CLAN DONNACHAIDH SOCIETY NEWSLETTER 2016 – No 1 News

CLAN DONNACHAIDH SOCIETY NEWSLETTER 2016 – No 1 Welcome to a new issue of the Clan Donnachaidh Society newsletter. News from the Clan Centre The Council of the Clan Donnachaidh Society held a meeting at the clan centre on 23 April. Left: Billy Duncan, Gillespie Robertson and Colin Robertson in the courtyard at the clan centre before the meeting. The Council at work. From the left, going clockwise: The Chief, Gillespie Robertson (Vice-Chairman), Stuart Robertson, Fiona Dukes (Secretary), Duncan Huie (Chairman), Anne-Lise Robertson (hidden from view), Billy Duncan (hidden from view) and Colin Robertson. On Skype on the laptop: Christy Duncan Lange (International Vice- Chairperson) and Tim Duncan. At the Council meeting: Duncan Huie, Anne-Lise Robertson and Billy Duncan. Some views from the clan area in April The village of Kenmore was founded at the head of Loch Tay by the Campbells in the 16th century. The present church was built in 1760, replacing an earlier church on the same site. In the 18th century Robertsons, Reids and Duncans are recorded as living in the parish. However, settlement in the area goes back to much earlier times. In the photo taken at the head of Loch Tay, above right, an artificial island known as a crannog can be seen. Construction of crannogs on Loch Tay goes back 2500 years and the reconstructed prehistoric roundhouse at Oakbank on the southern shore is well worth a visit. Crannogs continued to be built and occupied into the Middle Ages. Queen Sybil, wife of Alexander I (reigned 1107 to 1124), died at a nunnery on a crannog in Loch Tay in 1122. Duncan, the first chief of Clan Donnachaidh, is recorded as having a house and garden on a small island, probably a crannog, on Loch Tummel. On the left, Loch Tummel and Schiehallion are seen from the Queen’s View. Unfortunately Port an Eilean, the island associated with Duncan, was submerged in 1913 when the level of Loch Tummel was raised for a hydro-electric scheme. Queen Victoria, visiting in 1866, concluded that the Queen’s View was named after her but it was probably named after Queen Elizabeth (d. 1327), wife of Robert the Bruce. 2 A significant anniversary The seventh of April 2016 marked the 500th anniversary of the execution of William Robertson of Struan, the sixth chief of Clan Donnachaidh. This event represented more than William’s personal tragedy; it also marked a sudden dip in his family’s rising fortunes. The events surrounding William’s death have been recorded in various ways and this has led to some confusion in the historical narrative. Clan historians have mentioned a feud between the Robertsons and the Earls of Atholl resulting in William’s death; the seventh Duke of Atholl’s magisterial history of his family refers to the Earl of Atholl having ‘some difference with his cousin, William Robertson of Struan’. Recently James Irvine Robertson has revisited the sources and uncovered a more complex story. The full details of James’s research can be read here: http://www.donnachaidh.com/william.html1. A brief account follows. William probably succeeded as chief when he was still under age. His father had died relatively young and William became heir to his grandfather Alexander, the fifth chief, who died at an advanced age in 1505 after a long and prosperous career. Alexander had married twice, the first time before 1460 to Elizabeth Lyon, the daughter of Lord Glamis, by whom he had four sons and a daughter. Elizabeth then died and Alexander entered into discussions with his powerful neighbour, John Stewart, Earl of Atholl. John Stewart was the half-brother of King James II, who created him Earl of Atholl in around 1457. He had been born around 1440 and was thus about the same age as Alexander. Atholl had married twice and had a number of daughters by his second marriage. He had already offered Elizabeth in marriage with Alexander’s heir, Duncan. Duncan had died before the wedding could take place but Alexander then suggested that he should marry Elizabeth himself. It was also decided that her sister Isabel should marry Robert, Alexander’s second son and the new heir. Robert also died relatively young but he left a son William, who thus became his grandfather’s heir. Meanwhile Alexander and his young wife had two sons and two daughters. In January 1505, in failing health, Alexander obtained a Crown charter that settled Faskally and a large number of other estates (about a third of the total estate) on himself and his second wife Lady Elizabeth Stewart. There had been substantial divisions of the estates in the earlier history of the family and in at least one case there had been trouble as a result. The descendants of the first marriage would have recognized that Alexander