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The King, on hearing the news of the failure of his schemes to colonise Lewis, was beside himself. His dreams of filling his coffers from that quarter disintegrated before his eyes. No sooner were the hostages released and safely back in Fife than preparations were begun to repossess the Island of Lewis. So much for the guarantees given to the Macleods. So much for the ‘civilised’ societies of the South.
In June 1602 a Convention of the Estates was appointed and they met at Perth on the 26th. It was proposed that an army be sent to Lewis to retake the Island. The King asked that a subsidy of £20,000 be raised by the Church and the Boroughs to finance this mission. He pleaded with the assembled Convention that it was “inconsistent with his honour to submit to the indignities which he had suffered at the hands of the barbarous Lewismen….that the people of England were saying that a King who could not rule a handful of people like the inhabitants of Lewis was not fit to govern them.” After all, had not their Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth, defeated the Spanish Armada.
The King’s request for more money to finance his scheme did not go down well with his audience. They were happy to endorse his violent outbursts against the Islanders, they would praise the Adventurers and curse the Islanders to his heart’s content, but on the question of providing for more supplies they were determined that no more of the Nation’s money would be spent on what they had concluded, deep down, was a hare-brained scheme unlikely to be any more successful than the first. He even stooped to suggesting that fake coinage be produced to pay the soldiers, a suggestion that the Convention, to their credit, rejected.
The matter then passed into the hands of the Privy Council, a body with a more pliant backbone. It was agreed that the Highland Chiefs call out their Clans in the North of Scotland to assist the Marquis of Huntly in retaking Lewis for the Adventurers. There was some discussion about the wisdom of choosing Huntly for the task, being, as he was, a confirmed Roman Catholic. A distinction, by the way, that mattered little to the Lewismen. Papist or Protestant, if they came, would be given the same short shrift.
On the 19th July 1602 a proclamation was issued calling out an armed force in the North to subdue the Islanders. The preamble to the proclamation was full of the usual uncomplimentary vitriol, but now it was felt necessary to scrape foreign parts to find a parallel to the wickedness of the Islanders; “their monstrous cruelties were such as has not been heard of even amongst the Turks or the Infidels”
As the gathering of an army was under way in the North, where signs of reluctance to participate were met with threats of forfeiture of lands, even death, the Adventurers themselves were beginning to lose heart. They had to be threatened and cajoled to persevere with the venture.
Meanwhile back in the Isles, Tormod and Neil Macleod, having taken on good faith the guarantees of their rights to the Island given to them by the Adventurers and via them from the King, reverted to their old ways. Local squabbles among the various branches of the family resumed. The Macleods of Harris and the Macleods of Skye, never ones to let the opportunity for a good fight pass them by, also pitched in. Those ‘negotiations’ usually involved confrontations invariably resulting in serious bloodshed. Occasional raids and piracies on the mainland were undertaken to add a bit of spice and variety.
The Mackenzies of Kintail and the Macdonnells of Glengarry, squabbling over territory, resumed hostilities with a vengeance, culminating in the Castle of Strome, the last remaining stronghold of the Macdonnells in Wester Ross, being blown up. This left the Mackenzies the main force and the most influential Clan in the Northwest.
For various reasons the Northern Chiefs found it inconvenient to undertake the expedition against Lewis that autumn and the King finally relented and postponed it until the spring of 1603.
And so it was that on 3rd March 1603 the partners in the Adventurers’ syndicate were ordered to hire thirty soldiers each, stock up with a years’ supply of provisions and start preparing to set off for Lewis. Orders were issued for the Northern Chiefs to prepare with their forces to their points of rendezvous ready to assist the Adventurers as necessary. About three weeks later providence intervened and an event occurred that drove all thoughts of Lewis clean out of the King’s head and all preparations for the proposed invasion of Lewis were halted.
On the 24th March, Queen Elizabeth I of England was dead and King James VI of Scotland became King James I of Great Britain and Ireland. This one final act by an English Queen was the greatest service she could have ever done from the point of view of the Islanders of Lewis who would otherwise have been annihilated by their own King and so called fellow countrymen.
