxv (1995), 407. Auld, Life of Kennedy, 102–3. Ian Hamilton discusses the theological position of the United Presbyterian Church in The Erosion of Calvinist Orthodoxy (Edinburgh, 1990). For conflicting accounts of the Union controversy, see, for example, Auld, Life of Kennedy, 102–4; Patrick C. Simpson, The Life of Principal Rainy, 1 vol. edn (London, 1909) (Simpson, Life of Rainy), 148–201, 440–6. Simpson, Life of Rainy, 450–1; MacLeod, Second Disruption, 161.

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tending to make almost two religions.’ Shunning any attempt to understand the alternative viewpoint, Simpson argued that Highlanders tended to follow their leaders, many of whom ‘hardened the people in an irreconcilable hostility and fanaticised them against the south doctrinally as well as ecclesiastically’. This spirit of animosity was, Simpson argued, an alien importation into the Highlands at the hands of Begg and Kennedy: ‘Dr Begg did not create the division between the Highlands and the Church of the south. That division, I repeat, is racial. But Dr Begg fomented faction within it.’93 In 1873 Robert Candlish charged Highlanders with ignorance of the principles of the United Presbyterian Church, which had so few congregations in the north. ‘This ignorance of Highlanders,’ John Murdoch pointed out in the Highlander, turning Candlish’s argument on its head, ‘was a convenient argument against the Free Church as a whole, some thirty years ago’. Murdoch went on to suggest that part of the antipathy of Highlanders to the United Presbyterians was found in more prosaic matters than perhaps Kennedy and the Highland constitutionalists claimed: We make the deliberate statement that here, as in a thousand other instances, the land question has very properly and naturally a great deal more to do [with anti-unionism] than most people take the trouble to think. It is worthy of being given as a morsel for their consideration that, without any fault on the part of the present members and ministers of the U. P. Church, the originals of it were associated in an unfortunate way in the minds of Highlanders, with clearances and consolidation of farms. Rightly or wrongly, Highlanders in many cases looked upon the Relief Churches as, in some measure, the churches of those who came into their country to take the land from under their feet, and the houses from over their heads; and until this tradition is wiped out, and until the good and able men in the U.P. Churches in the Highlands show themselves alive to the sin and criminality personified in the land administration of this country . . . the Union, which is a good and proper object in itself, will make no great progress in the Highlands.94 The troubles within the Free Church between constitutionalists and revisionists led by Principal Rainy did not go without poetic commentary. In a fine specimen of ecclesiastical conservatism, the Skye woman who would become the bardess of the land reform movement, Mary MacPherson – known as Mairi Mhòr nan Òran – praised the leading constitutionalist Free 93

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Simpson, Life of Rainy, 430, 440, 450. For the impact of race theories on nineteenth-century thought, see L. P. Curtis, Anglo-Saxons and Celts: A Study of Anti-Irish Prejudice in Victorian England (Bridgeport, CT, 1968), 119; MacLeod, Second Disruption, 139–65; Fenyo˝, Contempt, Sympathy and Romance, 17–96 adopts a rather presentist approach to the issue; C. Kidd, ‘Race, Empire, and the Limits of Nineteenth-Century Scottish Nationhood’, Historical Journal, 46 (2003), 873–92. Highlander, 7 June, 1873, p. 8.

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Church ministers in the Highlands, including Gustavus Aird, George Mackay, Inverness, Alexander MacColl, Lochalsh, and John MacQueen, Daviot, for standing for sabbatarian principles and opposing the encroachments of liberal theology.95 John Kennedy’s support for those crofters imprisoned after the Strome Ferry riot earned the approval of Mairi Mhòr: An t-Ollamh Ceanadach, an saighdear, ’S tric chuir aoibhneas air a threud, Dheanadh air an t-Sàbaid fialachd – Sàbaid shìorraidh aige fhèin! 96 [Translation:] Dr Kennedy the soldier, Who often made his flock joyous, Making for the bounteous Sabbath – An eternal Sabbath for himself. The Union controversy kept Free Church attention focused on the Highlands during the 1860s and 1870s, by which time the site controversies of the post-Disruption period had mostly been resolved. As Murdoch perceptively noted, though, discussions of the ecclesiastical state of the Highlands could not be divorced from the social condition of the region. At the 1872 General Assembly, William Rose, minister of Poolewe in Wester Ross, described himself as ‘a kind of firebrand’ in his opposition to the Union. He maintained that Highland opposition to the Union rested on attachment to the Word of God and to Church principles and not, as alleged, on ignorance. Linking Highland sensitivities over the Union with wider grievances affecting the region, Rose turned to the land question: It is well-known that extensively a process is going on in the Highlands of turning the people from the main portions of the land and cooping them up in small holdings on the sea-shore, when they are not entirely expatriated . . . first sheep, but now deer, are supplanting our men. Now, on this deer-forest system I wish to remark that they are an unmitigated evil. A Highland proprietor is reported to have called them a great industry; I call them a great iniquity . . . to have our people hunted from the land of their birth, either abroad, or to huts and hovels on the sea-shore, is what we cannot help looking upon with indignation . . . But the grouse and deer-stalker, who, in order that his passion and pleasure be gratified, can continue to lay waste leagues of our glens and dales, is only an evil, and the whole institution ought to be laid under legal restrictions.97 95

96 97

M. MacPherson, ‘Clo na Cubaid’, ‘Gaisgich Loch Carann’ and ‘Coinneamh nan Croitearan’, in Donald E. Meek (ed.), Mairi Mhòr nan Òran, Taghadh de a h-Òrain (Edinburgh, 1998 edn) (Meek, Mairi Mhòr), 68–72, 175–8 and see also below 173–4. Mairi Mhòr nan Òran is translated ‘Big Mary of the Songs’. ‘Gaisgich Loch Carann’, Mairi Mhòr, 176. PDGAFCS, 1872, 312. Rose (1821–74) was a native of Glenbuchat, Aberdeenshire.

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At various junctures throughout this period the social condition of the Highlands was raised in the General Assembly. In 1863 Roderick MacLeod of Snizort disparaged the clearances in his moderatorial address. Referring to the outstanding contribution made by Skyemen to the British Army and Empire in the period before 1815, MacLeod retorted: The men of Skye were of some value in those days. Times have changed. The cry is now, ‘Away with them! Away with them!’ Sheep, it appears, are more worthy of keeping. In 1873 Thomas MacLauchlan condemned the few remaining Highland proprietors who had yet to provide sites for Free Church congregations: Such petty persecution not only does not serve their purpose in putting down the Church, but serves to sow the seeds of permanent alienation between the different classes of society in the country. Anti-landlord rhetoric was again evident at the 1875 Assembly. Alexander Duff, the veteran Indian missionary, described ‘the poor Highlands’ as an area with ‘scattered families of human beings and vast depopulated hunting-grounds for the recreation of the nobility and gentry of the south’. Duff reckoned the site-refusing duke of Atholl might go down in posterity ‘as occupying a vastly inferior platform, with respect to tolerance and liberality than that of the great Kaffir Chief of Basuto land’, since Mosheh, the Basuto chief, had granted land for the Free Church missions in southern Africa.98 In 1878 Dugald Campbell, a bailie of Greenock, referred to the Highland dependence on Lowland philanthropy via the Free Church Sustentation Fund: It seemed to him that the Highlanders had no chance of bettering themselves or providing means to support a gospel ministry, as they were driven from the finest of the land – the fine straths and glens, which were now occupied by deer. Campbell held that: The settlement of the land question, although not specially a Church matter, was of utmost importance to the Highlanders, and he believed they simply required a recognition of their rights that they might obtain the benefits of their toil to make them a contented people, and to make them less dependent for gospel ordinances on their brethren in the south . . . The first thing wanted was to put the people in a better position as respects their crofts – to give them some guarantee that if they expended labour and money in improving the land and building suitable dwellings, they would not be exposed to the hazard of being put away as mere tenants-at-will. Parliament could remedy 98

PDGAFCS, 1863, 6; 1873, 242; 1875, 194.

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this state of matters, and he wished he saw MPs as willing to take up this as other questions . . .99 * The criticism expressed above in the quotes from the General Assembly speeches of Rose, MacLeod, MacLauchlan, Duff, and Campbell enable us to revise existing interpretations of the Free Church’s attitude to Highland social issues in this period. Hunter believes that the Free Church had gradually adopted a more conservative, less anti-landlord agenda in the Highlands. Sorley MacLean maintained that by the time of the crofter resurgence in the 1880s, the Free Church had to a certain extent become a church of the Establishment; and where it was not, there was always the shadow of Catholic anti-Imperialist Ireland to cool any pro-crofter radicalism among the inner circles of the Free Church – the five per cent or so of its people who were clergy, lay preachers, elders, deacons or just communicants.100 It is true that internal ecclesiastical politics occupied much of the Free Church’s energy in this period particularly after the site controversy had abated. According to MacPhail, ‘in the 1860s and the 1870s the absorption of “the Men” in religion and ecclesiastical affairs precluded their participation in such secular matters as crofting grievances’. These comments, however, must be understood in the wider context of a Highland society which was – in relative terms – economically stable for the first time in living memory. Economic grievances may have been less important to ministers and elders, but they were also comparatively less pressing on crofters themselves in this period. This accounts for the undeniable diminution of social comment between the era of famine, site-refusal and mass emigration, and the agitation of the 1880s. In the longer term, nonetheless, it is probably true that engagement in the union and disestablishment debates familiarised Highland Christians with ecclesio-political controversy and advanced the discussion of land issues in ecclesiastical circles during this period, and more noticeably in the 1880s. As Allan Macinnes has suggested, involvement in these matters provided ordinary crofters with the organisational and oratorical skills necessary to conduct a campaign of political agitation.101 99

100 101

PDGAFCS, 1878, 256. Dugald Campbell was Provost of Greenock in 1880–1. He acted as an elder for the Skye and Uist Presbytery at the Free Assembly in 1878 and was a member of the Assembly’s Highland Committee until 1886. Campbell was author of The Land Question in the Highlands and Islands, with some Observations on the Administration of Scotch Affairs (Paisley, 1884), a pro-land reform and disestablishment tract which was favourably reviewed in the Oban Times of 12 Jan. 1884, p. 2. Hunter, Crofting Community, 216; MacLean, ‘Vale of Tears’, 16. MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 3; Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 60.

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There is no evidence to suggest that the Free Church became more Conservative politically in the period from the Disruption through to the land agitation. The Lowland Free Church was staunchly Liberal throughout the whole period covered by this book. In the Highlands it seems that the bulk of Free Church adherents were Liberal in allegiance or, more accurately, supporters of the Highland Land Law Reform Association after the enfranchisement of the crofters in 1885. The leadership of the denomination in the north was generally Liberal also (although Kennedy inclined to the Conservatives and many elders and ministers became Unionists after 1886). The comments of senior Free Church figures noted above belie the notion of a denomination that had adopted a sympathetic attitude to Highland landlords. Conservative theology did not necessitate support for the aristocratic – and increasingly plutocratic – monopoly on landholding. Indeed, a distinct vein of social criticism is noticeable in the 1870s. Like the criticisms of the 1840s and 1850s it was firmly directed at the system of landholding in the Highlands and, in some instances, called for some form of legislative amelioration of crofting conditions. This train of political thought firmly positions the Free Church social outlook of the ‘hiatus period’ within a broader continuity of anti-landlord rhetoric which encompassed the whole period from the 1840s to the 1880s.102 But there were significant differences between the criticisms of the 1870s and that of the ‘crofters’ war’ period. Foremost among these was the absence of a political movement with clearly defined land reform objectives. Again, the sheer volume of public support for crofters’ grievances which erupted during the 1880s was unprecedented. Before the onset of agricultural depression and the beginning of the Irish Land War the advocates of land reform were largely confronted by widespread apathy and indifference. This would change dramatically in the following decade. It seems highly likely that the growing sense of ‘Highlandism’ in spiritual and ecclesiastical matters was of some considerable importance in shaping crofters’ self-perception as a distinctive people. Whilst the 1860s and 1870s were a period of economic growth during which the Highlands became more integrated with the Lowland economy, it is possible that a heightened awareness of cultural distinctiveness was reinforced by the increased exposure to an alien industrial society and culture. Again, contact with ‘the outside world’ – through seasonal migration and the influence of the popular press – may eventually have enabled the post-famine generation to articulate their grievances more effectively and made them aspire to be more economically independent. This contact would have reinforced those notions of Highland ‘peoplehood’ which were so important in mobilising 102

This rhetoric was very similar to the Methodist ideology which informed English Agricultural Trades Unionism in the 1870s; see N. A. D. Scotland, ‘The National Agricultural Labourers’ Union and the demand for a stake in the soil, 1872–96’, in Biagini, Citizenship and Community, 151–67.

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crofters and land reformers alike in the 1880s. The traditional notion of duthchas and a biblically informed critique of oppression were clearly united in the populist politics of the Highlander. Thus, the Celtic revivalism of the 1870s fused with Highland religious belief to form a potent spiritual and cultural ideology which enthused the land campaign of the following decade. That is not to say that all the land reformers were conservative evangelical presbyterians sympathising with Kennedy and the Constitutional Party in the Free Church. Neither is it to suggest that every Highland evangelical was an active land reformer. Nevertheless, it is important that the more secular histories of the land question should be corrected by a recognition that the northern and southern sections of the Free Church became deeply polarised in the 1860s and 1870s, and that this polarisation included a sense of Highland distinctiveness in spiritual and cultural matters. This could only have reinforced the growing sense of the unity of the Highland people in the face of social, political, and religious pressure. When Kennedy in 1876 exhorted the Free Church membership in the Highlands to stake a claim for the endowments of the Establishment he stated: ‘You will now have to speak for yourselves. You must make your voice be heard in behalf of your just rights.’ Unwittingly, Kennedy was helping to sow a wind which, very shortly, would reap a whirlwind.103

103

Kennedy, Letter to Members of Free Church in Highlands, 14.

CHAPTER THREE

‘The Crofters’ War’: Genesis 1880–3 It was the enthusiastic addresses from Ministers in whom they had confidence, in whom they placed reliance, that turned the scale in favour of the F.C. in the Highlands in ’43 . . . In the present, publications and pamphlets will no doubt prepare the way but agitation conducted with the same spirit, with a tenth of the enthusiasm of ’43, meetings held in every parish, and in every clachan, resolutions put, petitions ready prepared for signatures to be presented to Parliament, any number of signatures to be obtained, and a spirit would be aroused that would take no denial, and could not be denied . . . Four gallant, enthusiastic fellows as well versed in Gaelic as in English, with the aid of the F.C. ministers, to lend assistance, and from the Press, and blazing advertisements would set the Highlands in a flame in 4 months.1 The Leckmelm evictions In December 1879 the Times reported that discussions on the land laws are becoming frequent in Scotland and the subject of the reform of these laws is coming to take a prominent place among the pressing, if not the burning, questions of the day.2 Whilst it is Scottish agriculture as a whole that is being referred to here, these quotes demonstrate that the climate of opinion throughout Scotland was becoming more sympathetic towards land law reform in 1879–80. Addressing farmers in a speech at Dalkeith during his celebrated Midlothian campaign, Gladstone referred to the unscriptural aspects of the land laws, especially the law of entail, thereby adding political and religious credence to the growing demands for land reform.3 Such a perceptible change in wider attitudes was not lost on protagonists of reform like John Mackay, Hereford, quoted above. As John MacMillan, the Free 1

2

3

NLS, MS 2634 fo. 319, Mackay to Blackie, 18 Aug. 1882. John Mackay was a Sutherlander who had moved to England to further his engineering career. Times, 15 Dec. 1879, p. 6. Roy Douglas, Land, People and Politics – the Land Question in the UK, 1878–1952 (London, 1976), 40–50 outlines the increase of land reform sentiment in this period; E. Richards, ‘How tame were the Highlanders during the clearances?’, Scottish Studies, xvii (1973) (Richards, ‘How tame were the Highlanders?’), 46. W. E. Gladstone, Second Speech, 26 Nov. 1879, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester, 1971), 83–4.

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Church minister of Lochbroom, Ross-shire, said at a public meeting in November 1880 in light of troubles between a landlord and crofters at Leckmelm, in his parish: I can confidently hope that a campaign has been inaugurated which shall not be abandoned until the cruel and ravaging foe is routed forever off the field – (Cheers) – and a yoke of iron which neither we nor or forefathers were able to bear, will be wrenched and snapped asunder – (Renewed cheers) – and removed from the necks of our peasantry, never more to be replaced . . .4 Throughout the summer and autumn of 1880 John MacMillan wrote letters to the press in order to publicise the events at Leckmelm. The new proprietor, Alexander Pirie, had decided to deprive his crofter tenants of their smallholdings and stock in order to consolidate the agricultural land in one large farm – the crofters were to become day-labourers on Pirie’s estate without holdings after Martinmas, 1880. By law the proprietor had the absolute right to evict his tenants in such a manner at forty days’ notice, and although Pirie intended to leave the crofters in their own homes, he was resolute in his policy of commandeering all of the croft land for his own farm. MacMillan’s fiery letters ensured a heated controversy between Pirie and himself; the new laird accused the minister of being ‘the arch-agitator’. When the case was raised by Charles Fraser Mackintosh in Parliament, William Harcourt, the Home Secretary, regretted Pirie’s actions but informed the House of Commons that the landlord was acting within his legal rights. Although the hostile public reaction did little to deter Pirie from his eviction policy MacMillan was not discouraged. In a letter to the Highlander that appeared on 27 October, 1880 he attacked the hereditary monopoly of power amongst the landed elite, criticising the House of Lords and – using language which would have been regarded as very radical for a loyal Protestant minister – he praised the values of ‘a properly constituted Republic’. Addressing professing Christians and ministers particularly, he questioned: If we are not to take up our deadly weapons and shoot every relentless factor and landlord from behind a hedge, are there no other weapons we can use as Christian men? The fact that we are the messengers of peace should not for a moment prevent us from turning every stone until our demands are satisfied. Neither does our high calling call upon us to be pusillanimous and cowards enough to quake before the great and those in favour, and allow the poor and the needy, the orphan and the widow, to be crushed and ground under the wheel of oppression.5 4 5

Inverness Courier, 18 Nov. 1880, p. 5. Highlander, 27 Oct. 1880, p. 3.

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No doubt MacMillan was drawing a distinction between the violence of the Irish Land War and the peaceful condition of the Highlands when he alluded to shooting landlords and factors ‘from behind a hedge’. His desire to find a non-violent but still forcible method of agitating led him to address a large gathering in Inverness in November 1880 convened to protest against the Leckmelm events. MacMillan was accompanied at this event by four other ministers and some prominent Celtic revivalists. The meeting was opened with prayer by Charles MacEchern, minister of the Established Gaelic Church, Inverness and John Mactavish, the minister of Inverness East Free Church, gave a short address calling for ‘some fixity of tenure on some certain fair conditions’.6 MacMillan’s own speech was radical in its denunciation of the landlord interest in the Highlands and in his critique of depopulation. In referring to the clearances MacMillan stated, ‘instead of having our glens and straths filled by people – the noble creation of God – we have desolation and death, misery and oppression’. MacMillan contrasted the ‘tyranny and bondage’ prevalent in Scotland and Ireland with the ‘prosperity that existed under tenant-propriety in France, Switzerland and other continental countries’. Stressing the danger of the unfettered exercise of property rights without responsibilities, MacMillan urged land reform as the only remedy to prevent the Highlands becoming an ‘utter desolation’. Furthermore, he touched on a number of themes which became prominent in the rhetoric of Highland land reformers in the 1880s. Appealing to history, MacMillan pointed out the differences between ‘patriarchal’ landholding in the Highlands and ‘feudal’ systems elsewhere in Britain. This historical distinction justified the rejection of economically individualistic prescriptions and the retention or revival of communitarian solutions – such as joint ‘club’ holdings and communal grazing land. In stressing the importance of a healthy Highland population to the physical and military wellbeing of the British nation as a whole, he raised another issue which was to recur persistently in the Napier Commission evidence.7 MacMillan’s oration has been regarded as ‘a landmark’ because, according to Iain Fraser Grigor, ‘the viewpoint of the mass of the crofting people had at last been bluntly and publicly expressed’. We might more accurately regard MacMillan’s position as being well in advance of those held by the ‘mass of the crofting people’ at this point. There is no doubt that MacMillan’s carefully orchestrated public outcry tapped into the vein of sympathy for the crofters which had developed in the preceding decades. His denunciation of Pirie marks the end of the inchoate and apolitical passivity which had largely characterised the opponents of landlord 6

7

Inverness Courier, 18 Nov. 1880, p. 5; Mactavish was involved in a site controversy in 1844, see 22 above. See, for example, NC Evidence (Ev.), 2000, 2798–9; see also ‘Fasachadh na Duthcha’, in Murdo MacLeod, Bardachd Mhurchaidh a’ Cheisdeir (Edinburgh, 1962), 27–8.

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policies within the region in the period before 1880. In a real sense, therefore, the speech significantly furthered the organisation of a social and political movement that was, for the first time, ‘capable of action against the landlords’.8 It is important to stress the politicised nature of this new sentiment in contradistinction to the anti-aristocratic land reform rhetoric of the destitution era and afterwards. The support of ministers for land reform in the 1880s was characterised by adherence to a fairly well defined set of objectives to be obtained by means of legislation. The formation of an organised land reform movement would be critical in this development and ministers were to take their fair share in its establishment. The politicised discussion of the land question was promoted by ministers in a variety of settings during the 1880s: in sermons and lectures, in the press, at land reform meetings, before the Napier Commission, and, perhaps most controversially of all, in church courts. Closely following on from MacMillan’s exhortation, John Mactavish presented an overture on the land question to the Free Presbytery of Inverness in February 1881. This was a very important step in the introduction of agrarian and social concerns to the debates of church courts. Even allowing for his involvement in a site dispute after the Disruption, Mactavish’s rhetoric was still surprisingly radical: Whereas the present land laws are unfavourable to the liberty, and the temporal, moral, and spiritual wellbeing of the community, it is humbly overtured by the Free Presbytery of Inverness to the General Assembly, indited to meet in May next, that it petition the legislature to abolish immediately the laws of Entail and Primogeniture, and legislate rather in the direction of the division than the accumulation of property; and to take such measures as shall prevent evictions without good and obvious reasons. The majority of the Presbytery, however, deemed it ‘too secular and revolutionary’. In opposing the motion A. C. MacDonald stated, if Mr Mactavish had contented himself with moving that something be done to prevent arbitrary evictions, he would have been more than glad to support it. He sometimes thought that the clergymen of the country were very much to blame for the indifference with which they looked upon this question, and he thought the time was come when nothing short of legislation would protect their interests and protect them 8

Iain Fraser Grigor, Mightier than a Lord (Stornoway, 1979), 38. Although Andrew Newby points to the formation of the Federation of Celtic Societies in 1878 as a key moment in the organisation of anti-landlord agitation, the Federation was fairly moderate politically during its early years, ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’, 40. For the place of the 1880s agitation within the longer-term history of protest, see Richards, ‘How tame were the Highlanders?’, 35–50; C. W. J. Withers, ‘Rural Protest in the Highlands of Scotland and in Ireland, 1850–1930’, in S. J. Connolly, R. A. Houston, and R. J. Morris (eds), Conflict, Identity and Economic Development in Ireland and Scotland 1600–1939 (Preston, 1995), 172–88.

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against landlords. But the overture now before them went much further than this. It was far too revolutionary.9 The rejection of Mactavish’s overture aroused the ire of a highly frustrated John Murdoch, who poured forth torrents of semi-theological disquisition on land reform especially targeted at ministerial reticence on the issue. In a lengthy article invoking the story of Naboth’s vineyard, Murdoch criticised ministers for being overly close to the landed interest. Ministers’ quiescence, he believed, was one of the evil consequences which have flowed from the landlords and the ministers having their heads in the same manger; and what was bred in the bone of the Established Church has not been got rid of in the Free. He acknowledged MacMillan’s contribution, however, and urged his readers to ‘always remember the exception of Mr Macmillan and a few others, who have dared to speak out for the truth and the poor’. He maintained that the influence of the ministers could have prevented existing abuses: ‘if the clergy had been true to their professions, and the truths of God . . . the land wrongs would not have attained to anything like their present magnitude . . .’10 Once again, Murdoch’s criticisms can only be understood when we appreciate the importance he attached to the ministers’ influence and the potential moral gravitas they could give to any land reform campaign. Although A. C. MacDonald opposed Mactavish’s motion in the Inverness Presbytery, he himself was careful to give guarded support to land reform principles and even criticised fellow ministers for their indifference towards the land issue. His acknowledging the legitimacy of social debate in a church court, despite his unwillingness to support Mactavish’s motion, was indicative of how many ministers were coming to see the necessity of supporting land reform in this period. In other words, ministers were highly aware of the changing climate of opinion and were conscious that it was better to be on the side of moderate, conciliatory reform than to be seen as supporting ‘landlord tyranny’. Indeed, whilst earlier ministers were often more active and concerned with the material welfare of their flocks than is popularly believed, it is important to remember that the ministers of the 1870s and 1880s were acutely aware of the alleged shortcomings of their predecessors. It would be too much to suggest that ministers were selfconsciously atoning for the perceived failure of past generations, but certainly the crisis in landlord–crofter relations over the following decade provided Highland ministers with a real opportunity to demonstrate where they stood regarding the social condition of their congregations. 9

10

Highlander, 9 Feb. 1881, pp. 2–3. Alexander C. MacDonald was a constitutionalist who was active in seeking to conciliate between crofters and the authorities, see 130–2 below. An overture in a presbyterian Church is a formal petition to a higher court of the church. Highlander, 30 Mar. 1881, p. 5.

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Agitation on Skye In the spring of 1880, after a prolonged period of discontent, some of the tenants of Valtos – on the Kilmuir estate on Skye – refused to pay their rents, which had recently been substantially increased by the proprietor, Major William Fraser. MacPhail has suggested that by early 1881 Fraser was worried about the boycotting tactics of the Irish Land League and, perhaps, also by the hostile reaction to his policies in the press, which was stirred up by procrofter land reformers in Glasgow. Unwilling to accept absolutist estate management and rack-renting any further, the Kilmuir crofters initiated the first stage of the campaign against the ‘cruel and ravaging foe’ called for by John MacMillan.11 The harvest of 1881 was a failure in the Western Highlands and Islands, and the combination of a disastrous fishing season with the loss of ancillary labour in the Lowlands as a result of the agricultural depression led to a subsistence crisis in the densely crowded crofting areas. In February 1882 in the west of Skye, at Glendale, a dispute over the lease of grazing land brought crofters into a prolonged confrontation with the estate management, which ultimately involved the police and armed forces.12 In April 1882, crofters in the Braes district, near Portree, deforced a Sheriff Officer from serving eviction notices on several tenants. The crofters had recently adopted a policy of withholding rent from the landlord, Lord MacDonald, in another dispute over grazing rights. The same tenants later attacked a force of over fifty police sent especially to arrest the ringleaders of the initial incident. This fracas, which became popularly referred to as the ‘Battle of the Braes’, received widespread coverage in the British press and was signally important in publicising the crofters’ struggle on the national stage.13 These incidents were reminiscent of the Irish agrarian troubles that had forced concessions from Gladstone’s administration in the form of the 1881 Irish Land Act. It has been often been stated that many of the younger Skye men imbibed radical ideas when working off the Irish coast during the summer fishing in the late 1870s, although the most recent study of the links between Irish and Scottish land reformers, by Andrew Newby, has cast doubt on this notion.14 Newby instead stresses the role of urban radicals committed to Michael Davitt’s land nationalisation and Henry George’s ‘single-tax’ platforms in the radicalisation of the Highland land debate. Nonetheless, opponents of land reform were quick to point out the influence of ‘fenianism’ on the crofters, especially after Edward McHugh, an itinerant activist from the Glasgow branch of the Land League of Great Britain, lectured 11 12

13 14

See MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 33. Glendale had recently passed into the ownership of Rev. Hugh Macpherson, an Established Church minister and absentee laird, but was administered by trustees and the factor, Donald MacDonald of Tormore. MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 36–52. Hunter, Crofting Community, 191; Newby, ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’, 89.

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in Skye in April 1882. Indeed, MacPhail believes that the Irish question was initially ‘the most important factor influencing the course of events in the Highlands and Islands’.15 The authorities grew acutely aware of parallels between the situations in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands throughout 1882. More than any other factor, it was the anxiety of the government to stem the rise of agrarian and political discontent in the Highlands before it reached Irish proportions that facilitated the establishment of a Royal Commission on the conditions of crofters and cottars in 1883. The subsequent willingness of later governments of all political hues to conciliate and legislate on behalf of the crofters must be seen in this context.16 Whilst crofters received encouragement to make known their grievances by the actions of MacMillan and Mactavish, the ministers on Skye itself were initially hesitant to speak openly about social conditions. Undoubtedly most Skye ministers were deeply disturbed and taken aback by the wave of agitation which swept the island in 1882. The Free Church ministers might have been expected to be vocal on behalf of their crofter adherents, but in the initial stages of the agitation they maintained a low public profile, not desiring to be accused of partiality or inflaming confrontation. The ministers of the Establishment, however, were more decidedly on the side of the authorities. John Darroch, minister of Portree, is reported to have said in conversation: ‘we were all in a difficult position. As ministers of the National Church we had to be careful to support law and order.’17 After the events at Braes they probably feared that any escalation in hostilities might lead to loss of life. This is clearly seen in a private letter from Donald Mackinnon, Established Church minister of Strath, in the south of Skye, to William Ivory, Sheriff of Inverness-shire: I do not wish to have my name publicly mentioned as interfering with the lamentable state of insurrection in which the crofters of Braes and Glendale now are; but I feel so seriously impressed by the danger calculated to arise from the resolution of the Govt. not to grant the aid of troops for the protection of the police, that I think it right to let you know that this resolution if persisted in, is certain to provoke a second and very much more serious collision with the police than the first – a collision which beyond the probability of a doubt will lead to a serious loss of life. I would seriously entreat you again to urge the Govt. to give military aid, for if the military are sent the danger of any collision will 15

16

17

MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 37, 46; A. G. Newby, ‘Edward McHugh, the National Land League of Great Britain and the Crofters’ War, 1879–1882’, SHR, lxxxii (2003), 74–91. For Irish issues, see J. Hunter, ‘The Gaelic Connection: the Highlands, Ireland and Nationalism 1873–1922’, SHR, liv (1975), 178–204; Paul Bew, Land and the National Question (Dublin, 1978); Samuel Clark, The Social Origins of the Irish Land War (Princeton, 1979); Phillip Bull, Land, Politics and Nationalism: A Study of the Irish Land Question (Dublin, 1996); G. Greenlee, ‘Land, Religion and Community: The Liberal Party in Ulster 1868–1885’, in Biagini, Citizenship and Community, 253–75. MacLean, Norman, Set Free (London, 1949), 66.

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be removed either with them or the police . . . It is in the interests of peace and of the poor misguided people that I advocate the sending of military for I know if they are sent there will be no danger of the calamity which is certain to happen if police alone are sent.18 John Murdoch reported that he had met with two unnamed ministers in Portree who were circulating a Gaelic tract by Sheriff Alexander Nicolson, which castigated the Skye crofters for violently protesting: one of them with a bundle of copies of a silly leaflet in Gaelic which a sheriff in another part of Scotland printed to act as a wet-sheet on the minds of the people . . . ‘Oh, we sympathise with the people,’ the younger of the two said, while the other seemed ashamed of the bundle of twaddle which he had been asked to circulate.19 Rent strikes proliferated across the island in spite of the clerical misgivings, with Braes, Kilmuir, and especially Glendale the chief centres of discontent. The Times of 23 November, 1882 reported that ‘the whole island of Skye is in a state of wild excitement’. At Glendale the authorities attempted to arrest the leaders of the agitation who had been interdicted to clear the disputed grazings of their stock. On 17 January, 1883, a body of fourteen policemen accompanying a messenger-at-arms were ‘stopped and severely mauled . . . by a crowd mainly of youths’ and three days later a larger force was obliged to retreat in the face of a huge crowd at Dunvegan.20 In the face of such unprecedented defiance of the law it became imperative that Free Church representatives meet the crofters to discuss the unrest. At Hamara Lodge, Glendale, on 30 January, four Skye ministers – John MacPhail, Kilmuir, Finlay Graham, Sleat, Joseph Lamont, Snizort, and John Macrae of Duirinish – questioned leading crofters over the recent assaults on police and sheriff officers. The ministers cautioned the Glendale men, urging them to obey the law and refrain from violence. Then they succeeded in getting the indicted men to surrender to the authorities. Acting on the advice of these ministers, Malcolm MacNeill – a civil servant at the Home Office and nephew of Sir John McNeill, the author of the 1851 Report – arrived at Glendale on the gunboat Jackal and met with the crofters at Glendale Free Church, where he persuaded the ringleaders to stand trial in the Court of Session in Edinburgh. The four ‘Glendale Martyrs’, including their spokesman, John Macpherson, were convicted of breach of interdict and contempt of court and each received two months’ imprisonment.21 18 19

20 21

NAS, GD136/1/10/46, Ivory Papers, Mackinnon to Ivory, 23 Nov. 1882. Irish World, 10 Jun. 1882, quoted in E. A. Cameron and A. G. Newby, ‘A “Little Leaflet” concerning the Crofters’ Agitation by Alexander Nicolson’, Innes Review, forthcoming. For Alexander Nicolson, see 120 above. Times, 23 Nov. 1882, p. 10; MacPhail, Crofters’ War, p. 59. The account of the Glendale troubles and the meeting between Free Church ministers and crofters is drawn from North British Daily Mail, 31 Jan. 1883, p. 5, and also MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 52–61.

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At an early stage of the land agitation, therefore, churchmen were involved in attempting to defuse potentially dangerous situations and conciliate between the crofters and the civil authorities. It is possible here to observe the emergence of a pattern in ministerial attitudes to the agitation. Many of the ministers who lived in the crofting areas were concerned to maintain as much harmony as possible within their communities and were naturally reluctant to associate themselves with unrest and confrontation between the authorities and the crofters. The crofters, on the other hand, had endured a period of great hardship after seasons of slowly rising living standards, they were better educated than previous generations, and, furthermore, they were encouraged by the popular press and the successful example of the Irish Land League. During the initial stages of the land agitation they may have been encouraged by John MacMillan’s radicalism and by the exhortations of Murdoch and his fellow land reformers, but they were largely operating on their own initiative. With the most notable exceptions of John MacMillan and Donald MacCallum, most ministers in the 1880s can be seen as reacting to incidents in the land agitation but not so directly involved in the planning of individual acts of protest. But this does not mean that the agitation, in both its nature and extent, was not contained by the influence of the local ministers, especially at times of high tension.22 The unwillingness of Highland ministers to countenance law breaking and violence was paralleled by the attitudes of clergymen elsewhere to law and order. In Ireland, for example, roman catholic priests are usually regarded as adopting a cautious attitude to land agitation despite the high level of clerical involvement with the Irish Land League and the Irish National League after 1882. Scottish presbyterian ministers and Irish roman catholic priests faced a similar dilemma of feeling obliged to condemn law breaking and agrarian outrage, but yet sympathising with popular grievances and criticising the injustices of the existing order. Although both groups adopted similar approaches, perhaps a number of priests in Ireland were more ready to equivocate over property rights and outrage than the presbyterians in Scotland. Roman catholic desire to establish a political and cultural hegemony in Ireland in conjunction with the Parnellite Party and the Irish National League generally led them more deeply into agrarian protest and nationalist politics than Scottish ministers and priests.23 Establishment of the HLLRA and the Napier Commission Unlike in Ireland, the Highland land reform movement was divided into a number of separate bodies, a number of which bore the title ‘Highland 22

23

The Glendale incident above establishes this interpretation, see 157–9 below for further examples which confirm it. James O’Shea, Priest, Politics and Society in Post-Famine Ireland, A Study of County Tipperary 1850–1891 (Dublin, 1983), 54.

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Land Law Reform Association’ (hereafter HLLRA). The formation of some of these various groups occurred in 1881–2 and an Inverness HLLRA was in existence from September 1882, in which John Mactavish was a leading light. But the two main organisations, the London HLLRA and the Edinburgh HLLRA, were established early in 1883. The Edinburgh Highland Association maintained a separate existence until late 1884 and the Sutherland Association represented the Sutherland crofters from early 1885. Of the two leading bodies, the most politically influential was the London HLLRA. The Edinburgh HLLRA was, however, supported by leading figures in the Free Church such as Robert Rainy, Principal of New College and Murdo Macaskill, minister of the Gaelic congregation at Greenock. Free Church influence on the Edinburgh HLLRA was substantial and is further examined in the following chapter. These different groups eventually merged in 1886 and officially adopted the name of ‘The Highland Land League’ in 1887. Although the Sutherland section eventually became the most radical, in their stated aims they were virtually identical and it is less confusing when dealing with the narrative of events if they are generally treated as branches of the same HLLRA movement.24 Thus, the HLLRA was in the beginning more an urban pressure group than a mass movement of crofters. But it was well organised and quickly established branches throughout the Highlands and Islands to which thousands of crofters affiliated. Sadly there are very few extant documents related to the HLLRA and membership statistics are difficult to verify. By June 1884 the HLLRA claimed 5,000 crofter members and a figure of perhaps 7,000 at the time of peak activity in 1885 is not inconceivable. Indeed, the Sutherland Association could boast 3,000 members in 1886 and in the same year the London HLLRA alone had 160 affiliated branches.25 The aims were to press for the establishment of a Royal Commission to enquire into crofting conditions and to achieve a reform of the existing land laws on the basis of the provisions of the Irish Land Act of 1881. The HLLRA thus desired fixity of tenure for crofters, compensation for improvements to the tenant, the establishment of a statutory body to fix ‘fair’ rents, and for landlords to be deprived of the right of eviction. HLLRA activists also wished to see a fullscale redistribution of land in order to enlarge crofters’ holdings. The HLLRA did not, however, condone violence and – officially at least – did not encourage rent striking. Controversially, the leading HLLRA supporters John Murdoch and Alexander MacKenzie toured the Highlands in advance of the Napier Commission in 1883 in order to help crofters prepare their evidence. These actions were interpreted by landlords and their supporters as fomenting dissent and unrest in the crofting areas. Murdoch and MacKenzie were also accused of encouraging crofters to present their evidence in a 24 25

Cameron, Life of Fraser Mackintosh, 109–12; MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 88–109. J. Hunter, ‘The Politics of Highland Land Reform’, SHR, liii (1974), 52; MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 108–9; and see 163–9 below.

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politicised fashion, repeating HLLRA nostrums instead of stating their genuine grievances. Fundamentally, the land reform debate was centred on the legitimacy of the competing claims to the land. The HLLRA asserted that the Highland people had been unjustly deprived of their lands by the landlords. The land reform movement, and the crofters themselves, were not slow to appeal to this view of history – and their interpretations of Scripture – to justify their call for land law reform and a thoroughgoing land redistribution. Conversely, some landlords, notably the 8th duke of Argyll, defended their position by pointing out the importance of property and capital to the wellbeing of society, viewing themselves as the agents for economic improvement in the face of the backwardness of crofters.26 Yet notwithstanding the eloquence and influence of such a protagonist as Argyll, the tide of public opinion was largely sympathetic to the crofters’ grievances. Such popular anti-aristocratic sentiment profoundly affected Liberal politicians and was a rallying point for the party’s radical wing. This shift in Liberal perspectives helps explain the appointment of a Royal Commission to ‘enquire into the condition of the crofters and cottars in the Highlands of Scotland’ in March 1883. The Commission was a major concession by the government in favour of the claims of the crofters and land reformers, after more than a year of unrest on Skye. The official response during the initial stages of the land agitation had been to hold out against demands for the establishment of an official inquiry into the state of the crofters. When by early 1883, it had become apparent that resolution of the agitation was beyond the capability of the traditional administrative alignment of the landed proprietors and the local authorities, Gladstone’s administration sanguinely hoped that the news of the Commission’s creation would in itself help to quell the disturbances. The chairman of the Commission was Lord Napier and Ettrick, a former governor of Madras. The other Commissioners were Donald Cameron of Lochiel, Conservative MP for Inverness-shire, Sir Kenneth Mackenzie of Gairloch, Charles Fraser Mackintosh, MP for Inverness Burghs, Professor Donald Mackinnon, recently appointed to the new Celtic chair at Edinburgh, and the Skyeman Alexander Nicolson, a Gaelic scholar and sheriff substitute of Kircudbright. It was originally intended that one of the Commissioners should be a presbyterian minister 26

For the 8th duke of Argyll’s robust defence of private landownership, see Essay on the Commercial Principles Applicable to Contracts for the Hire of Land (London, 1877); Crofts and Farms in the Hebrides (Edinburgh, 1883); ‘The Prophet of San Francisco’, Nineteenth Century, xv (1884), 537–58; ‘A Corrected Picture of the Highlands’, Nineteenth Century, xvi (1884), 681–701; Scotland as it Was and as it Is, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1887); The Unseen Foundations of Society (London, 1892); see also NLS, Acc. 9209, Correspondence of George D. Campbell, duke of Argyll, with his son, 1878–85; J. W. Mason, ‘The Duke of Argyll and the Land Question in Late Nineteenth Century Britain’, Victorian Studies, xxi (1977–8), 149–70.

