To counteract the spirit of disloyalty which was still lurking amongst the Highland clans, the Earl of Breadalbane, cousin to the Duke of Argyle, was entrusted with £16,000, to be distributed among the various chieftains, conditionally on their making submission to William and Mary. The Earl did not make an impartial distribution of the money; the leading chiefs were bought off, the lesser were intimidated by threats. A branch of the clan MacDonald were settled in a wild valley, Glencoe, in north Argyleshire; a small river, the Coe (the Cona of Ossian—a name which sounds musically sweet—calling up thoughts of serenity and peace,) runs through the valley towards Lochleven—the arm of the sea which separates Argyleshire from Inverness-shire. The valley spreads flatwise to the bases of the surrounding hills, which seem to stand as fortressed walls to guard it from all danger. But in this secluded spot—shut off as it seemed from the outer world—was enacted the basest of all the acts of treachery and barbarity which disgrace this seventeenth century.

MacIan, the chief of the MacDonalds of Glencoe, was an old man, stately, venerable, sagacious. He now charged Breadalbane with having defrauded him of his share of the government money; the earl retorted that MacIan and his tribe had been persistent marauders over his Campbell clansmen’s lands round Glencoe, which was probably true enough, as there had been a feud of long standing between the clans. A proclamation had been issued that—under severe penalties for non-compliance—submission had to be made before the 1st of January, 1692; MacIan, out of a spirit of contrariness, put off taking the oath, and the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Master of Stair, a friend of Breadalbane’s, reported officially to the government that the MacDonalds were not making submission, and that they were an incorrigibly lawless tribe of thieves and murderers.

On the 31st of December, MacIan and several of his leading clansmen went to Fort-William, and proffered to take the oath of allegiance before Colonel Hill, the commanding officer. Not being a civil official, the Colonel was not empowered to administer the oath, but, moved by the distress of the old man, who saw the danger to which his obstinacy had exposed his people, he gave him a letter to Sir Colin Campbell, the Sheriff of Argyleshire, requesting him to receive, although after the official date, the submission of the chief. With this letter MacIan hastened on, through snowstorms, by swollen streams, and rugged mountain paths, to Inverary. The road passed near his own home, but he was now in such haste that he went right on; but it was the 6th of January, before he had accomplished the weary fifty miles, and presented himself before the sheriff. The sheriff, considering all the circumstances, administered the oath; he gave MacIan a certificate, and wrote to the Privy Council, detailing the facts, and giving explanatory reasons for his own conduct in the matter.

But the secretary had hoped to have had MacIan in his power, and was chagrined by the submission; so the sheriff’s letter was suppressed, and the submission deleted from the records of the council. On the 16th of January, the secretary obtained the king’s signature to the following order, addressed to the commander of the forces in Scotland:—“As for MacIan of Glencoe, and that tribe, if they can be well distinguished from the rest of the Highlanders, it will be proper for the vindication of public justice to extirpate that set of thieves.” Burnet says that William did not read the order, but signed it, thinking it was only a detail in ordinary business. Another explanation is, that the fact of MacIan’s submission being treacherously withheld from William, he thought that the extirpation meant by the order was, that as a “set of thieves” they were to be broken up, and brought under ordinary law. William could not have meant to order or to sanction the horrible event which followed; but still the name of Glencoe ever sounds as a blast of judgment against the fair fame of the Deliverer.

And now, as under the royal order, the secretary gave explicit instructions for the indiscriminate butchery of the whole “damnable race.” The passes were to be guarded to prevent any escape. “In the winter,” he wrote, “they cannot carry their wives, children, and cattle to the mountains. This is the proper season to maul them, in the long dark nights.” A detachment of troops, belonging Argyle’s regiment, under Campbell of Glenlyon, were sent into the glen. They were hospitably received, and were quartered amongst the inhabitants. A niece of Glenlyon’s was married to a son of MacIan’s, and for twelve days there was hunting by day, and feasting, card-playing, and healths-drinking in the long evenings. Glenlyon and a party accepted an invitation to dine with MacIan on the 13th of February, but, as had been previously arranged, at four o’clock of the morning of that day, the work of blood began. The old chief was shot in his bed; his wife was stripped naked, and died next day from terror and exposure. The two sons of MacIan were aroused by the musket shots, the shouts of the murderers, and the screams of the victims; they, with many others, men, women, and children, fled, half-naked, in darkness, snow, and storm, into the less savage wilderness. The falling snow proved fatal to several of the fugitives, but it was the salvation of the others, for it prevented the troops, who were to have guarded the passes, from arriving at the time appointed, to intercept and slay all who had escaped from death in the glen. It was mid-day when these troops, by the several passes entered the glen, and they found no MacDonald alive but an old man of eighty, and him they slew. Every hut was burned, the cattle and horses of the tribe were collected, and driven to the garrison of Fort-William.

Thirty-eight victims: Was Secretary Stair satisfied? Not he; he was mortified that his plans for total destruction had failed. “I regret,” he wrote, “that any got away.” It is said that two men—one engaged in the contrivance of the massacre, and the other in its execution—Breadalbane and Glenlyon—did feel the stings of conscience, the heart-gnawings of remorse, and were never the same men afterwards.

It was long before the hideous story of Glencoe came to be generally known. On the facts being published, there rose a popular clamour for an inquiry. On the eve of the meeting of the Scottish Parliament, in 1695, it was known to ministers that the war-cry would be “Glencoe.” So in haste they got the King to appoint a Commission. After a searching enquiry, the Commission reported that the slaughter at Glencoe was murder; and that of this murder the letters of the Master of Stair were the sole warrant and cause. As a punishment for his great crime, Stair was dismissed from office!