Lewis had got a reprieve; Island life carried on as usual as the threat of invasion evaporated. It wasn’t until July 1605 that the King’s attention refocused on the Isles. On the 18th a Commission was appointed and proclamations were issued with all the usual threats and slanderous tirades.
Sir James Spens of Wormiston, Sir George Hay of Netherliff, and Sir Thomas Ker of Hirth were appointed to act as the King's Justices and Commissioners in Lewis for a year, "with full power to convocate the lieges in arms, to seize and search any persons in the island whom they might suspect of crime, and to detain them pending trial". Courts of Justice were to be set up in convenient places. Power was given to "pursue fugitives from the law who might take refuge in strongholds and to seize them by force, not sparing the use of fire or any warlike engine in reducing their strengths". There would be no repercussions however violent the measures used in apprehending the fugitives were.
Macleod of Harris, Donald Gorm Macleod of Sleat, Macneill of Barra, and Mackinnon of Strathswordale were also ordered to disarm and surrender their castles. Owners of galleys, birlings and boats were ordered to sail them to Loch Broom and surrender them so that they would not pose a threat to the King’s Navy, which was also to be deployed with orders to employ ‘ordinance, powder and bullets’ to assist the Commissioners.
Lewismen in particular were to be ostracised and "shown no comfort, countenance or relief for being avowed enemies of the King who violently expelled his peaceful subjects and entrusted the Island to themselves, where they now live most lasciviously and insolently. The King deems it inconsistent with his honour to suffer such an infamous wasps nest of lawless vagabonds to remain in any part of his dominions, seeing he has the power to root them out". Failure to comply with those instructions was to be taken as consorting with the Lewismen and would result in severe penalties.
In August 1605 the expedition set sail for Lewis. The military force accompanying the expedition was joined in the North by Mackenzie of Kintail, Donald Gorm of Sleat, and Mackay of Strathnaver. The Earl of Sutherland sent a body of men under the Chief of the Clan Gunn.
On their arrival off the coast of Lewis they sent Tormod Macleod a message offering surrender terms. They promised to pardon him for his past offences against the first expedition and upsetting the peace of the realm. He would be free to go to the King in London and they would put up no objections to his attempts at gaining favour and a means of securing for himself a livelihood. Realising that resistance would be futile against such a force he agreed to the terms. Neil, who was more wary of taking the Lowlanders’ word but sensible enough to realise that resistance would be pointless, took his Lewismen and withdrew to places of safety, there to bide their time.
Tormod went off to London and met the King. It is said that the King was greatly impressed by this Islesman, here in front of him was a young Highland Chief of modest and gallant bearing, who was not at all the barbarian he was led to expect. Friends of the Adventurers at Court, fearful that Tormod was creating a favourable impression that might even result in restoring the status quo on Lewis, began to poison the King’s mind against him. They were successful in their attempts; Tormod was expelled from Court, sent back to Edinburgh, where he was imprisoned for ten years. So much for the word of the Honourable Company of Adventurers.
Tormod was never to see his native land again. He was granted a pardon in 1615; went to Holland to serve in the army of the Prince of Orange and ended his days there. Whether or not he had any children isn’t known, if he did then his descendants would now be Dutchmen who probably never heard of the Island of Lewis. It is ironic that before the century’s end another Prince of Orange would come to England with an army, probably trained in methods of warfare originally taught by Tormod Macleod, and would kick another King James off the English and Scottish throne.
The Gentlemen Adventurers and the colonists set about building their colony at Stornoway. Thinking that they were safe enough after Tormod’s departure, by November they had sent the greater part of the forces they brought with them back home, retaining just their own detachment of mercenaries to protect the colonists.
During the winter months Neil began raiding the settlements of the colonists. Rumours that a large scale attack by the Islanders was being planned, aided by Macleods from the mainland, was circulated among them to keep them permanently on edge. Through the spring and summer and the following winter the attacks and raids continued. No sooner would the colonists build their houses than the Islesmen would attack and cause serious damage and hamper progress any way they could. Mackenzie of Kintail was supposed to have been given a commission around this time to maintain the peace but he appears to have been doing very little to ease the lot of the colonists, it being in his interest to see them fail. It was rumoured that he was making things worse.