had a number of sons to provide for and that his widow was entitled to a liferent in the estates. They may have resented the very generous settlement and the fact that after Elizabeth’s death these lands would pass to the elder son of Alexander’s second marriage, another Alexander, and thus out of the control of the Struan family. Many second wives in medieval Europe made strenuous efforts to obtain lands and favours for their children, to ensure they did as well as the children of the first marriage. Lady Elizabeth was extremely successful in exercising her influence over her husband. Alexander died two months after the obtaining the charter. His heir William was probably still under age and thus became a royal ward; it is possible that his other grandfather, the Earl, was made his guardian. Then in 1507, William’s uncle the Master of Atholl (the Earl’s heir) was made bailie over all the lands of the barony of Struan, which meant the Atholl family had control over all the lands that had been held by Alexander Robertson of Struan. The rights of William’s mother, Lady Isabel, and his step-grandmother, Lady Elizabeth, were protected but meanwhile William had obtained only restricted rights from a tack on his grandfather’s lands granted in 1506. He had to pay off his grandfather’s debts before he could get a charter, but it seems his main creditor was his other grandfather the Earl of Atholl, whose son was blocking access to the rents from his estates. The Master of Atholl may have been playing an increasingly large role in running his elderly father’s affairs; he succeeded to the title on his father’s death in 1512. 1 First published in the Clan Donnachaidh Annual 2008. Other accounts have been published in the annual, including an article by Sheila McGregor in 2004, which has also been consulted. 3 The indications are that anger and resentment led William into open hostilities. Later it was recorded that for three years he led an army of up to 800 freebooters comprised of his own followers and Rannoch MacGregors. The catastrophic defeat of the Scottish army at Flodden in 1513 led to the deaths of King James IV and many of the nobility. The new king, James V, was a baby. The power vacuum led to a period of power struggles, unsettled government and the formation of factions around the widowed Queen Margaret and the Regent, the Duke of Albany, who eventually prevailed over the queen. William’s activities seem to have become increasingly lawless in the uncertain period after Flodden but there is evidence that he had already embarked on hostile action. It was probably his feud against the Atholl family that led to the killing of John Cunnison of Edradour at Moulin in 15092. Cunnison may have been a follower of the Earl of Atholl and it is possible that the death had occurred in a fight between the parties. Alexander Myln, in his Lives of the Bishops of Dunkeld3, does not mention Cunnison’s death but he reports on the Bishop’s attempts to get William to lay down his arms in the period around 1514. Myln described William as committing ‘great outrages’ and ‘most unmercifully’ oppressing such as depended upon the Earl of Atholl (trying to collect rents from former Struan lands?) at a time when the Earl was in the north. Bishop George Brown of Dunkeld, who wished William well, made repeated efforts to warn him about his course of action but was unable to dissuade him. The Bishop was in poor health and died in January 1515. William lost a benevolent adviser on Bishop George’s death; the Earl of Atholl moved in briskly to get his younger son Andrew appointed Bishop of Dunkeld. The Earl of Atholl was able to secure the Regent’s support. In July 1515 he was given an extensive royal grant of the central part of the Struan lands because of defaults of payment due to him by William Robertson of Struan (payments may have been due both because of Alexander’s debts and William’s depredations). William thus definitively lost the central part of the Struan estates to his uncle, in addition to the eastern third consisting of the Faskally lands that had gone to Lady Elizabeth and his young half-uncle Alexander. Confident of the Regent’s support, the Earl of Atholl then moved against William on the charge of the murder of John Cunnison. There could be no justification for murder and John Cunnison’s relatives must have wanted justice, but there is some indication that the facts of the case were not totally clear-cut. The Bishop of Dunkeld’s efforts had focused on discouraging William from pursuing his ‘oppression’ of the Earl of Atholl’s tenants; in the mention of ‘outrages’ there is no reference to the heinous crime of murder, which the Bishop would surely have condemned.

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