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but political expediencies, denominational, and intra-denominational tensions made the choice of any one individual overly problematic.27 The evidence submitted by the vast majority of crofters and a number of pro-crofter land reformers on the one hand, and by landlords, factors, and grazier farmers on the other, emphasises the gulf of opinion which existed between the protagonists in the contemporary debate on the land question in the Highlands in the 1880s.28 For the first time crofters were given an opportunity to state their grievances and many used the platform to recount the time of the clearances and assert their customary, historical claim to the land. They were seeking to set the record straight according to their own version of events. Inevitably, a great deal of the crofters’ testimony was contradicted by landlords and factors, both at the Commission’s hearings, in letters sent to the Commission and in the press. Nevertheless, the majority of the Commissioners guardedly welcomed the oral testimony, stating that ‘if the instances [of oppression] produced for our information are not specifically and literally true, they are akin to truth’. And, although Napier did not recommend complete security of tenure, the crofters’ historical claims swayed him to the extent that he advocated the rejuvenation of the pre-improvement communal ‘township’ as a suitable model for future agricultural development in the region.29 The Napier Commission is acknowledged by commentators as a watershed in modern Highland history.30 Whilst the Report itself was roundly criticised by all parties and never became the basis for legislation, the influence of the Commission on the development of the land reform movement in the Highlands was immense. Crofters had been able to speak openly against the existing regime and were able to read and hear about similar grievances throughout the Highlands and Islands when the evidence was published in the press. The combination of the organisation of the HLLRA and the work of the Napier Commission in 1883 ensured that the land agitation moved 27

28

29

30

Cameron, Ewen A., Land for the People? The British Government and the Scottish Highlands, c. 1880–1925 (East Linton, 1996), (Cameron, Land for the People) 18–23; Nicolson was author of the ‘Little Leaflet’ discussed above on 103; I. M. M. MacPhail, ‘The Napier Commission’, TGSI, xlviii (1972–4), 438–9. Napier has been cited as a source in all the major studies of the ‘crofters’ war’. See Hunter’s comments on the value of Napier as a primary source in Hunter, Crofting Community, 160. Both MacPhail, Crofters’ War, and Grigor, Mightier than a Lord, draw heavily from the Napier evidence. MacPhail, ‘The Napier Commission’, gives a historical summary of the Commission’s work whilst Alexander D. Cameron’s Go! Listen to the Crofters (Stornoway, 1987) is a more descriptive, ethnological account. Allan Macinnes refers to the Free Church contribution to Napier in ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 61. The first chapter of Ewen Cameron’s Land for the People is the best synopsis of both the political and historical significance of the Napier Commission within the wider context of the role of government in the land question. NC Report, 2, 17–18. Napier largely drafted the recommendations on land tenure himself from which Lochiel and Mackenzie dissented. See, for example, MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 85–6.

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from being a series of disparate and localised incidents to become a concerted, well-publicised offensive against the landed class. The contributions of the clergymen who gave evidence before the Commission are a significant and important part of the total evidence submitted. Fifty-eight ordained clergymen and one unordained Congregational pastor spoke in person at one or more of the Commission’s sixty-one meetings. In addition, thirty-seven clergymen submitted written statements, twenty-one of whom had not testified in person before the Commission. From the total of eighty, forty-two ministers belonged to the Free Church of Scotland, twenty-eight to the Established Church of Scotland, eight were Roman Catholic clergymen, and two were pastors of congregational churches.31 It could possibly be objected that the figure of eighty ministers does not adequately reflect the whole Highland clergy nor prove a widespread ministerial interest in social issues. We ought to remember, though, that the Commission visited a limited number of places within a confined space of time. Those ministers and priests who were interviewed comprised a broad cross-section of the Highland clergy. Since there were over five hundred clergymen in the region, eighty testimonies represent a level of over 15% of the total. In addition, 139 unpublished letters from ministers were received by the Commission’s Secretary, Malcolm MacNeill, which reveal that the clergy were responsible in many localities for the arrangements of the Commission’s sittings and the delegation of witnesses.32 Somehow this substantial clerical contribution to the work of the Napier Commission has been consistently and inexplicably under-emphasised in the historiography. Possibly the most striking aspect of the clerical evidence to the Napier Commission is the general consensus of opinion on the land issue exhibited by the clergy across the denominational barriers. It would be wrong, of course, to ignore the stipendiary and legal positions of the different churches – which could have influenced attitudes to landholding and the status quo. A number of ministers appeared ambivalent or sceptical about the more radical proposals of some of the land reformers, indeed, there were some who gave the impression of being opposed to the concept of tenant-right as advocated by the HLLRA. Nevertheless, a clear pattern of sympathy for the crofters’ cause emerges from the testimonies of the majority. By examining the contributions of the clergy of each denomination in turn it is possible to highlight and exemplify the main themes of the clerical testimony.

31

32

In addition, two Free Church divinity students testified in Sutherland. Since this study is concerned with Gaelic society, the Orkney, Shetland, and Caithness evidence has not been used here. The Congregational pastors were both in Shetland. Since the concept of ordination is problematic in Congregational polity, I have included the unordained pastor with the other clergymen. NAS, AF50/3/89–1534, Scottish Office Agriculture and Fisheries Dept Files.

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The Napier evidence – the Free Church of Scotland I believe that they [the crofters’ delegates to the Napier Commission] are inspired by the Free Church, and that these are the Fenians we have – not the Free Church of the south, but the Free Church north of the Caledonian Canal – the Free Church that kept the people unbaptised; the Free Church that had seventeen bastards on one island; the Free Church that never visited, but sent ignorant, unlettered men about the place to spread discontent among the people . . . The Gaelic and the Free Church and the want of education are the curse of Skye.33 The quotation above from the evidence of a tenant farmer reveals the perception amongst those hostile to land reform that the policy of the Free Church was decidedly pro-crofter. The unanimous resolution of the Free Church General Assembly on the Commission’s work in May 1883 might have further confirmed such perceptions: The Assembly, considering the great importance of a righteous settlement of the questions in connection with which the Royal Commission is at present taking evidence in the Highlands and Islands, as fitted to promote both the social and the spiritual welfare of the people, and considering, also, the extreme desirableness of full and impartial evidence regarding the actual condition of the people in order to [sic] such a settlement, recommend to all ministers and members of the Free Church in the districts still to be visited by the Commission, that they do what they can towards securing that thoroughly reliable evidence be laid before it; and further instruct the Committee on the Highlands to watch over the present inquiry, so as it may affect the social and spiritual interests of the population.34 The Free Church represented a sizeable majority of the crofter population in the Highlands and Islands and it is not surprising that Free Church ministers were the most numerous, and generally the least reticent, clerical grouping to give evidence to the Napier Commission. Thirty-two ministers of the Free Church testified in person at the Commission’s various sittings and ten others submitted written statements. Since there were some social and economic differences between localities within the region, the evidence has been arranged geographically, in keeping with the Commission’s own itinerary. Only a very limited number of these Free Church ministers gave the impression that they were unwilling or unable to express opinions on the kind of social, economic, and political issues that fell within the Commission’s 33

34

Donald C. Cameron, NC Ev., 624. Cameron was the tenant farmer of Glenbrittle, Skye. He was a Highlander, but probably not a native of Skye. Resolution of J. C. Macphail, unanimously adopted by the Free Church General Assembly, 26 May, 1883, PDGAFCS, 1883, 29.

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remit. The most striking example of such reticence is the testimony of John MacKay, Free Church minister on St Kilda. The Commission’s St Kilda sitting was held in MacKay’s church and he opened the proceedings with a Gaelic prayer. MacKay would have been very familiar with the state of the island’s economy, which – according to another of the St Kildan witnesses – had reduced the people to a state of poverty in the last year worse than anything they had experienced in previous years.35 Yet he indicated a preference not to be drawn into the debate, rather dismissively commenting: ‘Well, I don’t know any reasonable complaint they have. They know themselves better. You can hear what they have to say about the rent and some sheep.’ It must, however, be remembered that of all the witnesses to the Commission, the people of St Kilda were the only group who had received no prior warning and therefore had no chance to prepare statements – the minister being no exception.36 It is surprising to note that on Skye – the hub of the agitation – only two Free Church ministers gave evidence in person, despite the fact that five of the thirteen Skye sittings were held in various Free Churches throughout the island. Four Skye Free Church ministers submitted written statements, one of whom, Finlay Graham of Sleat, had previously testified in person to the Commission in May. Graham co-operated with the Established Church minister of Sleat, Alexander Cameron, in preparing the crofters to give evidence.37 He was of the opinion that there was plenty of agricultural land in Sleat which could be taken from the large holdings of the grazier farmers and restored to the crofters ‘at fair rents’. Graham stated that, ‘I have never met any of the crofters but are willing to pay any fair rent for good land’. He was opposed to mass emigration, believing it better to ‘assist them at home’.38 The other Free Church ministers on Skye who submitted written statements, James Ross of Bracadale, Joseph Lamont of Snizort, and John MacPhail of Kilmuir expressed sympathy with the crofters and wished to see more land given to them. According to Lamont, many crofters had come near to starvation during the recent dearth. MacPhail was placed in a difficult position because Major Fraser of Kilmuir had helped the Free Church in the building of churches despite the fact that Fraser was notorious for high-handedness. MacPhail mentioned Fraser’s beneficence to the Free Church but, at the same time, stressed his belief in the necessity of land 35

36

37

38

Angus Gillies, St Kilda, NC Ev., 874. For the poverty of the St Kildans, see NLS, MS 2635 fo. 39, Rainy to Blackie, 21 Mar. 1883, cited below on p. 154, n. 23; PP, 1885, LVII, Report of Malcolm McNeill, Esq., Inspecting Officer of the Board of Supervision, on the Alleged Destitution in the Island of St Kilda in October 1885. NC Ev., 864. A similar reticence to comment on the land issue can be observed in the testimony of Donald MacLean, Carinish, North Uist, NC Ev., 807–9. Alexander Cameron was the son of William Cameron, Established Church minister and laird, Lochbroom, Wester Ross, see 117 fn. 56 below. NC Appendix (App.), 58; also NC Ev., 292.

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reform and his opposition to eviction and emigration.39 Ross and Lamont both showed a willingness to use Scriptural allegories in their statements. Ross, quoting from Psalm 137, likened Highland emigrants to the exiled Israelites in Babylon. Thus, the Skye Free Church ministers generally expressed sympathy with the aims of the HLLRA, but – conscious that the Skye crofters had been foremost in the land agitation from the beginning – they tended to criticise the land laws and the abuses of the existing system rather than individual landlords. The evidence of the Free Church ministers of the Outer Hebrides suggests a large degree of unanimity in their support for the aims of the crofters’ movement. The seventy-year-old minster of South Harris, Alexander Davidson, believed the structure of land-holding and the pattern of land use in Harris to be unnatural. ‘If the land were distributed among the people,’ he stated, ‘I think it is quite capable of bearing all the people in comfort.’40 James Greenfield, the Canadian pastor of the Gaelic Free Church in Stornoway, also advocated a thoroughgoing land redistribution and also criticised the strict regulations affecting the marriage of crofters’ sons on the Lewis estate. But his Canadian experiences and Conservative politics made him more amenable than most Free Church ministers to voluntary emigration as part of a wider solution.41 Malcolm MacRitchie, minister of Knock, Lewis and a native of Uig, in the same island, expressed the contentious but widely held opinion that Lewis was comparatively more prosperous during his youth. MacRitchie also favoured a measure of land reform and, in advocating the benefits of re-establishing a more numerous ‘middle-class’ of independent tenant farmers, he echoed the sentiments of many ministers.42 There were a number of reasons why the Sutherland ministers were perhaps more strident in their demands for land reform than any other Free Church group. The earlier Sutherland evictions were the most infamous of all the Highland clearances and still coloured landlord – tenant relations during the ‘crofters’ war’. Indeed, the monolithic dominance of the Sutherland estate and the alleged high-handedness of estate factors were a continual source of friction in the county. At the Disruption the exodus to the Free Church was almost total and the Free Church was initially refused sites for churches. Although sites were granted in 1844, relations between the Free Church and the Sutherland estate remained strained as late as the 1880s. In a letter to the Times written as late as 1886, 39

40

41

42

NC App., 12. MacPhail was later criticised by Henry George for advising the people to trust in providence and obey the law, Oban Times, 10 Jan. 1885, 5; see 139 below. NC Ev., 837–44; see also NC Ev., 1181–2, for the evidence of Roderick MacKenzie, Free Church, Tarbert, Harris. NC Ev., 1108–13. Marriage was discouraged among the landless youth, to deter subdivision. For more on Greenfield, see 153–4 below. For the testimony of Donald J. Martin, minister of Stornoway (English-speaking congregation) Free Church, see NC App., 179–93. NC App., 143.

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for example, Neil Taylor, Dornoch, referred to the ‘squabbles’ between Free Church ministers and the Sutherland estate factors over ‘popular interests’ – in other words, land reform. Another element bearing upon the ministers was the county’s long tradition of anti-clerical separatism led by na daoine. This phenomenon, although contained by the institutional Free Church post-1843, may have informed popular attitudes to ministers in Sutherland as late as the 1880s.43 The Sutherland ministers were acutely aware of the poor reputation of their predecessors regarding the clearances and the re-publication of Donald MacLeod’s accounts in Alexander Mackenzie’s History of the Highland Clearances in 1883 would have further sharpened the popular perception of ministerial failure and neglect during the earlier evictions. The positive response of Sutherland Free Church ministers to the crofters’ agitation may have been in part caused by a desire to escape the charge of negligence levelled at their predecessors. Moreover, most Sutherland Free Church ministers were natives of the county or the adjacent areas, and were naturally aware of local political tensions; some were descended from those actually evicted in the clearances. Eleven Sutherland Free Church pastors testified in person and, in addition, two divinity students and a Sutherland native who was a Free Church minister in Berwickshire also gave evidence to the Commission. As elsewhere, a number of the Sutherland Free Church ministers were elected as crofter delegates and spoke almost as much in the capacity of crofters as ministers. According to James Cumming, minister of Melness and an elected crofter delegate, ‘we are, in fact, under an absolute despotism’. Cumming, an outspoken critic of the existing land system, gave lectures to his crofting parishioners on the subject from the commencement of the agitation in Sutherland.44 Donald MacKenzie of Farr read statements on behalf of absent delegates and complained that ‘[a]ctual beggary is staring us in the face’. John Crawford, the factor for the Tongue section of the Sutherland estate, reported to his superior, estate commissioner Sir Arnold Kemball: I regret to say that several of the agitators from Inverness and elsewhere have been with the FC minister of Farr and others prompting them and others who are prepared to listen to their revolutionary slanders.45 MacKenzie was sensitive to charges of collusion and refuted the idea that discontent had been largely stirred up by outsiders, influenced by the Irish 43

44

45

Times, 13 Sep. 1886, p. 13; see also 182–3 below; Paton, ‘Church in Northern Highlands’, 297. For examples of anti-clerical rhetoric in Sutherland during the crofters’ agitation, see Northern Ensign, 26 Feb. 1885, pp. 2–3; 29 Apr. 1885, p. 6; and also 163–9 below. NC Ev., 1596. Allan Macinnes has referred to Cumming’s statement as one of the ‘most elegant’ submitted to the Commission, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 61; NLS, Acc. 5931, Papers of Rev. J. Cumming. NLS, Acc. 10225, Sutherland Estate Papers, Policy Papers, 177, Crawford to Kemball, 23 Jul. 1883. I am indebted to Annie Tindley for the quotations from the Sutherland Estate papers.

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Land League. Regarding the agitation, MacKenzie stated, ‘it has been slumbering on in our minds for years. We required no one from outside to agitate us upon this question.’46 Norman N. MacKay, minister of Lochinver, was also involved in a long-standing disagreement with the local estate management, in his case over the issues of the school board elections, the distribution of poor relief, and the destitution of the crofters. A worried Evander McIver, the factor for the Scourie section, wrote to Kemball concerning MacKay’s sway over the crofters: The ministers are as a rule more likely to do harm than good by this interference, and this one’s interests are so much matched up with those of the people that their representations are more likely to be coloured and incorrect, for the people will be sure to state their complaints very fully to them [the Napier Commissioners].47 MacKay later tried to persuade the duke of Sutherland and his eldest son, the marquis of Stafford, to divide a large farm in Assynt for resettlement by crofters from the overcrowded township of Clashmore. A wary Kemball wrote of MacKay: I am anxious to restrict his officious interference . . . and to preclude his agency as an intermediary between ourselves and the small tenants: with this object, I have strongly urged Lord Stafford to be most cautious in dealing with this gentleman . . .48 The estate management was clearly concerned to minimalise the ministers’ social leadership and influence. Yet, for his part, MacKay maintained that the crofters were ‘deeply attached to their proprietors’. This suggests that both crofters and ministers often reserved their excoriation for factors rather than landlords, especially if the laird was a descendent of the old Highland aristocracy, as was the case on the Sutherland estate. Hostility towards the factors ran even deeper in Sutherland, where memories of Patrick Sellar and James Loch were still fresh.49 The doyen of Sutherland Free Church ministers was the highly esteemed Gustavus Aird, Moderator of the Free Church General Assembly in 1888. Aird had been an Established Church minister before the Disruption and 46 47 48 49

NC Ev., 1650. NLS, Acc. 10225, Policy Papers, 214, McIver to Kemball, 20 Feb. 1883. NLS, Acc. 10225, Crofters, ZN/a, Kemball to McIver, 22 May 1884. NC Ev., 1715; North British Daily Mail, 6 Apr. 1883, p. 3. Another Sutherland witness (not a minister), John MacKay, stated that in the eyes of the crofters the duke of Sutherland ‘can do no wrong’, NC Ev., 2512; compare, however, with Grigor, Mightier than a Lord, 15 and Fenyo˝, Contempt, Sympathy and Romance, 158–9, for reports of crofters’ antipathy to the house of Sutherland during the Crimean War. The tendency to blame factors and incoming tenant farmers rather than proprietors for the hardship which followed evictions is evident in some of the poetry from the clearance period, see, for example, the first two poems in Meek, Tuath is Tighearna, 47–56.

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throughout his long incumbency of Creich Free Church had been outspoken in his condemnation of the policies of eviction and emigration. In his evidence to the Commission, Aird stated the need for fair rents, fixity of tenure, compensation for improvements, and the turning of hill pasture into club farms. Responding to common prejudices held against the crofters, he asserted, ‘the people are very industrious, and so far as I remember, I do not know a lazy man in my congregation’. Possibly anticipating governmental intervention in the aftermath of the Napier Commission, Aird questioned: ‘Is it mere policy for the rulers of this nation to allow such a class of people to be treated as if they were serfs?’50 The last, but most influential, group of Free Church ministers to testify to the Napier Commission were those who were resident in the towns, away from the heartlands of crofting, but who maintained a close interest in the affairs of the Highlands. This group was closely aligned with the Edinburgh HLLRA in particular, which was heavily influenced by Free Church ministers. Most of these ministers had familial connections with the Highlands and Islands and were thus acquainted with conditions in the crofting areas. Some of them were pastors to Gaelic-speaking congregations of the Highland diaspora settled in the urban centres of the Lowlands. Typical of this group was Murdo Macaskill, Greenock, who became the successor to John Kennedy at Dingwall. A Lewisman, Macaskill was a recognised leader of the conservative ‘constitutional party’ in the Free Church after Kennedy’s death in 1884 and played a conspicuous role amongst the ministers concerned with the land question. Before the appointment of the Napier Commission, Macaskill sent a questionnaire to ‘gentlemen of the highest standing and intelligence’ in every district in the Highlands with a view to gaining a clear portrayal of the economic and demographic ‘condition of the whole Highlands’, especially in connection with crofting. He received seventy returns, forty of which were published in the North British Daily Mail. An editorial in the paper asserted that Macaskill’s reports ‘have awakened anticipations regarding what may be expected from a properly chosen and armed Royal Commission of the liveliest nature’. When testifying at the Commission’s sitting in Glasgow, Macaskill stressed that his own inquiries corroborated the evidence already heard from crofters.51 Macaskill was more vehement than most in his criticism of the existing order. He believed that the crofters were living in a ‘miserable condition’ under a ‘tyranny . . . through laird and factor, of which for long they have been the victims’. Confining the bulk of his statement to conditions on 50

51

NC Ev., 2585–7; for evidence of Aird’s early opposition to clearances, see Aird’s letter to the radical journalist Donald Ross, 22 Apr. 1854, in MacRae, Life of Aird, 183–5, quoted above on p. 56. North British Daily Mail, 26 Feb. 1883, p. 2; 1 Mar. 1883, p. 4. Macaskill seems to have had a favourable view of this newspaper because at his behest a letter written by Gustavus Aird dealing with the land question was published which, according to Aird’s biographer, ‘caused something like a sensation’, MacRae, Life of Aird, 185–6.

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Lewis, Macaskill rejected ‘absolutely’ any need for emigration to raise the living conditions of the Lewis crofters. Fearing the danger of ‘social revolution’, Macaskill feared that the rising generation would be less tolerant of ‘grievous injustice’ than its forebears. He drew a direct link between evangelicalism and the relative lack of violence in the Highlands throughout the turmoil of the nineteenth century, stating that ‘only the influence of true religion could have kept our long-suffering Highlanders from having risen en masse long ago, against the whole odious system’.52 In December 1883, when the Commissioners had retired to write their Report, Robert Rainy, Principal of New College, and J. C. Macphail of Pilrig, Edinburgh, submitted a written statement on behalf of the Free Church and its General Assembly Highland Committee. The statement in the main concerned the work of the Free Church in the region with regard to provision of religious ordinances and in the field of education but it also offered an analysis of the land issue. The authors were at pains to point out that their submission was by no means an authoritative church policy but a general statement of the consensus of opinion amongst most Free Church ministers. The sub-section of the statement entitled ‘The condition of the people’ asserts that the office-bearers of the Free Church had performed an important role in maintaining ‘peace and quietness’ and in deprecating ‘all violent and passionate measures’. The statement acknowledged that it ‘has been maintained in some quarters that the disposition to urge peace and submission at all hazards has been carried too far’. But, according to Rainy and Macphail, this was in stark contrast to the ‘lawless state of the Highlands four or five generations ago’ – the transformation in the region being the result of the beneficent effects of ‘duty and religion’. The desire to maintain a conciliatory position did not, however, preclude Rainy and Macphail from advocacy of land reform. They considered these proposals to give a fair indication of the general attitude of Free Church office-bearers to the land question. They stated that crofters’ holdings were too small on the whole and the insecure conditions of crofting tenure were unacceptable, leaving crofters ‘defenceless against oppression’. Highland proprietors also placed crofters ‘under a despotism’, by concentrating arbitrary power over the mass of the tenantry in the hands of factors: In many cases it may be a paternal and kindly despotism. But whatever the character of it may be, it is not a good or safe system either for those who administer it or those who are subject to it. Rainy and Macphail concluded their statement with a short apologia for their willingness to contribute to the social and political debate in the Highlands and in Scotland as a whole: In offering these statements, no fear is felt that those who make them will be held to go beyond their province as ministers of religion, and, 52

NC Ev., 3138, 3140; see also Macaskill, Highland Pulpit, xvii–xviii.

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so far, representatives of the Church of Christ. We believe that everywhere, and, certainly, not least in Scotland and in the Highlands, the Church must co-operate on such questions with other agencies, and other agencies with the Church. Many evils have come from the separation and alienation of classes in Scotland, – evils for which it will be found that ‘force is no remedy’. If evils are to be averted and human passions restrained, classes that have been too much alienated must work together.53 This concluding statement highlights the extent to which Free Church ministers were aware of the growing emphasis on social problems in both rural and urban Britain, and the need for concerted, multilateral efforts to alleviate poverty. The willingness to advocate land reform not only underlines the decline in notions of the absolute rights of private property in late-nineteenth-century thought, but also the development of idealistic conceptions of peasant proprietorship and rural renewal as a solution to national social problems. The testimonies proffered by the ministers of the Free Church exhibit a high degree of consistency. The division between constitutionalists and revisionists in the Church does not appear to have affected ministerial attitudes to land reform. Unlike the Established Church, generational differences did not affect responses appreciably. Indeed, some of the most senior ministers, such as Gustavus Aird, Evan Gordon, and John Mactavish, were amongst the most vocal in their advocacy of reform.54 Not one Free Church minister advocated land nationalisation or wholesale expropriation of landed property. On this point they were probably in line with the prevalent opinion in the crofting communities and, indeed – so far as the future HLLRA MPs were concerned – only Angus Sutherland and Dr Gavin Clark would have supported such radical measures. They were keen to stress the importance of ‘fair rent’ or ‘fair terms’ in any settlement of the issue. Yet neither did any minister defend the rights of property unconditionally; indeed, it seems likely that the very few ministers who testified but did not seek to become embroiled in the land debate did so for personal reasons more than from political sympathy for the status quo. They perhaps felt that they were not competent to offer advice on agricultural or economic issues, or did not wish to be diverted from offering purely spiritual succour to the crofters. A large majority of the Free Church ministers demonstrated an awareness of the social and economic conditions of the crofters and were keen to recommend practical remedies on their behalf. A number tried to legitimise 53 54

NC App., 407–9. For Mactavish’s testimony at Inverness, see NC Ev., 2798–807. Evan Gordon, minster of Duke St Gaelic Free Church, Glasgow, was chosen to represent the Federation of Celtic Societies although he was not officially a member of the Federation, NC Ev., 3123, 3136. Gordon was a prominent constitutionalist and voted against disestablishment and the introduction of musical instruments in public worship, AGAFCS, 1884, 52–3, 57.

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and defend the motivation behind the agitation by stressing the indigenous development of the crofters’ movement in their localities. Thus, they sought to refute the arguments often voiced that the agitation was wholly inspired by ‘outside’ agitators fomenting trouble and sedition in the hitherto peaceable Highlands. Although some were sharply critical of the system of land management in the region they took pains to act in a conciliatory fashion and tried to ensure that the agitation did not descend into a bloody confrontation between the crofters and the authorities. According to the official statement of the Church on the issue, the influence of Evangelical religion had been foremost in ensuring peace in the region for the past century. In this statement lies the quintessence of the Free Church position during the agitation. The denomination attempted to persuade the crofters to use non-violent methods of expressing their frustration with the existing order. Many ministers emphasised the Free Church’s desire to avert social turmoil and upheaval and to promote the welfare of the whole nation and not just the interests of one social group. Free Church ministers generally concluded that the safest way to achieve such an objective was through an accommodation with the aims of the HLLRA. The Established Church of Scotland ‘The Church of Scotland,’ Ansdell observes, ‘was more reserved in its response to land questions in the 1880s’.55 The constraints of her endowed position naturally affected the Church of Scotland’s attitude to the agitation. Placed in a closer relationship to the authorities and the landlords, the Established Church never engaged in the debate in the manner of the Free Church General Assembly. For example, the Established Church did not communicate a statement on the land question to the Napier Commission. Furthermore, a great deal of the Established Church’s reticence can be explained by the relative weakness of its position in the region vis à vis the Free Church, which could legitimately claim to represent a large majority of the crofting population. Notwithstanding such reluctance to enter the debate at a denominational level, the attitudes of individual Church of Scotland ministers to the land issue were wide ranging. This is clearly seen in their testimonies before the Commission. Some refused to countenance land reform proposals, maintaining that there was insufficient land to support the crofters and cottars.56 Again, many Establishment ministers were more amenable to emigration as a remedy for poverty and land hunger than Free Church ministers were. But at the same time and within the same denomination, there was a small group of ministers who advocated radical land reform with passionate enthusiasm. In their zeal for the crofters’ cause they usually went further, 55 56

Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 152. See, for example, the evidence of W. Cameron, Lochbroom, NC Ev., 1846.

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rhetorically at least, than clergymen of the other denominations. There also appears to have been a ‘middle-ground’ position held by many parish ministers who, although guarded in their comments, were able to render a cautious approval of land reform. An example of the first group of – mainly older – Established Church ministers was David Williamson. Williamson had been minister of the parish of Assynt in Sutherland since 1849. It is surprising that he professed to be unable to ‘give any information in regard to the difference in their [the crofters’] condition. They are much the same’. When questioned by Lochiel whether there was more poverty in the 1880s than in former times, Williamson replied, ‘I really cannot say; I am not much acquainted with the crofters of the parish. They are all along the coast and I live in the middle of the country.’ Williamson did nonetheless believe that the ‘great gulf’ between the crofters and the farmers and lairds was a ‘great evil in any country’.57 In Lewis, James Strachan of Barvas said that he could envisage no way to increase the size of crofters’ holdings in his parish. Questioned as to whether he could suggest a remedy for the ‘present state of things’, Strachan responded: ‘Not so long as the remedy is supposed to lie in the parish itself. I cannot suggest anything.’ He blamed subdivision of holdings as the chief cause of poverty and he also stated that ‘the crofts held by the people are generally too small for their support’. Strachan believed the destitution is more severe now than it was in 1847 and following years in consequence of the failure of the potatoes, because at that time there was no failure of the fishing as there was last year and there was no destruction of crops.58 Another Lewis minister, Ewan Campbell of Lochs parish, aroused controversy when he scorned the idea of a redistribution of land in his parish: ‘It would be far better and far more merciful towards these poor people to send for the 42nd to shoot every mother’s son of them that would be put there.’ Neither did he think that the crofts in Lochs were over-rented. The septuagenarian Campbell blamed the crofters as much as the proprietors for their poverty, which he attributed to the effects of subdivision. Campbell was born in Nova Scotia but, unlike the Free Church minister John Mactavish who also had experience of Canadian life, he saw emigration as being the chief remedy for the crofters’ land hunger and poverty. Nonetheless, Campbell was not averse to some land from the sheep-farm of Park being given to enlarge some of the crofts.59 Archibald Clerk of Kilmallie, Lochaber, edited the Gaelic supplement of Life and Work, the Established Church monthly magazine. He submitted a written statement to the Commission in which he recommended emigration 57 58 59

NC Ev., 1750–2. NC Ev., 978–86. NC Ev., 1164–5; MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 105–6. The 42nd were the Black Watch.

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and restriction of subdivision amongst the remaining crofters as the most effective method of raising living standards. Clerk asserted that Kilmallie parish, where the population had decreased considerably since the famine, was a conspicuous example of the success of these policies.60 Another Established Church minister with a reputation as a firm supporter of the status quo was the redoubtable Donald Mackinnon of Strath, Skye. Mackinnon believed that emigration was necessary to raise living standards but wished to see a self-supporting farming class established with holdings sufficient to occupy the farmers on a yearlong basis. In a detailed written statement which demonstrated a thorough knowledge of agriculture and of local conditions, Mackinnon argued that the bulk of the crofters were in poverty because the part-time nature of crofting allowed the men to ‘spend from eight to nine months of the year in absolute idleness’. Crofters, ‘even with the best holdings they possess in this country, were not intended or expected to be self-supporting farmers, but working men with allotments’. Their poverty was thus inevitable where ancillary occupations were not pursued. Mackinnon believed that granting fixity of tenure would – by ‘binding them more tightly to their poverty’ – have the effect of perpetuating ‘indolence, helplessness and dependence . . . [on] eleemosynary relief’. His hierarchical social outlook led him to emphasise the importance of the landlords’ role. For example, he lauded the ‘steady improvement’ of the crofters of Tiree under the duke of Argyll’s management. Crofting communities were often less harmonious than was represented: ‘it is only the landlord or factor,’ he maintained, ‘having the power of using summary measures against parties doing injury or injustice to their neighbours, who can settle disputes, prevent injustice, and enforce order in crofting townships’.61 Donald MacCallum held very different opinions. MacCallum testified at the Commission’s Arisaig hearing, where he was a missionary minister in an overwhelmingly roman catholic area. Referring to the ‘actual repression under which Highland crofters suffer’, MacCallum asserted ‘the necessity for some kind of constant interference on the part of the Government between crofters and landlords’. He drew attention to the Arisaig estate regulations, known as the ‘seventeen commandments’, as an example of repressive estate management. The fourteenth regulation forced sons on reaching the age of twenty-one, whether married or unmarried, to leave the estate unless special permission was given from the proprietrix, Mrs Nicholson, for them to remain. This was, according to MacCallum, ‘a new refinement . . . in the art of mismanaging the people’. He stated,

60

61

NC App., 29–33. For more on Clerk (1813–87), see J. Gallon (ed.), The Rev. Dr Archibald Clerk’s ‘Notes of Everything’, Kilmallie Parish Minister’s Diary of c. 1864 (Kilmallie, 1987); see also 34, 73 above. NC App., 42–51. It is recorded of Mackinnon elsewhere, however, that he was ‘direct in speech and unfailing in his duty. He was a friend to the poor in his own parish’, MacLean, Set Free, 62; see 171–4 below.

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whatever may be the case in England and even in the lowlands of Scotland, the present system of landlords, factors, ground officers, consolidations, sheep walks, and small crofts, make up an incongruous mass, taken as a whole, which is utterly abnormal, and must give way to an arrangement more in harmony with the genius of the Highland people. Quoting from Isaiah 5:8, he justified his position in a manner which typifies the biblical rhetoric which he and other land reformers frequently adopted during the agitation: Proprietors and sheep-farmers try to live alone in the midst of the earth, and I, as a teacher of righteousness, am constrained to justify the ways of God to men by saying that the rapid succession of proprietors and managers on this one estate indicate a striking execution of the divine sentence, ‘Woe unto them that join house unto house, that lay field unto field, until there be no room, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth.’62 Angus MacIver of Uig, Lewis, also advocated land reform in the 1880s, although he was less prominent and outspoken than Donald MacCallum. The history of Maciver’s congregation was complex, mainly originating in a localised secession from the Free Church after the repeal of lay-patronage in the Established Church in 1874. Free Church ministers in Lewis, however, rejected an ecclesiological explanation and attributed the secession to land hunger whereby Uig cottars desired to get a portion of the extensive glebe for their own holdings. MacIver later took a leading part in a large and controversial HLLRA rally held at Stornoway in October 1884. In his evidence to the Commission, MacIver maintained that with a reduction of rents and a redistribution of land, the population of Lewis could be ‘perfectly comfortable’. He was willing, nevertheless, to lead a party of 2,000 Lewismen to Manitoba if sufficient potential émigrés were disposed to join him.63 In addition to these more obtrusive Established Church witnesses, there were a number of ministers who, in their testimonies before the Napier Commission, confirmed to some extent the evidence submitted by crofters’ delegates and land reform activists. On the troubled Kilmuir estate in Skye, for example, James Davidson, Stenscholl, referred to the ‘terrorism’ of estate officials.64 Another Skye minister, Duncan MacCallum of Duirinish, observed, ‘the cry everywhere seems to be for more land’. MacCallum was 62

63

64

NC Ev., 2080–94. For a fuller account of MacCallum’s role in the land agitation, see 169–76 below. NC Ev., 908, 918; A Free Church Highland Minister, The Uig Challenge to be Free (Glasgow, 1876); MacFarlane, Donald J. Martin, 65–6; MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 105. MacIver returned to the Free Church in 1889. NC App., 8–9; see also the evidence of Roderick MacDonald, South Uist, NC Ev., 725–32; and of Roderick Morison, Kintail, NC Ev., 2001; NC App., 434.

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aware of the potential difficulties involved in dealing with land hunger, but suggested, it is a grievance which proprietors, if disposed, have it in their power to alleviate in some considerable measure. It may be remedied so far, by taking slices from very large farms, and laying them out as suitable crofts.65 In the Inverness-shire parish of Glenelg, James MacDonald stated: I may say that I believe myself it would be a benefit to the proprietor to give more land, so as to make the people more contented before a spirit of socialism gets possession of the Highlands. At present the proprietor could easily satisfy the people with some little concession if he came to visit them and gave them free access to state their wants. There is a strong attachment between the Highlanders and the proprietors . . . I believe generally the people have need of increase of grazing, and they would also be the better of some additional land.66 There was in the Established Church a greater breadth of opinion on the land question than in other denominations. This partly accounts for the failure of the church to speak collectively on the issue. Again, the denomination was numerically weak and lacked moral authority in the crofting heartlands of the north-west Highlands. The prime reason, however, still remains that the Established Church was closer to the landlords both socially and politically. This undoubtedly affected the attitudes of many Established Church ministers to the land issue. On the other hand, it is impossible to disregard the extent to which pro-crofter public opinion constrained ministers’ public statements. For example, Established Church ministers were careful in their evidence to Napier to appear to take a balanced approach. Even the sceptical Ewan Campbell, Lochs, admitted that some farmland could have been given to enlarge crofts in his parish. The fact that vociferous land reformers were found among the Established ministry explains Hunter’s assertion that ‘the 1880s witnessed a partial reversal in the earlier roles of the Free and Established Churches’.67 Yet despite the activities of Donald MacCallum and a coterie of younger pro-reform ministers, Hunter’s conception of a quasi-radicalised Church of Scotland remains unconvincing. It was the Free Church which retained the allegiance of the crofting population throughout the agitation. Whilst the mutual objective of both the HLLRA and the Free Church during the first phase of the ‘crofters’ war’ was the establishment of a stable agrarian population in the Highlands, the Established Church was incapable of voicing a united opinion on the subject. 65 66 67

NC App., 35–6; see also 49 above. NC Ev., 2046–8. Hunter, Crofting Community, 216–17.

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The roman catholic Church Eight roman catholic clergymen testified to the Commission, including the Bishop of Argyll and the Isles, Angus MacDonald. The roman catholic population in the Highlands was concentrated in Inverness-shire, particularly in Uist, Barra, and the Small Isles, and in some of the more isolated parts of the mainland. These areas, as mentioned above, experienced profound demographic changes in the clearance and post-famine period and lost considerable numbers of inhabitants. As a result, roman catholicism held a low profile in the overwhelmingly protestant Highlands of the nineteenth century.68 Twenty-nine-year-old Alexander MacKintosh, priest of Boisdale, South Uist, complained about the smallness of the crofts since the creation of grazing farms from land once held by the people. He believed that if the crofts were as they were formerly, before the population was so crowded, the people would be able to make a living, having the common land they used to have. MacKintosh also urged breaking up the large farms to create enlarged crofts, fixity of tenure, outside valuators to set ‘fair rents’, and compensation for improvements.69 MacKintosh complained about the lack of religious instruction and the dearth of roman catholic teachers in the local schools. He was involved in a protracted and bitter controversy with Ranald MacDonald, factor on the Gordon-Cathcart estates, who accused Mackintosh of renewing old grievances in order to stir up land agitation: For a time the crofter agitation in South Uist seemed to subside, but immediately before the meeting of the Royal Commission, the Rev. Alexander MacKintosh convened meetings and renewed the old agitation, repeating the same complaints which the Kilphedar tenants had acknowledged to be unreasonable.70 In a private letter to the Napier Commissioner Charles Fraser Mackintosh dated 12 November 1883, the young priest denied being responsible for unrest among the South Uist crofters, blaming the agitation on the results of long-term problems: I have not on any single occasion used influence of any kind to create discontent in the mind of any single tenant in South Uist and all who know me will bear me out in this. The existence of discontent among the crofters of South Uist must have dawned upon Mr MacDonald previous to the visit of the Royal Commission to the island. I may say that grievances existed and were spoken of and regarded as such before 68 69 70

See MacDonald, ‘Catholic Gaidhealtachd’, 56–72. NC App., 119. NC Ev., 3332; see also 715–25.

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I was born. Mr MacDonald, if he meant to insinuate that influence has been used by me to create discontent stated what is utterly impossible for him or anyone else to prove . . .71 On the mainland of Inverness-shire, Charles MacDonald, the priest of Moidart, was singular in his praise of the local proprietor, Lord Howard of Glossop: ‘The feeling of all the tenants on Lord Howard’s estate, and on the estate of Captain Swinburne [the neighbouring laird], is one of complete and universal satisfaction.’ MacDonald praised Howard’s granting of more arable ground and hill pasture to the crofters in order to ‘put the people in a better condition’ and he further lauded the improvements in the crofters’ housing under Howard’s proprietorship. Fraser Mackintosh questioned MacDonald on the importance of roman catholicism in the good relations between laird and tenants on Howard’s estate which was one of the very few in the Highlands where the laird and all of the tenantry adhered to the same creed: ‘And Lord Howard is himself one [a roman catholic]?’ MacDonald: Yes. Fraser Mackintosh: Has it not been found that the Catholics are kinder to each other and stick more to each other than the other prevailing and dominant bodies? MacDonald: Well, persecution, I suppose, binds people together. When the penal laws were enforced, of course we were obliged to put shoulder and shoulder together. Fraser Mackintosh: And does not that clannish feeling still remain? MacDonald: Very much so; but at the same time I must say ever since I came to the country there has never been the slightest difference amongst Presbyterians, Episcopalians or Catholics upon religious matters.72 Angus MacDonald, Bishop of Argyll and the Isles and the son of a minor Inverness-shire laird, submitted a written statement to the Commission solely concerned with religious provision in schools.73 Whilst some roman catholic clergymen in the Highlands showed an interest in land issues, they were – above all else – anxious to safeguard their flock through the religious instruction and education of the young. They were vehement in their condemnation of the existing educational provision which they considered was biased in favour of protestant pupils, teachers, and school board members.74 Such alienation from the existing structures of authority might possibly have led roman catholic priests to a more vociferous condemnation of the status quo but the evidence suggests that they were no more radical in their advocacy 71 72 73 74

NAS, AF50/9/7, MacKintosh to Fraser Mackintosh, 12 Nov. 1883. NC Ev., 2108–13. Howard’s estate bordered Presbyterian Ardnamurchan and Sunart. NC App., 97–112. Roderick MacDonald, Established Church, South Uist, attacked the Roman Catholic record on education, NC App., 113.