By March 1607 the colonists just about had enough. At the risk of repetition, suffice to say, the King was at the end of his tether. The Marquis of Huntly was again commissioned to go and sort the Lewismen out. The Council in Edinburgh were ordered to accept any demands the Marquis of Huntly may make in return for pacifying the Islands. The commission given to Huntly was to be carried out by any means necessary within a year and not ended by "agreement of the country people, but by the extirpation of same".
Huntly agreed without hesitation to extirpate the whole population of the Isles within a year. In addition he was to undertake the extirpation of the whole of Clan Ranald, all the Macneils of Barra, the inhabitants of Knoydart and Moidart and the whole of the Clan Donald in the North.
All over the Islands and Western Highlands, on hearing of their imminent extermination, preparations were being made to defend themselves and the extent and severity of Huntly’s remit served to bring them together. It also caused the pressure on the colonists to be ratcheted up, and hastened their demise.
The feu duty and rents that Huntly was prepared to pay once he had got his hands on the Islands was too low at £400 to be acceptable to the Council in Edinburgh who asked for £10,000 and this became the sticking point that scuppered the deal and prevented the second of the King’s attempts at mass murder being put into practice.
All of a sudden the King and the Council caused the fact that Huntly was a Catholic to be brought up and used it against him. The Gunpowder Plot by disenchanted Catholics to blow up the King and the House of Lords on 5th November 1605 was still fresh in peoples’ minds. Catholics were not flavour of the month to start with and a Catholic boldly resisting the King’s wishes was considered foolhardy to say the least. The forces of the Kirk were let loose on him. He was charged with "failure to attend the services of the Kirk, and teaching his family doctrines and tenets opposed to Presbyterianism". His punishment was to remain within eighteen miles of the borough of Elgin and hold himself ready to listen to the sermons of Presbyterian ministers. However much those sermons benefited Huntly, they were a lifesaver to the Islesmen even though they never heard them.
The Adventurers, thus isolated, were doomed; their colony was burnt to the ground. Those who survived fled back to the Lowlands grateful that they escaped with their lives. By the end of September 1607 they were back in the Lowlands. Lewis reverted to its internal ‘friendly familial’ pursuits.
So ended the second attempt at colonising the Western Isles. Will it be third time lucky? Don’t miss the next exciting episode.
In June 1602 a Convention of the Estates was appointed and they met at Perth on the 26th. It was proposed that an army be sent to Lewis to retake the Island. The King asked that a subsidy of £20,000 be raised by the Church and the Boroughs to finance this mission. He pleaded with the assembled Convention that it was “inconsistent with his honour to submit to the indignities which he had suffered at the hands of the barbarous Lewismen….that the people of England were saying that a King who could not rule a handful of people like the inhabitants of Lewis was not fit to govern them.” After all, had not their Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth, defeated the Spanish Armada.
The King’s request for more money to finance his scheme did not go down well with his audience. They were happy to endorse his violent outbursts against the Islanders, they would praise the Adventurers and curse the Islanders to his heart’s content, but on the question of providing for more supplies they were determined that no more of the Nation’s money would be spent on what they had concluded, deep down, was a hare-brained scheme unlikely to be any more successful than the first. He even stooped to suggesting that fake coinage be produced to pay the soldiers, a suggestion that the Convention, to their credit, rejected.
The matter then passed into the hands of the Privy Council, a body with a more pliant backbone. It was agreed that the Highland Chiefs call out their Clans in the North of Scotland to assist the Marquis of Huntly in retaking Lewis for the Adventurers. There was some discussion about the wisdom of choosing Huntly for the task, being, as he was, a confirmed Roman Catholic. A distinction, by the way, that mattered little to the Lewismen. Papist or Protestant, if they came, would be given the same short shrift.
On the 19th July 1602 a proclamation was issued calling out an armed force in the North to subdue the Islanders. The preamble to the proclamation was full of the usual uncomplimentary vitriol, but now it was felt necessary to scrape foreign parts to find a parallel to the wickedness of the Islanders; “their monstrous cruelties were such as has not been heard of even amongst the Turks or the Infidels”
As the gathering of an army was under way in the North, where signs of reluctance to participate were met with threats of forfeiture of lands, even death, the Adventurers themselves were beginning to lose heart. They had to be threatened and cajoled to persevere with the venture.
