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The Macgregors, scattered as they were, lived mostly just north of the Lowlands, in Balquidder and the country north of Loch Lomond. Rob as a young man lived under the protection of the Duke of Montrose, and followed the trade of cattle-dealer, while himself also farming on a small scale. Inasmuch as there was a cash economy in the Highlands, it depended on the export of black cattle to the Lowlands and to England, and Rob did well for some years. But in 1712 he ran into financial difficulties, and cheated his clients. (Professor Stevenson is in no doubt about this.) He was made bankrupt, Montrose being one of his creditors.
Henceforth Rob made private war on Montrose. He found an ally and protector in the Duke of Argyll, chief of the Clan Campbell, for the two dukes were political rivals and in any case the Campbells and the Grahams had old scores to settle. Argyll, like other great men, found it useful to have a man like Rob, who was not too careful of the law, at his disposal. If Rob was a mafioso, Argyll was a gran’ mafioso. Each found the connection to his advantage.
Rob practised blackmail: that is, what we should now call a protection racket. It has at least this justification: that, since he had no monopoly of violence, he might actually be called upon to offer real protection to farmers and landowners. In general, however, the knowledge that the cattle on a farm or estate were being protected by Rob would deter competitors.
He professed himself a Jacobite, as the Macgregors mostly were, and so cast a veneer of political commitment over his activities. But whatever his true sentiments, which were probably shifting, Rob was canny enough to play both sides. Indeed this was only expedient: Argyll, after all, was a Whig and Hanoverian.
Not surprisingly, his conduct in the Rising of 1715 was equivocal; he joined the Jacobite army led, incompetently, by the Earl of Mar, and acted as its guide on their march south from Perth to Dunblane. His men did some raiding around Loch Lomond, but he stood off at the battle of Sherrifmuir. In the words of a contemporary ballad:
Rob Roy he stood watch
On a hill for to catch
The booty, for aught that I saw, man;
For he ne’er advanced
From the place where he stanc’d
Till nae mair was to do there at a’, man.
Ten years later, when General Wade was engaged in pacifying the Highlands, Rob made submission and wrote excusing his conduct. He would never have joined the Jacobites if it hadn’t been for the fact that Montrose was pursuing him for an alleged debt. If he had not been afraid of arrest should he come south of the Highlands, he would have attached himself to the Hanoverian army. As it was, though with the Jacobites, he had sent Argyll, the government commander, information about their strength and movements. In short, though he didn’t put it like this, he had cannily played both sides. His submission was accepted. He died in his bed, a man of property again. His sons, lacking his intelligence and charm and no more scrupulous, were less fortunate. One was hanged, another died in miserable exile, distrusted by all; this one, James More Macgregor, was the father of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Catriona.
Professor Stevenson has written an admirable biography, a work of scholarship which is also entertaining. He scotches some of the myths, and there is now probably very little to be known about Rob Roy beyond what he sets forth. His book neither whitewashes nor debunks Rob, for whom evidently he has formed some affection. But beside it, you should still read Scott.
John Donald/Berlinn, West Newington House, 10 Newington Road, Edinburgh EH 9 1 QS
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