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of land reform than presbyterian ministers. Neither episcopalian nor united presbyterian ministers appeared before the Napier Commission and this fact largely reflects the religious allegiances of crofting society. Although a baptist minister, Duncan MacGregor, played a prominent role in the land reform movement both in Scotland and America, none of the baptist pastors in the Argyllshire islands, such as Tiree, Mull, and Islay, testified or submitted statements.75 Such conspicuous silence among both baptist ministers and episcopalian clergy continued throughout the period of agitation. * The first phase of the crofters’ agitation witnessed a considerable level of ministerial involvement. From the outcry over the Leckmelm case aroused by John MacMillan, and the dearth which threatened the crofting communities in the winter and spring of 1881–2, a climate of sympathy towards the crofters was well established. The unrest on Skye caught many unawares – the island’s ministers included – but was the catalyst for a thoroughgoing ministerial involvement with the land issue which lasted throughout the crofters’ campaign. The churches were keen to be recognised as forces of social cohesion and stability as evidenced by the encouragement the Skye Free Church ministers gave to the Glendale crofters to surrender to the authorities. Nonetheless, senior Free Church figures such as Mactavish, Macaskill, and Aird were willing – even at this early stage – to identify with the crofters’ grievances and were actively seeking solutions to the land problem. The evidence gathered by the Napier Commission is the most valuable single source for the study of clerical attitudes to land reform both quantitatively and also in terms of the content of the material. The number of Highland clergymen who participated was the high figure of around one in six. Many of the ministers and priests took considerable pains to ensure that their respective opinions on both the local and the regional land issue were expressed in comprehensive and often incisive statements – both written and viva voce. This evidence suggests that the majority of Highland clergy were in favour of land reform in order to extend crofters’ holdings and provide tenurial security. Such a consensus is remarkable when one considers the deep social and sectarian divisions that existed in the Highlands in the 1880s. Ministers were opposed to socialism and land nationalisation and they did not wish to see the existing arrangements of an essentially 75

For MacGregor, see J. D. Wood, ‘Land Reform and Populism in the Atlantic Community 1879–1890: Towards a Comparative Approach’, M. Litt. dissertation (University of Edinburgh, 1981), 339–84; J. D. Wood, ‘Transatlantic Land Reform: America and the Crofters’ Revolt’, SHR, lxiii (1984), 79–104. The leader of the land agitation on Tiree, Donald Sinclair, President of the Tiree branch of the HLLRA, ‘was latterly a lay preacher in the Baptist Church, but he is best remembered for the composition of Gaelic evangelical hymns which became extremely popular well beyond Tiree’, Meek, Island Harvest, 23.

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Christian society being radically altered.76 By their support for land reform, however, they exhibited a sympathy for crofters’ social and economic grievances that was in contrast to the attitudes of many factors, tenant-farmers, and proprietors. There were, of course, some dissenting voices – generally those of older Established Church ministers. But such opposition to land reform where it existed was more based on scepticism about the viability of the crofting system than on a positive espousal of those abstract theories of property and possession advocated by the duke of Argyll. In a petition sent to the local landlord, Sir Alexander Matheson, the crofters of Carndubh and Bundaloch in Kintail were described as suffering ‘great poverty and hardship by the want of any land sufficient to grow potatoes for the use of their families’. The petition was drawn up and signed by the Free Church minister of Lochalsh, Alexander MacColl, the Established Church parish minister, Roderick Morison, and the Roman Catholic priest in Kintail, John Cameron. These three clergymen represented divergent religious bodies and, in their personal religious outlook and practices, would undoubtedly have been opposed to one another. The fact that they considered it within their duty to work together to further the social and economic welfare of the poor in their community highlights the practical consensus which emerged amongst Highland clergymen over the land issue in the first phase of ‘the crofters’ war’.77

76 77

Donald MacCallum was the only professed socialist among all the ministers who testified. NC Ev., 1992–3.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Escalation of Agitation Here the proprietor of the soil stocks the farm; at the close of autumn, the produce of the farm is valued, the proprietor appropriating one half and the tenant retaining the other. Does not this seem an admirable arrangement? Would it not exactly suit the state of things in the Highlands? Only, to prepare for such an arrangement, money should be supplied by the Government to meet the expense of trenching a sufficient amount of ground to furnish a thirty-acre croft to each family, with an outrun for cattle on hill pasture. This appears to me the most feasible scheme for meeting the wrongs under which our poor Highland crofters have so long been suffering. I have been thinking of ventilating this scheme, and I wish you to think it over, ere I say publicly anything about it.1 The policy impact of the Napier Report was minimal but the effect of the public enquiry was to promulgate and intensify the expectation for land reform throughout the crofting areas. This heightening of the agitation from 1884 forced the crofters’ grievances into the forum of national politics, a process which eventually led to the passing of the 1886 Crofters’ Holdings (Scotland) Act. At the same time both ministers and elders were forced to respond to the escalation of the land reform campaign, not least when troops were sent to bolster the authority of the law. The quote from John Kennedy’s letter to Gustavus Aird above demonstrates the extent to which the agitation and the resolution of crofters’ grievances were coming to preoccupy spiritual leaders as well as legislators and landlords. Fanning the flames In early 1884 the agitation was initially curtailed by the expectations aroused by the Napier Commission but the appearance of the Report and the subsequent unwillingness of government to act on its recommendations merely served to widen and intensify the disturbances, especially in Skye, Tiree, and the Outer Isles. Skye crofters withheld their rents at Whitsunday while landlords were paralysed from initiating removal proceedings against the crofters because the changing climate of public and 1

Kennedy to Aird, Mar. 1884, in Auld, Life of Kennedy, 179–80. The letter was written in Tuscany where Kennedy was convalescing shortly before his death.

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political opinion was increasingly inimical to evictions. The London HLLRA’s response to governmental inaction was to organise the first major land reform conference in the Highlands to articulate more clearly the aims and strategy of the land reform movement. Held at Dingwall, the county town of Ross-shire, the conference immediately followed the Ross and Cromarty by-election of August 1884 and marked a new departure in the agitation, since it laid the foundations for the politicisation of land reform activity in the Highlands. Indeed, the significant point about the Dingwall conference was the clarity with which the HLLRA articulated its views in preparation for the next general election, at which the crofters would have the vote for the first time. The land reform programme agreed on was multifaceted but had as its main objectives the introduction of a suspensory bill to halt evictions, legislation based on the ‘3 Fs’ of the Irish Land Act of 1881, and the implementation of the Napier recommendations, such as the proposals for the compulsory enlargement of holdings and the creation of new townships. Donald MacCallum, now the minister of Waternish, Skye, and James Cumming, Melness, were the principal ministerial participants. Cumming seconded a resolution to vote only for those ‘in full and thorough sympathy with the people on the great social question of Land Law Reform’. He also ‘contended that the people had as good a right to the land as any crowned head’.2 The Highland News report also states, however, that ‘the Ross-shire clergy and public men all . . . were conspicuous by their absence’ at Dingwall. On the clerical side, this is perhaps partially explained by the fact that many of the ministers were aligned with the Edinburgh HLLRA and the Edinburgh Highland Association at this stage. MacPhail refers to the initial rivalry between the London and Edinburgh associations and this undoubtedly affected the ministerial participation at London HLLRA meetings, such as the Dingwall Conference. The list of office-bearers of the Edinburgh Highland Association – which amalgamated with the Edinburgh HLLRA in December 1884 – contains the names of twenty-two ministers and some elders of both the Established and Free Churches. The Association aimed to ameliorate the condition of the small tenants, crofters, and cottars in the Highlands and Islands; to watch over their interests, and to protect and vindicate their rights by just and prudent means. The President was Alexander Beith, a senior Free Church minister, who had served pastorates in both Highlands and Lowlands. Gustavus Aird, Creich, was a Vice-President, and Robert Rainy, New College, Murdo Macaskill, Greenock, and Thomas MacLauchlan, Edinburgh, were members of the General Committee.3 2 3

MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 96–7; Highland News, 8 Sep. 1884, p. 4. MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 97; Highland News, 28 Jul. 1884, p. 2; see 136–7 below for the opinion of the Scotsman on the different associations.

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On 10 November, 1884 the Highland News published a letter from the leading Inverness Free Church minister, John Mactavish. Mactavish’s letter appeared at a critical juncture, after the Dingwall conference and when thousands of crofters had returned from the fishing season, more determined than ever to achieve land reform and rent reduction. On 31 October an extra detachment of police had been routed near Uig, in Skye, by some two hundred crofters. With tensions in Kilmuir and Glendale greatly heightened and with sensationalised newspaper reports creating alarm in official circles, the Home Secretary, Harcourt, reluctantly agreed to send troops to the island to support the police, the first military expedition to Skye since 1746. Mactavish’s letter therefore represents the response of sympathetic, pro-land reform ministers to the substantial escalation of agitation and tension in late 1884: I feel very much grieved at the reports of the illegal and violent proceedings by crofters in the islands of Skye and Lews. I have long been deeply impressed with the injustices of their Land Laws. These were framed in the interest of the landowner, and in the almost entire disregard of the interests of the occupiers and cultivators of the soil; and I have wondered that the people have borne so long and so patiently with the cruel injustice done to them . . . I would earnestly entreat my dear suffering fellow-countrymen to avoid every effort to take forcible possession of any land which the law gives now to another, and to abstain from all other acts of violence.4 Obviously impressed with the seriousness of the reports in the Scotsman about the failure of the authorities to control the growing confrontation, Mactavish sympathised with the crofters and praised their patience in view of ‘cruel injustice’. But those agitators who perpetrate violent acts were ‘misled’ and ought to operate solely within ‘constitutional means’. He stated that he would not blame them even ‘if they made execution of law as difficult as possible, if they would only avoid breaking it’. This, it could be argued, gave an implicit sanction to the non-payment of rent, the resistance of eviction notices and sheriff officers’ summonses, and similar tactics that had hitherto characterised the agitation. Indeed, Mactavish emphasised pragmatic political – as well as moral – reasons why the crofters ought not to break the law. To do so, he argued, would merely strengthen the landlords’ case. Whilst not drawing upon arguments grounded in racial superiority – which were common in late-nineteenth-century Britain – Mactavish drew a contrast between the violence and outrage characteristic of Irish Land War, and the Highland situation; this was an attempt to reaffirm the link between the land agitation and a Christian conception of Highland ‘peoplehood’. The Evangelical privileges of the Highlanders rendered 4

Highland News, 10 Nov. 1884, p. 3. The form ‘Lews’ or ‘The Lews’ was common in the nineteenth century.

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them more morally responsible than unenlightened roman catholics in Ireland. Mactavish’s belief that the crofters’ movement was fundamentally grounded in Christian principles also prompted his call for the London HLLRA to expel J. Stuart Glennie, a London barrister and prominent land reformer, who had recently published Pilgrim Memories, which was alleged to contain blasphemous and atheistic sentiments.5 On Skye the agitation had already gained momentum from the induction of Donald MacCallum to the parish of Waternish earlier in the year; more impetus was now added with the return of seasonally migrant crofters for the winter. At a mass meeting of a thousand crofters at Uig on the Kilmuir estate on Friday 7 November, presided over by MacCallum – who opened and closed the meeting with prayer – it was reported that motions were carried where crofters resolved to take possession of land if the proprietor was reluctant to part with it, ‘without even asking the proprietor’s assent . . . as this meeting is of the opinion that God created the land for all, and not for any particular individual’, other motions refusing to pay rent and to punish those who did, and refusing to serve in militia or naval reserve, unless legislation was brought forward.6 It must be kept in mind that many newspaper reports during the October–November 1884 period tended to sensationalise events and circulated exaggerated rumours about proposed acts of defiance. The editorial in the Highland News of 17 November, 1884 pointed out the damage done by such reporting when it criticised the excesses of the Inverness-shire authorities, stating that they were being affected by the sensationalist tone of the press coverage: There is a ‘war correspondent’ style about all the published reports which is thoroughly unsatisfactory to the moderate reader, and irritating to the subjects of it. We fear that the officials in local government authority have been seized with a sort of panic mainly in consequence of such sensational accounts of the agitation. The leader recognised the crofters’ grievances, but deplored intimidation and breaking of the law – accounts of which it believed to have been exaggerated. But rather than arming the police, the paper urged the military to be sent instead.7 MacPhail also refers to the ‘garbled reports’ of a mass demonstration held in Stornoway which appeared in the Scotsman. The report attempted 5

6 7

Highland News, 10 Nov. 1884, p. 3; see letter from ‘Highlander’ against Stuart Glennie, Highland News, 27 Oct. 1884, p. 3. Stuart Glennie was Vice-President of the London HLLRA, see also 159, 172 below. Highland News, 10 Nov. 1884, p. 4. Highland News, 17 Nov. 1884, p. 2.

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to portray the main speakers, Angus MacIver, of Uig Established Church, Lewis, and Alexander Mackenzie, the Inverness journalist and writer, as ‘inciting their audience to breaches of the law’. Whilst these assertions were grossly inaccurate, they seem to have conveyed the impression that law and order were on the verge of collapse in the Hebrides. The Oban Times more accurately reported a large meeting at Uig, Skye, held on 8 December, which indicates that Donald MacCallum did indeed give his support to non-payment of rent.8 Undoubtedly, these accounts encouraged a reluctant Liberal administration to concede to the incessant demands of William Ivory, Sheriff of Inverness-shire, for the deployment of troops. An editorial in the Northern Chronicle questioned the role of the ministers in allowing agitation to reach such a level and drew a comparison with the Irish situation: It used to be the well-founded boast of Highland Protestantism that it exercised a higher and nobler influence than the Roman Catholicism of Ireland . . . But . . . what have the religious guides of the Skyemen to boast of now? If things have not come to the worst, they would soon, by being let alone, come to the worst.9 Under the title ‘An Inverness Minister Trying to Make Peace’, the Highland News carried a report of the visit to Skye of A. C. MacDonald, the minister who had opposed John Mactavish’s initial resolution on land reform in the Inverness Free Presbytery in 1881: The Uig district was visited on Tuesday by the Rev. A. C. Macdonald, Inverness, who had preliminary meetings with different groups of the people. Mr Macdonald tried to impress upon them the utter futility of offering resistance to any body of constabulary that might be sent into the district, and the disastrous consequences to themselves that would be sure to follow such a rash step. Mr Macdonald telegraphed to the Home Secretary to the effect that he had good hopes of a peaceful settlement of the difficulty. The Rev. A. C. Macdonald’s visit appears to have been a purely voluntary affair. MacDonald also addressed a mass meeting of crofters at Uig where a resolution was passed unanimously not to offer resistance even if numerous arrests were being made. The resolution was telegraphed by James Davidson, the Established Church minister of Stenscholl, to the Home Secretary and the newspaper expressed hopes ‘that a better feeling will continue to prevail in the district’.10 In a letter to Sheriff Ivory, A. C. MacDonald reported his meeting with the Uig and Kilmuir crofters ‘among whom I have spent the 8

9 10

MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 112 and 111–17; Oban Times, 15 Dec. 1884, p. 4; see 137 above for another account of the Stornoway demonstration. Northern Chronicle, 5 Nov. 1884, p. 4. Highland News, 17 Nov. 1884, p. 4.

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last few days’. He stated that the crofters were not aware that they had broken the law: I had great difficulty in getting them to understand that . . . obstruction of the police on Her Majesty’s High Road was a breach of law – they were under the impression and strenuously maintained that no violent hands having been laid upon the officers, the simple fact of their having been asked quietly to ‘return’ did not and could not have amounted to a transgression of the law, but having got them otherwise convinced I had no difficulty in getting them to apologise for their conduct. MacDonald hoped that a large body of men will not be sent to Kilmuir ‘to apprehend a few of these simple, oppressed, hungry men . . .’ He emphasised the humanitarian aspect of his visit by informing Ivory that a ship load of good oat meal and blankets instead of armed men would have been more welcomed – this would go further to produce peace than all the military force at the Govt’s command. The people are starving from cold and hunger – and so long as they remain in this condition so long must we look for trouble and agitation.11 The government’s reluctant decision to accede to Sheriff Ivory’s request for troops to be sent to Skye elicited little comment in print from ministers. Indeed, many were perhaps relieved to see a more effective force than the Inverness-shire constabulary taking charge of the disturbances. Some probably believed that the military presence would restore the prestige of the authorities in the crofters’ eyes and help defuse tension. Not every minister was convinced, though. At an HLLRA meeting held in the Free Church mission hall in Oban, Argyll, on 26 November, presided over by Donald MacCaig, the Established Church minister of Muckairn, a resolution was passed condemning the action the government had taken. Two other local ministers also gave speeches at this meeting and supported the resolution.12 Using exceptionally strong language, MacCaig went as far as to question the doctrine of passive obedience: Were the artillery of the Forster and Assistance and the rest of the invading fleet to open fire and resound in the halls of Inveraray Castle, and of Dunrobin Castle, and of Armadale Castle, and the house of Major Fraser of Kilmuir and of Mr John Ramsay of Kildalton, and other castles and houses that need not be named, my opinion is that it would contribute very much to the prosperity as well as the pacification of the Highlands . . . Let it not then be supposed that the doctrine of passive obedience is inculcated in the Scriptures, or that men there are taught 11 12

NAS, GD1/36/1/18/37, Ivory Papers, MacDonald to Ivory, 13 Nov. 1884. Highland News, 1 Dec. 1884, p. 3. For more about this meeting see 158 below.

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to submit tamely and without a murmur to the wrongs and oppression to which they may be exposed.13 On 19 November the Commission of the Free Church General Assembly debated the ‘Crofter question’ in direct response to the events in Skye. At Robert Rainy’s instigation the Commissioners unanimously passed a resolution which referred to the ‘great grievances and wrongs [that] have been endured by the Crofter population in many parts of the Highlands, to their loss and great impoverishment’. In a classic statement of the denomination’s position, it was agreed that the necessity is urgent for redress of grievances by new and just laws, fitted to promote and secure improved conditions of life. The Commission sympathise deeply with the people of the districts concerned in all suitable efforts to obtain these remedies, and they earnestly exhort their people, not in the Highlands only, but in the Lowlands also, strenuously to exert their influence to secure early and effectual dealing with the evils involved in the existing state of things. The note of caution was, of course, sounded when the Commission warned against ‘all forcible resistance to the law, or disturbance of the public peace, by any violent interference with legal rights’. Such actions were not vindicated ‘by the allegation that the law in its principle or administration is unjust; for peaceful methods of seeking redress are open and ought to be employed’. The Free Church’s adherents were exhorted to a vigorous use of ‘all lawful means of redress, according to their own judgement, to resist the temptations which might lead them into acts of lawlessness or into defiance of authority, and to listen to no counsels which point that way’. A memorial was sent to Gladstone and it was agreed to establish a committee – with Rainy as convener – to examine how best to ‘press the question’ directly on the legislature and to advise ministers in the Highlands who were concerned about the growing unrest.14 A. C. MacDonald revisited Skye early in 1885 ‘to distribute meal, blankets, and clothing among the destitute crofters at Kilmuir with funds recently raised by the Earl of Breadalbane’. The prospective Conservative candidate for Inverness-shire, Reginald MacLeod, praised MacDonald for his conciliatory work but criticised Free Churchmen in Glasgow who – following the Commission of Assembly’s lead – drew up a resolution in the Glasgow Presbytery in early December proposing to petition Parliament for land reform and criticising existing ‘unjust and oppressive’ land laws.15 The resolution was the work of W. Ross Taylor, a leading Glasgow minister originally 13 14 15

Oban Times, 6 Dec. 1884, p. 5. AGAFCS, 1885, Proceedings of 1884 Commission of Assembly, 242–3. Highland News, 16 Feb. 1885, p. 4. For Reginald MacLeod, son of the Skye landlord MacLeod of MacLeod, see Northern Chronicle, 10 Dec. 1884, p. 6; and Highland News, 8 Dec. 1884, p. 4.

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from Caithness. Given the strength of feeling at the recent Commission, it is surprising that Taylor’s motion was narrowly defeated at the Presbytery’s next meeting on Wednesday, 7 January, 1885. The failure of this motion demonstrates that a liberal, revisionist Presbytery such as Glasgow did not necessarily adopt a land reform agenda as part of the wider Liberal political consensus. Clearly, the Free Church’s sympathy for the crofters was more strongly manifested in some areas than in others.16 Principal Rainy on Lewis October 1884 also witnessed a major upsurge in pro-land reform activity on Lewis, the largest and most populous of the Outer Hebrides. The agrarian poverty of Lewis was considered to be the worst in the whole region by the 1880s, and the island’s difficulties were compounded by the existence of a ‘cottar’ problem as much as a crofter problem. The island’s demography was exceptional during this period, since it was the only significant area of the Highlands and Islands where the population was still growing – it would not peak until 1911 at a level of 29,593. A primary reason for the exceptional land hunger on Lewis was the prevalence of subdivision amongst the crofters, with sons frequently given a portion of their fathers’ holdings as squatters or ‘cottars’. The agricultural potential of the island was not great given the poverty of the land, much of which was moor. The intensity of feeling amongst crofters and cottars was heightened by the fact that nearly all the best land was held by grazier farmers, and a large amount was used for deer forest, especially in Lochs parish, located in the south-eastern quarter of the island. Various schemes to substantially redistribute the land were drawn up by reformers on Lewis, including the ministers of the two Stornoway Free Church congregations, Donald John Martin and James Greenfield, and by Murdo Macaskill, Greenock.17 Whilst large-scale emigration was envisaged by many opposed to land reform as the only solution to the island’s problems, Angus MacIver of Uig stated to the Napier Commission that Lewismen would not emigrate until they first saw the results of a thorough-going redistribution of land. James Greenfield reckoned that the first remedy for Lewis would be ‘to have the whole island divided for the people of the island, be they crofters or farmers’.18 It was against this background that Robert Rainy visited Lewis in October 1884. Rainy was aware of the potentially damaging effect of alienating Highland sentiment at both the spiritual and the political level. Although probably in the presbyterian mainstream theologically – albeit in a characteristically ambiguous manner – Rainy gave encouragement to 16 17 18

Highland News, 12 Jan. 1885, p. 4. NC App., 179–93; NC Ev., 1108–13; 3137–50. NC Ev., 915–16, 1109; see also 111 above and 153, 204 below.

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the development of a more liberal form of evangelicalism in the Free Church and broadly supported younger biblical critics such as Marcus Dods and William Robertson Smith. It was his ecclesiastical chicanery and his eventual willingness to isolate constitutionalist Free Church sentiment in order to accomplish wider ambitions for union with the United Presbyterian Church – rather than his own personal religious outlook – which made ‘Black Rainy’ the bête noire of conservative Highland presbyterians.19 His visit to Lewis again demonstrates how seriously leading Free Church ministers viewed the land agitation and the extent to which they desired to encourage the land reformers and direct the movement along ‘constitutional’ lines. Rainy’s Lewis sojourn was ostensibly to open new Free Churches at Carloway and Shawbost, in the west of the island, but he managed to combine these duties with addressing two large meetings in Stornoway in favour of franchise reform and land reform. Additionally, whilst in Stornoway, and also on the west of the island, he encouraged the founding of branches of the Edinburgh HLLRA. In this he was supported by the newly elected Liberal MP for Ross and Cromarty, Ronald MunroFerguson of Novar, who espoused land reform principles in order to secure the seat in the face of opposition from a ‘crofter candidate’, Dr Roderick MacDonald. On 1 October 1884, a large Franchise reform meeting was held in Stornoway, the capital of Lewis. Novar and a number of Free Church ministers were present – Rainy, Donald John Martin, Stornoway, Alexander Lee of Nairn (a close ally of Rainy), John MacLean, Shiskine, Arran, Roderick MacRae, Carloway, Allan MacArthur, Barvas, and Duncan Morrison, Uig – the last three being ministers on Lewis. Donald John Martin made ‘an able speech in Gaelic’ in which he appealed to imperialism, political loyalty, and Highland atavism. He moved the following motion, which was reported in translation: That this meeting is of the opinion that the condition of classes of the crofters and cottars in the Highlands of Scotland, as revealed in the report of the Royal Commission upon the Highlands and Islands, is not creditable to this great Empire; thanks Mr Gladstone for his encouraging reference to this subject in the recent speech at Edinburgh; and urges upon the Govnt. the necessity, after the passing of the Franchise Bill, for immediate land legislation, so that the straths and glens of the Highlands may yet be inhabited by a loyal, prosperous, and contented race. Rainy supported Martin’s resolution and, referring to the ‘previous bad treatment’ of the crofters during the clearances, pointed out the connection 19

Simpson, Life of Rainy; Alexander Stewart, and John K. Cameron, The Free Church of Scotland 1843–1910: A Vindication (Edinburgh, 1910); A. McPherson, History of the Free Presbyterian Church (1893–1970) (Inverness, n.d.). Rainy was widely regarded as having sacrificed Robertson Smith in order to accommodate higher critical views more subtly within the Free Church, see MacLeod, Second Disruption, 96–9.

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between franchise reform and land reform: ‘If there had been a Franchise Bill in those days, certainly there would have been no evictions such as had taken place.’ Rainy concluded by outlining the aims he believed the movement ought to strive towards. ‘It was not to set class against class,’ he stressed, rather, ‘[i]t was that the crofter class should be in circumstances to achieve independence by honest hard work’.20 During the following week Novar addressed crofters at meetings on the west side of the island, in Carloway, Barvas, Shawbost on Thursday and at Ness on Friday morning. He attended the opening service of the new Free Church at Carloway conducted by Rainy. Local crofters were waiting to meet him outside the new Free Church at Shawbost, and at Barvas another political meeting was also held in the Free Church. A further meeting held on Tuesday, 7 October, in order to form a Stornoway branch of the Edinburgh HLLRA, was attended by Rainy and Roderick MacRae of Carloway. Donald John Martin, Stornoway, gave another Gaelic speech in which he strongly espoused the Liberal cause and warned against setting up an independent or autonomous non-party group to represent the crofters. ‘Land Laws, more than landlords, were to blame . . .’ he stated, reflecting the moderate position of the Edinburgh HLLRA, which was more typical of Novar’s brand of Liberalism than the more radical rhetoric of the London HLLRA. Rainy himself moved a resolution in favour of legislative intervention on behalf of the crofters but – clearly demonstrating his Gladstonian sympathies – ‘touched upon the enormous difficulties that the Government had to contend with in the House of Commons’, a reference to the obstruction tactics of Parnell’s Irish Party.21 It is tempting to suggest that Rainy and Novar were acting to further the political interests of the Liberal Party and the institutional hegemony of the Free Church in their Lewis tour. Rainy’s commitment to land reform was questioned at times, especially during the Inverness Free Church Assembly of 1888, where he submitted a typically vague motion on the subject. Nonetheless, his submission to the Napier Commission and his speech at the November Commission of Assembly make it clear that he viewed moderate land reform as a worthwhile political and social objective. Rainy’s reputation as an unscrupulous ecclesiastical politician is somewhat tempered, moreover, by the sympathy he showed towards Highlanders suffering from destitution resulting from harvest failures or storms when he was convener of the Free Church General Assembly Highland Committee.22 Of course, it is not necessary to question the genuineness of Rainy’s concern for the crofters to envisage his use of the Edinburgh HLLRA as a means of seeking to moderate and control the crofters’ movement in the interests of the Free Church leadership. Furthermore, the political reluctance of the Liberal 20 21 22

Highland News, 6 Oct. 1884, p. 3. Highland News, 13 Oct. 1884, p. 4. NC App., 407–9; NLS, MS 2635 fo. 39, Blackie correspondence, Rainy to Blackie, 21 Mar. 1883.

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administration to send troops against the crofters may have heavily influenced Rainy. If his personal influence could restrain the likelihood of agitation on Lewis, the authorities would have been greatly encouraged. Novar also used land reform rhetoric in his election campaign and encouraged crofters to join the Edinburgh HLLRA. He told the crofters of Ness that ‘they should join some association such as the Edinburgh HLLRA, and publish quarterly reports of their doings and in that way bring their grievances before the public’. Novar, of course, was also a landlord and an opponent of the more radical reformers. Following a conversation with Novar about the Lewis crofters, the duke of Argyll informed Gladstone that the young MP ‘cannot support the wild notions they have conceived’. According to the Scotsman, radical land reformers affiliated to the London HLLRA were alleged to have circulated hand bills attacking Novar and Rainy such as the following: The Stornoway Liberal Association, merchants, and others whom we support by our custom and labour, and ministers (with Rainy and Lee at their head), who live on our hard-earned funds are backing the landlord Novar, and doing all they can to crush your Land Law Reform Association, and to serve their own interests only. To mislead you they have formed a branch of a sham Edinburgh Association, the prominent members of which are those who declined to combine in your interests a very short time ago.23 There is ample reason to suspect the extent of Novar’s commitment to land reform. His encouragement of the Edinburgh HLLRA and his close involvement with Rainy does raise questions about Rainy’s motivation for going to Lewis and giving such unqualified support to the official Liberal platform. The difficulty with this conspiracy theory lies, however, in the simple fact that Rainy ought to have gone to Skye rather than Lewis in late 1884 if the authorities had hoped his presence might inhibit excessive confrontation. Less than a month after Rainy’s return from the Hebrides a Scotsman editorial drew attention to differences between the Edinburgh and London Associations. The London Association ‘was formed . . . on exactly the same principles as the Parnellite Party’. Whereas the Edinburgh Association, the paper reckoned, was established by Free Church leaders ‘influenced by the desire to strengthen the hold of their Church on the population of the Highlands and Islands by championing their real or supposed grievances’. The London Association accused the Edinburgh body of indulging in ecclesiastical politics, regarding her leaders as having ‘no other object at heart than the Disestablishment of the Church of Scotland’. The Free Church ministers, for their part, had, according to the Scotsman, unintentionally fanned the flames of agitation: 23

Ross-shire Journal, 3 Oct. 1884, p. 4; Argyll to Gladstone, 4 Dec. 1884, quoted in MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 232; Scotsman, 25 Oct. 1884, p. 7.

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It is not too much to say that they encouraged breaches of the law . . . It would be monstrous to suggest that either Principal Rainy or any of the other members of the Highland Association, meant to encourage lawlessness. Their mistake was in supposing that they could give encouragement to men who had sinned but were believed to have sinned in ignorance, without thereby encouraging the sin.24 Ironically, the period immediately following Rainy’s visit witnessed an outbreak of serious agitation on the west coast of Lewis – including several acts of outrage – which lasted until mid-1885. A report of the rival London HLLRA meeting in Stornoway held at the end of October, which was opened in prayer by Angus MacIver, Uig, and with the singing of Psalm 46, singled out the two ministers present, MacIver himself and Donald MacCallum, for being overly fiery in their rhetoric: ‘He from Skye [MacCallum], in particular, speaking in a wild and demonstrative strain as could not but have had a most injurious effect upon too credulous hearers’. No Free Church ministers attended the demonstration.25 1884 was a year when the Highland land issue became more politicised largely through the success of the two-pronged assault waged by crofters at a local level and by the leaders of the HLLRA on the national stage. Ewen Cameron has shown how central government sought to isolate the HLLRA by encouraging landlords to reach an accommodation with their tenants.26 But the momentum behind the campaign was too powerful for even this strategy to take effect. The reform of the British political system – a process which would give crofters the vote the following year – encouraged crofters to press their case; moreover, the economic difficulties of landlords also played an important part in strengthening the crofters’ position. As the editorial in the Ross-shire Journal of 26 December stated: 1884 has in many respects been a remarkable year . . . Our friends the crofters are waging and winning, and very much in consequence of the depression. The depression has affected them with extreme severity, but this same depression has been opening up new possibilities for them, and bringing land hitherto beyond their means within easier reach, and in a short time we may expect to see them as a class in the possession of more desirable holdings, and these held on more equitable terms.27 Landlords’ conference and Henry George The early months of 1885 were equally turbulent. The agitation continued and a number of developments took place that would considerably shape 24

25 26 27

Scotsman, 18 Oct. 1884, p. 4. The disestablishment accusation appeared again during the Sutherland election campaign in 1885 and is discussed below, 167. MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 127–37; Highland News, 27 Oct. 1884, p. 4. Cameron, Land for the People, 32, 39. Ross-shire Journal, 26 Dec. 1884, p. 2.

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the course of events. Firstly, a conference of landlords was held at Inverness which adopted a number of resolutions designed to placate both recalcitrant crofters, and a Liberal administration determined that proprietors should bear some of the burden of responsibility for rectifying matters. The Inverness conference was largely the work of Munro-Ferguson of Novar and Cameron of Lochiel and was the result of months of government pressure on the landlords. Whilst in hindsight it is clear that the terms offered by the proprietors were insufficient to satisfy the demands of the crofters, it is important not to underestimate the contemporary significance of the conference. Indeed, the reluctance of the government to legislate was only overcome by the failure of the landlords’ conference to produce a settlement with the crofters.28 The conference elicited little response from the clergy, although a letter from a ‘Parish Minister’ in the Oban Times revealed a hostile attitude Are there to be landlords at all? And if there are to be landlords there is wonderful unanimity among all classes that their power must be restricted, that their fangs and claws must be drawn so as to render them harmless to their tenants and the community at large.29 It seems likely that this ‘Parish Minister’ was one of two radical Established Church ministers with an Argyll connection (hence their correspondence with the Oban Times). Both Malcolm MacCallum, minister of Strontian, and Donald MacCaig, Muckairn, would appear to fit the bill. MacCaig, who had so strongly criticised the Skye military expedition, was an active HLLRA member and contributed a number of highly advanced pieces to the Oban Times on land reform. He considered standing for Argyll at the 1885 election but found his path blocked by the fact that it was illegal to be an Established Church minister and an MP simultaneously. Although strangely – as an Established Church minister – in favour of disestablishment, MacCaig can be regarded as fairly conservative theologically. Donald MacCallum, Waternish, brother of Malcolm, reckoned that the proprietors’ conference was an admission of defeat: When Belshazzar saw the handwriting on the wall, he trembled. Similarly when the landlords saw the independent attitude of the crofters written on the once famous walls of their power, they went to Inverness to read it.30 28 29 30

Cameron, Land for the People, 28–31. Oban Times, 24 Jan. 1885, p. 3. Oban Times, 7 Feb. 1885, p. 6. For MacCaig, see Oban Times, 23 Aug. 1884, p. 3; 18 Oct. 1884, p. 2; 5 Dec. 1884, p. 5; 28 Mar. 1885, p. 4, and a sermon on 1 Timothy 6:12 in the same paper on 19 Jul. 1884, p. 6; and also 158 below. MacCaig (1828–86) was a native of Lismore and originally a student in the Free Church. He was succeeded in Muckairn by Malcolm MacCallum.

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The visits of the American land reformer Henry George to Britain in 1884–5 were also important in maintaining the public profile of the land reform campaign. Like many nineteenth-century radicals George was ambivalent, to say the least, towards institutional, orthodox Christianity although he frequently sought to legitimise his position by appealing to the Bible.31 At a meeting in Greenock, George was accompanied by Murdo Macaskill and although Macaskill did not endorse George’s single-tax policy, he believed his own presence on the platform would indicate ‘the sense of the urgency of the question’. George visited the Highlands on his second tour and spoke at Portree, Braes, Uig, and Broadford on the island of Skye. He caused controversy when he criticised the churches on Skye and particularly the Free Church minister of Kilmuir, John MacPhail, who was reported to have counselled the people ‘to obey the law and trust to Providence for reform’. This doctrine was ‘only fit for slaves’, according to George, who warned ‘if they submitted to unjust law they were as responsible as the landlord’. Although denied the Glendale Free Church for a meeting, George spoke in the Broadford Free Church at a meeting under the presidency of the minister, Alexander Grant.32 In comparison with Edinburgh and Glasgow, the land reform movement was not so strongly supported in Aberdeen or Dundee. This partly reflects the smaller number of Highlanders resident in the latter two cities. Again, although many east coast tenant farmers expressed interest in land law reform at the height of the depression, the conservative nature of the farming interest probably hindered the development of agrarian radicalism in the north-east. Nevertheless, Henry George took his message to the east with proselytising zeal and was supported by ministers on each occasion. On his first tour in February 1884 he visited Dundee and spoke from the pulpit of David MacRae’s Congregational Church.33 On his second trip he addressed a meeting in Aberdeen which was presided over by C. C. MacDonald, a popular Established Church minister and the chairman of the Aberdeen branch of the HLLRA. George was again scathing of the institutional churches and, despite MacDonald’s presence at the meeting and the support he had received from ministers elsewhere, he asserted: The attitude of the Church, especially the Free Church, on the land question was disgusting. What happened at the Disruption ought to have opened the eyes of the Free Church people and their ministers to the injustice and wickedness of the Land Laws – (applause) – but only 31

32 33

Henry George Jnr., The Life of Henry George (London, 1900); E. P. Lawrence, Henry George in the British Isles (Michigan, 1957). Macaskill, Highland Pulpit, xvii; Oban Times, 10 Jan. 1885, p. 5. David MacRae was a native of Oban. A political radical and a theological liberal, he left the United Presbyterian Church because of his hostility to credal subscription. George also addressed a meeting in the Free Church in Wick, Caithness during his earlier visit, Highland News, 18 Feb. 1884, p. 2.

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here and there was a minister found raising his voice on the subject. The present movement was essentially a religious movement, and as such it ought to be led by those who were the ministers of Christ . . .34 At the end of his Scottish tour George spoke in the City Hall in Glasgow when the platform party included Donald MacCallum and seven other ministers. George was fulsome in his praise of MacCallum’s reforming zeal. He again stressed the religious aspect of land reform but now professed to be gratified by the ministerial response: This movement at bottom [was] a religious movement; they knew that it had not been the spirit of envy and malice in their hearts that had prompted them; and yet they had for the most part from the professed ministers of Christianity reproach, and contempt and slinking back. Here at last was a man that came forth at a critical time, as John Knox came forth, and he rejoiced that Mr MacCallum stood not alone. To his mind one of the strongest evidences of how rapidly this movement was beginning to touch the hearts of and the consciences of men, was the way in which it was touching the representatives of the Church.35 According to Norman MacLean, George aroused the ire of a Free Church elder in Braes, near Portree, when lecturing on land reform from Scriptural principles. Criticising the Apostle Peter for not showing forgiveness and charity to Ananias in the fifth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, George allegedly maintained that this incident put an end to the primitive communism of the Apostolic Church. George was faced with an indignant response, and his audience left the building. This rather exaggerated, hyperbolic account, however, contradicts a newspaper report of the meeting which states that ‘at the close of the meeting several came forward from the audience to shake hands with Mr George and to tell him that they have read Progress and Poverty from end to end’. Whatever proceedings actually did occur, George’s alleged conflict with the elder leads us to consider more closely the important role of the eldership in the church’s response to the land question.36 The role of the elders In classical presbyterianism, the office of the ruling elder was held by a plurality of men, who were ordained to exercise spiritual oversight and discipline in a congregation. Since they did not necessarily possess – and in the 34 35

36

Oban Times, 20 Dec. 1885, p. 3. Oban Times, 31 Jan. 1885, p. 6; also quoted in E. A. Cameron, ‘Poverty, Protest and Politics: Perceptions of the Scottish Highlands in the Era of the Crofters’ War’, in D. Broun and M. Macgregor (eds), Miorun Mòr nan Gall, The Great Ill-Will of the Lowlander: Lowland Perceptions of the Scottish Highlands, forthcoming, 11. Norman MacLean, The Former Days (London, 1945), 137–8; Oban Times, 10 Jan. 1885, p. 5.

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nineteenth century Highlands rarely did possess – a formal education, nor an official call to preach the gospel, they held a lesser profile in the life of the church than the ministers. Nonetheless, elders usually attained positions of considerable influence in their communities and were often respected for their piety and sagacity. The earlier Evangelical leadership in the Highlands, na daoine, was almost entirely absorbed into the Free Church in 1843, and they naturally formed the eldership of the denomination in the northern and western Highlands. Although, as already noted, levels of ministerial settlement were very high by 1883, the Free Church suffered chronic shortages of Gaelic-speaking pulpit supply for a considerable time after 1843. Consequently, a high level of pastoral labour fell upon the elders who often led meetings for worship and prayer, especially in the remoter areas where ministerial visitation was less frequent. The Free Church also supported about thirty catechists and some lay-missionaries who normally operated in congregations which could not afford to maintain a minister.37 The importance of the eldership, therefore, is in their function as a spiritual elite within Gaelic society but who did not possess the educational attainments of the ministry. Moreover, the elders were unsalaried and lived and worked in the crofting communities, being perhaps less abstracted from the secular world than the ministers. Indeed, many Highland elders spent considerable periods away from their homes in their youth, either abroad, in the forces, or working in the Lowlands. The account of early Evangelical leaders in Skye in Roderick MacCowan’s Men of Skye, for example, is notable for the number of Napoleonic War veterans mentioned.38 Their experiences in places such as Egypt, Portugal, and Waterloo left an indelible mark on their lives, not least on the seriousness of their piety. Elders were not, therefore, isolated from the wider economic and social changes of the nineteenth century. Douglas Ansdell has suggested that an ‘overdue emphasis is placed on the clergy’ in defining the response of the Church to the land issue. He writes: When comments are made about the church providing leadership in Highland communities it is not just ministers that are being referred to; elders, deacons, catechists, teachers, missionaries and the men are included. Sadly, there is only a small glimpse available of their involvement in land issues. This is unfortunate as the lay leadership of the church in the Highlands would undoubtedly be more familiar with the insecurity attached to eviction and possibly more sympathetic to the distress of those evicted. If a wider picture of the contribution of this group were available it is arguable that it could alter significantly the image of the church in relation to land issues.’39 37

38 39

The figure in 1883 was thirty-three catechists, see PDGAFCS, 1883, Highland Committee Report, 12. R. MacCowan, The Men of Skye (Portree, 1902). Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 157.