Meanwhile back in the Isles, Tormod and Neil Macleod, having taken on good faith the guarantees of their rights to the Island given to them by the Adventurers and via them from the King, reverted to their old ways. Local squabbles among the various branches of the family resumed. The Macleods of Harris and the Macleods of Skye, never ones to let the opportunity for a good fight pass them by, also pitched in. Those ‘negotiations’ usually involved confrontations invariably resulting in serious bloodshed. Occasional raids and piracies on the mainland were undertaken to add a bit of spice and variety.
The Mackenzies of Kintail and the Macdonnells of Glengarry, squabbling over territory, resumed hostilities with a vengeance, culminating in the Castle of Strome, the last remaining stronghold of the Macdonnells in Wester Ross, being blown up. This left the Mackenzies the main force and the most influential Clan in the Northwest.
For various reasons the Northern Chiefs found it inconvenient to undertake the expedition against Lewis that autumn and the King finally relented and postponed it until the spring of 1603.
And so it was that on 3rd March 1603 the partners in the Adventurers’ syndicate were ordered to hire thirty soldiers each, stock up with a years’ supply of provisions and start preparing to set off for Lewis. Orders were issued for the Northern Chiefs to prepare with their forces to their points of rendezvous ready to assist the Adventurers as necessary. About three weeks later providence intervened and an event occurred that drove all thoughts of Lewis clean out of the King’s head and all preparations for the proposed invasion of Lewis were halted.
On the 24th March, Queen Elizabeth I of England was dead and King James VI of Scotland became King James I of Great Britain and Ireland. This one final act by an English Queen was the greatest service she could have ever done from the point of view of the Islanders of Lewis who would otherwise have been annihilated by their own King and so called fellow countrymen.
Lewis had got a reprieve; Island life carried on as usual as the threat of invasion evaporated. It wasn’t until July 1605 that the King’s attention refocused on the Isles. On the 18th a Commission was appointed and proclamations were issued with all the usual threats and slanderous tirades.
Sir James Spens of Wormiston, Sir George Hay of Netherliff, and Sir Thomas Ker of Hirth were appointed to act as the King's Justices and Commissioners in Lewis for a year, "with full power to convocate the lieges in arms, to seize and search any persons in the island whom they might suspect of crime, and to detain them pending trial". Courts of Justice were to be set up in convenient places. Power was given to "pursue fugitives from the law who might take refuge in strongholds and to seize them by force, not sparing the use of fire or any warlike engine in reducing their strengths". There would be no repercussions however violent the measures used in apprehending the fugitives were.
Macleod of Harris, Donald Gorm Macleod of Sleat, Macneill of Barra, and Mackinnon of Strathswordale were also ordered to disarm and surrender their castles. Owners of galleys, birlings and boats were ordered to sail them to Loch Broom and surrender them so that they would not pose a threat to the King’s Navy, which was also to be deployed with orders to employ ‘ordinance, powder and bullets’ to assist the Commissioners.
Lewismen in particular were to be ostracised and "shown no comfort, countenance or relief for being avowed enemies of the King who violently expelled his peaceful subjects and entrusted the Island to themselves, where they now live most lasciviously and insolently. The King deems it inconsistent with his honour to suffer such an infamous wasps nest of lawless vagabonds to remain in any part of his dominions, seeing he has the power to root them out". Failure to comply with those instructions was to be taken as consorting with the Lewismen and would result in severe penalties.
In August 1605 the expedition set sail for Lewis. The military force accompanying the expedition was joined in the North by Mackenzie of Kintail, Donald Gorm of Sleat, and Mackay of Strathnaver. The Earl of Sutherland sent a body of men under the Chief of the Clan Gunn.
On their arrival off the coast of Lewis they sent Tormod Macleod a message offering surrender terms. They promised to pardon him for his past offences against the first expedition and upsetting the peace of the realm. He would be free to go to the King in London and they would put up no objections to his attempts at gaining favour and a means of securing for himself a livelihood. Realising that resistance would be futile against such a force he agreed to the terms. Neil, who was more wary of taking the Lowlanders’ word but sensible enough to realise that resistance would be pointless, took his Lewismen and withdrew to places of safety, there to bide their time.
