In the fighting that took place after the 1688 ouster of King James II by his daughter Mary and her Dutch husband William of Orange, the highlanders were largely Jacobites—supporters of James. Following their defeat, the new King William offered a pardon to all clans who acknowledged his legitimacy with an oath to be taken by Jan. 1, 1692. Some clan leaders delayed until the last moment, and bad weather prevented one of them, Alasdair Maclain, chief of the MacDonald clan, from doing so until after the deadline expired.
This technical lapse allowed some Scotsmen, hostile to the MacDonalds and highlanders in general, to plot the eradication of the clan. John Dalrymple, Secretary of State Over Scotland, was a lowlander with a desire to break the power of the clan system in northern Scotland. He conspired with leaders of clan Campbell, who had a long-standing feud with the MacDonalds, to carry out an exemplary extermination of their mutual enemies. He arranged to have troops commanded by a Campbell officer billeted in the homes of Glencoe and to kill their hosts at a pre-arranged time.
This was the order given to Captain Robert Campbell, who was staying at the house of the MacDonald chieftain:
Exits from the valley were blocked by military units and on the snowy morning of Feb. 13, the troops in the three settlements attacked the householders. The first to die was Maclain, “the old Fox.” Soldiers then ranged up and down the glen, killing 38 men and burning their homes. An additional 40 women and children would die from exposure, having lost their shelter.
The deaths created a scandal. Though there was little sympathy for the MacDonalds themselves, who had a reputation for lawlessness and plunder, many Scotsmen objected to the deed being carried out by men who had been quartered in the homes of the murdered families. The law forbade cold-blooded killings in cases where victims had surrendered or where hospitality (a key feature of Scottish culture) had been offered.
The Scottish Parliament ordered an inquiry which declared the deed to be one of “murder under trust,” an illegitimate order that should have been disobeyed. It demanded that the MacDonalds be recompensed and the guilty officials punished, but little was done to enforce this.
The massacre did nothing to win highland hearts to the cause of the new dynasty. When Jacobite rebellions broke out in 1715 (led by the son of James II) and 1745 (led by James’s grandson Bonnie Prince Charlie), men from the area rose up once more against the crown.