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It seems unlikely that such a full-scale study of non-ministerial lay leaders can ever be written given the paucity of information left to posterity by elders, whether on the land question or any other issue. Apart from the scarcity of evidence, the other main difficulty in assessing elders’ opinions on the land question is that of identification. This is especially problematic with the evidence of the Napier Commission, where only a handful of delegates are listed as elders. Some other delegates were elders, but were not identified as such in the published version of the evidence. The predominance of a small number of surnames in each locality, and the fact that the oral tradition of sloinneadh, or genealogical identification, has rapidly declined in recent generations makes definitive identification of non-ministerial church officebearers very difficult for the historian. Nevertheless, there are a number of accounts in newspapers, in the Napier evidence, and elsewhere that confirm the involvement of a number of leading elders in the land reform movement. The most prominent elder to take part in the agitation was a Lewisman, Roderick MacLeod from Point. Ruairidh Bàn (fair-headed Roderick) was considered the leading Free Church elder on Lewis. He seems to have been an outspoken character and MacPhail records that the words ‘terrible in rebuking sin’ were written in epitaph on his gravestone.40 MacLeod took a leading part in HLLRA activities on Lewis and he had scathing words for ministers who would not support the crofters, whom he designated ‘mere cat-paws of the landlords, aiding the present system of iniquity’. Yet he praised ‘those true ministers who are fearless servants of their Master, advocating the cause of the oppressed and the down-trodden [and] fulfilling your obligations as servants to the Most High God’.41 MacLeod travelled further afield to address meetings and conferences, including the HLLRA conference at Bonar Bridge in 1886. His presence at the conference was praised in a Gaelic leader in the Oban Times: Tha moran do na Gàidheil eòlach air an duine diadhaidh so; agus air a’ chuideachadh thapaidh agus dhuineil a tha e toirt do aobhar saorsa an fhearainn . . . Rinn e ùrnaidh agus labhair e òraid aig a’ choinneimh mhòir a bha aig na Gàidheil o cheann ghoirid ’s an taobh tuath; agus bidh iad fada an cùimhne na thuig iad. Tha Ruairi ’na dhuine thlachd-mhor ’na phearsa, ealanta ’na theanga; agus smachdail ’na thagradh air cùisean nan Gaidheal. Canar ‘Pàpa Leòdhais’ ris leis an fheadhainn air am bheil eud gu’n èisd an sluagh ris. Nam biodh tuillidh do ‘Phàpan’ an t-seòrsa so againn bhiodh cor na Gàidhealtachd ni b’fheàrr.42 [Translation:] Many Highlanders are familiar with this godly man and with the able and manly support he is giving to the cause of the 40

41 42

MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 2. For a rather light-hearted sketch of Ruairidh Bàn, see Norman C. MacFarlane, The ‘Men’ of the Lews (Stornoway, 1924), 117–20; and 182 below. Oban Times, 21 Aug. 1886, p. 3. Oban Times, 9 Oct. 1886, p. 4.

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liberation of the soil. He prayed and gave a speech at the Highlanders’ conference in the north recently which will be long remembered by those who understood them. Ruairidh is a man of pleasant personality, eloquent tongue, and powerful in his pleading of the Highlanders’ cause. He is called ‘the Pope of Lewis’ by those who are jealous of his influence over the people. If we had more ‘popes’ of this kind the condition of the Highlands would be [far] better. MacLeod was also invited to London by the HLLRA to testify of the poverty of the Lewis crofters and cottars, although it is not clear whether he eventually travelled there or not. In a letter to the Highland News, in March 1887, Ruairidh Bàn outlined his opinions on the history of the crofters, the 1886 Crofters’ Act, his friendly relations with the Lewis Estate, and the pro-land reform views of the new Free Church minister of Point, George MacLeod.43 His solution to the historical grievances which formed such a central part of his case were highly prescriptive and rooted in a deep revulsion at the widespread poverty of his native island: The sheep farms and deer forests, as well as all farms of £20 and upwards, must be restored to the landless people at once, not only in Lews but all over the Highlands and Islands. Government loans must be got for the purpose of reclaiming waste lands, and that without delay. Our Lewismen are fast drifting in to pauperism of the vilest dye. What with overcrowding, barren lands, which have run out with continuous cropping, rents doubled for township lands, which used to pay less than half the present rent. But of recent years numerous crofters have settled upon the township land who pay rents to the landlords, although the original tenants who had the original lands got no reduction . . . I have written this letter without prejudice or malice to any estate official, as I am on the best of terms with them all, and believe honestly that we will soon have a most thorough change for the better before the present Jubilee year closes.44 It is related in James Cameron’s The Old and the New Highlands and Hebrides that Ruairidh Bàn met Joseph Chamberlain when Chamberlain visited Lewis in March 1887. Cameron’s somewhat inaccurate account portrays Ruairidh Bàn as an illiterate, monoglot Gaelic speaker unable to converse with Chamberlain in English. As the above letter makes clear, however, Ruairidh Bàn was perfectly competent in the English language, sufficient indeed to contemplate a trip to London on the crofters’ behalf. Cameron’s account includes the allegation that an unnamed Parliamentary candidate (who was opposed by Ruairidh Bàn) was so impressed by the elder’s influence over the Lewis crofters that he attempted to bribe him with an annuity of £30; the bribe was refused. This allegation, while unsubstantiated in 43 44

See 192 below for George MacLeod. Highland News, 5 Mar. 1887, p. 3.

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Cameron’s account, harmonises with accusations levelled in contemporary Gaelic songs against Munro-Ferguson of Novar during the elections of 1885 and 1886. In 1888 Ruairidh Bàn was elected one of three delegates of the Lewis Presbytery to the Free Church conference on the land question at Dingwall.45 A number of elders testified to the Napier Commission, among whom was John MacIver, from Scoraig in Wester Ross. MacIver became a highly respected Free Presbyterian elder after 1893, and although he cannot be regarded as a land reformer as such, he demonstrated a strikingly magnanimous concern for the distribution of land in his locality: I should like that the people should get increased holdings, and I do not see why they should not – there is plenty of land and to spare . . . But if anyone thinks that we, my brother and myself, have too much land, we will be very glad to share it with our poorer neighbours, and we have been always so. The local crofters, in his judgement, were ‘paying too much rent’ and he added that he ‘never saw them so poor’. MacIver was not elected specifically as a crofter delegate, but was recommended as an ‘independent witness’ since he combined small-scale farming with his business as a merchant. This probably explains why he was less condemnatory of landlords than many of the crofter witnesses, indeed MacIver was not afraid to criticise the crofters themselves: We are sometimes blaming proprietors, but this must be said, that some of the people among ourselves if they had the power would probably use it against their neighbours at least quite as oppressively. Many of the landed proprietors probably don’t use their power to the utmost. No doubt the people have cause to complain, and they have that all over the country, but what I want to speak about would be some practical measures for their good. The people would benefit by many other things besides an increase of the holdings of land. MacIver went on to advocate the communal, joint-stock, club farming system as a fair means of maintaining living standards, and the development of infrastructure for the fishing industry.46 Norman Munro, from Clachan on the Kilmuir estate, the centre of much of the Skye disturbances, queried 45

46

James Cameron, The Old and the New Highlands and Hebrides (Kirkcaldy, 1912) (Cameron, Old and New Highlands), 86–7; see 153 below and 147–54 for Gaelic poetry of the land agitation more generally; Minute Book of the Free Presbytery of Lewis, 22 Feb. 1888, 375. NC Ev., 1777–9. In 1888 MacIver led an appeal to raise money for a fellow inhabitant of Scoraig, Kenneth MacLeod, who was left destitute after a lightning strike, Scottish Highlander, 17 May 1888, pp. 6–7. For an informative obituary of MacIver by Neil Cameron, see Free Presbyterian Magazine, 32 (1927–8), 427–32.

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had not I a good right to that land for which my forefathers suffered death in wars, protecting the country? Who should have a better right to that land than the heirs living in it, although it is wasted with sheep and game and deer altogether? . . . I think that the offspring had a good claim on these lands to get them. I am well aware that is partly what has done a little disturbance in the island – claiming such claims on the land. On Raasay, John Munro, a missionary with the non-denominational West Coast Mission on the island of Rona, testified that the crofters were ground down and ‘reduced to poverty by the [land] laws . . . I think the Government should help them out of their difficulties and they would work like other men.’47 Another West Coast missionary and crofter based in Skye, John Macintyre, seconded a motion calling on ministers to take a greater interest in the ‘temporal welfare of their flocks’ at a public meeting in Braes in December 1884. Recognised as a leader of the crofters’ protests in the township of Sconser, Macintyre stated that he thought ministers should take more interest in the temporal affairs of their people than they were doing . . . The children of Israel had to go through the Red Sea and the wilderness before they got to the promised land. In the same way, they would have to go through a sea of agitation, and possibly through many trials before they could inherit the land of their forefathers Referring to the question of rent, Macintyre said it was not right to say they would not pay their rents, but if they had not the wherewithal how were they to pay? Granting they had a pound or two still, were they to allow their families to starve? That they must not do. In 1886, at the Bonar Bridge HLLRA conference, Macintyre stated in a ‘stirring’ Gaelic address: The Sconser people three years ago had no sheep, but now, owing to the present agitation, they could boast of some four hundred sheep grazing in the neighbouring deer-forest. (Applause) The Sconser people were determined to finish the Game Laws by drowning all the deer that came on their land.48 As a result of the escalation of the agitation the Free Church Assembly’s Highland Committee issued guidelines to catechists and missionaries 47 48

NC Ev., 147–9, 462. Oban Times, 3 Jan. 1885, p. 5; Scottish Highlander, 14 Oct. 1886, p. 3. For more on Macintyre and the troubles with the Sconser Deer Forest, see Oban Times, 3 Oct. 1885, p. 5; W. Orr, Deer Forests, Landlords and Crofters (Edinburgh, 1982), 130–1.

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regarding the advisability of commenting on the land question during worship services. In a very cautious ‘Circular to Catechists’ it was stated: In regard to matters of public discussion, those especially which may be matters of diversity of opinion within the Church, the Committee rely – and they trust they may confidently rely – on the good sense and right feeling of the catechist. You may, and naturally will, have your own judgement of such matters, with which the Committee would not desire to interfere. But you will keep in mind that, as the servant of the Church, it is not your duty to be a prominent advocate in such matters, but to enforce the great things of the Kingdom of God, and to hold these up before the eyes of the people.49 The 1886 Circular repeated the advice and added more cautionary sentiments regarding the agitation and its effects on religious life: It is well known that social and political questions have for some time deeply moved the minds of many of the Highland people. This state of things, which may ultimately be overruled for good, continues to operate meanwhile in some quarters as a disturbing force; it fills many minds with a feverish preoccupation, and renders them for a time less accessible, apparently, to religious instruction and impression.50 The official circulars concerning public worship did not deter William MacBeth, a Free Church catechist, from Applecross, Wester Ross, from moving at a political meeting in November 1885 that ‘no landlord, whatever his views might be, should be supported by the electors’. MacBeth, who later became a Free Presbyterian elder, queried Dr Roderick MacDonald, the HLLRA candidate for Ross and Cromarty, ‘whether he was an atheist or Unitarian, MacDonald replied he was a Free Churchman and that he was against Disestablishment, to MacBeth’s satisfaction’.51 As we can see, a number of elders played an active role in the crofters’ movement. It is difficult to ascertain the extent of their contribution or their influence since they were less conspicuous than the ministers. The fact that most of them were also crofters made them socially closer to the bulk of the HLLRA membership than the ministers were. This may have caused some elders – William MacBeth and Ruairidh Bàn MacLeod, for example – to be more decidedly in favour of the HLLRA agenda than many ministers were. Yet such is the scarcity of information concerning the elders that it would be unsafe to conclude that they were more favourable towards land reform than ministers. The evidence suggests, moreover, that only a limited number of the many hundreds of elders in the Highlands commented publicly on the land question. The percentage of ministers who appeared 49 50 51

PDGAFCS, 1885, Reports, IV (Highland Committee), 21. PDGAFCS, 1886, Reports, IV (Highland Committee), 6. Oban Times, 21 Nov. 1885, p. 2.

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before the Napier Commission or took part in HLLRA meetings was much greater proportionally. Besides the elders, there were other prominent laymen involved in the agitation. One of these was Murchadh a’ Cheisdeir, Murdo MacLeod, a native of Leurbost in Lewis. He was an itinerant evangelist and was employed as a lecturer for the Highland Temperance League. His hymns and poems were very popular in the Highlands, and he composed religious hymns, nostalgic ‘homeland’ verse, and songs on the land agitation. Donald MacCallum, Waternish, stated that ‘in imparting courage to the sufferers and in strengthening the hands of their deliverers in the time of the crofters’ agitation, no one did more than Murdo MacLeod’.52 In his most scathing denunciation of Highland landlords, Fàsachadh na Duthcha – the Despoiling of the Homeland – MacLeod linked the biblical and the political themes with a graphic picture of God’s judgement poured on those lairds who oppressed the people and would not ‘pity the destitute’: Chuala sinn mu thimchioll Hàmain, Ged, aon uair, a b’uaibhreach, àrd e; ’Chroich a rinn e ’Mhordecài, Fhuair a chnàmhan sìneadh oirr’. Sin mar dh’èireas do dhroch uachd’rain, Taomar diombadh Dhè bho shuas orr’; ’Chionn an euceart air an t-sluagh, ’S nach nochd iad truas do dhìlleachdain.53 [Translation:] We have heard concerning Haman, Although, one time, he was high and mighty; The gibbet he made for Mordecai, Had his bones stretched out on it. That is what will befall iniquitous landlords, God’s indignation will be poured on them from above; Because of the injustice inflicted on the people, And since they will not pity the destitute. The poetry of the land agitation The uncompromising verse composed by Murchadh a’ Cheisdeir, with its pointed use of analogy and social stereotyping, presents a vivid picture of the mindset of the crofters, so many of whom were adept at employing religious rhetoric to justify their campaign. The importance of poetry and communal song has been noted by Meek and also – in the wider British context 52 53

Quoted in MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 9. Extract from ‘Fàsachadh na Duthcha’ (the despoiling of the homeland) by Murdo MacLeod, Bardachd Mhurchaidh a’ Cheisdeir, 27.

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of popular political movements – by Dunbabin.54 The significance of communal poetry in the Gaidhealtachd cannot be overestimated, since it remained the principal vehicle for the articulation of the traditional Gaelic perspective on events. According to Meek, ‘the most striking idiosyncrasy of Gaelic land agitation verse is not its overall lack of an analytic approach, but its largely parochial and non-political nature’. Whilst verse, therefore, can be an unreliable source for analysing political events, it certainly provides ‘a valuable guide to the emotional reactions of the Highland people generally’. In a later work, however, Meek has asserted the factual validity of the poetry. He notes that: In resorting to song, the primary motivation of the majority of poets was the preservation of the traditional Gaelic community in its local or wider Highland forms. Their perceptions of that community derived from the normal practices maintained across the centuries, and were based on such considerations as kinship, co-operation and collective defence. Maintenance of the community, as they knew it, was possible only when its ethical and social values were preserved. Violation of these values was part and parcel of the intrusion of external agencies, and had to be resisted.55 Looking at the nineteenth century as a whole, it is of crucial importance that evangelicalism had become generally accepted as integral to the ‘ethical and social values’ of the Gaidhealtachd, and not an ‘intrusion of external agencies’. But if the ethos of Gaelic society was predominantly Christian, the favoured mode of articulation was poetic. Everyday life was saturated with song and the local bard occupied an important position as the mouthpiece of the community. And although the religious influence on Gaelic verse was very powerful, bards were usually independentminded enough to criticise the behaviour of professing Christians if they felt it disagreeable or inconsistent. What then can be discerned from the work of poets brought up in evangelical communities regarding ministers and land issues? The most significant poem of the period, Spiorad a’ Charthannais (The Spirit of Kindliness), was composed by John Smith of Uig, Lewis, in response to the Bernera troubles of 1874. Derick Thomson regards it as the finest Gaelic poem of the nineteenth century: ‘[Smith’s] greatest poem has the heartbeats of his countrymen in it, but also the pulses of their intellect.’ Meek sees the work as an analysis ‘in broadly theological terms’ of the causes

54

55

D. E. Meek, ‘The Role of Song in the Highland Land Agitation’, Scottish Gaelic Studies, xvi (1990), 1–53 and Meek, Tuath is Tighearna, 10–40; Dunbabin, Rural Discontent, 232–3, 287–8; MacLean, ‘Poetry of the Clearances’; S. Grannd, ‘Three Songs of the Land Agitation period from South Argyll’, Scottish Gaelic Studies, xvi (1990), 55–65; see also 16–17 above. D. E. Meek, ‘Gaelic Poets of the Land Agitation’, TGSI, xlix (1974–6) (Meek, ‘Gaelic Poets’), 316–18; Meek, Tuath is Tighearna, 11, 34.

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of conflict and ill-feeling in the Highlands. Smith regards secular selfinterest – as exemplified in the oppressive practices of Highland estates – as displacing the Spirit of Kindliness. Stylistically and in its mood the poem owes much to evangelical experience, and resembles a hymn in its tune and cadences, but it can also be read as a modern, politically conscious reflection on the implications of the New Testament passage in 1 Corinthians 13. Meek continues, ‘the Spirit of Kindliness can be none other than the Holy Spirit, whose absence, even within the hearts of practitioners of outward religion, leads to conflict’. Smith compared kindliness – ‘the grace of highest worth’ – with the actions of the factors and lairds in the clearances: Cha robh do ghnè-sa riadhladh Ann am broilleach iarainn cruaidh Nam baillidhean ’s nan tighearnan Chuir sìos an tìr mu thuath. Bu charthannach na fàrdaichean Bha seasgair, blàth innt’ uair; ’S tha tìr nan daoine còire ’n-diugh ’Na fàsach dòbhaidh, truagh. Gun mheas iad mar gum b’ shnàthainn iad Na còrdan gràidh bha teann A’ ceangal cridh’ nan àrmunn ud Ri dùthaich àrd nam beann. Gun tug am bron am bàs orra ’N dèidh cràbhaidh nach bu ghann, ’S an saoghal fuar gan sàrachadh, Gun ionad blàth dhaibh ann. [Translation:] Your quality did not hold sway In that hard, iron-breasted band, The factors and the landlords Who oppressed the northern land; The houses that were warm and snug Were once filled with kindly ways, But now that land of kindly folk Is a poor, empty, desert waste. They reckoned as mere threads Those cords of love that held The hearts of those fine heroes To the lofty land of bens; Their grief resulted in their death, After no lack of godly fear,

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And the cold world oppressed them With no warm shelter near.56 Smith also criticised professing Christians, and ministers in particular, for not showing the graces associated with the Spirit of Kindliness and exhibiting a religion grounded in the principles of worldly strife. As Thomson points out, this criticism of religious rivalry shows ‘clear independence of thought and judgement’ in the context of a society which held ecclesiastical affiliation in high importance: Gur leat an creideamh buaireasach A dhùisgeas gruaim is greann; An creideamh nach dèan suairce sinn, ’S nach dèan ar n-uabhair fann; An creideamh th’aig na diadhairean, Lem miann a’ chòmhstri theann: ’Nan laimh-san dh’fhàs a’ Chrìosdalachd Mar bhiasd nan iomadh ceann. An searmonaiche prèisgeil ud, ’S ann dh’èigheas e le sgairt Gur mallaicht’ sinn mur èisdear leinn Ra chreud-san, an tè cheart; An àite bhith sìor èigheach rinn Mur dleasdanas ’s gach beart, A dhèanamh daoine cèillidh dhinn An làthair Dhè nam feart.57 [Translation:] Yours too is that contentious creed That rouses hate and ire, The creed that will not make us kind, And represses not our pride; The creed beloved by those divines Who love the sharpest strife; Through them, Christianity has become Like the monster of many heads. That preachy sermoniser claims – Who shouts aloud with strength – That we are cursed if we heed not His creed – the one that’s best; Instead of ever reminding us Of our duty in all things, 56

57

Derick S. Thomson, An Introduction to Gaelic Poetry (Edinburgh, 1989 edn) (Thomson, Gaelic Poetry), 245; Meek, Tuath is Tighearna, 26, 94–5, 97. I am grateful to Donald Meek for allowing me to quote from his translations of these poems. Thomson, Gaelic Poetry, 241; Meek, Tuath is Tighearna, 93.

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Which would make us sensible Before the King of Kings. Those bards (and bardesses) active in the 1880s who commented on the issues at stake in the land agitation were virtually without exception on the side of the crofters’ movement. The best known of these was Mary MacPherson from Skye, Mairi Mhòr nan Òran. She composed a number of pieces which praised leading land reformers such as John Murdoch, Charles Fraser Mackintosh, and Donald MacCallum, and she also commented favourably on the Skye crofters’ campaign of agitation. In common with most nineteenth-century Gaelic bards, she was highly influenced by biblical language and imagery. In one satire she memorably likened Sheriff William Ivory to Judas Iscariot: Cuirear le cinnt, Clach ghlas os do chinn, A nochdas gach prìob dhòibheairteach, ’S mar a reic thu gach cliù, airson beagan de spùill, Tur, mar Iùdas, gud ghrunnd fòtusach. [Translation:] A grey stone will certainly be placed above you, Which will record every one of your iniquitous bribes, And how you sold your entire reputation for a little booty, For the sake of your corrupt ground, Exactly like Judas.58 Mairi Mhòr’s pro-crofter radicalism was nevertheless tempered by an innate deference to traditional figures of authority. She found no contradiction, for example, in praising certain landlords as well as land reformers. This is evidenced by her eulogising the duke of Sutherland and the Skye proprietors Lachlan MacDonald of Skeabost and Dr Nicol Martin of Husabost.59 In her attitudes to ministers she could also manifest rather contradictory views. We noted in chapter two that she admired John Kennedy of Dingwall and the constitutionalists in the Free Church, yet she could also be scathing about ministers who refused to speak out on behalf of their crofting parishioners. For their unwillingness to criticise Major Fraser of Kilmuir, the Skye Free Church ministers, Joseph Lamont of Snizort and John MacPhail, Kilmuir, came in for heavy criticism: Nach b’ iad aoghairean gun chùram, A chùm am beòil cho dùinte, A’ faicinn sliochd nan diùlnach, Gan sgiùrsadh às am paraistean.60 58 59 60

Meek, Mairi Mhòr, 201; see also Tuath is Tighearna, 168; the translation is on p. 268. Meek, Mairi Mhòr, 91–5, 142–3, 151–3. For traditional deference see also 113 above. Meek, Mairi Mhòr, 171.

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[Translation:] Weren’t they the careless pastors, That kept their mouths so closed, Seeing the race of the brave worthies, Being scourged out of their parishes. There is one poem in Meek’s anthology, Òran na h-Election (the Song of the Election), which is highly critical of D. H. MacFarlane, HLLRA MP for Argyll in 1885–6. This criticism is firmly centred on MacFarlane’s roman catholicism and his background in Irish politics. Indeed, it is significant that the composition of Òran na h-Election has been associated with Neil Taylor, a constitutionalist Free Church minister in Dornoch, Sutherland, who gave support to land reform in the early and mid-1880s and was president of the Dornoch branch of the HLLRA from 1883 to 1885. Its chief importance is in the fact that it is the only poem associated with a Free Church minister to emerge from the agitation. Òran na h-Election, it should be remembered, is atypical of the land agitation poetry and even of the political views of many Free Church ministers since it praises the Tory landlord, Colonel J. W. Malcolm of Poltalloch, who did not support land reform. Moreover, the humour and repartee contained in the poem suggest the poet was somewhat unlike the descriptions of Neil Taylor in the press, which consistently portray him as a fairly stern character.61 The poet praises the Argyllshire electorate for choosing the Unionist Malcolm in place of MacFarlane in 1886. This highlights the extent to which Home Rule and religious allegiance became overriding considerations in ministers’ political stances in the post-1885 period, so much so that a moderately pro-land reform figure like Taylor – if the poem can be attributed to him – could praise the victory of an aristocratic landlord over an HLLRA candidate: Buaidh is piseach gu bràth do Earraghàidheal nan gaisgeach; Chuir iad cùl ri MacPhàrlain, Ris a’ Phàpa ’s ri Gladstone; Chuir iad cùl ris na gàrlaich – Gillean Phàrnell – ’s rin cleachdadh; Tha i nis mar bu dual dhi A’ togail suas na gorm-bhrataich – An Union Jack.62 [Translation:] May success and prosperity for ever attend Argyllshire of the heroes; They turned their backs on MacFarlane, On the Pope and on Gladstone; 61 62

See, for example, Northern Ensign, 22 Apr. 1885, p. 3. An Tàillear Crùbach, ‘Òran na h-Election’, in Meek, Tuath is Tighearna, 149–52. The impact of Home Rule on ministers’ politics is discussed in the next chapter; see also Meek, ‘The Catholic Knight of Crofting: Sir D. H. MacFarlane’, TGSI, lviii (1992–4), 70–122.

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They turned their backs on the wretches – Parnell’s lads – and their habits; The constituency is now as was customary Raising high the blue banner – The Union Jack.63 Unsurprisingly, the outspoken Donald MacCallum of Waternish was the object of poetic eulogy and he himself was a composer of anti-landlord verse. In a piece devoted entirely to his honour MacCallum is contrasted with the Free Church ministers, who it was alleged preferred the company of the landlords and coveted crofters’ possessions: ‘Ma gheibh iad cuid dhaoine, tha iad sona gu leòr’ [if they get people’s possessions they are happy enough].64 A poem by Murdo MacLeod from Barvas, in Lewis, criticised the position of ministers ‘chaidh iad leis na h-uachdarain bha cur an t-sluaigh gu bàs’ [they went along with the landlords who were killing off the people]. The poet is heavily critical of Munro-Ferguson of Novar and rejoices in his defeat at the hands of the HLLRA candidate, Dr Roderick MacDonald, in the 1885 election. Of particular importance is the allegation that Novar’s tactics included bribery, with the implication that some of the Free Church ministers who supported him were recipients. At the 1884 Ross and Cromarty by-election Novar was publicly supported by Gustavus Aird and Murdo Macaskill and, as noted above, Novar was feted by Rainy and some of the Lewis Free Church ministers in October 1884. Somewhat surprisingly, the poet singles out the Tory-supporting minister of the Free Gaelic congregation of Stornoway, James Greenfield, as the one noble man who adhered to the people in every step . . . who would not be deceived by bribes and he did not yield to toffs; he would not take one reward from them, as he looked up to heaven Ach ’s ann bha ’n duin’-uasal ann, A lean an sluagh ’s gach ceum, Greenfield an duin’-uasalCha mhealladh duaisean e; Bha fìrinn air mar shuaicheantas, ’S do uaislean cha do ghèill, ’S cha ghabhadh e le tuarasdal, ’S e ’g amharc suas gu nèamh.65 These verses are of considerable value in demonstrating the frustration of more militant elements in the crofting community with the perceived failure of many Free Church ministers to play an active role in land reform politics. Such criticisms went as far as to suggest that ministers were on the 63 64 65

Meek, Tuath is Tighearna, 253–5. M. MacIlleathain, ‘Do Dhòmhnall MacCaluim’, in Meek, Tuath is Tighearna, 177, 180–3. Meek, Tuath is Tighearna, 136–7; see also 143–4 above.

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side of the landlords historically, that their position had not changed since the clearances, and that they were even profiting financially from this stance through bribery. The charge ‘if they get other people’s possessions they are happy enough’ may be interpreted as referring to ministers’ alleged financial exploitation of the crofters by demanding contributions to the Free Church Sustentation Fund. These opinions can be regarded as anti-clerical, reflecting frustration with the dominant ministerial position in crofting society and their general unwillingness to undertake full political leadership in spite of their social prominence. Nevertheless, we should bear in mind that the poetic corpus makes sweeping generalisations and unsubstantiated claims about many aspects of the land agitation, not least the role of the ministers. Indeed, the majority of poems from the period ignore the issue. Most of the references to ministers within the corpus are eulogistic, with praise for men such as Donald MacCallum, his brother Malcolm, and James Greenfield, for their willingness to support the crofters’ claims.66 Of course it is undeniable that anti-clerical opinion existed amongst HLLRA supporters and was drawn from a long tradition stretching back not only to the writings of Donald MacLeod and John Murdoch, but even perhaps to earlier frustration with the Moderate ministers of the pre-Disruption era. Yet while the extant poetry of the agitation reflects this tradition, the anticlerical voice was by no means a predominant one.67 * The period after the publication of the Napier Report in 1884 witnessed a major upsurge in land agitation and a corresponding increase in political activity connected with the Highland land question. Ministers in this period were vexed by the rising defiance of authority witnessed in rent strikes and deforcements. Quite understandably, they were keen to see the HLLRA publicly defend the authority of the law. Both John Mactavish’s letter and the resolution of the Commission of the Free Assembly demonstrate the ministerial abhorrence of violence. This stance on law and order shows why only a few ministers raised their voices in protest against the deployment of troops to Skye in November 1884 despite the Free Church’s unambiguous desire that the underlying causes of the agitation be resolved by reform legislation. The chief significance of the survey of elders’ responses is in offering further proof that Christians in the Highlands – especially from the Free Church – were heavily involved in the land agitation at every level. Yet the 66 67

Meek, Tuath is Tighearna, 177–8. As a wider phenomenon anti-clericalism is discussed by Eugenio Biagini in Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform: Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone 1860–1880 (Cambridge, 1992), 192–253; see also Coffey, ‘Democracy and Popular Religion’. In the overall Scottish context it is probably true that the lack of a sharp dichotomy between clergy and laity as a result of presbyterian ecclesiastical polity was responsible to a large degree for the relative scarcity of anti-clericalism in radical political discourse.

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criticisms of ministers expressed by some of the elders clearly reflect a certain level of dissatisfaction. Although the majority of the land agitation poems make no reference to the role of the ministers, frustration with the social leadership of the clergy was also vented in a number of anti-clerical poems. This leadership was to come under even more fire in the intensely partisan atmosphere of the 1885 general election.

CHAPTER FIVE

Politics, Presbyteries and ‘The Prophet’ If you will vote for those who join house to house and lay field to field, then mock not your God by praying ‘Thy will be done.’ As a preacher of truth and righteousness I warn you against advancing by your vote that tyranny and wrong which has ruined our land, and made our brethren to be the prey of evil beasts. Why will you honour, and give power to, your deadly enemies?1 The HLLRA dominated political debate in the Highlands at the critical juncture when crofters were enfranchised in 1885. The combination of impassioned political argument, deeply held religious conviction, and exceptionally high turnout made the electioneering of that year memorable. Although the HLLRA movement itself has left little documentary evidence to posterity, an abundance of contemporary newspaper coverage affords us a wide view of the main developments and events. In particular, we notice the contribution of the man who – through statements such as the one quoted above – became the leading clerical proponent of land reform. But before examining the political campaign fought by the land reformers we must first consider more closely the relationship which existed between the HLLRA and the ministers. Ministers and the HLLRA By 1884 the question of whether ministers should encourage their congregations to join and form branches of the land reform associations was a pressing one. In Glenelg, Inverness-shire, for example, the close formal links between Christians and land reformers during the height of the agitation were apparent: A public meeting of the inhabitants of Glenelg, under the auspices of the Highland Association of Edinburgh, was held last week, when about forty members were enrolled. Mr [Duncan] MacLeod, F. C. elder, having opened the meeting with prayer, the objects of the association were read and the members enrolled.2 1 2

D. MacCallum, ‘Address to the Highland Crofters’, Oban Times, 21 Nov. 1885, p. 2. Highland News, 13 Oct. 1884, p. 3. Duncan M. Macrae was Free Church minister of Helmsdale; William Ross, a native of Latheron, Caithness, was minister of Cowcaddens, Glasgow; Daniel Fraser left the Free Church and became Established Church minister of Kildonan in 1872.

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The pattern of opening and closing meetings with prayer was very common, and many meetings were held in Free Church buildings. A similar report in the Highland News of a lecture given by Angus Sutherland on ‘Rent: its origin and nature’, in Helmsdale, Sutherland, provides an insight into the membership profile of a typical HLLRA branch: The audience consisted chiefly of young men under twenty-five, and may be regarded as representative of such gatherings in the Highlands . . . The Rev D. Macrae, president of the Association presided; and the Rev. W. Ross, Rev. D. Fraser took part in the meeting.3 In many places the formation of HLLRA branches was often instigated by Free Church ministers, who subsequently took a prominent place in the local activities and meetings of the League, chairing meetings and acting as office-bearers. It could be argued that such activity merely evidenced clerical desire to control or influence the agitation. To borrow a phrase from Allan Macinnes: were ministers acting primarily as the ‘moral policemen of land reform’?4 Certainly the desire to defuse tension in potentially violent circumstances was a recurring feature of the ministers’ involvement at land reform meetings. In troubled localities such as Tiree and Kilmuir in 1884–6 and Lewis in 1887–8, ministers undoubtedly desired to see a return to quietness and normality; their appearance at HLLRA meetings in these districts was probably intended to diminish the likelihood of violence rather than advance political awareness of land reform.5 At a large gathering of cottars and crofters on Tiree in 1884, for example, [t]he Revds. D. J. Mackay, F. C., Tiree, and Alex. L. Shaw, F. C., Torosay and Salen, Mull, considering the gravity of the situation, and the probability that the people would break the law, attended the meeting for the purpose of advising them to keep within the letter of the law. Having constituted the meeting with praise and prayer, ‘[b]oth ministers sympathised with the aims of land reform, but counselled patience and caution, and agitating in the bounds of the law’. Shaw proposed ‘a comprehensive scheme for land reform, and the need for legislation’ but warned: If you . . . follow your feelings and impulses, and the leading of men who incite you to violent actions, you will weaken the hands of Mr Gladstone and your friends, and retard the legislation which you and all your friends have so much at heart. I again appeal to you . . . to do nothing rash or foolish, or lawless, but to keep within the letter of Her Majesty’s Law, and may the Lord be with you, and guide you in the right way.6 3 4 5 6

Highland News, 24 Nov. 1884, p. 4; see Ewing, Annals, i, 160, 257, 307. Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 62. See also 103–4 above. Oban Times, 15 Nov. 1884, p. 5.

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Although the desire to restrain the more volatile elements in the crofters’ movement was an openly acknowledged aim of the clergy, the impassioned language which some ministers used in their speeches at HLLRA meetings suggests their support was also founded on a genuine commitment to land reform principles. Reference has already been made in the previous chapter to the meeting of the Oban branch of the London HLLRA, where the deployment of troops to Skye was severely criticised. This meeting was presided over by Rev. D. MacCaig, opened in prayer by Rev. A. MacDougall, Baptist minister, also present, Rev. Kennedy, FC minister, and apology from Rev. James Maclean, Congregationalist minister, whose letter urged the need for land reform, the 3F’s, and criticised the ‘tyranny and rapacity of the landlords and their myrmidons’. Kennedy, the Free Churchman, spoke supportively of land reform, and justified ministers’ involvement in the campaign: ‘ministers are pre-eminently guides to their people in spiritual matters, and you cannot separate, you cannot dissociate spiritual and temporal matters’.7 If the redress of crofters’ grievances was viewed by ministers such as Kennedy as a matter closely bound up with morality and spirituality rather than a matter of political expediency, then there is little reason to doubt the sincerity of their land reform pronouncements. The matter of the Free Church’s relationship with the HLLRA was inconclusively debated at the Presbytery of Skye and Uist in October 1884. The debate was held in response to a letter from Alexander Mackenzie, the Secretary of the Edinburgh HLLRA, requesting that ministers encourage their flocks to join in order to bring the campaign within the pale of ‘constitutional’ debate. James Reid, Portree, believed that branches ought to be formed with the view of aiding the people in making their grievances known, and for the purpose of preventing the people from going to extremes, as was the case in some parts of Skye, especially in Kilmuir and Glendale. There was, however, no unanimity in the Presbytery on the issue. The Kilmuir minister John MacPhail for one was very worried about the state of his own congregation: All the crofters were made to take an oath that they would act as the majority should determine, under pain of having their corn and other effects destroyed. And this was no mere empty threat, for as a matter of fact the corn of the few who had refused to join was the other day scattered and damaged. He greatly lamented this state of matters, and he 7

Oban Times, 6 Dec. 1884, p. 5; see 131–2 above. There was no settled Free Church minister in Oban during 1883–5 but this may have been John Kennedy who became a minister in Arran in 1889. Kennedy would likely have been a probationer at this time. So far as I am aware he was no relation of his namesake in Dingwall.

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was afraid the HLLRA of London, through their agents, were responsible to a great extent. Other members of the Presbytery disagreed with MacPhail and asserted that ‘in all their public utterances the members of that association strongly impressed upon the crofters the necessity of keeping within the bounds of the law’. MacPhail replied that ‘Mr Stuart Glennie did not appear to give such advice, and Rev. Mr [Donald] Maccallum’s [sic] views were as extreme as those of Mr Henry George.’ The report concludes: ‘After a long conversation, the Presbytery separated without arriving at any conclusion on the matter of the formation of associations.’8 The inconclusive nature of the above debate – and possibly similar cases in other presbyteries – no doubt made church courts wary of pronouncing definitively on the question. Throughout the 1880s crofters, elders, and ministers were free to affiliate with the HLLRA irrespective of their denominational allegiances. For example, Finlay Graham, Free Church minister of Sleat, Skye, encouraged his crofter adherents to join the HLLRA and was a consistent advocate of land reform during the agitation. Yet he still felt it his duty to defuse tensions and try to mediate between the MacDonald estate management and the Sleat crofters who had refused to pay rent. The Highland News reported in December 1884 that: Last week some of the crofters asked the advice of Mr Graham, F. C. minister of Sleat, who asked all the crofters in the townships that had withheld rent to meet him in the Free Church in Knock yesterday [Tuesday, 21 December, 1884]. The meeting was accordingly held, and was presided over by Mr Graham, who advised the people that they should by all means pay their rents in full, while at the same time he told them they were quite entitled to get their grievances enquired into and redressed . . . a letter was drawn up unanimously expressing the crofters’ attachment to the proprietor [Lord MacDonald] and his family and their willingness to pay rents. Bearing the hallmarks of ministerial composition, the letter states: We are well aware that the bonds of society must not be loosened, and that affections must not be estranged between inferiors and superiors. At the same time we are hopeful that our grievances will be redressed in a constitutional manner.9 The true level of ministerial support for the HLLRA is difficult to gauge: it is clear that a large majority of the Established Church clergy took little part in its activities. The same can be said for every other denomination except the Free Church; overall, around one quarter of the Free Church ministers 8 9

Highland News, 20 Oct. 1884, p. 2. Highland News, 22 Dec. 1884, p. 4; Hunter, Crofting Community, 216; see 110 above for Graham’s testimony before Napier.

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in the region publicly supported the land reform campaign. The nature of this support is difficult to analyse, however, and varied markedly from Presbytery to Presbytery. In the areas most affected by the agitation the involvement of the ministers was correspondingly greater than in those where classic crofting conditions were not predominant and where the concomitant sense of grievance was less. In the agriculturally mixed areas of Argyll, mainland Inverness-shire, and Highland Perthshire, fewer Free Church ministers spoke out in favour of land reform. In the Free Presbytery of Kintyre, for example, which contained seven ministers in 1883, only one – John MacLean of Shiskine, Arran – appeared at a political meeting during the agitation. This meeting was not even held within the bounds of Kintyre Presbytery but far away in the crofting heartland of Lewis, where MacLean had previously been a minister.10 In the Presbytery of Mull only two ministers – mentioned above with regard to the meeting on Tiree – out of nine were involved in land reform meetings. In the Dingwall Presbytery, on the other hand, five out of ten ministers were pro-land reform. In the Hebrides the proportion of explicitly pro-land reform clergy was even higher. Only one out of the eight Skye ministers – John Macrae, Duirinish – did not come out publicly in favour of reform. In the Lewis Presbytery six out of the eight ministers were pro-reform. The statistics for Sutherland were also very high, with eight of the Dornoch Presbytery’s ten ministers giving public support for the HLLRA’s objectives. There is, additionally, the difficulty of ascertaining how many of those ministers who appeared at meetings were actively supportive of the HLLRA or were members of the organisation. Whilst ministers were normally given a leading role at the meetings they attended, there was no policy of according special status to ministers in local branches ex officio as was the case with clergymen in the Irish National League. Of course, it is fair to point out that an individual minister’s reluctance to play a part in the HLLRA campaign did not always imply his hostility to the crofters’ desire for more land. The number of land reform overtures drawn up by Highland Presbyteries during the agitation encourages the view that ministerial support for land reform in the Free Church easily transcended the number of those who gave vocal support to the HLLRA.11 Despite the close involvement of so many ministers in the activities of the HLLRA, it is evident that many of the more strident land reformers were dissatisfied with the level of ministerial commitment to the movement. Such dissatisfaction could be expressed in the type of criticisms expressed by elders recorded in the previous chapter, or even in anti-clerical poetry. At public meetings anti-clerical sentiment sometimes took the form of heavy criticism and even sarcasm directed at the ministers (at meetings where ministers were absent). An open-air meeting of the Lochcarron branch in January 1885 witnessed two speeches which justified land reform from the 10 11

Highland News, 6 Oct. 1884, p. 3; see 134 above. Ewing, Annals, i, ii, passim; Free Church of Scotland Assembly Papers, No. I, 1888, 173–8.

