ffect upon the noble father of his
captive, than all the Campbell swords the craven lord could muster."
Under these circumstances, Sir Lachlan Maclean was neither in the temper
nor the condition to comply with the exactions of those whom he also
regarded as having usurped the sovereign authority. He refused; and his
refusal was exactly what his enemy desired.

The next step which Argyle took was to claim the amount due to him from
the chief, which, by buying up all the debts, public and private, of
Maclean, he swelled to thirty thousand pounds, before a court of law.
Such was the state of Scottish judicial proceedings in those days, that
the process was ended before Sir Lachlan had even heard of its
commencement. He hastened, when informed of it, to Edinburgh, in order
to make known his case before the "Committee of Estates," then acting
with sovereign authority in Scotland. But he was intercepted at
Inverary, cast into prison upon a writ of attachment, issued and signed
by Argyle himself, and immured in Argyle's castle of Carrick, for a debt
due to Archibald, Marquis of Argyle. It was there required of him that
he should grant a bond for fourteen thousand pounds Scots, and sign a
doqueted account for sixteen thousand pounds more, bearing interest.

For a time the unhappy chief refused to sign the bond thus demanded; for
a year he resisted the oppression of his enemy, and bore his
imprisonment, with the aggravation of declining health. At last his
friends, alarmed at his sinking condition, entreated him, as the only
means of release, to comply with the demand of Argyle. Sir Lachlan
signed the document, was set free, and returned to Duart, where he
expired in April, 1649. To his family he bequeathed a legacy of
contention and misfortune.

His successor, Sir Hector Maclean, the young hostage who had been
kidnapped from Dumbarton, was a youth of a warlike and determined
spirit, who resisted the depredations of the plundering clan of
Campbells in Lorn and Ardnamuchan, and, on one occasion, hung up two of
the invaders at his castle of Dunnin Morvern. Such, in spite of this
summary mode of proceeding, were Sir Hector's ideas of honour, that,
notwithstanding his doubts of the validity of the bond obtained from his
father, he conceived that the superscription of his father's name to it
rendered it his duty to comply with its conditions as he could. He is
declared by one authority to have paid ten thousand pounds of the
deman