THE MACDONALDS OF KEPPOCH

BADGB : Fraoch gorm (erica vulgaris) common heath.

SLOGAN : Dia s Naomh Aindrea.

PIBROCH : Ceapach na fasaich, and Blar Mhaol rua.

AN interesting subject for the pen of the Scottish historical student would be the mass of evil consequences, extending for centuries afterwards, which flowed from the moral indiscretion of Robert II., first of the Stewart kings. As a warrior and a statesman the Stewart was in every way worthy of his grandfather, King Robert the Bruce. It was his private conduct, in the matter of his conjugal relationships, which entailed such endless woes upon his descendants and upon Scotland. Though legitimated by a Papal dispensation in 1347, eight years before his second marriage, there can be no question that the Stewarts early connection with Elizabeth Mure of Rowallan was irregular. Out of this fact arose the claim of the children of his later marriage with Euphemia Ross, the Earls of Strathearn and Atholl, to be the proper heirs of the Crown, a claim which brought about the assassination of James I. and the terrible Douglas Wars against James II. At the same time, by their own acts the children of Elizabeth Mure brought a heritage of woe on Scotland. The eldest son, John, ascended the throne as Robert III., but the third son, the ambitious, able Robert, Duke of Albany, ruled the country, secured the death of Robert III.s elder son, by starvation, at Falkland, and the capture and long imprisonment of the kings second son, afterwards James I., by the English, for which betrayal a fearful nemesis was suffered by his own son and grandsons on Stirling heading hill. Elizabeth Mures fourth son was the savage Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, better known as the Wolf of Badenoch,

vhose defiance of the laws of God and man kept the rthern half of Scotland in fire and bloodshed for more

•nan twenty years. To mention only one other of the twenty-one children of Robert II., his eldest daughter

Margaret, who was married to John, Lord of the Isles,

35o, carried with her what seems to have been nothing

s than a curse. To make way for her, the Lord of the

Isles set aside his first wife, Amy MacRuari, with her





children, and from that day the misfortunes of the great House of the Isles began, and the downfall of the whole race of Macdonald. It was Margaret Stewarts son, Donald of the Isles, who married a sister of the Earl of Ross, and on that Earls death claimed the Earldom. This was claimed also by his uncle, Robert, Duke of Albany, for his own younger son. To assert his claim Donald, in 1411, marched across Scotland and fought the bloody battle of Harlaw, where he was defeated by his cousin, Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, eldest natural son of the Wolf of Badenoch. It is true that in 1431 the tables were turned, when the same Earl of Mar was defeated by the Islesmen, under Donald Balloch, in the fierce battle of Inverlochy; but the victory brought down upon Alexander, the next Lord of the Isles, Margaret Stewarts grandson, condign punishment at the hands of his other cousin, King James I., and the misfortunes of the house went from less to more, till in 1493 John, fourth and last Lord of the Isles, died a forfeited and landless man in Paisley Abbey or Dundee.

In these matters the Macdonalds of Keppoch shared the misfortunes of the great House of the Isles from which they had sprung. Their ancestor was Alastair, third son of John, Lord of the Isles, and Margaret Stewart, daughter of King Robert II. Angus Og, the father of John of the Isles, who figures as the hero in Scotts poem, had received from King Robert the Bruce, as a reward for loyal support, the lands of Morven, Ardnamurchan, and Lochaber, forfeited by his kinsmen the MacDougals of Lome, and John of the Isles made his third son Lord of Lochaber. In a deed of 1398 Alastair is termed Mag-incus vir et potens," and for three hundred years his

cendants were known as the race of Alastair Carraich s not till ..