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Bible, criticised anti-poaching legislation, and compared estate factors to Haman, the persecutor of the Jews in the book of Esther. One of the speakers, John Maclean, took off his hat to read from the Bible and was followed in this by the rest of the audience. The chairman of the meeting was Finlay Mackenzie, who had been imprisoned in 1883 for his part in the ‘Strome Ferry riot’. Yet the biblical, sabbatarian worldview of the Lochcarron crofters did not inhibit them from laughing at the comments of one of the speakers, Donald Macrae: He regretted that the clergy as a whole steered shy of this agitation, a movement which aimed solely at redressing the people’s grievances – (cheers) – but if the people withdraw or even curtail the Sustentation Fund – (cheers) – they would find that these reverend gentlemen could not long retain that rosy plumpness at the back of the neck by which they were now so conspicuous. (Loud laughter and cheers.)12 Although there was a small but influential group of more radical reformers within the movement, the essence of the HLLRA’s policy prescription was the ‘Dingwall programme’ of 1884, including a thorough redistribution of land held by sporting estates or large grazing farms. Reformers were keen to preserve the remaining communal aspects of crofting agriculture, such as the common pasturage system. They generally resisted attempts to introduce outright individual ownership as a basis for a viable smallholding economy and preferred the ‘dual ownership’ regime established by the 1881 Irish Land Act. At the 1885 general election, five ‘crofter’ candidates were elected: Donald H. MacFarlane in Argyll, Charles Fraser Mackintosh in Inverness-shire, Dr Roderick MacDonald in Ross and Cromarty, Dr Gavin Clark for Caithness, and John MacDonald Cameron for the Northern Burghs. Their subsequent political influence was minimal, though, even when Gladstone’s third administration introduced crofting legislation the following year.13 Much HLLRA rhetoric was centred on the distribution of land in Israel under the Old Testament. A common proof-text quoted on HLLRA literature was Isaiah 5:8: ‘Woe unto them that join house unto house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth.’ This raises the question of the extent to which HLLRA – or certain leading HLLRA activists – attempted to circumvent the institutional authority of the church (the ministers in particular) by using liberationist interpretations of scripture in order to legitimise land reform in the crofters’ eyes.14 A great deal of this rhetoric emanated from the pen of John 12

13

14

Oban Times, 7 Feb. 1885, p. 7. Macrae himself was among the ten men imprisoned after the Strome Ferry riot, see McConnell, Strome Ferry Riot, 27. Cameron, Land for the People, 37; see also D. W. Crowley, ‘The Crofters’ Party, 1885–1896’, SHR, xxxv (1956), 110–26. For more on this theme, see Meek, ‘Land Question answered from the Bible’, 84–9; and also above 83–4.

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Murdoch. As noted in chapter two, Murdoch’s pioneering editorial stance during the 1870s gave the Highlander a seminal role in the formation of the land movement of the following decade.15 Murdoch’s deployment of religious arguments for land law reform and his repeated criticisms of the clergy for not engaging with the land question had two effects. Firstly, the use of biblical rhetoric reinforced a familiar ideological framework within which land reform could be legitimised. Secondly, Murdoch clearly inspired a number of ministers into supporting the crofters’ cause and into a determination not to be accused of the alleged failures of the earlier ministers during the clearances.16 Any cursory perusal of the reports of HLLRA meetings from the 1880s clearly reveals the extent to which the Bible was used to justify land reform and to vilify landlords. Joseph MacLeod’s pantheon of activists, Highland Heroes of the Land Reform Movement, devotes the whole first chapter to a biblical justification of land reform; and Murdoch’s liberationist pamphlet Iubile nan Gàidheal was essentially a series of quotations, mainly from the Old Testament, setting out the case for observing the Mosaic land laws and stressing their continued relevance in the New Testament era and especially in the nineteenth-century Highlands.17 The London HLLRA briefly published a magazine entitled the Crofter in 1885; here there are less specific appeals on biblical grounds but there are a number of criticisms levelled at ministers for political reasons. In September 1885 the Crofter referred to the antipathy to the HLLRA ‘held by Highland Ministers, Free and Established, with few and honourable exceptions’. The stated reason for such antipathy was historical, namely that: Landlords and factors, with worldly wisdom, took advantage of the thousand and one opportunities that offered of conciliating the only class in the Highlands who were in a position to raise their voices against the iniquities perpetrated in the name of Justice . . .18 Unlike the Edinburgh HLLRA, therefore, the London Association criticised Highland ministers and liked to view themselves as closer to the interests of the crofters than were the ministers. The fact that some leading ministers endorsed candidates who opposed the HLLRA nominees in the 1885 elections no doubt exacerbated these tensions. Yet it is very difficult to measure the extent of anti-clerical feeling in the HLLRA branches. It probably remained the case that crofters in particular localities were possibly more able to distinguish between the political stance of their ministers and the spiritual role they occupied in the community. Highly politicised 15 16 17

18

See 79–85 above. See 180, 195 below. Joseph MacLeod, Highland Heroes of the Land Reform Movement (Inverness, 1917); MacMhurchaidh, Iubile nan Gàidheal; Meek, ‘Land Question answered from the Bible’, 84–9, gives a synopsis of Murdoch’s pamphlet. Crofter, Sep. 1885, p. 93.

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activists living in London were less likely to draw such distinctions in their assessment of the ministers’ position.19 Thus, the relationship between the churches and the land reform associations, especially the London HLLRA, was complex. At two very important levels – the ideological and the institutional – the Associations owed a great deal of their success to biblical authority and to the influence and activity of ministers. Nevertheless, political tensions arose which caused the London HLLRA to regard the majority of ministers as acting in a manner that tended to foster ‘landlordism’. A great deal of this tension was undoubtedly caused by the differing aims of the ministers and the land reformers respectively. Ministers were generally aiming at conserving the existing framework of social relations but with a benevolent readjustment of the condition of the crofters in order to facilitate social cohesion. On the other hand, some prominent land reformers, especially in the city branches, were deeply influenced by Georgite single-tax ideas and others desired outright nationalisation of the land.20 Such markedly different conceptions of the true purpose of land reform, and of the tactics necessary to obtain it, inevitably brought ministers and radical reformers into disagreement. John Murdoch and others in the HLLRA certainly used biblical rhetoric to persuade crofters of the validity of their arguments. Whilst this was no doubt heartfelt in Murdoch’s case, we may legitimately question whether this was true of all the radicals. Of course, the crofters themselves used similar justification in their speeches at HLLRA meetings and conferences. Whilst Murdoch et al. may have given encouragement to this trend, such arguments would have had little resonance if evangelical ideology and an accompanying biblical interpretation of social injustice had not previously become ingrained in the collective mind of the Highland people. The Sutherland election The most controversial example of the interaction between ministers and land reformers at the political level was during the general election campaign in the county of Sutherland in 1885. The enfranchisement of the crofters in that year radically altered the dynamics of Highland politics and ensured that the first election fought under the new franchise would become a test of strength between land reformers and the landlords, who had hitherto virtually monopolised county representation in the region. Both the land question and ecclesiastical issues were of central importance during the election and in Sutherland the organisational links between the Free Church and the HLLRA were exceptionally strong. Free Church ministers 19

20

This corresponds with Dr John MacInnes’s observation that ‘Gaelic tradition, generally speaking, distinguishes between economic avarice and religious austerity’ among the clergy, ‘Religion in Gaelic Society’, 233. Newby, ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’, passim.

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took a leading part in forming local branches of the Association, chairing meetings and lecturing on the biblical basis for land reform. By 1885, when the 21 local branches affiliated to the HLLRA amalgamated into a county body, known as the Sutherland Association, the total membership stood at 1,540, out of a total of 3,180 eligible voters. This statistic is all the more remarkable since the majority of the Association’s individual membership represented whole households. As noted above the Sutherland Association was actually claiming 3,000 fully subscribed members by 1886.21 One of the most active and politicised Sutherland ministers was James Cumming, Free Church minister of Melness, in the north-west of the county. Cumming was the only Free Church minister from the agitation era who has left a collection of private papers to posterity and this source has been valuable in showing the significance of the land question in Sutherland religious circles during the 1880s.22 As Newby has observed, Sutherland became the most radical of all the Highland counties in the 1880s and Cumming’s public statements during the agitation show his passionate and deep-rooted commitment to a biblically inspired vision of land redistribution.23 For example, in a lecture delivered in the village of Farr in March 1883, he demonstrated an awareness of the importance of land as the key material resource for sustaining communal life and used the law of nature to justify reform: [W]hen [the land] is prevented from its natural and divinely appointed uses, the natural order of society is disturbed, and this disorder brings less or more of ruin on all concerned . . . Others claim a preference . . . for the exclusive occupation of large tracts of land by sheep and deer, as they allege there is no support in such tracts of lands for human life. These reasoners forget, or do not observe, that though the laying out of the land under deer may pay one individual better it is a dead loss to the community as a whole, and that man will live comfortably, on any given area, that supports the animals, as sheep, goats and cattle, which support man. Wherever the creatures that support man thrive, there man will also thrive. Cumming turned to question the hereditary privileges of the landlords and contrasted scriptural injunctions with the existing land legislation: ‘The law of God says thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, the statute law of Great Britain says you are mistaken – it is not your neighbour’s house or field, it belongs to the laird.’24 Unsurprisingly, Cumming’s views attracted hostility from the estate management. John Crawford, the Tongue factor, 21

22 23 24

NLS, Acc. 5931, Cumming Papers; Northern Ensign, 26 Aug. 1885, p. 6; D. W. Kemp, The Sutherland Democracy (Edinburgh, 1890), 39, 44–7. For the 1886 statistic, see MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 109; see also 105 above. NLS, Acc. 5931, Cumming Papers. Newby, ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’, 181. NLS, Acc. 5931, Cumming Papers, ‘Observations on the Land Laws’, n.p.

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described Cumming and the neighbouring Free Church minister, Donald MacKenzie of Farr, as: doing all in their power for years to stir up dissatisfaction amongst the small tenantry – setting class against class and slithering among the people of the worst description for the office of ‘The Highlander’ in Inverness. For the last 35 years the population of this section of the parish heard of the last minister [Cumming] nothing but rank communism and my surprise has been that the people are not more angry than they are.25 Notwithstanding the contempt of estate officials for ministers, the close connection between the Free Church and the Sutherland Association was subjected to intense pressure during the course of the prolonged election campaign. The problem originated with the decision of the more radical land reformers, meeting at a conference in the village of Lairg, to withhold support from any ‘landlord, relative, or connection of the landlord class’: this immediately ruled out the sitting MP, the marquis of Stafford, heir to the dukedom of Sutherland. Locally popular, Stafford earned himself the sobriquet of ‘the radical marquis’ for his enthusiastic espousal of land reform principles in his manifesto. The Free Church ministers were generally satisfied with Stafford’s position on land reform and believed the so-called Lairg resolution was extreme and politically naive because of its fundamental class bias. The more radical reformers viewed this position as a betrayal and condemned the ministers for ‘hankering after the fleshpots of Egypt’. One crofter, Colin Mackay, speaking originally in Gaelic, stated this position in characteristically biblical terms: Landlords in the past made laws in Parliament which had worked to them so much wrong. If they sent a landlord to Parliament again they might look out for the yoke to be put upon them heavier than ever. The Israelites of old had been oppressed more and more by Pharaoh the oftener they asked for freedom. That would be the case if they sent a landlord to Parliament, as if landlords now got a chance they would make laws to crush out the little freedom the crofter already possessed.26 The radicals further ensured that the election would be polarised around class when they chose Angus Sutherland, a crofter’s son from Helmsdale, as the ‘crofter’ candidate; the election was thus heralded by the radicals as a straight contest between the son of the laird and the son of the crofter. But the ministers’ prominent role in the creation of a politically aware, pro-land reform constituency from the beginning of the agitation lent a good 25

26

NLS, Acc. 10225, Policy Papers, 177, Crawford to Kemball, 5 May 1882. This may be a reference to the Scottish Highlander rather than John Murdoch’s paper. I am grateful again to Annie Tindley for this quotation. Northern Ensign, 1 Apr. 1885, p. 3. The translation was given in the original report.

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measure of credibility to Stafford’s land reform manifesto. This was acknowledged in a letter from ‘A Lover of Fair Play to Rich and Poor’, which criticised the more radical reformers for their treatment of the crofters’ ‘natural leaders’, namely the Free Church ministers who not only initiated the movement for reform, but by their persistent action and judicious conduct placed it in the effective, useful position it occupies at present.27 Indeed, despite the division with the Sutherland Association, the ministers remained active at political meetings throughout the election campaign. Ministerial urging of caution and non-violence undoubtedly prevented the heated controversy over the election from spilling into acts of outrage. The church’s policy was exemplified in an 1885 resolution of the Free Synod of Sutherland and Caithness, which combines a conciliatory approach with encouragement for legitimate agitation: The Free Synod of Sutherland and Caithness earnestly and affectionately counsel the people within the bounds to exercise Christian forbearance in conducting this agitation; and while advocating their own rights, to show a due regard to the rights and feelings of others, in the claims they advance, and the expressions they employ, because the want of this regard is greatly productive of difficulty in reaching a satisfactory resolution of the problems discussed. And the Synod would earnestly exhort their people, while using all legitimate means to have their grievances redressed, to wait on the Lord, in whose hand the hearts of all men are, and to maintain becoming composure, which they may do, seeing that legislation on land reform may confidently be expected at an early date.28 Stafford was eventually returned with a majority over Angus Sutherland of 643. His victory demonstrates the considerable political influence of the Free Church ministers over the crofting electorate, even when opposed by the most radical factions of the HLLRA. James Hunter has argued that the poll in Argyllshire – which resulted in a triumph for the roman catholic HLLRA candidate D. H. MacFarlane in an overwhelmingly protestant constituency and against the advice of the ministers – represented a more significant and successful challenge to ministerial political influence.29 The religious position of the Free Church, however, was much weaker in Argyll than in Sutherland and, consequently, Free Church influence over the Argyllshire electorate was less decisive than in the northern constituency. Had Free Church influence been as strong in Argyll as it was in Sutherland, it is virtually certain that MacFarlane would have been defeated by the Independent 27 28 29

Northern Ensign, 26 Aug. 1885, p. 6. Quoted in Northern Ensign, 15 Apr. 1885, p. 2. Hunter, Crofting Community, 216.

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candidate and leading Free Churchman Sir William Mackinnon of Balinakill. Mackinnon, who was second to MacFarlane in 1885, actually came within 500 votes of taking the seat, polling 2,852 votes to MacFarlane’s 3,336.30 Whilst MacFarlane attracted the opposition of Established Church and Free Church ministers alike, such hostility stemmed from his religion and his previous position as an Irish Home Ruler, rather than from his espousal of land reform. While the success of the HLLRA in Skye and Lewis may be regarded as counter-examples confirming Hunter’s view, the Free Church ministers of both islands were generally pro-land reform and support for the ‘crofter’ candidates was thus not anti-clerical. Another important factor which helped secure the marquis of Stafford’s re-election was the residual loyalty of Sutherland crofters to the ducal house. This was a factor entirely absent in the Hebrides and was not an issue in Argyll in 1885.31 The Sutherland election campaign discloses the complicated relationship of religion and politics during the agitation. Whilst the majority of the county’s crofters were loyal to the constitutional party in the Free Church, a number of the ministers were strong advocates of disestablishing the Church of Scotland. Once it became apparent that the ministers’ support (including that of Cumming) was with Stafford, an anomalous situation arose whereby Angus Sutherland promptly announced his adherence to the principle of state endowment of religion.32 The radical candidate thus gave his support to a cause which was viewed with great disdain by many on the Liberal left in this period. The Crofter’s comments on the situation suggest that Angus Sutherland’s advocacy of ‘national recognition of religion’ was calculated to appeal to conservative Free Church crofters and to drive a political wedge between ministers and congregations: It is well known to the crofters that the majority of the fathers and brethren who attended the recent [G]eneral Assemblies in Edinburgh are as anxious to preserve landlordism as they are to disestablish the Church. In this respect the Sutherland Free Church ministers are the chief sinners, but Angus Sutherland is having his revenge by declaring against Disestablishment.33 30

31

32 33

MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 157. For more on Sir William Mackinnon, see J. Forbes Munro, Maritime Enterprise and Empire, Sir William Mackinnon and his Business Network, 1823–93 (Woodbridge, 2003), especially 383–9 for the 1885 election campaign. Although Forbes Munro provides an exhaustive account of Sir William Mackinnon’s entrepreneurial career, he under-emphasises Mackinnon’s religious convictions and his support for the Free Church constitutionalists. The positions were somewhat reversed the following year when, after Gladstone’s Home Rule conversion, MacFarlane was defeated by a Tory Unionist, Col. J. W. Malcolm of Poltalloch. Malcolm held the seat until 1892 when MacFarlane was returned for a further three years. In Sutherland, Stafford’s resignation ensured the election of the radical Angus Sutherland, who held the seat until 1895. Stafford himself was also in favour of maintaining the establishment principle. Crofter, June 1885, p. 61. In later years Sutherland repudiated his support for establishment on political grounds, see Hunter, ‘Politics of Land Reform’, 60–1.

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In Sutherland during the following year, James Cumming became involved in a dispute with a large section of his congregation. The two points of disagreement were Cumming’s refusal to support Angus Sutherland in the 1885 election and Cumming’s espousal of disestablishment.34 At one point it was reported that as many as two hundred seceded from the Melness Free Church and sought recognition by the Established Church, petitioning Gladstone to support the Establishment as ‘an institution founded upon the teaching of Holy Scripture, and calculated to bring the benefits of Christianity within reach of all classes, and especially of the poor . . .’ There being no Established Church congregation or building in Melness, the new congregation started to build a church in autumn 1887. The difficulties in Melness became apparent as early as March 1886. At a conference of local branches of the Sutherland Association from the west of the county, Melness delegate John Cameron stated that ‘their Association in Melness was the most radical in the county, and they were gaining strength every week’. Cameron pointed to the inadequacies of the proposed legislation passing through Parliament in early 1886. He also predicted widespread defiance of the law and mentioned the religious aspect of the agitation in a militant speech: [H]e would not be at all surprised if the Government would have to send troops to Sutherland, if they were not to get a more drastic measure – (cheers) – as they would be obliged to take the land. (Cheers.) They were now taking up the Church Question in Melness. (A voice ‘To make Mr. “Cumming” Mr. “Going”’ and laughter.) Well perhaps so. (Cheers.) . . . The people of Melness were pledged to carry on the agitation, and when he went home he would tell them there that the people of Farr were as determined as they were to fight to secure the land of the forefathers. (Cheers.) . . .35 In the island of Mull, in the Argyllshire constituency, the chairman of the Salen branch of the HLLRA, the Free Church minister Alexander Shaw, resigned from the Association in August 1885 after a meeting addressed by Donald H. MacFarlane. MacFarlane’s refusal to give a categorical pledge in favour of disestablishment prompted Shaw’s resignation. MacFarlane, like Angus Sutherland, was no doubt conscious that in Argyll – where the Established Church was strong by Highland standards – any radical denunciation of the principle of establishment would likely weaken his prospects. The complexity of the ecclesio-political background to such debates cannot be overemphasised, more especially in a denominationally mixed county like Argyll. In this particular case we have an audience of pro-land reform and mainly Established Church crofters, who were in favour of the 34

35

Northern Chronicle, 25 Mar. 1886, p. 6; Scottish Highlander, 7 Oct. 1886, p. 7; Highland News, 29 Oct. 1887, p. 2; 12 Nov. 1887, p. 3; 3 Dec. 1887, p. 3. Northern Chronicle, 31 Mar. 1886, p. 5; Scottish Highlander, 25 Mar. 1886, p. 6 and 7; Oct. 1886, p. 7; Highland News, 29 Oct. 1887, p. 2.

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Roman Catholic MacFarlane, opposing a Free Church pro-disestablisher, Shaw, who was also pro-land reform. Such varying allegiances within the land reform movement make it difficult to furnish generalisations about the political sympathies of ministers or land reformers by virtue of their ecclesiastical stances.36 The Prophet of Waternish One minister whose position on public questions was unequivocal throughout the 1880s was Donald MacCallum. Indeed, far more than any other Highland minister, MacCallum’s name is synonymous with the land agitation. Given his prominence, MacCallum has attracted the attention of a number of commentators, most notably Meek, Hunter, and Ansdell, the latter of whom quite fairly regards MacCallum as ‘the foremost land campaigner among the clergy’.37 The main events of MacCallum’s life are outlined in Meek’s article ‘The Prophet of Waternish’, where he highlights the formative influence of Celtic revivalism, and especially the writings of John Murdoch, on the young divinity student at Glasgow in the mid- to late 1870s.38 MacCallum’s theological views were certainly affected by the rejection of calvinist orthodoxy in the Scottish universities at this time. Yet throughout his ministry he accorded a high place to the Bible as the Word of God, indeed his application of Old Testament passages – whilst innovative in the political context – can be viewed as a homiletical extension of the Highland preference for allegorical interpretations of the Old Testament. Like many of the first generation of labour movement activists – Keir Hardie included – MacCallum found theological justification for his ‘Christian socialism’ in the ethics of the Bible. As a preacher, poet, political activist, and platform orator, MacCallum took every opportunity to proclaim his message, which was essentially a romanticised social gospel adapted to the conditions of the late Victorian Highlands and Islands. Meek has likened this ‘land gospel’, as MacCallum referred to it, to a prototype of modern Latin-American liberation theology.39 Certainly MacCallum relished casting the landlords in the role of Pharaoh and the crofters as the oppressed children of Israel. The only restitution or redemption possible was for a thoroughgoing redistribution of land to the crofters. Here John Murdoch’s influence over MacCallum’s thinking is apparent, although MacCallum was never as explicitly committed to the reinstitution of the Mosaic land laws as Murdoch. Norman MacLean states that MacCallum was influenced by Winwood Reade’s Martyrdom of Man, and that this became the substance of his addresses, especially on the theme of slavery. Indeed, it is noticeable that 36 37 38 39

Oban Times, 22 Aug. 1885, pp. 3–4, 6. Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 152. Meek, ‘Prophet of Waternish’, 2–7. Meek, ‘Land Question answered from the Bible’, 88; see also 4 above.

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many of MacCallum’s extant speeches make reference to slavery and compare crofters’ conditions to those of slaves.40 Reade’s atheistic humanism may have encouraged MacCallum to interpret biblical passages in a more materialistic manner than was common in the Highlands. For example, at a crofters’ meeting in Uig, Skye, on 7 November, 1884, MacCallum concluded his characteristically homiletical address with a reference to slavery. This extract is notable for the repetition of imperatives, which was a common rhetorical device in Gaelic preaching: Na bithibh nar tràillean do dhaoine ach na’r clann do Dhia. Bithibh [sic] misneach agaibh. Tha moran ann a sheasas gus a chriocht sibh. Is f[h]earr tuiteam ann a [sic] cheartas na seasadh ann an eucoir. Bithibh dìleas d’a chéile. Deanaibh an ceartas agus cuiribh ur ’n earbsa ann an Dia . . . Gu’n robh Dia ar ’n athraichean gu sìorruidh maille ribh. Amen.41 [Translation:] Do not be slaves to men but children of God. Be of good courage. There are many that will stand until you finish. It is better to fall in righteousness than to stand in injustice. Be loyal to each other. Do righteously and put your trust in God . . . The God of our fathers be with you for evermore. Amen. MacCallum first came to prominence when he testified to the Napier Commission at Arisaig, Inverness-shire, where he was missionary minister in an overwhelmingly roman catholic community. He was outspoken in his criticism of the landholding system generally and on the Arisaig estate in particular. His evidence before Napier was greatly appreciated by the crofters of Arisaig and South Morar who actually presented him with a gold watch and an illuminated address. MacCallum went further than almost any other presbyterian minister would have dared in praising the religious character of the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Arisaig: I reckon that man is left to the freedom of his own will as to the manner in which he shall worship God. Who can come between his soul and God . . . I found you godly, and I honoured you for it. I found you truthful, temperate, and I esteemed you highly for it.42 Having failed to appear, somewhat remarkably, at his original scheduled induction, MacCallum was eventually transferred to the quoad sacra charge of Hallin-in-Waternish in Skye in March 1884. He immediately took a leading role in the Skye land agitation and was made chairman of the recently founded Waternish branch of the HLLRA. Almost immediately he became embroiled in a bitter dispute with the local proprietor Captain Allan 40

41 42

MacLean, Set Free, 54; Winwood W. Reade, The Martyrdom of Man (London, 1872: 1934 edn), 274–80. Oban Times, 5 Jul. 1884, p. 3. Report of Presentation and Entertainment to Rev. D. MacCallum, by the natives of Arisaig and South Morar (Oban, 1884) (Presentation to Rev. D. MacCallum), 5.

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MacDonald, who accused MacCallum of slander and of disturbing relations between the proprietor and his tenants. MacCallum’s biblical and analogical rhetoric tended to obscure direct exhortations to confrontation and resistance, but as it has been noted above, he was clearly in favour of rent strikes since he chaired meetings at which ‘no rent’ resolutions were adopted. Referring to landlords, he used the expression ‘resist the devil and he will flee from you’, which could potentially be interpreted in a number of ways, even as an encouragement to a policy of civil disobedience.43 Throughout 1884 and 1885 MacCallum travelled widely addressing crofters’ meetings and he campaigned extensively for HLLRA candidates at the elections held in 1885 and 1886. In September 1884, for example, MacCallum spoke at a number of meetings in Uist and Barra, accompanied by John MacPherson, ‘the Glendale Martyr’. When he addressed a predominantly roman catholic audience at Castlebay, Barra, MacCallum – although heavily critical of fellow presbyterian ministers – was scrupulously careful not to criticise the attitudes of the priests to the land question: How long in slavish flattery would our ministers continue to preach on the divine right of lairds? When would they begin to denounce the vices of the rich? The slavery of the people was deeply rooted; they would yet uphold and listen to ministers who would say to their face that they were ‘sowing the seeds of sedition, and inciting to violence’.44 This level of activity was partly made possible by the tiny size of the Established Church congregation in Waternish; the Lord’s Supper was only dispensed once during MacCallum’s incumbency, at which four people communicated, two of whom were his mother and his sister (who lived with MacCallum as his housekeeper). MacCallum never kept any records of kirksession meetings, nor was there a communion roll.45 It was claimed, however, that his political work was diverting him from the normal duties of the ministry. At the time of the 1885 general election the minute book of the Skye Established Presbytery records that: The Presbytery expressed their great dissatisfaction with Mr MacCallum’s absence from duty today, more especially that they are informed he is going about the country as a political agent, a cause which the Presbytery think is unbecoming in a clergyman.46 At a later meeting of the Presbytery, MacCallum was censured and rebuked by Donald Mackinnon, the minister of Strath: 43

44 45 46

NAS, CH2/330/5, Skye Presbytery Minute Book, 30 Jan. 1884, 357; Presentation to Rev. D. MacCallum, 10. Quoad Sacra parishes were disjoined from civil parishes solely for ecclesiastical purposes. The congregational finances were not under the jurisdiction of the feudal superior. Oban Times, 4 Oct. 1884, p. 6, doubtless a reference to Donald Mackinnon, Strath. NAS, CH2/1496/1, Hallin-in-Waternish Kirk-session Minute Book. NAS, CH2/330/5, Skye Presbytery Minute Book, 1 Dec. 1885, 393.

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Dr Mackinnon moved that the Presbytery while freely admitting Mr MacCallum’s right to advocate the cause of the crofters, whom they are as anxious to see in possession of their just rights as Mr MacCallum can be, highly disapprove of the manner in which Mr MacCallum has incited the crofters to violence and class hatred, and of his having in his addresses made statements which he himself now admits to have been untrue, express their serious disapprobation of his having associated in the said work with a man who scoffs at Christianity, and calumniates its Author. They further express their disapprobation with his continued absence from his parochial duties, and for these reasons they appoint the Moderator seriously to censure Mr MacCallum for conduct so unworthy of a clergyman, and to admonish him when for the future advocating of the crofters’ cause to adhere to truth and to the use of language such as becomes a minister of Him who came into the world to proclaim peace and goodwill to men, and who on ascending on high left peace as a legacy to His followers.47 MacCallum, it is recorded, accepted the censure unreservedly. In a strange and inexplicable turn of events, however, he later repudiated the Presbytery’s censure publicly in a letter to the Inverness Courier of 13 April, 1886. The Skye Presbytery viewed his behaviour as highly serious, especially when he failed on three occasions to meet with his fellow presbyters in order to resolve the dispute. In all their dealings with MacCallum it seems that the Presbytery exercised a considerable degree of forbearance. Yet MacCallum was clearly determined to have himself represented in public as suffering at the hands of a persecuting, pro-landlord Presbytery. The evidence from the records shows that the Presbytery, including even Donald Mackinnon, Strath, strove to be as conciliatory as possible in their public business. It is likely that MacCallum was determined to win public sympathy, and he tried to avoid publication of his apologies and subsequent submission. Finding himself in a difficult situation, he sought to portray his fellow ministers as ‘laird fawners’ for their dealings with him. This was one of MacCallum’s favourite appellations, and he frequently employed it to describe other ministers who would either not preach on social or land issues, or who would not support the HLLRA publicly.48 The Established Church Presbytery of Skye have been accused of being ‘pro-landlord’ but in actual fact they petitioned Gladstone and Lochiel to act on the land question in April 1885: The Presbytery, while abstaining from committing themselves to principles or details of legislation, would respectfully memorialise the 47

48

NAS, CH2/330/5, Skye Presbytery Minute Book, 6 Apr. 1886, 397–9. The reference to the ‘man who scoffs at Christianity’ is to J. Stuart Glennie, the Vice-President of the London HLLRA, see 129, 159 above. Inverness Courier, 13 Apr. 1886, p. 5.

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Government to take the solution of the land question in the Highlands into their early consideration.49 The motion, which was unanimously agreed to, was moved by John Grant, minister of Kilmuir, and seconded by John Darroch, Portree. It was not, therefore, a product of Donald MacCallum’s influence. Yet whatever the public face of the Skye Presbytery, it was clear that privately Donald Mackinnon – who appears to have been amongst the most formidable and forceful of the Established Church ministers in the Highlands – was more than willing to undermine MacCallum and see the authorities curtail his political activities. In a highly confidential letter to William Ivory, Sheriff of Inverness-shire, Mackinnon, on the basis of hearsay, accused MacCallum of inciting the crofters to murder: Now as to MacCallum I said that in the Oban Times of 26th April 1884 he is reported to have made use of the following words – ‘Moses had every comfort that he needed himself but he killed the Egyptian that smote his kinsman and God considered him worthy to be the leader of the people’ and though not reported, it is quite true. I am led to believe that he used stronger language than the above and that he added ‘have you not here Egyptians to deal with – Lairds, factors and large farmers?’ Could there be a clearer instigation to murder than this?50 Mackinnon’s letter was written partly out of frustration that MacCallum’s arrest in November 1886 had failed to produce a prosecution. Mackinnon was highly critical of the local Procurator Fiscal on Skye, and hoped Ivory might be able to replace him with a more efficient and zealous official. MacCallum’s arrest was part of the second military expedition to Skye, sanctioned by the Conservative Secretary for Scotland, Arthur J. Balfour, in order to remedy the crisis in rate payment on Skye. The case against MacCallum was based on his continued presence at HLLRA meetings in Skye where resolutions to resist payment of rents were passed. More specifically, it was alleged that MacCallum had incited crofters to violence when chairing a meeting, held at Glendale on 5 November, ‘at which a resolution of resistance by force was carried’.51 The details in Ivory’s report to Balfour are substantially similar to the published accounts, including MacCallum’s own version of events: We ascertained at Uig that Mccallum [sic] against whom a criminal warrant had been issued was at Staffin we went there but found he was 49

50 51

NAS, CH2/330/5, Skye Presbytery Minute Book, 7 Apr. 1885, 386; Meek, ‘Prophet of Waternish’, 2; Hunter, Crofting Community, 217. NAS, GD1/36/1/47/29, Ivory papers, Mackinnon to Ivory, 18 Dec. 1886. NAS, HH1/125, Skye Expedition, Memo for Secretary for Scotland, including Telegram from Sheriff Ivory, Portree, 14 Nov. 1886. I understand that it was this meeting on 5 November which is referred to in the Memo, although it may refer to an earlier meeting, since in a police report (HH1/127, 9–14 Nov.) it mentions that there was ‘no information as to what passed’ at the Glendale meeting.

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at Valtos night coming on we came on here with Macpherson and gunboats leaving the police to execute the warrant against Mccallum and he was lodged in prison at Twelve last night shortly after we arrived here Hamilton took a declaration from Mcpherson and committed him for further examination 14th Nov 10.30 am.52 The police were active in arresting known leaders of the agitation, having gone to considerable lengths in the process. Plain-clothes officers attended a service at Kilvaxter Free Church in order to arrest suspects and others concealed themselves outside the building after a Sabbath service on 7 November. The suspects, however, were not identifiable.53 John Macpherson, ‘the Glendale Martyr’, was arrested earlier on Saturday, 13 November, and both he and MacCallum were confined in Portree jail until Monday, 15 November. MacCallum was bailed for £100 on Monday but the charge against him of inciting to violence – or as he himself described it ‘inciting the lieges to violence and class hatred’, which was actually the charge of the Skye Presbytery – was dropped through lack of evidence. Macpherson spent longer in jail, but was also released without trial. It was this failure to prosecute which aroused the ire of Donald Mackinnon, Strath, noted above. As MacPhail records, Balfour received a deputation of MPs and pro-crofter sympathisers on Thursday, 18 November, in London, where Charles Fraser Mackintosh described the treatment of MacCallum and Macpherson as ‘harsh and inhumane’.54 The Skye expedition ended with the departure of the troops and the two Navy vessels on 1 December. It had succeeded in pacifying Skye and reducing rate arrears, although the main reason for the long-term disappearance of agitation from Skye was the effect of the new Crofters’ Commission, which reduced rental and arrears substantially under the provisions of the 1886 Crofters’ Act.55 After his arrest MacCallum’s activities never reached the same levels of intensity as had characterised his period on Skye. In 1887 he was translated to Tiree, where for two years the duke of Argyll refused to augment his stipend, and finally to Lochs in Lewis, succeeding the land reform sceptic Ewan Campbell in 1889. Lochs was the scene of the most pressing land hunger in Lewis, and witnessed a major land raid in the Park deer forest in November 1887. MacCallum, in common with many other ministers – Gustavus Aird included – arranged for collections on behalf of the impoverished cottars of Lochs at this time. By the time of MacCallum’s transfer to Lewis in 1889, the agitation had subsided and as Meek records, he ‘settled down to the life of a conventional parish minister’.56 52

53 54 55 56

NAS, HH1/125, Ivory to Balfour, 14 Nov. 1886; see Cameron, Old and New Highlands, chapter xv, for MacCallum’s own account of the arrest. NAS, HH/1/127, Police Reports from Skye (no. 6), 9–14 Nov. 1886. MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 199. See 179–83 above for a discussion of the Crofters’ Act. See 193–5 below; Meek, ‘Prophet of Waternish’, 7.

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MacCallum’s role as a land reformer in the 1880s was highly publicised and, in relation to other ministers, he earned a reputation for outspoken advocacy of the land reform movement. Hunter recognises this, but asserts that for all the huge affection felt for MacCallum by crofters, his part in the land reform movement was, in the last analysis, quite minimal when compared to the part played by crofters themselves.57 It seems clear, though, that MacCallum exercised a wider influence than any single crofter – even greater than his fellow itinerant agitator John Macpherson. Naturally, the collective strength of thousands of crofters outweighed individual contributions, but Meek is correct to maintain that MacCallum held a very influential position in the agitation: As a minister, he helped to give the movement respectability, and the crofters themselves were encouraged by his fearless stand as a member of the establishment . . . none was so utterly committed, and none endured so much hardship as he did.58 For all his prominence, however, it is probably true that MacCallum’s reputation has been overblown while others have been long neglected. He was certainly not a figure of spiritual or theological gravitas in the manner of John Kennedy. Nor has MacCallum’s literary legacy been free of controversy; his poetry has generally been regarded as ‘strangely lacking in power and imagination, compared with the mighty speeches of his heyday’. Certainly his spiritual poetry, although christocentric and mildly evangelical in emphasis, lacks the psychological profundity of the earlier verse of the great religious bards Dugald Buchanan and John Morison. More than any other Gaelic poet of his generation MacCallum reflected the incarnationalist emphasis of the new theology. Meek notes that MacCallum’s verse was influenced by the Skye bard Neil MacLeod, whose own work has also been criticised for sentimentality and lack of hardedged realism. Ronald Black, however, has lately re-assessed MacCallum’s poetry very positively and regards him – particularly on account of his sense of irony – as ‘the most brilliant exponent of anti-landlordism in Gaelic verse’.59 MacCallum undoubtedly enjoyed a reputation as a demagogic platform orator; indeed, Meek has described him as ‘undoubtedly the greatest orator of the crofters’ movement’. Nevertheless, the records show that he paid scant regard to the pastoral side of his calling. As Norman MacLean noted: 57 58 59

Hunter, Crofting Community, 217. Meek, ‘Prophet of Waternish’, 7. Dòmhnall MacCaluim, Sop as Gach Sèid, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1883, 1884); Meek, ‘Gaelic Poets of the Land Agitation’, 313; Meek, ‘Prophet of Waternish’, 7; Ronald I. M. Black, An Tuil, Anthology of 20th Century Scottish Gaelic Verse (Edinburgh, 1999), xxvi–viii.

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The people flocked to weekly meetings where the rapacities of landlords were depicted in all the glowing metaphors of the Gaelic language; but on Sundays his church was left as desolate as before. The little minister was good enough for expounding the meat that perisheth, but the living Bread was to be sought elsewhere [i.e. the Free Church]. A contemporary admirer described a speech which he gave in London: It was rough, extravagant, sometimes almost incoherent . . . [he] adopted the attitude and tone of a prophet, and despite all sorts of faults of expression and manner, he was not wholly devoid of a sort of prophetic power.60 MacCallum’s seemingly petulant behaviour before the Skye Presbytery in 1886 demonstrates the publicity-conscious, vain streak in his character. He was certainly aware of his controversial position: As you know, I have taken a very prominent part in this agitation; I have travelled the most of the West Coast, I have gone over the Western Isles, and with all my might I have preached this land gospel to the people . . . A minister said to me, ‘By comparing the lairds to Ahab, the factors to Jezebel, and the crofters to Naboth, you put yourself in the place of Elijah.’ And what if I do? Indeed, many of his letters to the press reveal his willingness to use hyperbole to ridicule his opponents. For example, he accused Sheriff Ivory of threatening to kill crofters in Glendale. In a letter to the Oban Times in February 1885 MacCallum queried: How can we pray for the Queen who hears not even now the wail of our distress, who will not listen to the proof of our innocence, but who, on hearing vague rumours and unsubstantiated reports of law-breaking and secret societies, sends a scoffing Sheriff authorised and equipped to kill us all. The reported opinion of John Darroch, the Established minister of Portree, regarding MacCallum was that: ‘He was always trying to make himself a great man. The only way of achieving greatness open to him was to become a demagogue, and he took it . . . he was vain.’61 * Although some clergymen were concerned that the HLLRA’s politicisation of the land question was responsible for increasing tension between crofters and landlords, a large number viewed the land reform movement as worthy 60

61

Meek, ‘Land Question answered from the Bible’, 87; MacLean, Set Free, 54; Oban Times, 3 Jan. 1885, p. 5. Oban Times, 3 Jan. 1885, p. 2; 7 Feb. 1885, p. 5; MacLean, Set Free, 66.

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of their support. For churchmen, the solution to such differences was simply to leave their adherents to affiliate with the HLLRA if they desired. Despite uneasiness in some quarters, the policy of tacit toleration was an inevitable one. Since 1883 ministers had been widely involved in the organisation and activity of HLLRA branches and also at conference and executive level – none more so than Donald MacCallum. MacCallum’s position was, however, quite different from other ministers. The circumstances of his congregations gave him opportunity to devote himself to political activity in a way not open to ministers with more extensive charges. The average Free Church minister was too burdened with pastoral work to commit himself to the HLLRA cause so singularly as MacCallum. Certainly, most Free Church ministers were neither as outspoken nor as extreme as MacCallum despite the pro-land reform sympathies they may have held as individuals. Nevertheless, the fact that such a high number of HLLRA meetings were attended by Free Church ministers suggests that they typically maintained a high degree of commitment to land reform in this period, tempered, as ever, with a desire to maintain law and order. Although there were a number of conspicuous exceptions, Established Church ministers were less supportive of the HLLRA and do not appear in reports of land reform meetings as frequently as their Free Church counterparts. Notwithstanding, the Skye Established Presbytery – normally regarded as firm supporters of the landlord position – petitioned Parliament in favour of land law reform at the height of the HLLRA campaign. Baptist and congregational ministers were only occasionally involved in HLLRA activities during this period, while the number of roman catholic, episcopalian, and United Presbyterian clergymen addressing land reform meetings seems to have been almost negligible. There was a body of opinion among active land reformers which held that the churches, and ministers in particular, were neglecting to act in the best interests of their congregations by their reluctance to fully endorse the HLLRA position on political issues. Hostility to the ministers’ policy was certainly in evidence at the 1885 general election. But the campaign in Sutherland suggests that wherever the Free Church was strong, and when a divergence of opinion arose which pitted Free Church ministers against the most radical reformers, the political advice of the ministers held significant weight with the crofters. This contrasts with Hunter’s fundamentally anticlerical view that the HLLRA inherited the mantle of leadership from the evangelical laity, na daoine.62 The HLLRA might have presented an alternative focus of political and intellectual activity for crofters, indeed it may be correct to suggest that the institutional hegemony of the Free Church was to some degree challenged in this period. But we cannot ignore the extent to which the land reformers built their case foursquare on Christian ground. The liberationist interpretation of the Bible was a substantial buttress in the HLLRA edifice. This link between popular evangelical belief and populist 62

Hunter, Crofting Community, 216.

