ous resistance which they were
in the habit of offering to the authority of the Crown and of the Court
of Session, their wars, their robberies, their fireraisings, their
practice of exacting black mail from people more peaceable and more
useful than themselves, naturally excited the disgust and indignation of
an enlightened and politic gownsman, who was, both by the constitution
of his mind and by the habits of his profession, a lover of law
and order. His object was no less than a complete dissolution and
reconstruction of society in the Highlands, such a dissolution and
reconstruction as, two generations later, followed the battle of
Culloden. In his view the clans, as they existed, were the plagues of
the kingdom; and of all the clans, the worst was that which inhabited
Glencoe. He had, it is said, been particularly struck by a frightful
instance of the lawlessness and ferocity of those marauders. One of
them, who had been concerned in some act of violence or rapine, had
given information against his companions. He had been bound to a tree
and murdered. The old chief had given the first stab; and scores
of dirks had then been plunged into the wretch's body. [223] By the
mountaineers such an act was probably regarded as a legitimate exercise
of patriarchal jurisdiction. To the Master of Stair it seemed that
people among whom such things were done and were approved ought to be
treated like a pack of wolves, snared by any device, and slaughtered
without mercy. He was well read in history, and doubtless knew how great
rulers had, in his own and other countries, dealt with such banditti.
He doubtless knew with what energy and what severity James the Fifth had
put down the mosstroopers of the border, how the chief of Henderland had
been hung over the gate of the castle in which he had prepared a banquet
for the King; how John Armstrong and his thirty-six horsemen, when they
came forth to welcome their sovereign, had scarcely been allowed time
to say a single prayer before they were all tied up and turned off. Nor
probably was the Secretary ignorant of the means by which Sixtus the
Fifth had cleared the ecclesiastical state of outlaws. The eulogists
of that great pontiff tell us that there was one formidable gang which
could not be dislodged from a stronghold among the Apennines. Beasts of
burden were therefore loaded with poisoned food and wine, and sent by a
road which ran close to the fastness. The robbers sallied forth, s