Tormod went off to London and met the King. It is said that the King was greatly impressed by this Islesman, here in front of him was a young Highland Chief of modest and gallant bearing, who was not at all the barbarian he was led to expect. Friends of the Adventurers at Court, fearful that Tormod was creating a favourable impression that might even result in restoring the status quo on Lewis, began to poison the King’s mind against him. They were successful in their attempts; Tormod was expelled from Court, sent back to Edinburgh, where he was imprisoned for ten years. So much for the word of the Honourable Company of Adventurers.
Tormod was never to see his native land again. He was granted a pardon in 1615; went to Holland to serve in the army of the Prince of Orange and ended his days there. Whether or not he had any children isn’t known, if he did then his descendants would now be Dutchmen who probably never heard of the Island of Lewis. It is ironic that before the century’s end another Prince of Orange would come to England with an army, probably trained in methods of warfare originally taught by Tormod Macleod, and would kick another King James off the English and Scottish throne.
The Gentlemen Adventurers and the colonists set about building their colony at Stornoway. Thinking that they were safe enough after Tormod’s departure, by November they had sent the greater part of the forces they brought with them back home, retaining just their own detachment of mercenaries to protect the colonists.
During the winter months Neil began raiding the settlements of the colonists. Rumours that a large scale attack by the Islanders was being planned, aided by Macleods from the mainland, was circulated among them to keep them permanently on edge. Through the spring and summer and the following winter the attacks and raids continued. No sooner would the colonists build their houses than the Islesmen would attack and cause serious damage and hamper progress any way they could. Mackenzie of Kintail was supposed to have been given a commission around this time to maintain the peace but he appears to have been doing very little to ease the lot of the colonists, it being in his interest to see them fail. It was rumoured that he was making things worse.
By March 1607 the colonists just about had enough. At the risk of repetition, suffice to say, the King was at the end of his tether. The Marquis of Huntly was again commissioned to go and sort the Lewismen out. The Council in Edinburgh were ordered to accept any demands the Marquis of Huntly may make in return for pacifying the Islands. The commission given to Huntly was to be carried out by any means necessary within a year and not ended by "agreement of the country people, but by the extirpation of same".
Huntly agreed without hesitation to extirpate the whole population of the Isles within a year. In addition he was to undertake the extirpation of the whole of Clan Ranald, all the Macneils of Barra, the inhabitants of Knoydart and Moidart and the whole of the Clan Donald in the North.
All over the Islands and Western Highlands, on hearing of their imminent extermination, preparations were being made to defend themselves and the extent and severity of Huntly’s remit served to bring them together. It also caused the pressure on the colonists to be ratcheted up, and hastened their demise.
The feu duty and rents that Huntly was prepared to pay once he had got his hands on the Islands was too low at £400 to be acceptable to the Council in Edinburgh who asked for £10,000 and this became the sticking point that scuppered the deal and prevented the second of the King’s attempts at mass murder being put into practice.
All of a sudden the King and the Council caused the fact that Huntly was a Catholic to be brought up and used it against him. The Gunpowder Plot by disenchanted Catholics to blow up the King and the House of Lords on 5th November 1605 was still fresh in peoples’ minds. Catholics were not flavour of the month to start with and a Catholic boldly resisting the King’s wishes was considered foolhardy to say the least. The forces of the Kirk were let loose on him. He was charged with "failure to attend the services of the Kirk, and teaching his family doctrines and tenets opposed to Presbyterianism". His punishment was to remain within eighteen miles of the borough of Elgin and hold himself ready to listen to the sermons of Presbyterian ministers. However much those sermons benefited Huntly, they were a lifesaver to the Islesmen even though they never heard them.
The Adventurers, thus isolated, were doomed; their colony was burnt to the ground. Those who survived fled back to the Lowlands grateful that they escaped with their lives. By the end of September 1607 they were back in the Lowlands. Lewis reverted to its internal ‘friendly familial’ pursuits.
So ended the second attempt at colonising the Western Isles. Will it be third time lucky? Don’t miss the next exciting episode.
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