Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England

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An anonymous contemporary account, pp. 103–110; pub. by The Clarendon Historical Society, 1885. World History

336.

Orders for the Massacre of Mac Ian MacDonald of Glencoe and His Clan (February 12, 1692)

Sir:

You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebels, the MacDonalds of Glenco, and put all to the sword under 70. You are to have especial care that the old fox and his sons do upon no account escape your hands; you are to secure all the avenues, that no man escape: this you are to put in execution at five a clock in the morning precisely, and by that time, or very shortly after it, I’ll strive to be at you with a stronger party; if I do not come to you at five, you are not to tarry me, but to fall on. This is by the king’s special command, for the good and safety of the country, that these miscreants may be cut off, root and branch. See that this be put in execution without feud or favour, else you may expect to be treated as not true to the king or government, nor a man fit to carry commission in the king’s service. Expecting you will not fail in the fulfilling hereof, as you love yourself. I subscribe these with my hand,

ROBERT DUNCANSON.

For their majesties’ service, to Capt. Robert Campbell of Glenlyon.

massacre

. . . The soldiers being disposed five or three in a house, according to the number of the family they were to assassinate, had their orders given them secretly. They had been received as friends by those poor people, who intended no evil themselves, and little suspected that their guests were design’d to be their murtherers. At 5 o’clock in the morning they began their bloody work, surpris’d and butcher’d 38 persons, who had kindly received them under their roofs. Mac Ian himself was murther’d, and is much bemoan’d; he was a stately, well-favoured man, and of good courage and sense: as also the Laird Archintrikin, a gentleman of more than ordinary judgment and understanding, who had submitted to the government, and had Coll. Hill’s protection in his pocket, which he had got three months before.

I cannot without horror represent how a boy about eight years of age was murthered; he seeing what was done to others in the house with him, in a terrible fright ran out of the house, and espying Capt. Campbell, grasp’d him about the legs, crying for mercy, and offering to be his servant all his life. I am informed Capt. Campbell inclined to spare him; but one Drummond, an officer, barbarously run his dagger through him, whereof he died immediately. The rehearsal of several particulars and circumstances of this tragical story makes it appear most doleful; as that Mac Ian was killed as he was drawing on his breeches, standing before his bed, giving orders to his servants for the good entertainment of those who murdered him. Whim he was speaking the words, he was shot through the head, and fell dead in his lady’s arms, who, through the grief of this and other bad usages she met with, died the next day. It is not to be omitted that most of those poor people were killed when they were asleep, and none was allowed to pray to God for mercy.

Providence ordered it so, that that night was most boisterous; so as a party of 400 men, who should have come to the other end of the glen, and begun the like work there at the same hour, (intending that the poor inhabitants should be enclosed, and none of them escape,) could not march at length, until it was 9 o’clock, and this afforded to many an opportunity of escaping, and none were killed but those in whose houses Campbell and Glenlyon’s men were quartered, otherwise all the males under 70 years of age, to the number of 200, had been cut off, for that was the order.

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Chicago: "Orders for the Massacre of Mac Ian MacDonald of Glencoe and His Clan (February 12, 1692)," Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England in Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England, ed. Edward Potts Cheyney (1861-1947) (Boston: Ginn, 1935, 1922), 553–555. Original Sources, accessed March 29, 2024, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=PW637DN354R33MK.

MLA: . "Orders for the Massacre of Mac Ian MacDonald of Glencoe and His Clan (February 12, 1692)." Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England, in Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England, edited by Edward Potts Cheyney (1861-1947), Boston, Ginn, 1935, 1922, pp. 553–555. Original Sources. 29 Mar. 2024. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=PW637DN354R33MK.

Harvard: , 'Orders for the Massacre of Mac Ian MacDonald of Glencoe and His Clan (February 12, 1692)' in Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England. cited in 1922, Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources: Intended to Illustrate a Short History of England, ed. , Ginn, 1935, Boston, pp.553–555. Original Sources, retrieved 29 March 2024, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=PW637DN354R33MK.