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politics became critically important when crofters received the vote. The liberationist message was an internalised feature of the crofters’ political outlook and was a critically important ideological justification for land reform. Such rhetoric may have been used on occasion to circumvent ministerial political influence; indeed, by challenging ministers’ interpretations of the Mosaic land laws such men as Murdoch and MacCallum were directly appealing to crofters to formulate a political strategy founded on the Bible but not necessarily based on the interpretations of the Highland clergy. It would be misleading, however, to regard the HLLRA as a spearhead of secularising or even anti-clerical influence in the crofting communities. The Church did not lose influence either in the short or in the longer term. Whatever tensions occurred at the height of the ‘crofters’ war’ between ministers and HLLRA activists were largely the result of disagreements over personalities and political tactics. Although the more secular among the radicals held a different social outlook from the ministers, there was no fundamental divergence between them over the necessity for land reform to alleviate poverty. The HLLRA was not a serious, long-term threat to the Church, mainly since it derived so much of its political legitimacy from the support of evangelical Christians – both crofters and clergy – and a great deal of its ideology from their beliefs.

CHAPTER SIX

‘The Crofters’ War’: Disunity and Disorder 1886–8 They were all deeply interested in the welfare of their countrymen. They might not see their way to adopt all the measures that were proposed, but he protested against the accusation that they the ministers of the F.C. were indifferent.1 The Crofters’ Act The bill which finally reached the statute book as the Crofters’ Holdings (Scotland) Act in June 1886 was essentially based on the Irish Land Act of 1881.2 The only significant piece of legislation passed by Gladstone’s short-lived third administration, the bill was introduced to the House of Commons in early 1886 by G. O. Trevelyan, Gladstone’s Scottish Secretary, and was modelled on an earlier bill which had failed to gain Parliamentary assent the previous year. The legislation was predicated on the concept of ‘dual ownership’, which was at the heart of the Liberal land policy. Under this system the tenant owned the improvements and the security of the tenancy while the proprietor retained the actual ownership of the land. The new Act granted security of tenure and compensation for improvements, and gave an independent statutory Crofters’ Commission the power to set rents and cancel arrears. The Liberal leadership was swayed by the historical argument that the crofters had been unfairly deprived of their ancestral lands and they used this to justify legislating for only one particular region of the country. But in his criticisms of the bill in the Commons, the Tory spokesman, Arthur J. Balfour, attacked Trevelyan for holding the ‘erroneous and utterly unfounded theory that the crofter in the Highlands had some kind of prescriptive and hereditary right to fixity of tenure’.3 1

2

3

A. R. Munro, Alness, report of Dingwall Free Presbytery debate on the Crofters’ bill, Highland News, 29 Mar. 1886, p. 4; see Ewing, Annals, i, 278. Munro was the father of Robert Munro, the Secretary for Scotland in Lloyd George’s administration 1916–22. For a full discussion of the debate surrounding the Crofters’ Act, see Cameron, Land for the People, 16–39. Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, CCCIII, 5 Mar. 1886, 211. The wider movement in party political attitudes to the free market and property rights which became more evident at this time has attracted some comment. Jose Harris, for example, believes

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The ecclesiastical response to the legislation was favourable and supportive. Some Presbyteries discussed the bill before it was enacted, and some petitioned the government to demonstrate their support for the principles embodied in the bill. At the March meeting of the Free Church Presbytery of Dingwall, in Easter Ross, the discussion of the bill was introduced by Alexander Munro, minister of Alness, who stated that it ‘was likely to have a most important influence on the material and moral welfare of their fellow-countrymen’. He believed the government ought to be supported in the matter, ‘and their intention to do justice to our countrymen who have suffered so long and so cruelly from neglect and oppression – (applause) – should be welcomed. (Applause.)’ Munro was aware of the importance of appearing to encourage the crofters: For himself and others he might say that without leaving their special work as ministers of the Gospel, they were heartily willing to do all they possibly could. (Applause.) He supposed that a committee should be appointed to draw up a petition and make suggestions in the line indicated. He was aware that it would be too late for the second reading of the Bill, but it would strengthen the hands of the Govt., and show that their sympathies were with the people. (Applause.)4 A. D. Mackenzie, Kilmorack, stressed that [h]is own people knew they had his sympathy, and he had frequently given them his counsel on the question. As to the present Bill, he believed there were many excellent points in it, and if it could be further amended he would be better pleased still, but his advice was that they should accept it and if found to be insufficient they should ask for suitable amendments afterwards. (Applause.)’5 The Dingwall Presbytery was a stronghold of the constitutionalist party in the Free Church. Conservative figures such as Malcolm MacGregor of Ferintosh, Murdo Macaskill, Dingwall, and W. S. MacDougall, Fodderty, supported Munro’s motion and the Presbytery unanimously agreed to encourage the government by sending them a petition of support for the bill. MacGregor’s statement reveals the extent to which Free Church ministers were careful to identify themselves with ‘the people’s cause’ but also how wary they were of the danger of radical or socialist tendencies emerging in the crofters’ ranks. This fear was widespread among ministers at the time. He stated that the people

4 5

that late-nineteenth-century Conservatism ‘inherited a view of property originally espoused by radical Liberalism half a century before’, Private Lives, Public Spirit: A Social History of Britain 1870–1914 (Oxford, 1993), 120. Highland News, 29 Mar. 1886, p. 4. In 1887 Mackenzie was involved in a dispute with Lord Lovat’s factor over the level of rent paid by crofters in Beauly, see Highland News, 23 Feb. 1887, p. 3; 5 Mar. 1887, p. 3.

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had undoubtedly been oppressed, and it was a surprise to him that they had borne it so patiently (Hear, hear). The people themselves were loyal and law-abiding, and if outside advice and influence were not brought to bear on them there would be little to fear (Hear, hear). The motion had his cordial support. William MacDougall, Fodderty, said he felt intensely for the crofters, because in his first ministry [on the Isle of Raasay] he saw the oppression of landlords, and he felt they should do all in their power to help to better their condition. (Applause.)6 The Free Church General Assembly debated the original crofters’ bill in May 1885 at some length. In that debate Robert Rainy pointed out that the bill did not adequately deal with the matter of rent arrears or with the problem of enlarging crofters’ holdings. With the fall of Gladstone’s administration in June of that year the 1885 bill was not enacted by Parliament. The questions over arrears were largely settled by 1886 as provisions for a statutory Crofters’ Commission – or Land Court as it was frequently referred to – with wide-ranging powers to set rental and arrears levels were incorporated into the revised bill. In 1886 the Assembly recorded their satisfaction with the legislation and advised the Free Church population in the Highlands to carry on the discussion in a manner worthy of them, and fitted to command the respect of the community, abstaining always from acts of violence or of opposition to the law.7 Despite the Free Church’s approbation, the Crofters’ Act initially pleased very few parties. It was regarded with horror by many landlords as a drastic infringement of their property rights, and Balfour’s criticisms were echoed by other Highland proprietors.8 The HLLRA MPs derided the bill for not making fuller provision for redistribution of land to enlarge crofts and to provide cottars with holdings, and consequently they voted against it in the Commons. HLLRA branches throughout the region rejected the Act when it had passed into law and, as the agitation moved from being a general crofter problem to a more specifically cottar problem, the level of confrontation increased. Many landless cottars who realised that the Act made no provision for their aspirations came to the view that the forcible possession of land used for sheep-farms and deer forests was the only means of achieving their aims. Additionally, for the two-year period between the passing of the Act and the first ‘fair rent’ decisions reached by the newly established Crofters’ Commission, crofters also regarded the Act as woefully inadequate.9 Their 6

7 8 9

Highland News, 29 Mar. 1886, p. 4; see John S. MacPhail, Memorial Sermons of the Rev. W. S. MacDougall of Fodderty and Contin, with a Sketch of his Life (Inverness, 1897), 19. PDGAFCS, 1885, 153; PDGAFCS, 1886, 177. Hunter, Crofting Community, 224–8; Cameron, Land for the People, 38. Hunter, Crofting Community, 226–8.

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no-rent campaign largely continued as they held out for a rent reduction under the auspices of the Crofters’ Commission. Frustration with the apparent failure of the Act to deal with their chief grievances left the crofting communities in a state of discontent which lasted until 1888. Ruairidh Bàn MacLeod, the prominent Lewis Free Church elder, wrote to the Oban Times outlining the dismal prospects facing the crofters, especially in view of the poor fishing season. He even suggested that the crofters and cottars would have to forcibly occupy land taken from them at the clearances since they had expected a full restoration with the passing of the Crofters’ Act: Unless we get this in a lawful way I am confident that the starving people of Lews will be forced to take it of their own accord, seeing that their fathers once tilled it.10 The continued discontent forced MPs to further debate conditions in the crofting counties in August. During the discussion, the Conservative member for Peckham, Arthur Baumann, defended the duke of Argyll, who had been criticised by Gavin Clark, the radical HLLRA MP for Caithness. Argyll’s estate included the island of Tiree, which had witnessed serious disturbances when crofters deforced police and occupied a farm that they hoped would be added to their holdings. In late July 1886 a force of marines was sent to quell the unrest and several arrests were made. Baumann also referred to the Free Church ministers as being ‘in some degree responsible’ for the disorder and discontent: ‘They were jealous lest anybody should shear their flocks but themselves, which they did pretty frequently.’ These remarks drew an indignant response from Neil Taylor, Free Church minister of Dornoch. In a letter to the Times, Taylor asserted that while the Free Kirk ministers felt themselves pledged to land reform, they acted almost uniformly on the principle of promoting and conserving good feeling between landlord and people, and not in any sense by encouraging them to disorder and agitation, as the hon. gentleman has seen fit to represent them. Taylor referred to the leading role Free Church ministers had taken at the time of the Napier Commission and also to his own repeated appeals to the marquis of Stafford to initiate land reform in Sutherland. He then drew attention to the fact that the Free Church ministers of Sutherland had been ‘denounced and all but boycotted by their own people, for their supporting Stafford at the 1885 general election. This was clear proof, Taylor argued, that the ministers were not responsible for violence and disorder: The Free Church ministers are prepared to take their share of the agitation for land reform as originally begun and conducted . . . but we 10

Oban Times, 21 Aug. 1886, p. 3.

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disclaim personal responsibility for excesses or extravagance in language or in actions which have been since mixed up with it.11 Emerging disunity Such were the tensions after the passing of the Crofters’ Act that it is unsurprising that cracks appeared in the unity of pro-land reform supporters in this period. There were two main sources of disunity from 1886 onwards. The first were the widening cleavages which emerged within the HLLRA bodies themselves. In addition there were differences of opinion between the HLLRA and the ministers, which drove some churchmen to adopt a critical attitude towards the land reform movement. Proposals to formally unite the three constituent associations – London, Edinburgh, and Sutherland – which comprised the HLLRA movement ironically led to a greater disunity and lack of clear political direction.12 The decision to unite was taken at the Bonar Bridge Land Law Reform conference in September 1886, but was almost thwarted by the procrastination of the Sutherland Association delegates, who feared their financial and political independence would be subsumed in the new organisation. The 1887 conference held at Oban witnessed the formal unification of the three groups under the title of ‘The Highland Land League’, but as MacPhail points out, from this time onwards ‘the annual conferences set the scene for clashes between the different factions’.13 As the Land League became increasingly identified as none other than the radical wing of the Liberal Party in the Highlands, so divisions over contentious aspects of the Liberal programme widened the cleavages in the League. Certainly, the Home Rule and disestablishment debates contributed to these divisions.14 But more than anything else, it was the passing of the Crofters’ Act itself that weakened the League’s long-term political influence after 1887. The Act – by granting most of the conditions stipulated by the HLLRA at the Dingwall conference of 1884 – had effectively forced the land reformers to adopt a more radical position concentrated on widespread land redistribution. Some prominent sympathisers – whilst no doubt willing to see land redistribution – became disillusioned with the radical direction the reformers increasingly pursued. In this climate, moderates, such as John Stuart Blackie and his close correspondent John Mackay of Hereford, felt alienated from the more radicalised Land League. They found it difficult to justify the level of confrontation in the 1886–8 period, and blamed the

11 12 13 14

Times, 1 Sep. 1886, p. 6; 13 Sep. 1886, p. 13. See Hunter, ‘Politics of Land Reform’, 45–68. MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 108–9, 218–19. For the disestablishment debate, see J. G. Kellas, ‘The Liberal Party and the Scottish Church Disestablishment Crisis’, English Historical Review, lxxix (1964), 31–46; G. I. T. Machin, ‘Disestablishment and Democracy’, in Biagini, Citizenship and Community, 120–47.

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League’s more radical agenda for perpetuating tension. As Dunbabin notes, the withdrawal of moderates from the movement – although weakening the League politically – strengthened the hands of the advocates of land nationalisation. This goal was, of course, politically unobtainable in the immediate wake of the new legislation. Consequently both Blackie and Mackay withdrew their support after the passing of the 1886 Act. They were not alone, since the ministers were also becoming disenchanted with the strategy adopted by the Land League.15 Clerical lukewarmness towards the HLLRA was already apparent by the time of the Bonar Bridge conference. At that conference Duncan MacGregor, Baptist minister in Chicago and founder of the Scottish Land League of America, criticised the paucity of ministers in attendance: ‘The ministers of Scotland were making a tremendous mistake in losing touch with the common people.’16 Some ministers no doubt believed the Crofters’ Act was sufficient to meet crofters’ grievances, or was all that might be expected from a Parliament still heavily representative of the landed interest. But for reasons which are further discussed below, a large number were dissatisfied with the 1886 settlement and continued to advocate a thorough redistribution of land to crofters and cottars. Their sympathy with the crofters was, however, often not matched by continued political endorsement of the Highland Land League. The comments of Neil Taylor, Dornoch, in his letter to the Times noted above, demonstrate that the tensions between radicals and ministers in Sutherland at the time of the 1885 election had affected relations between the clergy and some of their congregations. This was most obvious, perhaps, in Melness, Sutherland, where James Cumming lost a large number of his flock to the Established Church. As discussed in the previous chapter, the main reasons for this secession were Cumming’s espousal of the marquis of Stafford’s candidature and his support for the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland. Yet both Taylor and Cumming had given unqualified support to land reform from the inception of the campaign in the early 1880s. Cumming’s obituary in the Northern Ensign records that he had held advanced views on land reform for many years previously: ‘By speech and pen he advocated the cause of the crofters many years ago; and it may be claimed for him that he was the pioneer of land law reform in Sutherland.’17 Another undated tribute from a correspondent in the Northern Ensign stated that Cumming: was the first in the district to take up his pen on behalf of the people. His land leagueism dated further back than John Murdoch’s, and, like 15

16 17

Dunbabin, Rural Discontent, 270–1; NLS, MS 2636 fo. 315, Blackie correspondence, Mackay to Blackie, 20 Nov. 1886. Blackie’s disillusionment had nothing to do, however, with HLLRA support for home rule, which he had supported consistently for many years. Scottish Highlander, 14 Oct. 1886, p. 3. NLS, Acc. 5931, Papers of Rev. J. Cumming, ‘Death of the Rev. James Cumming, Melness’, cutting from Northern Ensign, n.d. Cumming died in 1894.

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the late Prime Minister his radicalism increased with his years. Like the other ministers he differed from the people in 1886 [sic], but he never retracted a single sentence which he uttered in connection with the relation of the people to the soil.18 In July and August 1886, several letters appeared in the Highland News which severely criticised a number of constitutionalist ministers for the allegedly political and partisan nature of their sermons on the Monday thanksgiving services of Communion Seasons. Communions were held throughout the Highlands every week during the summer – it is recorded that the seventyfive-year-old Gustavus Aird preached at twenty-three Communions in 1887.19 In a letter from Lairg, written by ‘A Free Churchman’, Neil Taylor was alleged to have preached in Gaelic on Monday, 5th inst., at Lairg Communion, and . . . finished by giving a political discourse pouring out abuse on the people of Sutherland . . . Surely our Sacraments ought to be conducted free from politics. The future founder of the Free Presbyterian Church, Donald Macfarlane, was also accused of ‘political preaching’ in a letter from ‘Feargag’, writing from Stratherrick, Inverness-shire. According to ‘Feargag’, Macfarlane included ‘crofters’, which was presumably a reference to the HLLRA, amongst a number of liberal groups on the receiving end of his criticisms: Last Monday was our Sacramental Monday, and on that occasion the Gaelic congregation were made to endure a lecture from that political luminary, the Rev. Mr Macfarlane, Moy, such as they never heard before, and few of them will care to hear again. If preaching has become of none effect in the hand of our clergy they would be better to betake themselves to some more suitable employment than supplying its place with forcible-feeble denunciations of Home Rule, Gladstone, Crofters, Voluntaries, U. P.’s.20 In reality the constitutionalist ministers in the Highlands were becoming increasingly embroiled in the debates which had engulfed the Free Church over a whole range of ecclesiastical, theological, and political issues. By lecturing congregations on the distinctive principles underlying the Free Church constitution of 1843, ministers like Taylor and Macfarlane were seeking to reinforce the theological conservatism of Highland congregations. Given the strength of criticism directed against the Sutherland clergy by radical land reformers in 1885, it is unsurprising that many 18

19 20

NLS, Acc. 5931, Papers of Rev. J. Cumming, undated tribute to Rev. James Cumming from Northern Ensign. The date referring to the general election should read 1885 instead of 1886. Highland News, 5 May 1888, p. 3. Highland News, 12 Jul. 1886, p. 3; 2 Aug. 1886, p. 3; 21 Jun. 1888, p. 3.

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conservative ministers identified the HLLRA as a potential threat to the bonds which existed between them and their congregations. From a wider perspective, the crisis over Home Rule and the disestablishment debate had a long-term effect on Highland ecclesiastical politics. After 1886, existing divisions in the Free Church in the Highlands over disestablishment became more entrenched. The Northern Chronicle and other influential Conservative voices increasingly championed the constitutionalist cause in the Free Church – as well as that of the Established Church – and urged the Free Church conservatives to rejoin the Establishment. Donald Macfarlane, for one, seemed prepared to take this step in 1886–7, when the bill drawn up by R. B. Finlay, Liberal Unionist MP for Inverness Burghs, to reconstruct the Established Church’s constitution was narrowly defeated in Parliament.21 The defeat of this measure and the latitudinarian theological tendencies of many Established Church ministers dissuaded Highland constitutionalists from rejoining the ‘Auld Kirk’. In 1886, however, with the disestablishment controversy still prominent, the prospect of a rejuvenated Church of Scotland seemed as distasteful to more liberal Free Churchmen as it seemed appealing to conservatives. ‘A Crofter’, writing in the Highland News, hoped that the columns of the paper would be used to denounce ‘the ministers of the Free Church who want to go back again to Egypt’. He criticised the position of the Established Church in relation to the landlords: His Grace the Duke of Argyll is ‘boss’ of the Established Church. He is a ruling elder. Perhaps this explains the unholy alliance which has taken place betwixt the Established Church clergy and the lairds.22 Whilst the Skye disturbances largely died out after the military expedition of 1886 and agitation gradually petered out throughout the Highlands in 1887, Lewis remained a source of discontent until 1888. At the Free Church Communion at Barvas, on the west side of Lewis, in September 1887, the influential constitutionalist Hector Cameron, minister of Back, Lewis, allegedly condemned the Land League and the agitation for diverting money from the Sustentation Fund and for making people withhold their rents. Cameron was alleged to have described the land agitation as having ‘brought a curse on the island’. Murdo Macaskill, Dingwall, had consistently supported land reform from before the time of the Napier Commission. In the Free Church General Assembly of 1888, however, he gave a report of an 21

22

Donald Beaton (ed.), Memoir and Remains of Rev. Donald Macfarlane (Inverness, 1929; Glasgow, 1999 edn), 20; see also Simpson, Life of Rainy, ii, 59–65; Smith, ‘Free Church Constitutionalists’, 111–15 Highland News, 30 Aug. 1886, p. 3. Some disestablishers advocated using the endowments of the Established Church for the social improvement of the Highlands, see Gilbert Beith, The Crofter Question and Church Endowments in the Highlands (Glasgow, 1884). Beith was the son of Alexander Beith, senior Free Church minister and President of the Edinburgh Highland Association, see 127 above.

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Evangelical ‘awakening’ in his native Lewis the previous year and questioned ‘how is that account consistent with the agrarian disorders that followed?’ Macaskill’s answer was a stark one: My firm conviction is, that however much I sympathised with the people as to the causes that led to these [agrarian disorders], that they were stirred by Satan to oppose this blessed work which promised such an abundant harvest . . . During the final phase of the ‘crofters’ war’ the increasingly confrontational aspect of the agitation heightened many ministers’ growing scepticism about the land reform movement.23 Like Neil Taylor and James Cumming, John MacMillan of Ullapool also became the target of criticism from radical reformers in 1886–7. Refuting allegations that ministers were inactive in the face of landlord oppression, MacMillan gave a scarcely-concealed attack on the policy of the HLLRA: ‘I have done my share of delivering my people out of Egyptian bondage, but to lead them to be buried in the ‘graves of lusts’ instead of leading them to the land of promise is what I refuse out and out to do.’ The reference to ‘graves of lusts’ obviously refers to what MacMillan regarded as the unobtainable objectives of the HLLRA post-1886. Furthermore, the willingness to use violence to achieve such ends among some crofters and cottars was, he firmly believed, contrary to the practice of the Christian faith. The following year, 1887, MacMillan was again accused of having ‘changed his colours and gone over to the minority on the landlord side’. This provoked an indignant response from ‘Veritas’, who was a frequent correspondent in the columns of Highland newspapers in the 1880s. Denying that MacMillan had changed his position on the land question, ‘Veritas’ asserted that ‘Mr MacMillan is the same as ever at heart toward the crofters and their cause, but has no need to “keep a constant ferment around him”.’ Describing MacMillan as ‘a strong Gladstonian’ and sympathetic to the Irish, ‘Veritas’ deprecated radical criticisms of the ministers as counterproductive to the crofters’ cause. He believed they ‘take the very worst way to gain the sympathy and co-operation of the ministers of the Gospel in the Highlands’. Notwithstanding the criticisms he argued that the ministers have more influence over the minds of the people than outsiders are aware of, and, as an ardent supporter of Dr. Macdonald [the Land League MP for Ross and Cromarty], and desirous of the co-operation of our ministers, I deprecate very much the conduct of some of your correspondents in this respect. It serves no good purpose to be coming down on our ministers. 23

Scottish Highlander, 29 Sep. 1887, p. 3; MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 200; PDGAFCS, 29 May, 1888, 100.

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Allan Macinnes’s assertion that MacMillan was ‘firmly allied on the side of the landed interest’ by 1886 is thus difficult to sustain.24 Indeed, the notion that Free Church constitutionalism led ministers into a quiescent political rapprochement with proprietors hostile to land reform is foundationless. In early 1887, for example, at a meeting of Highland constitutionalists which discussed the Finlay bill, the organisers, Neil Taylor and A. C. MacDonald, received letters of support from Gustavus Aird, Murdo Macaskill of Dingwall, Angus Galbraith of Raasay, John MacMillan of Ullapool, Murdo Mackenzie, Kilmallie, and Malcolm MacGregor, Ferintosh.25 Each one of these ministers spoke out publicly in favour of land reform at some stage during the agitation, whether at Presbytery meetings, before the Napier Commission, or at public meetings.26 Notwithstanding their increased reservations about the Land League’s modus operandi, it is very apparent from the evidence below that conservative ministers sustained an interest in the crofters’ cause. Rather than remaining ‘faithful and sympathetic to the crofters’ movement’, as MacPhail has put it, it is perhaps more correct to suggest that the Free Church ministers were faithful and sympathetic to the aims and aspirations of the crofters themselves.27 The Home Rule debate was another source of controversy which widened the gulf between many ministers and the Land League. In a discussion of Highland attitudes to Irish nationalism, Sorley MacLean stated that ‘when the Liberal conversion to Irish Home rule made the ministers and elders Tory’ a long-term political wedge was driven between ministers and many of their adherents.28 A full exploration of this assertion is beyond the scope of the present work, but it is important to remember that although Home Rule had a profound impact on ecclesiastical politics, the ‘Fundamentalist Presbyterian clergy’ described by MacLean were not all united in their attitudes to Irish politics, either before or after the first Home Rule crisis. It is certain that many Highland presbyterian ministers and elders harboured grave doubts over Charles Stewart Parnell and especially concerning Parnell’s willingness to concede significant political status to the roman catholic Church in Ireland. Roman catholic influence over education policy and the practice of giving priests an ex officio executive position in Irish National League county conventions would have further confirmed presbyterian suspicions that Home Rule would inevitably lead to ‘Rome rule’. 24

25 26

27 28

Scottish Highlander, 18 Nov. 1886, p. 5; 13 Oct. 1887, p. 2; 3 Nov. 1887, p. 3; Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 61. Highland News, 5 Feb. 1887, p. 3. Murdo Mackenzie, although silent during the 1880s, spoke in favour of land reform and of Gustavus Aird’s role in the movement in a speech at Inverness on the occasion of Aird’s retiral, see Rev. Dr. Aird’s Farewell, Gaelic and English Sermons, Preached in Creich Free Church, On Sabbath, 15th Nov., 1896 (Inverness, 1897), 14. MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 200. MacLean, ‘Vale of Tears’, 18.

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More than an unwillingness to recognise Irish political aspirations, this hostility was based on opposition to the potential politico-ecclesiastical dominance of roman catholicism in Ireland and a concern for the status of the Irish protestant minority. The radical ‘Plan of Campaign’ – endorsed by Archbishops Walsh and Croke in the face of Papal disquietude – may have led some Highland ministers to regard the Land League’s more radical political stance and the concurrent upsurge in land raiding as an undesirable echo of the Irish campaign. Certainly, Neil Taylor regarded ostracisation of ministers at the hands of radical reformers as little less than being ‘boycotted by their own people’. According to the Highland News: ‘There is no class of people who denounce boycotting in Ireland with such strength of language as some conspicuous ministers of the Free Church in the Highlands.’29 The opposition to Home Rule was manifested in a number of ways. As noted above, Home Rule was one issue allegedly denounced by Donald Macfarlane of Moy in a sermon in 1886. We have noticed in the previous chapter that his namesake, the roman catholic HLLRA MP for Argyll, Donald H. MacFarlane, was the recipient of fierce criticism and satire in the poem Oran na h-Election, which may have been composed by Neil Taylor of Dornoch. Murdo Macaskill, Dingwall, was another prominent minister opposed to Irish Home Rule and, indeed, it is significant that in Macaskill’s biography, written by his son, his attitudes to the land and Irish questions are linked together. Macaskill’s active contribution to the land debate is outlined first; then attention turns to a decisive change in his engagement in public life: The appearance of Home Rule on the horizon, however, which Mr Macaskill viewed with all the Presbyterian’s aversion, put a sudden stop to his co-operation with Liberal politicians; though he did intervene later in the interests of the Park raiders, and he took a prominent part in the conference of ministers which met at Dingwall in 1887 [sic], under the presidency of Dr Aird, to press upon the government the necessity of land reform.30 Presbyterian aversion to Irish Home Rule, almost certainly shared by the majority of constitutionalist ministers, was not absolute, however. John MacMillan, who was opposed to disestablishment, was reckoned a sympathiser to the Home Rule cause in 1887, and Gustavus Aird declared himself opposed to Balfour’s coercion policy in Ireland in 1888. Aird, a life-long Liberal voter, opposed the 1886 Home Rule proposals on technical, fiscal 29

30

The Times, 13 Sep. 1886, p. 13; Highland News, 14 Jan. 1888, p. 3; see also Emmet Larkin, The Roman Catholic Church and the Plan of Campaign in Ireland 1886–1888 (Cork, 1978); Ambrose MacAulay, The Holy See, British Policy and the Plan of Campaign, 1885–93 (Dublin, 2002), 63–80 for T. W. Croke. Macaskill, Highland Pulpit, xviii.

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grounds, because he ‘believed they would involve the British taxpayer’. Nonetheless, he sympathised with the Irish people: I can imagine how, if the Presbyterians were so much persecuted in Ulster [by the Anglican ascendency], what the condition must have been in the rest of Ireland. The characteristic of the Englishman is that he must have the upper hand, not only in Ireland but elsewhere.31 The Irish question, therefore, although very important in the formation of political allegiances post-1886, did not bring conservative Free Church ministers entirely into the Unionist camp. Furthermore, there is little evidence to show that antipathy to Irish Home Rule equated with hostility to Highland land reform amongst the ministers. The Unionist-leaning Murdo MacAskill, for example, although unwilling to espouse the Liberal cause after 1886, was quite prepared to advocate land reform publicly, even after the passing of the Crofters’ Act. Macaskill and John MacMillan exemplify the danger of over-generalising clerical attitudes to land reform and other political issues. Conservative politics and conservative theology were not synonymous for these men. Again, it should be remembered that many Liberal Unionist and Tory politicians were also willing to contemplate substantial schemes of land reform after 1885. Joseph Chamberlain’s tour of the Highlands in 1887 provides the most striking individual example of this point.32 Ongoing agitation In the eyes of political Conservatives, the passing of the Crofters’ Act took away any lasting justification for resistance to the authorities. It has been remarked that during his brief tenure as Secretary for Scotland in 1886–7 Arthur J. Balfour was ‘almost constantly engaged in planning and controlling military expeditions to the west and north of Scotland’. Balfour’s willingness to use coercion was also in evidence during his tenure as Chief Secretary for Ireland from 1887 to 1891.33 As the focus of the agitation moved from the rental and grazing disputes which characterised the earlier phases of the crofters’ war to a concentrated attempt by landless cottars to get sporting and farm land made into holdings for themselves, Balfour felt justified in using military power to quell disturbances. His strong-arm tactics, employed in Tiree and Skye in 1886, provoked widespread criticism, not least from Robert Rainy. Unable to attend a public meeting in Edinburgh 31 32

33

Scottish Highlander, 3 Nov. 1887, p. 3; Highland News, 5 May 1888, p. 3. For political attitudes to Scottish Home Rule, see I. G. C. Hutchison, A Political History of Scotland 1832–1924, Parties, Elections and Issues (Edinburgh, 1986), 171–3. Ministers seemed less involved in the Scottish home rule debate than in the opposition to Irish home rule. Hunter, Crofting Community, 228; MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 176–7, 192–4, 234–5; R. F. MacKay, Balfour: Intellectual Statesman (Oxford, 1985), 34–5; Catherine B. Shannon, Arthur J. Balfour and Ireland (Washington, 1988).

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which called ‘for inquiry into the recent extraordinary proceedings in Skye and Tiree’, Rainy wrote an apology stressing his support for the rule of law but argued that it was ‘of great importance that the law should be enforced with consideration and dignity, especially in cases where the feelings and interests of large classes of poor men are concerned’. He added: I also think it of importance that even necessary steps in upholding the law should not be allowed to divert attention from permanent question of social life and progress. In both respects it appears to me that vigilant attention and criticism on the part of the public are at present very much required. The arrest of leading agitators on Skye by Sheriff Ivory also prompted another wave of indignant protest couched in biblical, liberationist language among the HLLRA membership. At the above meeting, John Macpherson, the Glendale martyr, announced during a speech calling for the release of imprisoned crofters, that God was his guide, under his flag he would fight to the death . . . He asked them to stand shoulder to shoulder, and they would hear the chains of slavery cracking in all parts of Britain. At a meeting of the Dornoch branch of the Sutherland Association on 10 November, 1886, William MacLeay, Clashmore, likened Sheriff Ivory to a malevolent demon: [T]he sky is overcast, the storm cloud is lowering, and the ivory is shining resplendent, in the guise of an angel of light – (laughter) . . . If Sheriff Ivory and the landlords of the Highlands (for he knew full well that Ivory was backed by all the landlord class) believed that they were to strike terror into the hearts of the Highland people, they had truly reckoned without their host – (loud cheers). He was neither an orator nor an historian, but he knew from the grand old Book that until the fulness of time had arrived, and until the faith of the children of Israel had reached maturity, the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh so much that he would not let them go out of the land of Egypt and out of the house of bondage. It was not for him to say that the Lord had not dealings with Sheriff Ivory, but if so they were evidently of the hearthardening description . . .’34 1887 was relatively quiet in comparison with the previous five years. But by the end of the year, dramatic confrontations between crofters and the authorities were prevalent throughout Lewis. Hunter blames landlessness, low stock prices, and a further collapse in the herring fishing for the disorder. The events surrounding the Park Deer Raid and the Aignish riot have also been covered extensively by I. M. M. MacPhail, Joni Buchanan, 34

Highland News, 27 Nov. 1886, pp. 3, 5; see 151 above.

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and Ewen Cameron.35 The following summary is largely drawn from their accounts. Conditions in Lochs Parish, Lewis, were brought to the attention of the wider world by a series of articles written by the radical Land League activist Donald MacRae, a schoolmaster in the parish. In November 1887 a resolution to occupy the extensive deer forest of Park in South Lochs was adopted at a Land League meeting. The ostensible aim of the raid was to kill as many deer as possible to provide food for landless families and a considerable number were shot by the hundreds of raiders who entered Park on 22 November. Remaining three days in the forest, the raiders ignored the advice of the Sheriff of Stornoway to disperse. Although a military force was sent to Lewis to assist the police, the ringleaders of the raid surrendered to the authorities without struggle when they had returned to their homes from the forest. The raid achieved its real purpose in that it generated great publicity for the Lewis cottars. Such was the level of sympathy that at the subsequent trial the six defendants were each acquitted of mobbing and rioting. MacPhail suggests that ‘[n]ews of the Deer Raid stimulated a revival of agitation among the more militant cottars and led to a disturbance of an unprecedented nature.’ This disturbance became known as the Aignish riot or ‘the battle of Aignish’. In the prelude to the riot it was reported in the Northern Chronicle that: the crofters of the Point district of the Lews held a mass meeting on Wednesday, at the Garrabost Free Church, to consider what steps should be taken with reference to their grievances against the tenant of Aignish farm . . . The resolution to forcibly take possession of the Aignish Farm on the 9th January was adopted.36 The Garrabost Free Church minister George MacLeod is reported to have been present at this meeting, which is a rare example of a Free Church minister apparently acquiescing in or, at least, not protesting against a decision to break the law. Buchanan records that: ‘John Crichton, Swordale, presided until the resolution to raid was read out; he then gave up the chair so that no one person could be singled out by the authorities.’37 Presumably, George MacLeod refused to take responsibility for the decision to raid but was possibly influential in making sure that no one else could be held accountable for the resolution either. Notwithstanding the presence on Lewis of a detachment of nearly 100 Royal Scots and a sizeable contingent of Royal Marines sent in the aftermath

35

36 37

Hunter, Crofting Community, 236–42; MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 12–17; Joni Buchanan, The Lewis Land Struggle: Na Gaisgich (Stornoway, 1996) (Buchanan, Na Gaisgich), 70–92; E. A. Cameron, ‘ “They will listen to no Remonstrance”: Land raids and Land raiders in the Scottish Highlands, 1886–1914’, Scottish Economic and Social History, xvii (1997), 43–64. MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 206; Northern Chronicle, 4 Jan. 1888, p. 6. Buchanan, Na Gaisgich, 72, 93.

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of the Park raid, the decision to occupy Aignish and drive the farmers’ stock off the land was persisted with. The inevitable confrontation between the authorities and four hundred or five hundred men from the Point district of the island occurred on 9 January, 1888. The raiders began to drive livestock off the farm and were prevented in a melee during which a dozen Lewismen were arrested. The crowd, however, tried to stop the prisoners being taken away and overcame the local Procurator Fiscal, who was wielding a revolver. Marines with fixed bayonets came to the Fiscal’s aid and eventually, after stiff resistance, the prisoners were taken aboard a gunboat and brought to await trial in Edinburgh. Unlike the Park raiders, the Aignish rioters each received heavy sentences in the High Court ranging from nine to fifteen months’ imprisonment, which immediately dampened enthusiasm for further agitation on Lewis. The Free Church and land redistribution The violent unrest on Lewis forced policy makers in both church and state to examine more critically the social condition of the cottars and crofters in the most congested areas of the islands. In December 1887, in response to an appeal by leading land reformers, a special collection was organised in the churches for the Lochs cottars, who were reported to be on the verge of starvation. Gustavus Aird replied to the appeal, stating that [t]he object, viz., a collection for many of the people of Lews, and especially for Lochs, is most excellent, and at present particularly urgent, and I will most willingly intimate a collection here for the purpose . . . I will urge their doing what they can to help such an excellent cause, but at best it is little [that] can be done . . .’38 The Established Church minister of Rogart, Colin MacDonald, wrote to John MacLeod, Gartymore, a leading Sutherland land reformer: I cannot imagine that any person, and particularly in the position of a Christian minister, can hesitate to give effect to the appeal in your letter of 21 inst., on behalf of the apparently half-starving people in the Parish of Lochs, in the island of Lews. Differences of opinion must, of course, exist regarding recent doings by some of these poor unhappy people, as well as with reference to the large question with which that action is intimately associated, but it would be a great pity if anyone were on this account to delay discharging so obvious a duty as the one to which your letter invites.39 38

39

PP, 1888, LXXX, Report on the Condition of the Cottar Population of the Lews; Highland News, 31 Dec. 1887, p. 4. MacDonald to MacLeod, quoted in Highland News, 31 Dec. 1887, p. 4.

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John Murray, Free Church minister of Clyne, Sutherland, and himself a native of Lewis, was led to question the underlying reasons for destitution in Lochs: It is to be regretted that such destitution prevails amongst crofters and cottars, and what is needed is not temporary relief but such a scheme of land distribution as would effect something like a permanent cure. It may be difficult to devise such a scheme, but if all classes, landlords as well as crofters and tenants and others, should address themselves calmly and resolutely to the subject, the devising of the practicable remedy would not be found impossible.40 Murray’s willingness to critique the post-1886 regime was to be echoed in Free Church circles more vehemently in 1888. The foremost voice in this criticism was that of Gustavus Aird. In December and January Aird was controversially attacked by the Scotsman, which accused him of condoning lawbreaking by the Park Deer raiders when intimating the collection for the Lewis destitution: Dr Aird denounces them [the land laws] as iniquitous. And he declares that the crofters may break them without sin, justifying in particular their recent raid upon the deer in the Park Forest. He vouches for the sinlessness in the eyes of God of that lawless proceeding . . . Has he considered the grave responsibility that a man in his position incurs by the use of such language, and the painful consequences that may ensue? . . . It is to be hoped that the Free Church will take steps to repudiate Dr Aird. It has for some time been looking doubtfully on the crofter agitation owing to its effects on the Sustentation Fund. But there are interests in the Church’s keeping even more sacred than the Sustentation Fund, and after such a speech from its Moderator-elect, it may feel it incumbent upon it to take a stand on the side of the law and of the Decalogue.41 The accusations against Aird were proved to be false, however, after a special meeting of the Creich Free Church congregation held to exonerate Aird. Alexander Murray, an elder, moved a resolution at the meeting that in the opinion of this meeting the substance of the remarks made by Dr Aird in connection with the announcement was that he ‘deeply sympathised with the Lewismen in their present distress. Many of you may likely have heard that they have been represented as rebels; well better men than they have been called rebels. There are unjust laws, and every effort ought to be employed to repeal such. But I am sure it will be no sin on your part to show your sympathy with them, and to do what may be in your power to relieve their present exigencies’.42 40 41 42

Highland News, 7 Jan. 1888, p. 2. Scotsman, 29 Dec. 1887, p. 4. Northern Chronicle, 4 Jan. 1888, p. 6.

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The Scotsman was forced to acknowledge that Aird did not ‘use the words nor convey the meaning attributed to him, but that, on the other hand, he “distinctly stated that the law must be maintained” ’. The paper then criticised Highlanders for being untrustworthy, blaming local correspondents for making it difficult to obtain accurate reports from the region.43 Aird’s willingness to employ ‘every effort’ to repeal ‘unjust laws’ was manifested in his organising a conference of Free Church ministers and elders in February 1888 specifically to discuss the land question. Although the issue had been widely discussed in Free Church courts throughout the decade, this was a quite unprecedented step. Indeed, this conference can be regarded as the first meeting of Scottish presbyterian churchmen held to specifically address a social question. Yet, surprisingly enough, the conference has largely escaped the attention of historians.44 At a private preliminary meeting held in the Dingwall Free Church it was agreed that the conference would seek a broad consensus ‘representing both parties in the Church in the North’ with delegates from all the presbyteries in the area and from land reformers ‘with the view of formulating proposals in favour of legislation on the crofter question’ and to bring the question once again before the General Assembly. An editorial in the Highland News welcomed the idea of a conference stating that: This move on the part of the ministers is not a day too soon; but so far as they are concerned it may be a day too late, for there is no use blinking at the fact that they have appeared hesitating and dilatory, until their people have got it into their heads that their ministers have abandoned them, and lent their influence to the lairds. Suggesting that the church ought to have been more active earlier in the development of the agitation, the editorial asserted: If Dr Mactavish’s proposals had been carried out years ago, the Church would have moved long before this, and been stronger in position; but their hesitation has thrown the people into the hands of strangers, whose leadership may not have been so wise or perhaps so safe.45 One week later – in a directly contradictory manner – the same paper heaped praise on non-partisan ministers, maintaining: In no country in the world is there more genuine respect for the ministry, or more sincere regard for the men who quietly, in the fear of God, go out and in among the homes of the people. 43 44

45

Scotsman, 4 Jan. 1888, p. 6. The meetings at the time of the famine, for example, were public charitable meetings, and although ministers were heavily represented at such, these meetings were not formally convened by the churches. James Hunter refers in a footnote to newspaper reports of the conference in ‘Politics of Land Reform’, 60; Ansdell, People of Great Faith, 151. Highland News, 4 Feb. 1888, p. 3; 11 Feb. 1888, p. 2.

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Quite contrary to much of what had been expressed by radical land reformers, the editorial suggested: Such men will never meet disrespect, because they are not members of the Land League, or any other league. The less they have to do with leagues the better, their own large hearts and deep sympathy will ever guarantee that they are on the side of the oppressed, and against the oppressor.46 The conference met at Dingwall, Ross-shire, on 21 February, and was attended by twenty-four ministers. The small attendance and large number of apologies from absent clergymen were attributed to the fact that that particular Thursday was observed as a communion fast-day in a number of Highland parishes. The proceedings were chaired by Gustavus Aird, who opened the conference with prayer. Aird moved the first resolution, which addressed the subject of land redistribution from a radical perspective: [T]his conference is convinced that a measure should at once be passed to restore to and secure the full enjoyment by the Highland people, on equitable conditions, of their native land, of which Parliament and the Crown have in the Crofters’ Act already practically admitted that they should never have been deprived. Aird defended his resolution in a wide-ranging speech which called for the ‘breaking up of large sheep-farms’ and criticised the inadequacies of the Crofters’ Act. Arguing against the conversion of hill grazing into deer forests, Aird said: They had read a good deal lately about a raid made upon the deer in the Lews, but there was no word of the raids that the deer made upon the poor crofters’ lands. Aird concluded his speech with a reference to John Kennedy of Dingwall, quoting Kennedy’s letter from Florence and stating that Kennedy if he had been alive, would have been with them to-day . . . They all knew the power of intellect, the warmth of heart, and genuine love which Dr Kennedy entertained for Highlanders, and they were all glad to see his successor [Murdo Macaskill] taking up the good work. A motion moved by John Mactavish, Inverness, was adopted, urging that ‘money should be advanced by the State for erecting suitable buildings, for the reclamation of the land and the purchase of stock for enlarged or new holdings’. Other motions were passed calling for increased security regarding rent levels and compensation for improvements and the building of harbours to provide employment and promote the fishing industry. In effect, the resolutions unanimously adopted by the Free Church ministers at Dingwall 46

Highland News, 18 Feb. 1888, p. 2.

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were as radical as the official land redistribution policy of the Highland Land League. Although Aird’s motion was fairly vague, it was still firmly based on the creation of new holdings for crofters and the enlargement of existing crofts. According to Aird’s vision, land was to be provided for all the Highland population. Perhaps even more far-reaching was Mactavish’s motion calling for further state intervention since his proposals anticipated much of the direction of subsequent government policy in the region.47 The proceedings of the conference were greeted with some scepticism by the Highland News. ‘It is proposed that the State should advance money for all and every purpose in the Highlands’, the paper’s editorial noted: For what? To enhance the value of the landlords’ property? No doubt it will be alleged that fixity of tenure will prevent confiscation by the landlord, but conditions will be attached to this security, and, if they are violated in any way, is the landlord to reap the benefit of the assistance given to the tenant by the State? The Highland News also suggested that a conclave of Presbyterian churchmen was perhaps not the best place to formulate social and economic policy after all: We have no desire to deprecate the very excellent moral effect that is likely to be produced by such a large body of clerical gentlemen meeting together for the purpose of formulating schemes for the amelioration of the condition of the people; but we cannot ignore the fact that the people have an organisation for effecting this object, and have the means for gaining legislative effect for their aspirations. It is in the best interests of the Highlands that all efforts in the direction of reform should find their outcome through that organisation, and we are of opinion that it is in the highest degree detrimental to the Highland cause to be continually creating influences outside the organisation. We presume that as there was no reference to bringing the resolutions come to at the meeting before the Free Church Assembly at Inverness, that proposal has been abandoned. That is well. A Church Court is not the place to formulate detailed schemes of land reform.48 Other newspapers were more sanguine, with the Scottish Highlander stating, ‘It would be difficult to over-estimate the importance of the conference of Free Church ministers, and laymen, held at Dingwall on Thursday last . . .’ Alexander Mackenzie, the paper’s editor and prominent land reformer, was himself present at the conference where he seconded Aird’s motion. Mackenzie’s enthusiasm was palpable in his editorial: The resolutions there adopted are a full and unhesitating declaration of the rights and requirements of the Highland peasantry. They were 47 48

Northern Chronicle, 29 Feb. 1888, p. 7; Scottish Highlander, 1 Mar. 1888, p. 2. Highland News, 23 Feb. 1888, p. 2.

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sufficiently general to secure unanimous approval, and at the same time specific enough to indicate very clearly the direction in which the recent land movement points, and the means by which the deep distress of the people can be alleviated without resort to the oft-tried but unsuccessful expedient of drafting them off in shiploads to foreign lands, at least without first seeing to it that all the land available at home should be devoted to its proper purpose of supporting as large a population as can subsist upon it in fair comfort. Mackenzie confronted those who questioned the Free Church ministers’ motives pointing out that the advocates of land reform in the wider political sphere were very few in number until comparatively recently: What, it has been asked, is the motive underlying this new-born zeal of the Free Church clergy in the cause of land law reform? It were a sufficient answer to this that the friends who ask the question, though they now make the loudest noise, were not long ago in the same position. Mackenzie viewed the conference resolutions almost as an official imprimatur on the respectability of the land reform cause and movement. ‘[W]hat is more appropriate,’ he queried, than that the Free Church should stretch out a hand and help on the movement now that it is a living and powerful force in the social as well as in the political aspirations of their people. The Oban Times was also supportive of the conference, believing that ‘[t]his healthy movement . . . is capable of achieving great results if judiciously managed’. The editorial suggested that ‘[t]his declaration of war against deer forests and the preservation of certain lands for the purposes of sport, marks a new era in the history of the Highland churches’. It continued, ‘[t]he resolutions passed may seem drastic; but their expectations are based on laws which have found place already on the statute-book’. The Scotsman, on the other hand, viewed the conference as a belated attempt by the Free Church to exercise control over its wayward crofter and cottar adherents and questioned the future course of Free Church policy on the land issue: It remains also to be seen what the Inverness Assembly may do. Will Dr Rainy give over the reins to Dr Aird or Mr MacAskill, on their native heath, and let the Free Church be dragged at the heels of the Highland Land League, playing a more degraded part than the Catholic Church in Ireland in connection with the National League?49 The conference agreed that the land question should be debated at presbytery level before being sent up for the consideration of the Free General 49

Scottish Highlander, 1 Mar. 1888, p. 4; Oban Times, 3 Mar. 1888, p. 4; Scotsman, 29 Feb. 1888, p. 6.

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Assembly, due to meet that year in Inverness, with Gustavus Aird a popular choice for Moderator. It is likely that the decision to hold the Assembly in Inverness was mainly prompted by a desire to stave off the growing alienation of the Highlanders from the Lowland majority. Related to this, of course, was the leadership’s desire to show solidarity with the crofters. A number of presbyteries debated the issue and by the time of the Assembly in May, thirteen overtures were sent up to the supreme court of the Free Church: twelve from Highland presbyteries or synods and one from a presbytery in the Lowlands.50 At a meeting of the Dornoch presbytery Aird drew up an overture which was seconded by John Murray, Clyne, and unanimously agreed to: Whereas the state of the Highlands and Islands is at present very much disturbed; whereas the main cause of the disturbances is the poverty of the crofters, and cottars, and fishing population, caused by the want of sufficient land on which to live, and the failure of the fishing industry; whereas the adherence of these people, generally, to the Free Church of Scotland, lays on the Church a duty of watching over their temporal and spiritual welfare: it is hereby overtured by the Free Church Presbytery of Dornoch, to the venerable the General Assembly, that they take this matter into their serious consideration, and petition Parliament to devise a remedy by which the cause of the present sufferings of the people of the Highlands and Islands may be removed, or otherwise do in the matter as to their wisdom may seem meet.51 A similar overture presented to the Inverness presbytery by John MacTavish ran into opposition from some who, like the editor of the Highland News, were sceptical about the competency of church courts to debate the land issue. Nevertheless, the number of overtures received suggests that Free Church opinion was still clearly sympathetic to the crofters. The preponderance of overtures emanating from Highland courts demonstrates the pervading unity of the Free Church in the region regarding the crofters. The fact that the most powerful and influential presbytery in the south, Edinburgh, also sent an overture on the question highlights the overall denominational sympathy for the crofters. Free Church opinion was still convinced that the crofters and cottars had a genuine case of grievance against their landlords, that violent unrest was rooted in land hunger, and that there were problems concerning the applicability and extension of the 1886 legislation which needed parliamentary attention. As James Lachlan

50

51

The Free Synods of Glenelg, Moray, and Sutherland and Caithness, and the Free Presbyteries of Caithness, Chanonry, Dingwall, Dornoch, Edinburgh, Islay, Lochcarron, Nairn, Tain, and Tongue sent overtures up to the 1888 General Assembly, Free Church of Scotland Assembly Papers, No. I, 1888, 173–8; see also Inverness Free Church Assembly 1888, Memorial Volume (Inverness 1888), 47–8. Highland News, 10 Mar. 1888, p. 3.

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MacLeod comments: ‘What these overtures reveal . . . is a depth of feeling within in the Free Church in support of the crofters which has been underestimated.’52 The Dingwall conference undoubtedly brought these issues into greater focus for the Free Church ministers and elders. At the General Assembly, however, the general unanimity on these points was less in evidence than at Dingwall. The Assembly debate showed less agreement over more specific schemes of amelioration and one speaker – a Lowland elder – still opposed the use of church courts for discussion of social questions. Consequently, the debate on the land question in the Inverness General Assembly of 1888 was less conclusive than that of the Dingwall conference and the Assembly’s final resolution was not nearly so prescriptive. Having received so many overtures on the subject, the Assembly spent four hours debating two motions, of which the more detailed and radical was moved by Major Neil MacLeod, a theologically conservative elder and native of Skye. MacLeod’s motion called for further legislation to achieve land redistribution and urged state funding ‘for the stocking of those enlarged and new holdings, on such terms as are now offered to crofter emigrants’. The aim, according to MacLeod, was ‘that as many of the native inhabitants of the Highlands and Islands may be retained in the country, to be a blessing and strength to the Empire’. This motion, however, was passed over in favour of a more ambiguous statement submitted by Robert Rainy. Although Rainy’s motion omitted specific legislative recommendations, it referred to the ‘long continued trial and depression which have weighed upon them [the crofters] as a class’. MacLeod argued that Rainy’s motion offered only sympathy and that ‘[s]ympathy would do the crofters no good unless they took action in the matter.’53 On the other hand, a number objected that since Parliament had already legislated on the matter in favour of the crofters, the General Assembly should not further interfere. The desire to present a united front persuaded Murdo Macaskill, Dingwall, to vote for Rainy’s motion and to call on Major MacLeod to withdraw his motion. The omission of detail in Rainy’s motion was a point of strength rather than a weakness, according to Macaskill. Whilst he himself had been in favour of outlining detailed legislative prescriptions at the time of the Dingwall conference, he stated that his views had changed in the intervening months. Macaskill was now ‘perfectly convinced that had these details been introduced they would have had, not a resolution, but a bill prepared for Parliament’.54 The ambiguity of Rainy’s motion, therefore, succeeded in bringing all shades of opinion in the Free Church to support a statement sympathising with the crofters. The motion, which became the resolution of the Assembly, blamed the agitation 52 53 54

MacLeod, Second Disruption, 22. PDGAFCS, 1888, 169. PDGAFCS, 1888, 187.

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on ‘a state of the law which failed duly to protect the rights and to encourage the industry of the people’, and urged the immediate attention of Parliament: [W]hile the Assembly earnestly exhort their faithful people to obey the law, and to respect the rights of all persons and classes in the efforts they make to obtain necessary reforms, they do also express their deep anxiety that whatever measures are requisite to just and happy social conditions in the Highlands should not be delayed, so as to prolong existing evils and create increased irritation, but should be early and completely carried through.55 Aird’s concluding moderatorial address dealt extensively with the land issue, and he stated: That it is competent for a Court of the Church of Christ to engage in such a subject we think clear, when there are so many injunctions in Scripture against oppression. The Moderator asserted: in not a few instances one man possesses for sporting purposes tens of thousands of acres of pasture and cultivable land, whilst thousands of human beings are only allowed a few acres of poverty-stricken soil. Is it fair, is it rational, is it just, that the Government of a free and professedly Christian country should permit such a state of things to exist any longer? Does not justice demand a thorough readjustment of our land laws? Aird continued: Let it be understood whilst this venerable Assembly reprobates all lawlessness as inconsistent with law and gospel, yet at the same time we conceive that it should ever bear testimony against tyranny and oppression. It is not our province to formulate laws on the subject, but it becomes the Courts of the Church to petition the Legislature for, and to give their weight and sanction to, all wise measures devised for the amelioration of the social position of the people, and to use all lawful means for the repeal of unjust and oppressive laws.56 Press reactions to the Inverness deliberations were predictably mixed. The Northern Chronicle criticised the Free Church for seeking to capitalise on the land question.57 The Highland News abandoned the unfamiliar position it adopted after the Dingwall conference and reported that ‘the Free Church has emphatically declared itself the champion of “our common people who 55 56 57

PDGAFCS, 1888, 39–40. PDGAFCS, 1888, 254–6. Northern Chronicle, 6 Jun. 1888, p. 4.

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labour the land” ’. The editorial detected a new willingness to engage with social questions in the church: The General Assembly of the Free Church has risen above those circumstances which tended to keep its members silent on a burning social question . . . The unanimous finding of the Assembly, yesterday, on the Highland land question, is a fitting memorial commemorative of its visit to Inverness in 1888. The Highland News welcomed the development of social criticism during the forty-three years since the previous Inverness General Assembly: The Inverness Assembly of 1845 was also exercised as to agrarian affairs in the Highlands. But it was satisfied with demanding suitable sites for the building of places of worship. Like a truly democratic organisation the Church has progressed, and now demands that the social condition of the people of the Highlands shall have the immediate attention of the legislature.58 Even the normally dismissive Scotsman hoped that the proceedings at Inverness would have a salutary effect on the crofters and cottars: That the crofter question was the specific business which took the Assembly to Inverness has never been doubtful. If it had, the Moderator’s closing address would have put it beyond all doubt that it was so in his opinion; and he may in this respect be accepted as representing the Free Church people of the Highlands. Great expectations were awakened among the people by the news that the Assembly was coming to the Highlands to throw the whole weight of the Free Church on their side in the agrarian agitation. It is to be hoped that the debate and Principal Rainy’s motion will satisfy them and that they will not charge the Assembly as keeping the word of promise to the ear and breaking it to the heart.59 The resolution was well received by those favourable to land reform and it coincided with the end of widespread agitation in the region. Myles MacInnes, a prominent Skye activist, stated to a meeting of the Skye Land League that: The Free Church General Assembly was taking up their cause, and it was to be hoped that they would put their whole strength to the wheel, and that the Government, Tory as it was, would give heed to their cry.60 The Inverness Assembly resolution had, however, little effect on Salisbury’s administration. On the Liberal side, however, Lord Rosebery stated that he 58 59 60

Highland News, 2 Jun. 1888, p. 2. Scotsman, 6 Jun. 1888, p. 6. Scottish Highlander, 7 Jun. 1888, p. 3.

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had been ‘greatly struck’ by the debate in the Assembly and by Rainy’s ‘statesmanlike speech’ and the ‘remarkable utterance which came from the Moderator – the venerable Dr Aird’. According to Rosebery, the incidents of oppression recalled in Aird’s closing address ‘bring home to the poorest Englishman, as well as the poorest Scotchman, the nature of the laws under which that population have been pursuing their arduous avocation’. Although Rosebery was a leading member of the administration which passed the Crofters’ Act, he now regarded the 1886 legislation as inadequate over the matter of the extension of holdings. That such a prominent statesman acknowledged the importance of Aird’s address in conjunction with a recognition of the need for further land redistribution highlights the importance of the Inverness Assembly. The Free Church’s resolution undoubtedly kept the land question before the minds of politicians and the wider public.61 In the Established Church General Assembly, the land question became the object of some limited discussion for more or less the first time. Norman MacLeod, an influential Glasgow minister, ‘expressed the fear that the Highland people would become so absorbed in political and social agitation as to be indifferent to their spiritual interest’. He stated he would not deprecate any legitimate effort by the people to improve their condition, but it was his earnest hope that the preoccupation with social and political agitation would not be allowed to alienate them from those paths of moderation, honour, and piety in which they and their fathers had walked during many generations.62 This provoked Donald MacCallum, now resident in Tiree, to assert that the Assembly were making a mistake in not showing more sympathy with the people in their struggle to obtain their rights, in the way of recommending the Government to look into their circumstances, and in recommending the mitigation of the sentence upon the crofters in the Calton Jail.63 The previous year’s Established Assembly had stated that: The General Assembly, deeply interested in all that concerns the wellbeing of the people, recommends the [Highland] Committee to watch over all legislative and other movements aiming at the social amelioration of the humbler classes in the Highlands and Islands, so as to guide these movements, as far as possible, to wise and happy issues.64 But despite MacCallum’s intervention, the Established Church made no official pronouncement on the issue in 1888. Similarly, the other major presbyterian body in Scotland, the United Presbyterian Church, did not 61 62 63 64

Oban Times, 23 Jun. 1888, p. 2. Scottish Highlander, 7 Jun. 1888, p. 7. Scottish Highlander, 7 Jun. 1888, p. 7. This was a reference to the imprisoned Aignish rioters. Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1887), 55.

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discuss the Highland land question in 1888, nor at any point in the 1880s.65 It is thus clear from the General Assembly and Synod debates of the main presbyterian Churches in 1888 that theological liberalism and social criticism were not necessarily to be found hand in hand. If it was true that social concern for Highland crofters was disproportionately found amongst outsiders originally – and that is by no means certain – by 1888 the Highlanders themselves were taking the lead by aligning the most theologically conservative of the national denominations with the pro-land reform agenda. Crofter colonisation We have noticed in chapter three that Established Church ministers were, in general, more favourable to emigration as a remedy for land hunger than their Free Church counterparts.66 The fact that Establishment ministers received their stipend through the state-regulated teind system, and were consequently less dependent on maintaining a high level of population in their parishes, cannot be discounted as a reason for the differing stances. Yet, as has been stated above, Free Church ministers in the Highlands were not dependent on their own congregations for their stipends since they received a guaranteed income from the Sustentation Fund. The level of contribution from Highland congregations to the central fund was indeed low, reflecting the poverty of the Free Church’s adherents in the region.67 Despite many Tory and Establishment criticisms, therefore, the Free Church ministers’ general scepticism about emigration was not simply derived from a self-interested desire to maintain the numbers of their congregations. Political allegiances may have affected attitudes, with Conservative-inclined Establishment ministers tending to favour a state-organised emigration scheme, whilst Liberal-leaning Free Church ministers sought relief for crofters and cottars through land reform. Angus MacIver – a Lewis minister who served at different times in both denominations and was in favour of both land reform and assisted emigration – had pointed out to the Napier Commission that the people of Lewis were reluctant to emigrate until land was more evenly distributed. Nonetheless, MacIver had earlier expressed his willingness to lead a party of emigrants to Canada. Unlike land reformers and politicians, therefore, some ministers saw no contradiction between land reform and voluntary emigration to the dominions.68 Indeed, it was to Canada that the Unionist government hoped large numbers of cottars would emigrate after the disturbances of 1887–8. Lord 65 66 67

68

Proceedings of the Synod of the United Presbyterian Church, 1880–90. See 117–21 above. The contributions in 1883 from the Synods of Argyll, Glenelg, Ross, and Sutherland and Caithness were £17,840 for sustentation and £9,223 for congregational funds; see also 67 above. NC Ev., 908, 915–16, 918; see also 120, 133 above.

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Lothian, the Scottish Secretary, was determined to shift the focus of attention away from the land itself to a wider concern with the infrastructure and economy of the Highlands. This policy envisaged the extension of railways and telegraph communications and the creation of roads and harbours.69 Hand in hand with economic diversification was an attempt to solve the cottar problem in the Western Isles through a scheme of emigration. The ‘crofter colonisation’ scheme provided eligible cottars with a £120 repayable loan from the British government and 160 acres of land from the Canadian government. The scheme was masterminded by Lothian and by Malcolm MacNeill – the former secretary to the Napier Commission – but was characterised by haste and poor organisation. Underfunding and a lack of co-operation from the Canadian authorities and land companies contributed to its failure; and, despite the weakened position of the Land League by this point, there remained considerable hostility to the idea of emigration in the crofting areas. Land League antipathy to emigration was deep-rooted since the emigration solution struck at the heart of their reformist argument which maintained that there was sufficient land in the region for all the inhabitants provided a fair redistribution were enacted. Emigration, of course, was all too reminiscent of the era of destitution and clearance to be acceptable to the Land League’s membership. As Wayne Norton explains: ‘The anti-emigrationist forces were on the defensive, but were not inactive. Lothian’s posters inviting applications for emigration in 1889 were torn down throughout the Western Isles, and ministers refused to publicise the purpose of MacNeill’s visit . . .’70 Those favourable to emigration at this time certainly saw the Free Church ministers and elders as an obstacle to the development of the colonisation scheme. Alexander Craig Sellar – Liberal Unionist MP for Partick and son of the infamous Sutherland estate factor Patrick Sellar – questioned Malcolm MacNeill before a Commons Committee as to why the clergy opposed the scheme. ‘I suppose,’ MacNeill replied, ‘on account of the presumed falling off of the contributions to the Sustentation Fund.’ He also stated that the ostensible reason for their opposition was their fear that emigrants would be deprived of religious ordinances. Notwithstanding, MacNeill conceded that some Free Church ministers were ‘strongly in favour’ of emigration.71 Indeed, a considerable interest from ministers – both Established and Free – was shown in the scheme. In March 1888, Hugh Lamont, a presbyterian minister in Quebec, wrote to the British authorities offering his 69 70

71

Cameron, Land for the People, 72–6. W. Norton, ‘Malcolm MacNeill and the Emigrationist Alternative to Highland Land Reform, 1886–93’, SHR, lxx (1991), 25; S. MacDonald, ‘Crofter Colonisation in Canada, 1886–1892: The Scottish Political Background’, Northern Scotland, vii (1986–7), 47–59. PP, 1889, X, Evidence and Report of the Select Committee on Colonisation, 25, 30.

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services as a publicist for the emigration scheme. Lamont, a Gaelic-speaking Highlander who had been in Canada for over thirty years, stated that he was ‘quite familiar with the literature of the Crofter movement and is fully persuaded that Emigration is the only solution to the difficult problem’.72 The pro-land reform Free Church minister of Poolewe, Ronald Dingwall, also corresponded with the Scottish Office, enquiring as to how some of his parishioners could take advantage of the scheme. Dingwall was informed, however, that the scheme was at present limited to the most congested districts of the Western Islands. And the S[ecretary] for S[cotland] regrets therefore that he cannot offer the families referred to any assistance in the matter.73 A handful of other ministers from the mainland enquired about the scheme, but, significantly enough, none from the islands. Roderick Morison, parish minister of Kintail, Wester Ross, who had voiced opposition to deer forests and supported land reform before the Napier Commission, wrote on behalf of several landless families in his parish, whom he regarded as more deserving than the Lewis cottars: There can be none anywhere more needful or more deserving and the people here have always borne their hardships quietly – without creating any disturbance, which it seems to me should operate in their favour and not against them.74 The belief that Hebridean Free Church ministers were actively standing in the way of emigration was widespread at both official level and even amongst some of the potential emigrants themselves. When Duncan MacKay, a joiner from Back, Lewis, returned his ticket to Malcolm MacNeill on the grounds that his wife would not leave Lewis, MacNeill attributed her reluctance to ‘Clerical (F.C.) influence’. This was probably the case, or one of the cases, which MacNeill referred to in his evidence before the Commons Committee when he reported: I was told by the crofters themselves (of course I cannot vouch for the accuracy of what I was told) that the influences brought to bear upon the women, after the applications were accepted, were by the Free Church elders.75 The Free Church minister of Back, Hector Cameron, was a noted Tory and no admirer of the Land League, yet it is revealing that he was not supportive of 72

73

74

75

NAS, AF51/24, Scottish Office Emigration Files, letter from Hugh Lamont, Quebec, 31 Mar. 1888. NAS, AF51/37, letter from Ronald Dingwall, Poolewe, 11 May 1888; NAS, AF51/37, Cochran-Patrick to Dingwall, draft memo, 14 May 1888. NAS, AF51/123, letter from J. Anderson, Aviemore, Jan. 1889; NAS, AF51/127, letter from Roderick Morison, Kintail, 14 Jan. 1889. NAS, AF51/121, MacNeill to Gascoigne, 2 Jan. 1889; Report on Colonisation, 30.

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emigration. Another letter from a potential Lewis emigrant, Donald MacLeod of Shawbost, warned that ministers should not be informed about future visits from Malcolm MacNeill to select families for emigration. MacLeod believed that ministerial opposition was based on antipathy to the crofters themselves and not on any scepticism about the virtues of emigration per se: ‘The cause for this is the majority of the Country Ministers are great tories they are not much in Crofters’ favours as the people thinks . . .’ It seems strange that MacLeod’s accusation that ministerial hostility to emigration was informed by spite against the crofters over political differences, when during this period it was the Conservative Party that advocated emigration. For example, a resolution of the Portree Constitutional Association to the Scottish conference of the National Union of Conservative Associations from December 1888 urged infrastructural development of the Highlands ‘concurrently with opportunities for voluntary emigration’ for the ‘true settlement’ of the difficulties ‘which have been agitating the Highlands of Scotland’. Ministerial opposition to emigration in the late 1880s was clearly not derived from Tory political beliefs as Donald MacLeod, Shawbost, had claimed.76 Whether the ministerial opposition complained of by MacNeill was tacit or otherwise, it is apparent that many Free Church ministers, like their crofter adherents, remained unconvinced that emigration was a suitable alternative to land reform. Of course, some ministers showed a certain interest in emigration, which they viewed as a useful means of relieving population pressure in overcrowded areas and also as a means of maintaining the unity of the British Empire. We have noticed that Established and Free Church ministers alike wrote to the authorities on behalf of potential emigrants. As a panacea for the Highland malaise, however, crofter colonisation was not seriously regarded in the 1880s. Whilst an unwillingness to lose congregational numbers undoubtedly, and quite naturally, played a part in Free Church suspicion of emigration, this was probably more grounded in genuine care for the spiritual welfare of the colonists than out of a concern for the level of the ministerial stipend. The main reason for ministerial scepticism was their sympathy with the crofters in their demand for redistribution of land and a rejection of the view that only emigration would allow crofters the opportunity to better their circumstances. Here we can perhaps discern a major cause of the divergence between Establishment and Free Church ministers over this issue. If the older Established Church ministers were often still drawn from the remnants of the former Highland middle class, the ‘tacksmen’, and gentleman farmers, the Free Church ministry by the time of the land agitation was increasingly recruited from within the ranks of the crofting communities. This helps explains why Free Church ministers’ views on emigration were generally more in line with the mainstream view held by the crofters and the Land League than were those of many Established Church ministers. 76

NAS, AF51/121, letter from Donald MacLeod, South Shawbost, 16 Jan. 1889; NAS, AF51/115, Resolution of Portree Constitutional Association, 21 Dec. 1888.

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Providentialism during the 1880s Before concluding this study it is necessary to give a brief account of providentialism in the ‘crofters’ war’. It is evident that a high providentialism did not hinder philanthropic endeavours by presbyterians in the famine years. By the 1880s, it is noticeable that providentialist language was far less prominent in the debate on the social condition of the Highlands, even at times of hardship such as crop failures and storms. Whilst this might be regarded as evidence of a decline in rigid providentialism even amongst the most conservative Highland calvinists, it is possible to argue instead that the emphasis and not the actual doctrine of providence was altered in the intervening period. There is absolutely no reason to believe that they abandoned formal belief in God’s providence as ‘His most holy, wise and powerful preserving and governing all His creatures and all their actions’.77 In response to better communications – which reduced the region’s susceptibility to food shortages – and a more scientific understanding of the causes of potato infestation, it is possible that Highland calvinists came to view afflictive providences as operating more through secondary causes. Thus, if the efficient causes of poverty were human in origin, human endeavour was necessary to deal with both the causes and consequences. This might further explain why they were generally more committed to seeing crofters remedy their social grievances through reform of the existing order. At a land reform meeting in August 1885, for example, Alexander Mackay, Free Church minister of Rogart, urged the crofters to organise effectively to take advantage of the economic difficulties of the aristocracy: He could not see any other way for it but the people to combine and call emphatically upon the legislature to change the law, and protect them, and put them in possession of their just rights. The Highlanders had now every encouragement to combine, and stand up for their rights. Providence was coming to their rescue . . . But Providence helps those that help themselves. You, the people, must organise, and unitedly state clearly, reasonably and temperately what you want, and in the face of all opposed to you, stand firm and the issue will be success.78 Attitudes to destitution and poor relief could still retain a distinctly providentialist tone in the 1880s. As in the 1840s, ministers were aware of the need to channel philanthropy in order to foster habits of industry and selfreliance. Hector Cameron, Free Church minister of Back, Lewis, noted the improved harvest in 1887, but nonetheless warned that ‘destitution may occur, of so general and pronounced a character, as to require more than local efforts and resources to cope with it’. Charitable intervention he regarded as almost certain 77

78

Shorter Catechism, Answer to Question 11, published with the Westminster Confession of Faith (Glasgow, 1997 edn), 289. Northern Ensign, 2 Sep. 1885, p. 3.

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if the Lord should not be pleased to favour them with exceptionally fine weather and unwonted success in prosecuting the fishing . . . or otherwise provide some employment for the people to enable them to help themselves. Notwithstanding slight differences in emphasis, Cameron’s supposition that God’s providential intervention, human responsibility through philanthropic endeavour, and the need to encourage self-reliance could all be reconciled is one which no doubt would have found support among Highland ministers during the 1840s.79 * Ministers welcomed the Crofters’ Act in 1886 because it provided security of tenure. The year 1886 certainly marked a turning point in Highland history and was recognised even at the time as having great significance. Landlord power was decisively curtailed and crofters had won far-reaching concessions from the government. But although the era of eviction and clearance was finally over, the economic and social prospects for the population of the Highlands and Islands were still comparatively poor. These ongoing problems were readily acknowledged by many ministers in the period following the 1886 Act. Here it is significant that moderate land reform found wider acceptance from the right as well as the centre-left of the political spectrum from the mid 1880s onwards.80 This potentially allowed clergymen to voice pro-land reform sentiments with less fear of being branded as subversive radicals. Not only did clerical support for land reform as a desirable economic and social objective continue in this period, it became more detailed and more comprehensive, and was ultimately endorsed by church courts at every level. Hunter attempts to contrast ‘the almost universal opposition of the protestant clergy to the crofters’ movement’ in the middle of the decade, with a radical volte-face in clerical attitudes in 1888. By 1888, he argues, ‘the Free Church’s [H]ighland clergy had come out strongly in favour of almost all the Land League programme, including the crucial demand for more land’.81 Without providing any reasons why such a remarkable change should have occurred immediately after the passing of far-reaching legislation, Hunter’s analysis of the clerical position from 1885–8 appears flimsy. 79

80

81

See Cameron, Land for the People, 75–6, for civil servants’ attitudes reminiscent of the famine era during the 1880s and 1890s. For Hector Cameron’s statement, see PP, LXXX, 1888, Report on the Condition of the Cottar Population in the Lews, 26. Cameron, Land for the People, 38, 62–123, discusses the acceptance of land reform by all parties in the decades following 1886. Tory-Unionist policies were heavily influenced by Irish developments, hence the establishment in 1897 of a Congested Districts Board to administer land purchase in the region, 83–101; also L. P. Curtis, Coercion and Conciliation in Ireland, 1880–1892 (Princeton, 1963), 135 ff. Hunter, ‘Politics of Land Reform’, 60.

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In actual fact, there was no dramatic reversal of the Free Church position on land reform in this period which, as the previous chapters demonstrate, was consistently on the side of the crofters’ movement. Rather, clerical attitudes to land reform kept pace with political developments and may even be said to have outstripped Parliamentary interest in the question by 1888. That a consensus in favour of redistribution emerged by 1888 demonstrates how aware the ministers were of the underlying causes of social instability in the region. Despite the increasing absorption of churchmen in ecclesiastical controversies, all shades of theological opinion in the Free Church were agreed over a populist measure of reform which would be more radical than the legislation of 1886. This again undermines Donald Smith’s assertion that theological liberalism and ‘incarnationalism’ were responsible for the Free Church’s espousal of land reform.82 Highland conservatives in the Free Church were not influenced by theological novelties such as higher criticism, but were profoundly affected by social turmoil and poverty in their own parishes. Indeed, it is from a sense of altruism and cultural affinity that we can trace their strong support for a resolution of the land question in favour of the crofters and cottars in the period 1886–8. Of course, the unhappy consequences of land hunger were all too evident in these years and it is little wonder that some ministers – even those such as Ronald Dingwall and Roderick Morison who had supported land reform before the Napier Commission – sought to take advantage of Lord Lothian’s emigration scheme on behalf of landless families in their parishes. The failure of the scheme, however, may be partly explained by the reluctance of island ministers to give encouragement to emigration as a solution. This shows the extent to which ministers regarded land reform to be the real solution to the region’s poverty, and it further highlights the congruence of the ministers’ views on land redistribution with those of the Land League and the crofting population. Whilst ministers’ views on the land itself may have been in line with Land League policies, it is clear that tensions between the League and the ministers developed in this period. This was perhaps unsurprising given that the land reform movement largely lost its sense of purpose and direction after 1886. As the League became more politicised – in other words, adopted a plethora of contentious Radical causes – the breach between activists and conservative ministers widened. Naturally, clerical opinion remained as firmly set against violence and lawbreaking as ever. The fact that incidents of violent confrontation became more serious may further explain the unwillingness of certain ministers to give such vocal support to the Land League in this period. This did not mean, however, that ministers lost interest in the struggles of the crofters and cottars. The evidence from 1888 clearly refutes such a notion. Those commentators who recognise the 82

Smith, Passive Obedience, 248–57, 313–25.

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disunity and diminishing influence of the Land League quite rightly draw attention to the political difficulties faced by the movement. Although hitherto unrecognised by historians, it may be that the estrangement of many ministers from the League after 1886 was itself a further cause of the League’s weakness and lack of purpose. Quite clearly, the Free Church’s endorsement of land redistribution in 1888 did not represent ‘affiliation to the Highland Land League’ and was thus not, as Macinnes has written, ‘the sectarian death-knell of the movement’.83 The sudden resurgence of violent protest in late 1887 was matched by the almost complete cessation of protest throughout the region by the summer of 1888. Although the land issue remained the leading challenge to policy makers and politicians for another generation, the unprecedented communal agitation of the ‘crofters’ war’ was a thing of the past by the summer of 1888. Whilst there is evidence that the Land League co-operated with ministers at local level during school board elections in 1890, active clerical participation in the wider land debate effectively ended in 1888.84 Whatever disagreements existed between individual ministers and radical reformers, in 1888 the Free Church agreed on an unmistakably pro-crofter policy which urged land reform as the only long-term solution to the economic and social difficulties of the Highlands and Islands. Land from large sheepfarms and deer forests was to be extensively redistributed to enlarge crofters’ holdings and to provide new holdings for landless cottars. This same vision of ‘the land for the people’ was shared by the membership of the Highland Land League and was at the heart of the Liberal Party’s Highland policy until the early 1920s. The Inverness Assembly and especially the Dingwall conference were the high-watermark of ecclesiastical involvement with the Highland land question.

83

84

Hunter, ‘Politics of Land Reform’, 57–67; MacPhail, Crofters’ War, 218–20; Cameron, Land for the People, 124, 142; Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 62. Hunter, ‘Politics of Land Reform’, 60, quotes Oban Times, 16 Jan. 1890 in reference to the Land League having ‘unanimous Free Church support’ in school board elections. The paper actually appeared on 18 January. In the same publication, 25 Jan. 1890, pp. 2, there is, however, a report of the Kilmuir Free Church minister, D. A. MacDonald, opposing the Land League candidate, Archibald MacDonald, in the county council election. Free Church support for the Land League candidate in the Stenscholl school board election in Skye was discussed in the Scottish Highlander, 17 May 1888, p. 7, and in a letter from ‘Active Agent’ to the same paper, 14 Jun. 1888, p. 2

Conclusion In 1893 a sizeable number of the most conservative Free Church members and adherents followed two ministers out of the Free Church to form a body which soon became known as the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The motivation for this action was the refusal of the Free Assembly in its jubilee year to repeal the Declaratory Act passed at the 1892 Assembly. The Act altered the terms of subscription to the Westminster Confession for office-bearers and was designed to give liberty of opinion to the many liberal voices in the Lowland Free Church calling for theological change and credal revision. But to Donald Macfarlane, formerly of Moy and now on the isle of Raasay, to Donald Macdonald of Shieldaig, Wester Ross, and to thousands of others who followed them, the Declaratory Act was a betrayal of the theological position of the Reformation. Whilst the Free Presbyterians represented only a minority of the Free Church in the north, the events of 1893 crystallised the deep division which had become more and more apparent since the 1860s between the Highland and Lowland sections of the Free Church. Neither Macfarlane nor Macdonald left any comments on record concerning the land question although it was reported that Macfarlane criticised the Land League at the Stratherrick Communion in 1886.1 We do know, however, that a number of early Free Presbyterians were vocal in their advocacy of the crofters’ claims. At a meeting to rally support for the fledgling Free Presbyterian movement at Flashadder, Skye, an elder, John Macaskill, claimed, ‘for some years back, we had been fighting against aggressive land laws, but now it is Church laws we are fighting against – a much more serious cause of complaint’.2 Although only two ordained ministers left the Free Church, a number of divinity students followed them and quickly took a leading role in the new denomination. One of these, Neil Cameron, used a striking analogy to liken the travails of Christ’s Church to the sufferings of the evicted during the clearances: Under iniquitous laws in this land families were evicted, and had to go to foreign lands to seek another home. Did not the children share the grief of their parents? When Christ cannot get where to lay His head in our midst, His children fast and mourn in those days. This feebly 1

2

See p. 195 above. For the 1893 Declaratory Act and the Free Presbyterian movement, see MacLeod, Second Disruption, 179–232. Northern Chronicle, 14 Jun. 1893, p. 6.

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represents the feelings of every true child of God, when Christ and His bride – the church – their mother – are cruelly dealt with; the foundations of their house razed to the ground, and no room left for them, in some places, but the open fields or the sea shore.3 Another student, John MacLeod, later reflected on his youthful hostility towards landlords and the Tory party: I came from the Highlands where the heather was on fire with the Land Question and I had no liking for the party that stood for the oppression which had been inflicted upon the tenants of the Highlands and Islands.4 In 1898 the Free Presbyterian Magazine contained the following retrospective piece, which James Lachlan MacLeod has described as ‘coming close to being a classic piece of social criticism’: Strathnaver and the banks of the Kildonan river, and many other fertile spots, once the seats of a stalwart God-fearing race, are now silent haunts of sheep and deer. The money-grabbing instincts of the landlords proved stronger than the calls of humanity and patriotism, and they ruthlessly evicted hundreds of virtuous peasants, to lay the land under sheep. For why? In the eyes of the landlords at that time a fat pocket book was the most sacred of all earthly possessions . . . when lords and ladies whose fathers spoiled the dwelling-houses of a gallant and faithful race, find their sumptuous town and country houses in danger of being burnt over them, they may have cause to reflect on the exact character of the Divine judgement.5 These quotations demonstrate once again that even the most conservative Highland evangelicals were influenced by the land agitation and were not afraid to speak their minds on the issue. Protestant Unionism, support for Church Establishments, and other Conservative principles may have generally characterised the politics of the Free Presbyterians but they themselves were as deeply affected by the folk memory of the clearances and the negative perception of landlords as anyone else in the Highlands. We can be sure that, in spite of their theological and social conservatism, their condemnation of evictions was borne out of what MacLeod has described as a ‘deeply ingrained . . . Highland sense of grievance’.6 Again, we see that the connections between theology and the politics of land cannot be classified through a straightforward left-right bifurcation. 3 4

5

6

Free Presbyterian Magazine, i (4) (1896), 132. J. F. M. MacLeod, ‘A Boyhood in An Gearasdan: Notes by the late Principal John MacLeod’, TGSI, lvii (1990–2), 270–1. Free Presbyterian Magazine, ii (9) (1898), 360. For more Free Church and Free Presbyterian social criticism, see MacLeod, Second Disruption, 14–22. MacLeod, Second Disruption, 16.

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In 1892 only three Highland ministers took the opportunity to testify before the Deer Forest Commission despite the fact that one of the commissioners was the radical Established Church minister Malcolm MacCallum of Muckairn, Argyll. This demonstrates the lessening of clerical concern for land reform after 1888.7 The subsequent failure of reform legislation to facilitate any lasting economic turnaround in the region no doubt ensured that twentieth-century ministers did not speak out on land issues with the same unity of purpose as their predecessors, although social criticism has never been entirely absent from the Highland churches. During the second half of the nineteenth century Highland churchmen were closely involved in the land question. This involvement became progressively more confident as the decades passed and, by the 1880s, the Christian interest in land reform became a decisive factor in the success of the crofters’ campaign. It is true that clerical attitudes towards the land issue in this period are complex. Yet in spite of the sectarian factors which tended to divide clergymen, and although individual responses to the question exhibited wide divergences, at a more fundamental level an undeniable pattern of sympathy with the crofting population of the Highlands and Islands emerges. After the 1843 Disruption, the Free Church’s willingness as a denomination to portray itself as the ‘church of the Highlands’ had two principal effects. Firstly, it brought influential ministers – both Highland and Lowland – to examine and speak publicly about Highland grievances and the policies of Highland proprietors for the first time. Secondly, it made the new church formulate a position on Highland social issues which was distinctly hostile to clearances and emigration. The essential features of this position remained intact throughout the period in question, although Free Church sympathy for land reform as a solution to poverty achieved a fuller expression in the 1880s. As Hunter has recognised, evangelical religion was central to the development of a distinctively Highland notion of ‘peoplehood’. The trials of the Disruption and destitution era were indeed the ‘making’ of the crofting community. Again, the renewed interest in Gaelic culture in the 1860s and 1870s, in conjunction with a sense of social injustice informed by a biblical Weltanschauung, led to a concerted and politicised assertiveness during the land agitation of the following decade. This was accompanied by the increasing alienation felt by Highland calvinists towards their more liberal brethren in the Lowland Free Church. Whilst the absorption of ministers and elders in ecclesiastical debates during the 1860s and 1870s may have initially diverted the attention of Highland Christians away from political agitation, it is apparent that the ecclesiastical controversies within the Free Church ultimately strengthened crofters’ mettle for the struggle of the 1880s. 7

PP, 1895, XXXVIII–XXXIX, Royal Commission (Highlands and Islands, 1892), Report and Evidence; Cameron, Land for the People, 77–82.

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The events of the 1880s are unparalleled in Highland history. The involvement of ministers in the land issue in this period represents an unprecedented level of social engagement by Highland churchmen. Indeed, the very parameters of the agitation were set by ministers. Chronologically, the campaign to achieve redress of crofters’ grievances received its initial impetus from John MacMillan’s letters and oratory during the Leckmelm case. The widespread participation of ministers in the Napier Commission hearings seems likely to have further established the moral case for land reform in the political realm. If, for example, ministers had largely contradicted the crofters’ evidence, it would have been more difficult to generate the consensus in favour of reform which gathered political momentum in the aftermath of the Napier Report. In setting their faces resolutely against lawbreaking, the ministers placed a relatively effective restraint on violent conduct. The fact that no lives were lost during the agitation testifies to the success of the church’s tireless reiteration of the non-violence message. Macinnes’s notion that ministerial caution hampered both the radicalism and the final outcome of the campaign is unrealistic. Had ministers not urged restraint the potential for loss of life and widespread injury would almost certainly have been realised in the powder-keg atmosphere of Skye and Lewis; and, whatever the shortcomings of the Crofters’ Act, the achievement of regional-specific legislation which dramatically curbed the rights of property represented a resounding victory for the crofters. In reality, a more radical measure of reform was simply not on the political agenda before 1886 and this is true a fortiori for the period immediately afterwards.8 The relationship between the HLLRA and the ministers was frequently close, although never clear-cut. It is highly unlikely that HLLRA branches would have proliferated as rapidly and successfully in the crofting areas had local ministers not given encouragement to their organisation. This was certainly the case in Sutherland in 1883 and Lewis in 1884. Indeed, such was the extent of ministerial influence in the Edinburgh HLLRA that it was frequently regarded as merely a front for the Free Church leadership. Clerical involvement in the HLLRA proves that ministerial advocacy of land reform was not simply a case of following lay sentiment in order to maintain popularity. Of course, ministers were careful up to a point not to stand in the way of land reform aspirations and did not wish to appear intellectually retrograde or unconcerned about crofters’ grievances. But there is no reason to believe that ministers disingenuously sacrificed their principles in order to ingratiate themselves with public opinion. Indeed, tensions between radical land reformers wishing to pursue a more militant anti-landlord line and the more consensual approach favoured by ministers were evident from the time of the 1885 general election. As Newby and others have pointed out, however, the HLLRA movement itself was a heterogeneous grouping divided not only organisationally, but 8

Macinnes, ‘Evangelical Protestantism’, 59–62.

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also in its political objectives.9 The wide divergences between the radical Georgites and land nationalisers on the one hand and the more moderate advocates of ‘the three F’s’ on the other, for example, force us to revise the interpretation of a unified, radical ‘Crofters’ Party’. Rather than regarding the Free Church as being fundamentally at odds with the HLLRA at the height of the agitation, it is clear that the Free Church’s land policy was one amongst many competing visions of pro-crofter land reform. The importance of the church’s position – unlike that of the various land reformers – was that it held the allegiance of a majority of the crofting population, and was thus the most powerful institution in Gaelic society. Again, the willingness of anti-land reform conservative voices, such as the Scotsman, the large farmers, and estate factors, to severely criticise the Free Church for being too sympathetic to the HLLRA must be stressed. Taken together with the criticisms emanating from the radical end of the political spectrum, these demonstrate the singular position of the Free Church. All the protagonists were aware of the Free Church ministers’ influence over their crofting adherents and were desirous of having that influence exerted on their own behalf. The fact that the denomination attracted condemnation from all sides shows how thoroughly ‘Gladstonian’ her land policy was in the 1880s. By using fairly radical rhetoric to support moderate land reform in order to facilitate socially conservative ends the Free Church position was bound to attract criticism from many different sources. The political divergences within the crofters’ movement were much more visible after the passing of the Crofters’ Act and the Home Rule crisis in 1886. As the newly constituted Highland Land League became more identified with a wider political radicalism, some ministers, such as John MacMillan, Neil Taylor, and Murdo Macaskill largely withdrew their support. Indeed, it is possibly the case that clerical antipathy after the passing of the new legislation was partly responsible for the disarray which engulfed the League. But the Crofters’ Act, although a fundamentally important landmark in the agitation, did not satisfy many ministers’ desire to see a wider distribution of land in the Highlands and a greater degree of state support for the development of the region’s economic infrastructure. The highpoint of ecclesiastical interest in the land question at the Dingwall Conference and the Inverness Free Church General Assembly in 1888 demonstrates that ministers retained a large deal of sympathy for the crofters and cottars notwithstanding the violence surrounding the Lewis disturbances in 1887–8. The sheer number of ecclesiastical figures who commented on the land question at some point in the 1880s enables us to assert with confidence that a significant and sizeable proportion of the office-bearers of the churches were positively engaged in the debate in one way or another. We know that more ministers commented in print than did elders. Nevertheless, the very tangible involvement of elders shows that Christian 9

Newby, ‘Shoulder to Shoulder’, 351.

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involvement in the land question was to be found at all levels. More than anything else, though, the willingness of church courts to endorse pro-land reform motions reveals the extent of ministers’ and elders’ sympathy with the crofters’ movement. Here is the crucial evidence which proves that the majority of the Free Church was pro-reform, even if only a minority vocalised their support in public. If the majority had been hostile to land reform it would have been very difficult to discuss the subject in church courts and to arrive at a pro-reform consensus. When the different denominational responses are examined, it is noticeable that the various theological standpoints of the churches did not preclude individuals from adopting an outspokenly pro-land reform approach. It is the conservative, evangelical Free Church, however, which alone articulated a distinctively pro-land reform voice as a denomination. Roman catholic responses were mainly localised and priests did not take a leading role in the HLLRA. The smaller episcopalian, baptist, and congregationalist Churches were largely silent, with the exception of one or two individuals. Unlike the Established Church, where generational differences affected attitudes, Free Church ministers exhibited a more consistently positive approach to land reform over time, in keeping with the denomination’s position on Highland issues. The close involvement of such influential men as John Kennedy and Gustavus Aird, as well as scores of other ministers, in the land question makes Hunter’s assertion that ‘the vast majority of the Protestant clergy were opposed to the HLLRA and all that it stood for’ untenable.10 In general during the mid-nineteenth century the discussion of specific legislative reforms was left to politicians while evangelicals were committed to the principles of private philanthropy. Only as the amelioration of social conditions became an accepted part of the state’s role in the last third of the century did it become more fully acceptable for clergymen to formally debate social issues in their official capacity. This is one reason for the progressive development of pro-land reform sentiment amongst ministers. R. H. Campbell has written that evangelical social reformers viewed the transformation of society ‘only through the prior revolution of individual conversion in people’s lives’.11 This primarily refers to evangelical philanthropy in urban Scotland in the middle of the nineteenth century. But Campbell’s view may have significance for the nature and development of social criticism in the Highlands also. If the Highlands were largely viewed by evangelicals in the period before the Disruption as a mission field, then it is only natural to expect that the conversionist imperative – which was so prominent during the period of revivalism – would take precedence over more materialist intervention as the solution to the region’s social crisis. By the 1870s and 1880s the religious position of the region was reversed in the 10 11

Hunter, Crofting Community, 216. Campbell, ‘Church and Social Reform’, 138.

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minds of conservative evangelicals, such as Kennedy. The Highlands were now no longer a mission field but rather a bastion of true religion. The church could legitimately expect to advocate material solutions as well as purely spiritual ones, if it was felt that improving the material welfare of the population would help to stabilise and preserve the religious culture of the region. This interpretation broadens our understanding of the progressive development of pro-land reform sentiment amongst Highland evangelicals. The two features of a self-conscious Gaelic religious identity and a genuine social concern evident within the church in this period are, again, a manifestation of how deeply evangelical religion had affected the culture of the region. In this sense the Highlands reflect Tönnies’s conception of a society where religion is naturalised within a kin-based, communal culture.12 Finally, it is important to discuss the theological nature of land reform ideology. In the theologically united Free Church of the 1840s and 1850s, we noted that there was a general revulsion against the worst consequences of agrarian capitalism in the region. Providentialism and extensive charitable effort went hand in hand during the famine years, sometimes accompanied by criticism of the inflexibility of ideologically motivated relief and emigration strategies. It seems that the telos of evangelical social concern in this period was primarily compassionate rather than rehabilitative. Both Smith and Hilton (in a much more sophisticated form) have supported the contention that changed social attitudes from the middle decades onwards were heavily influenced by the changed theological emphasis on the incarnation. But although theological changes began to divide the Free Church there is little to suggest that the ‘atonement’ versus ‘incarnationalist’ dichotomy in the Highland and Lowland sections of the denomination tangibly affected attitudes to land reform.13 Indeed, the group least influenced by incarnational theological trends was committed to a populist measure of social reform based on the amelioration of poverty through legislative intervention. Although primarily offering spiritual succour, the Christian church in the Highlands did not turn a blind eye to social deprivation; rather it was deeply involved in finding ways in which poverty could be remedied. Of course, the atmosphere of the 1880s was markedly different from that of the 1840s and we cannot expect Highland calvinists to have been unaffected by the currents of social reform which had transformed British society. The social outlook of Hilton’s moderate evangelicals in the early nineteenth century was different, in many ways, to that of the Highland calvinists in the 1880s. Among the reasons for such differences the influence of culture, language, socio-economic class, Malthusianism, and romanticism must be considered. Nonetheless, both groups consistently emphasised the vicarious sacrifice of the atonement as the bedrock of Christian faith. Whatever other 12

13

F. Tönnies, Community and Civil Society, J. Harris (ed.), translation of Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft by J. Harris and M. Hollis (Cambridge, 2001), 29, 239–41. Hilton, Age of Atonement, 5 and passim; Smith, Passive Obedience, 248–325.

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factors brought about and influenced their divergent social attitudes, atonement theology could not have been one of them. This being so, one might legitimately question whether the idea of atonement was nearly as ‘important in shaping as well as rationalizing the economic philosophy’ of the pre-1850 period as Hilton has suggested. At any rate, by comparing the prevailing ideology of the early nineteenth century with the New Right neo-liberalism of the 1980s, Hilton touches on a point that requires little demonstration: namely, that it is perfectly possible to advocate laissez faire nostrums without imbibing the spirit of soteriological religion. The characters prominent in this work show that the converse is also true, that blood-earnest calvinism and a conciliatory social outlook could be complementary.14 Whilst we can positively say that calvinist theology did not hinder the development of land reform ideology, it is more difficult to say that theology per se was responsible for the position adopted by conservative ministers such as Kennedy and Aird. Rather, it is in the marriage of Highland cultural distinctiveness – which for men like Kennedy primarily entailed the defence of orthodox calvinism – and a benevolent Christian social ethic that we can perhaps come nearest to understanding the motivation behind ministerial support for land reform. Of course, these men would be unwilling to draw distinctions between those aspects of life most influenced by theology and those which were less so. As far as Kennedy and his followers were concerned, calvinism was an all-embracing philosophy of life. What we see in the period 1843–93, but most especially during the ‘crofters’ war’, is the intellectual elite of Highland society influencing the development of the land debate along moderate, ‘constitutional’ lines. Whilst many ministers in the half-century under discussion could see no alternative but emigration, a larger number consistently advocated a thorough reform of landholding as the best solution for the region’s problems. By the 1880s the bulk of the crofters themselves were deeply influenced by evangelicalism and justified their actions through essentially Christian perspectives. The outlook of the HLLRA membership was influenced by ministers at institutional level, but was also to a great extent the outcome of a century of evangelical permeation of crofting society. It is perhaps not surprising that theologically conservative ministers rejected the application of utilitarian principles to the land question and instead advocated a communitarian solution based on an organicist, historicist conception of the link between the land and the people. Given the central place of popular calvinism in the Gaelic Gemeinschaft, they shared in the belief that the existing landholding system, unless reformed by legislation, was a threat to the historic integrity and identity of the Highland people.

14

Hilton, Age of Atonement, 6, 45–7, 373–6. Additionally, many supporters of economic individualism in the early nineteenth century, including utilitarians and many High Churchmen, were opposed to evangelicalism.

Bibliography MANUSCRIPT SOURCES Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland John Stuart Blackie Correspondence, 1864–88, MS 2621–64. Correspondence of George D. Campbell, duke of Argyll, with his son, 1878–85, Acc 9209. Free Church ministers’ Correspondence, MS 10997. Papers of Rev. J. Cumming, Melness, Acc 5931. Sutherland Estate Papers, Acc 10225. Edinburgh, National Archives of Scotland Scottish Office Department of Agriculture and Fisheries Files, AF50. Emigration Files, Secretary for Scotland’s correspondence, 1888–9, AF51. Church Minute Books, CH Files. Ivory Papers, GD136. Highland Destitution, HD Files. Scottish Home and Health Department Miscellaneous Files, HH1. Glasgow, Mitchell Library John Murdoch MS Autobiography. Sir John McNeill Letterbook on Highland Emigration, 1852, MS 21506. Minute Book of the Free Church Presbytery of Lewis, 1843–88, held by Clerk of Western Isles Presbytery, Free Church of Scotland.

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Index Aberdeen, 139 Adams, Alexander, 37n, 49 Aignish riot, 191–3 Aird, Gustavus, 14, 23, 56, 64, 72–3, 91, 113–14, 116, 124, 126–7, 153, 174, 185, 188–9, 192–9, 201–3, 217, 219 Allan, Hector, 23 An Fhianuis, 21 An Teachdaire Gaelach, 46 Ansdell, Douglas, 2, 4–5, 31, 58, 69–71, 117, 141, 169 anti-clericalism, 112, 153–5, 160–3, 177–8 Applecross, 82, 146 Argyll, 1n, 21, 124, 138, 152–3, 160, 166–9 Argyll, duke of, 47, 106, 119, 125, 136, 174, 182, 186 Arisaig, 119, 170 armed forces, 5, 101–2, 128, 130–1, 136, 141, 154, 168, 173–4, 190, 192–3 Arran, 68 Assynt, 81, 113, 118 Atholl, duke of, 92 atonement theology, 10–11, 61–2, 87, 89, 218–19 Australia, 24, 36, 50–2 Back, 186, 206, 208 Balfour, Arthur J., 173–4, 179, 189–90 Balfour, Roderick, 47 Ballachulish, 22 Baptists, 11, 21, 63, 73, 124, 177, 217 Barra, 35, 122, 171 Barvas, 135, 153, 186 Baumann, Arthur, 182 Beaconsfield, Benjamin Disraeli, earl of, 84 Bebbington, David, 60–1, 64 Begg, James, 24–5, 30, 41, 48, 53–4, 56, 61, 84, 89 Beith, Alexander, 127 Bernera, 78–9, 148 Bessborough Commission, 17 Bible see Gaelic Bible Black, Ronald I. M., 175

Blackie, John Stuart, 58n, 76, 86, 183–4 Bonar Bridge, 142, 145, 183–4 Bracadale, 68 Braes (Skye), 101–3, 139–40, 145 Breadalbane, marquis of, 33, 72, 132 British Empire, 56, 92, 98, 134, 207; see also Australia, Canada Broadford, 139 Brown, Callum, 58–9 Brown, Stewart J., 39 Bruce, Steve, 69 Buchanan, Dugald, 175 Buchanan, Joni, 191–2 Buchanan, Robert, 35 Bumsted, J. M., 46 Calvinism, 5, 9–11, 58–74, 87, 169, 208–9, 218–9 Caithness, 1n, 21, 28, 108n, 166 Cameron, Alexander (Brodick), 76 Cameron, Alexander (Sleat), 110 Cameron, Charles, 15 Cameron, Donald C., 109 Cameron, Ewen, 107n, 137, 192, 209n Cameron, Hector, 186, 206–9 Cameron, James, 143–4 Cameron, John (Kintail), 125 Cameron, John (Melness), 168 Cameron, Neil, 144n, 212–13 Cameron of Locheil, Donald, 106, 107n, 118, 138, 172–3 Campbell, Dugald, 92–3 Campbell, Ewan, 118, 121, 174 Campbell, R. H., 217 Canada, 35, 46–7, 50–1, 111, 118, 120, 204–6 Candlish, Robert, 24n, 53, 56, 90 Cannadine, David, 14 Carloway, 134–5 Catechists, 5, 59, 68–9, 71, 141, 145–6 Celtic revival, 75–8, 95, 98, 214 Central Board for the Relief of Destitution in the Highlands of Scotland, 13, 34–46, 54

Index Chalmers, Thomas, 11, 24–5, 37–9, 56 Chamberlain, Joseph, 143, 190 Clark, Dr Gavin, 116, 161, 182 clergy relations with land reformers, 156–78, 183–90, 195–6, 209–11, 215–17 settlement statistics, 65–66 social background, 72–3, 207 Clerk, Archibald, 73, 118–19 Clyne, 194 Coffey, John, 60 Communion seasons, 63–4,185–6, 196 Communitarianism, 5, 98, 219 Congregationalists, 66, 108, 139, 177, 217 Conservative Party, 16, 94, 111, 179–80n, 188, 190, 202, 204–7, 209n, 213; see also Unionism Cook, Archibald, 15n, 63 Cook, Finlay, 28–9 Cottars, 133, 181, 190, 192–3, 199, 205–6, 210 Crawford, John, 112, 164 Creich, 114, 194 Crichton, John, 192 Crofter, 162 ‘Crofter colonisation’, 204–7; see also emigration Crofters’ Act, 126, 143, 174, 179–83, 190, 196, 200, 203, 209–10, 215–16 crofting system, 1, 74–5, 114–15, 119 Croick, 23, 41; see also Glencalvie Croke, T. W., 189 Cuairtear nan Gleann, 47 Culloden, 6 cultural modernism, 5, 68–9 Cumming, James, 14, 112, 127, 164–5, 167–8, 184, 187 Daily News, 51 Darroch, John, 102, 173, 176 Davidson, Alexander, 111 Davidson, James, 120, 130 Davidson, Thomas, 22 Daviot, 63 Davitt, Michael, 101 Declaratory Act see Free Church deer forests, 61, 133, 145, 181, 192, 196, 198 Deer Forest Commission, 214 Denominational statistics, 65–7, 108, 124, 127, 159–60 Devine, Tom, 32, 71, 75, 79 Dewey, Clive, 77–8

235

Dingwall, 85, 127–8, 160, 180, 195–7, 200 Dingwall Free Church conference on land question, 144, 189, 195–8, 200–1, 211, 216 Dingwall, Ronald, 206, 210 disestablishment, 87n, 93, 136, 146, 167–9, 183–6, 189 Disruption, 6, 9, 11–12, 19–31, 53–6, 73, 96, 111, 139, 214, 217 Dods, Marcus, 87–8, 134 Dornoch, 19, 160, 182, 191 Douglas, Roy, 26, 96n Duff, Alexander, 52–3, 67, 92–3 Duirinish (Skye), 29, 49–50, 69, 103; see also Glendale Dunbabin, J. P. D., 148, 184 Dundee, 139 Dunoon, 19 Dunvegan, 103 Durham, Co., 3 Durness, 82 Duthchas, 78, 95; see also Highland identity Easter Ross, 6, 23, 180 economic recovery, 74–5, 79, 93 Edinburgh, 26, 33–4, 61, 76, 103, 105, 139, 190–1, 193 Edinburgh Highland Association, 105, 127, 156; see also HLLRA Edinburgh HLLRA see HLLRA education, 68, 75–6, 122–3 elders and land question, 5, 17, 93, 140–7, 154–5, 159, 206 elections, general, 155–6, 161, 163–9, 177, 182, 184 emigration, 46–52, 55–6, 117–19, 133, 198, 204–7, 210, 214, 219 Enright, W. G., 87 Episcopalianism, 12, 66–7, 73, 123, 177, 217 Established Church of Scotland, 6–8, 10–15, 21, 29, 31, 53, 59, 65–6, 72–3, 100, 102, 108, 117–21, 125, 127, 136, 138, 159, 162, 167–9, 171–3, 177, 184, 186, 203–4, 207, 217 establishment principle, 16, 40n, 87n, 95, 167, 213 evangelicalism 8–11, 20, 58–74, 117, 128–9, 217–19 Evangelicalism and land question, 2–10, 30–1, 55, 81–2, 85, 177–8 Ewing, Alexander, 41

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eactors, 149, 205 relations with clergy, 7–8, 111–13, 120, 122, 162, 164–5 eamine, 13, 19–20, 26, 32–46, 195n, 208 Farr (Sutherland), 164, 168 Federation of Celtic Societies, 76–77, 99n Fenyo˝, Krisztina, 35 Findlater, Eric, 42 Finlay, R. B., 186, 188 Fishbourne, Edward J., 43–5 Flashadder, 212 Flinn, Michael, 75 Fraser, D., 157 Fraser Mackintosh, Charles, 16n, 76, 97, 106, 122–3, 151, 161, 174 Fraser, Major William, 101, 110, 131, 151 Free Church of Scotland, 5, 8–16, 19–31, 54–7, 59, 63, 65–6, 84–95, 100, 102, 108–17, 124, 127, 135–6, 139, 145–6, 153–5, 159–60, 162, 163–9, 176–83, 185–8, 194–207, 209–12, 214–18 and famine relief, 32–46, 208; see also Central Board Free Church Colleges, 1, 76, 87 Free Church constitutionalism, 16, 87n, 90, 95, 100n, 114, 116, 151, 167, 180, 185–6, 188–90 Free Church Declaratory Act, 212 Free Church General Assembly and land reform, 24, 52–3, 55, 91–3, 109, 132; Inverness Assembly (1845), 23–4, 202; Inverness Assembly (1888), 197–203, 211, 216 Free Church Magazine, 12, 23–4, 29, 54 Highland–Lowland division, 85–95, 133–4, 199, 212, 214, 218 Sustentation Fund, 55, 92, 154, 161, 204–5 Union controversy in Free Church, 89–91, 93, 134 Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, 185, 212–3 Free Presbyterian Magazine, 144n, 213 Gaelic Bible, 4, 60, 68, 74, 160–2 Gaelic language, 16, 59, 70, 73–4, 176, Gaelic poetry, 16–17, 70–1, 113n, 147–55 Gaelic publications, 79–80 Gaidhealtachd, 1, 5, 9, 12,16, 58, 67, 69, 74, 76, 148 Galbraith, Angus, 188 Garrabost, 192 George, Henry, 101, 139–40, 159, 163, 216

Gladstone, William Ewart, 11, 16, 96, 106, 132, 134–6, 152, 157, 161, 168, 172–3, 179, 181, 185, 187 Glasgow, 19, 33–5, 76, 101, 132–3, 140, 203 Glencalvie evictions, 1, 23, 41 Glendale, 101–3, 104n, 128, 139, 176 Glenelg, 21, 156 Glennie, J. Stuart, 129, 159 Glenshiel, 29 Gordon, Evan, 116 Gordon of Cluny, Col. John, 35 government attitude to emigration, 46–53 response to famine, 33, 39 response to land agitation, 102, 105, 126–7, 130–1, 135–6, 179–82, 190–3, 209 Graham, Finlay, 103, 110, 159 Graham, Sir James, 22 Grant, Alexander, 139 Grant, John, 173 Gray, Peter, 20, 39, 56 Greenfield, James, 111, 133, 153–4 Greenock, 139 Grey, Sir George, 47 Grigor, Iain Fraser, 98–9 Harcourt, William, 97, 128 Harris, 21–2, 111 Helmsdale, 157, 165 Hercules, 51 higher criticism, 87–8, 210 Highland and Island Emigration Society, 50–2 ‘Highland host’, 89 Highlander, 4, 16, 79–85, 90, 95, 97, 162, 165 Highland identity, 5, 31, 75–8, 94–5, 214, 219 Highland Land Law Reform Association (HLLRA), known as Highland Land League from 1887, 15–16, 94, 104–8, 117, 121, 127, 131, 134–9, 142–3, 145–7, 152–5, 156–78, 181–91, 197–8, 202, 205–7, 209–11, 219 relations with ministers see clergy Highland News, 16, 127–30, 143, 185–6, 189, 195–7, 199, 201–2 Highland societies, 76–8 Highland Temperance League, 147 Hilton, Boyd, 10–11, 20, 39–40, 56, 61, 218–19 Home Rule, 167, 183, 185, 188–90, 216; see also Ireland

Index Howard of Glossop, Lord, 123 Hunter, James, 8, 30, 69–71, 75, 77, 80, 93, 121, 166, 169, 175, 177, 191, 195n, 209, 214, 217 Hypothec, 25 Inverness, 23, 98, 135, 138, 197–203 Inverness Courier, 172 Inverness-shire, 1n, 21, 51, 67, 72, 102, 122, 160 Iona, 48 Ireland, 13–14, 17, 20, 26, 28, 32–3, 36–40, 93–4, 98, 101–2, 104, 128, 130, 152–3, 187–90, 209n Irish Land League (succeeded by Irish National League after 1882), 13–14, 101, 104, 112–13, 160, 188–9, 198 Irving, Edward, 11n Islay, 124 Ivory, William, 102, 130–1, 151, 173, 176, 191 Kemball, Sir Arnold, 112–13 Kennedy, George, 23 Kennedy, John (Arran), 158 Kennedy, John (Dingwall), 14, 56, 58, 61–2, 64, 71–2, 76–7, 84–95, 114, 126, 151, 175, 196, 217, 219 Kidd, Sheila, 45, 79–80 Kildonan (Sutherland), 7, 213 Kilmallie, 22, 118 Kilmuir, 101, 103, 157–8 Kilvaxter, 174 Kintail, 125, 206 Kintyre, 21, 160 Lairg, 165 Lamont, Hugh, 205–6 Lamont, Joseph, 103, 110–11, 151 Land gospel see Liberationist interpretations of Bible Land League of Great Britain, 101 land redistribution, 133, 161, 183–4, 196–8, 200, 203–4, 207, 209–11, 216 landlords, 12–14, 20–31, 33–6, 42, 46, 54–5, 72–3, 94, 97–100, 105–7, 119–21, 125–6, 128, 131, 137–8, 149, 152, 162–7, 169–71, 173–7, 181, 186–8, 191, 197, 199, 208–9, 213–14 relations with ministers, 72–3, 117, 153–4 Leckmelm evictions, 97–8, 124, 215 Lee, Alexander, 134, 136 Leurbost, 147

237

Lewis, 21, 31, 47, 49, 68, 78, 111, 115, 120, 128, 133–7, 142–4, 157, 160, 167, 174, 182, 186, 191–4, 196, 204, 206–8, 215–16 Liberal Party, 94, 105, 135–6, 179, 183, 188–90, 202–4, 211 Liberal Unionists, 190, 205; see also Unionism Liberationist interpretations of Bible, 4, 83–4, 161–3, 169, 176–7, 191 Liberation theology see Liberationist interpretations of Bible Life and Work, 118 Livingstone, David, 67 Lochaber, 22, 118 Lochalsh, 125 Lochcarron, 25, 160–1 Loch, James, 113 Lochs, 118, 133, 153, 174, 192–4 London, 143, 162, 176 London HLLRA see HLLRA Lothian, Lord, 205, 210 Lowlands, 57, 67, 74, 76–7, 94, 101, 114, 132, 141 MacArthur, Allan, 134 Macaskill, John, 212 Macaskill, Murdo, 73, 105, 114–15, 124, 127, 133, 153, 180, 186–90, 196, 198, 200, 216 MacBeth, William, 146 MacCaig, Donald, 131–2, 138, 158 MacCallum, Colin, 73 MacCallum, Donald, 4, 18, 73, 104, 119–21, 127, 129–30, 137–8, 140, 147, 151, 153–4, 156, 159, 169–78, 203–4 MacCallum, Duncan, 23n, 49, 120–1 MacCallum, Malcolm, 73, 138, 154, 214 MacColl, Alexander, 50, 72–3, 91, 125 MacDonald, A. C., 99–100, 130–2, 188 MacDonald, Alexander, 122–3 MacDonald Cameron, John, 161 MacDonald, Capt. Allan, 170–1 MacDonald, C. C., 139 MacDonald, Charles, 123 MacDonald, Colin, 193 Macdonald, Donald, 212 MacDonald, Dr Roderick, 134, 146, 153, 161, 187 MacDonald, James, 121 MacDonald, John (Ferintosh), 7n MacDonald, John (Helmsdale), 7, 73 MacDonald, Lachlan, 151

238

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MacDonald, Lord, 101, 159 Macdonald, Ranald, 122–3 MacDougall, A., 158 MacDougall, William S., 180–1 MacEacharn, Duncan, 49 MacEchern, Charles, 98 Macfarlane, Donald (Moy), 185–6, 189, 212 MacFarlane, Donald H. (HLLRA MP), 152, 161, 166–9 MacGregor, Alexander, 40, 44–5, 53–4, 79 MacGregor, Duncan, 124, 184 MacGregor, Malcolm, 180, 188 McHugh, Edward, 101 Macinnes, Allan, 5, 62–3, 66, 68–9, 71–2, 93, 107n, 157, 188, 211, 215 MacInnes, Dr John, 7–8, 68–72 MacInnes, Rev. John, 2, 63–4 MacInnes, Myles, 202 Macintyre, John, 145 MacIver, Angus, 120, 130, 133, 137, 204 McIver, Evander, 8n, 113 MacIver, John, 144 MacIvor, Farquhar, 29 Mackay, Alexander, 73, 208 Mackay, Colin, 165 Mackay, D. J., 157 MacKay, Duncan, 206 Mackay, George, 91 Mackay, John (Hereford), 96, 183–4 MacKay, John (St Kilda), 110 Mackay, Mackintosh, 19, 21–7, 37, 48, 52, 56 MacKay, Norman N., 113 Mackenzie, A. D., 180 Mackenzie, Alexander (Inverness), 16, 105, 112, 130, 197–8 Mackenzie, Alexander (Edinburgh), 156 MacKenzie, David, 7, 28–9 MacKenzie, Donald, 112–13, 165 Mackenzie, Finlay, 161 Mackenzie, Sir Kenneth, 106, 107n MacKenzie, Lachlan, 6 Mackenzie, Murdo, 188 Mackinnon, Donald, 73, 102, 119, 171–4 Mackinnon, Professor Donald, 106 Mackinnon, Sir William, 167 MacKintosh, Alexander, 122 MacLauchlan, Thomas, 26, 29–30, 47, 56, 62, 76, 92–3, 127 Maclean, James, 158 Maclean, John (Lochcarron), 161 MacLean, John (Shiskine), 134 MacLean, Norman, 140, 175–6

Maclean of Ardgour, Col., 22 MacLean, Peter, 50 MacLean, Sorley, 93, 188 MacLeay, William, 191 MacLeod, Alexander, 6 Macleod, Donald (Free Church College Principal), 1 MacLeod, Donald (Shawbost), 207 MacLeod, Donald (Strathnaver), 2, 6, 9, 28, 41, 112, 154 MacLeod, Duncan, 156 MacLeod, George, 143, 192 MacLeod, James Lachlan, 73, 88–9, 199–200, 213 MacLeod, John (Gartymore), 193 MacLeod, John (Free Presbyterian student), 213 MacLeod, Joseph, 162 MacLeod, Murdo (Murchadh a’ Cheisdeir), 147 MacLeod, Murdo (Barvas), 153 MacLeod, Neil, 175 MacLeod, Major Neil, 200 MacLeod, Norman (Caraid nan Gaidheal), 19, 34–7, 40, 46, 51, 53–4 MacLeod, Norman (Glasgow), 203 MacLeod of MacLeod, 33 MacLeod, Reginald, 132 MacLeod, Roderick (Ruairidh Bàn), 142–4, 146, 182 MacLeod, Roderick (Snizort), 50, 56, 68–9, 92–3 MacMillan, John, 96–102, 104, 124, 187–90, 215–16 McNeill, Sir John, 13, 47–8 MacNeill, Malcolm, 103, 108, 205–7 McPhail, A. N., 61, 64 MacPhail, I. M. M., 5, 76, 93, 101–2, 127, 129, 142, 174, 183, 188, 191–2 Macphail, J. C., 109n, 115–16 MacPhail, John, 103, 110–11, 139, 151, 158 MacPherson, John, 103, 171, 174–5, 191 MacPherson, Mary, 90–1, 151–2 MacQueen, Donald, 68–9 MacQueen, John, 91 Macrae, D., 157 MacRae, David, 139 Macrae, Donald (Lochcarron), 161 MacRae, Donald (Lochs), 192 Macrae, John (Duirinish), 103, 160 Macrae, John (MacRath Mòr), 22, 31, 72 Macrae, John (Stornoway), 49 MacRae, Roderick, 134–5

Index MacRitchie, Malcolm, 111 Mactavish, John, 22, 51, 56, 72, 87–8, 98–100, 102, 116, 124, 128, 130, 154, 195–6, 199 MacVean, Donald, 48 Malcolm of Poltalloch, Col. J. W., 152–3, 167n Malthusianism, 26, 41n, 219 Martin, Angus, 29 Martin, Donald John, 72, 111n, 133–5 Martin, Dr Nicol, 72, 151 Matheson, Sir Alexander, 125 Matheson, Sir James, 36, 47 Meek, Donald, 4, 11, 17, 85, 147–52, 169, 174–5 Melness, 14, 164, 168, 184 Methodism, 3 Mill, John Stuart, 37, 77 Miller, Hugh, 13, 48, 55–6 Moderate party, 8, 20–1, 30, 70, 154 Moidart, 123 Moody, Dwight L., 87 Moore, Robert, 3 Morison, John, 175 Morrison, Duncan, 134 Morison, Roderick, 120n, 125, 206, 210 Muckairn, 131, 138, 214 Mull, 48, 124, 160 Munro, Alexander, 179 Munro, John, 145 Munro, Norman, 144–5 Murdoch, John, 4, 58, 79–85, 90–1, 100, 103–5, 151, 154, 161–3, 169, 178, 184 attitude to Jews and eastern crisis, 82–3 premillenialism, 82 pacifism, 84 Murray, Alexander, 194 Murray, John, 73, 194, 199 Mysticism, 70–1 Na daoine, 70–2, 93, 112, 141, 177 Napier, Lord, 9, 106 Napier Commission, 9, 17, 68, 98–9, 102, 104–27, 133, 135, 142, 144–7, 154, 170, 182, 188, 204–6, 210, 215 Ness, 135 Newby, Andrew, 77, 99n, 101, 164, 215–16 Nicolson, Alexander, 103, 106 North British Daily Mail, 15, 114 Northern Chronicle, 16, 130, 186, 192, 201 Northern Ensign, 184 North Uist, 22 Norton, Wayne, 205

239

Novar, Ronald Munro-Ferguson of, 134–6, 138, 144, 153 Oban, 131, 183 Oban Times, 16, 130, 138, 142, 173, 176, 182, 198 oral tradition, 4 Orkney, 66, 108n Park Deer Raid, 174, 189, 191–4, 196 Parnell, Charles Stewart, 104, 135–6, 152–3, 188 passive obedience, 3, 5, 131 Paton, David, 7–9, 41, 71 patronage, 20 Peel, Robert, 11, 36 Perthshire, 1n, 42, 160 Pirie, Alexander, 97–8 police, 101–3, 128, 131 Poolewe, 206 Poor Law Commission, 12, 28–9 Pope, Robert, 74 population statistics, 21, 32, 47, 133 Portree, 33, 101, 139, 174, 207 Postmillenialism, 10, 67 Premillenialism, 82–3 Providentialism, 19–20, 26, 33–4, 38–43, 56, 139, 208–9, 218 Raasay, 72, 145, 212 race, 53, 55, 88–90 Rainy, G. H., 72 Rainy, Robert, 76, 89–90, 105, 115–16, 127, 132–7, 153, 181, 190–1, 198, 200, 202–3 Ramsay, John, 131 Reade, Winwood, 169 Reid, James, 23n, 158 Revivalism and politics, 3, 31, 186–7 revivals, 8, 20, 59–60, 68–9, 72, 86–7, 186–7, 217 Rogart, 193, 208 roman catholicism, 11, 21, 51, 67, 73, 104, 108, 119, 122–5, 129, 166–70, 177, 188–9, 198, 217 Rosebery, Lord, 202–3 Rose, William, 91, 93 Ross and Cromarty, 1n, 21, 71, 85, 97, 127, 134, 153 Ross, David, 49 Ross, James, 110–11 Ross-shire Journal, 137 Ross, William, 157 Russell, Lord John, 36, 47

240

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Sabbatarianism, 60–1, 86, 91, 161 Sacramental theology, 63–4 Sage, Alexander, 6 Sage, Donald, 72 St Kilda, 110 Salen (Mull), 168–9 Salisbury, Lord, 202 Sankey, Ira, 87 Schmidt, Leigh Eric, 60, 63–4 Sconser, 145 Scotsman, 15, 42, 128–9, 136, 194–5, 198, 216 Scottish Highlander, 16, 197 Scottish Land League of America, 184; see also MacGregor, Duncan Scourie, 113 Sell, Allan, 86 Sellar, Alexander Craig, 205 Sellar, Patrick, 113, 205 Shaw, Alexander L., 157, 168–9 Shawbost, 134 Shaw, John, 78, 80 Shetland, 66, 108n Shieldaig, 212 Shorter Catechism, 59, 74 Simpson, Patrick Carnegie, 89–90 site controversy, 21–4, 31, 92 Skene, W. F., 77 Skye, 22, 29, 37, 43, 50–1, 68, 71–2, 92, 101–4, 106, 109–11, 124, 126, 128–32, 136, 154, 158–9, 167, 170–7, 186, 190–1, 202, 211n, 215 Sleat, 159 Small Isles, 122 Smith, Adam, 10 Smith, Donald, 9–10, 19, 56, 61, 210, 218 Smith, John, 148–9 Smith, William Robertson, 84, 134 Social gospel, 169; see also Liberationist interpretations of Bible Socialism, 121, 124, 169, 180 South Morar, 170 South Uist, 35, 122, 171 Staffin, 173 Stafford, marquis of, 113, 165–7, 182, 184 Stewart, General David, 6 Stornoway, 120, 133–7 Strachan, James, 118 Stratherrick, 185, 212

Strathnaver, 3, 213 Strome Ferry riot, 60–1, 91, 161 Strong, Rowan, 12 Strontian, 22 Sutherland, 1n, 3, 7, 9, 19, 21–2, 28, 71, 82, 105, 111, 163–8, 177, 182, 184–5 Sutherland, Angus, 116, 157, 165–8 Sutherland Association see HLLRA Sutherland, 2nd duke of, 22, 33, 36, Sutherland, 3rd duke of, 113, 151 Swinburne, Capt., 123 Taylor, Neil, 112, 152–3, 182, 184–5, 187–9, 216 Taylor, W. Ross, 132–3 teinds, 204 Theological liberalism, 18, 74, 87–91, 134, 169–70, 175, 186, 203–4, 210, 212, 218–9 Thomson, Derick, 148, 150 Thornton, William, 77 Times, 15, 23, 96, 103, 111, 182, 184 Tiree, 21, 47, 119, 124, 126, 157, 160, 174, 190–1, 203 Tobermory, 33 Tongue, 112 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 218 Toomey, Kathleen, 67 Treveyan, Charles, 43, 45, 48, 51 Trevelyan, G. O., 179 Uig (Lewis), 120, 148 Uig (Skye), 128–30, 139, 170, 173 Ulster, 67, 190 Unionism, 94, 189–90, 205, 213 United Presbyterian Church, 15, 37n, 66, 89–90, 134, 177, 185, 203 Valtos (Skye), 101 Wales, 13, 17, 74 Walsh, William, 189 Waternish, 129, 170–1 Wester Ross, 60, 82, 91, 144, 146, 206, 212 Westminster Confession of Faith, 9–10, 41n, 58–9, 212 Williamson, David, 118 Withers, Charles, 78 Witness, 13, 24–5, 29, 35, 37, 44, 46–7, 54

Index

241