INTRODUCTION
[xvii] The Family of Grant of Grant have been for ages the recognised chiefs of their numerous and powerful clan - a clan which have been long distinguished for devoted loyalty and attachment to their lawful sovereigns. Strathspey is the country of the Grants. So much were they identified with the great Strath and its magnificent river, that King Charles the Second desired to confer a peerage on the distinguished chief of the Grants, James Grant of Freuchie, under the title of EARL OF STRATHSPEY and LORD GRANT OF FREUCHIE. While the patent of the peerage was in preparation, the sudden death of the chief defeated the intention of the King, but the honour was not lost to the family; it was only deferred. After the lapse of nearly two centuries, in the course of which the power and influence of the family had been greatly increased by their acquisition of the dignities and estates of the Earls of Seafield, Her Majesty Queen Victoria conferred the title of BARON STRATHSPEY OF STRATHSPEY, as a peerage of the United Kingdom, upon the late lamented chief of the Grants, the lineal male descendant of the intended Earl of Strathspey. No more appropriate title could have been bestowed. It was hailed with delight by the whole members of the Grant Clan as an honour done to their chief and themselves, and on that auspicious occasion the hearts of the men of Strathspey were stirred as only Highland hearts can be.He it was who first resolved to carry out the design of preserving an enduring record of his family and their muniments. He was pleased to commit to me the task of editing the work, in which during its progress he took much interest, and it will always be matter of regret that it was not completed in his lifetime. This regret is somewhat lessened by the recollection that two of the volumes - those embracing the Charters and [xviii] Correspondence - were so far completed as to allow of their being submitted to him for inspection several months before his death. All his intercourse with me regarding the work was most pleasant and agreeable, and his large collections of muniments were from the first intrusted to me with the most generous confidence.
According to the strictly chronological order of the history of the Grant Family, from their earliest time to the present, the memoir of the late chief falls to be given towards the close of this volume. But as he was the originator of this work, even at the risk of anticipating what may there be said, it is deemed suitable to pay a tribute to his memory here. Amidst the many panegyrics which his lamented death called forth, we prefer to quote one which could not be swayed by the influence of private friendship. The deep devotion of the people of Strathspey to their late chief, who was regarded more as their father and friend than simply as their landlord, was very strikingly shown at that time. With the deepening sense of a real and heavy bereavement, genuine sorrow and dismay took possession of every heart, and at the closing scene grief alone responded to grief. A stranger, recently settled in the country, has collected very impartially and recorded very happily what he said was the voice of the whole Gaelic-speaking people in the country, in the following remarks:
"The burial which took place at Duthil on Saturday was very different front those at which profusion of undertaker's pomp forms the chief attraction. Lord Seafield's death, before attaining the threescore years and ten, produced a feeling of mourning, as if for a dear friend, among all parties and classes throughout the counties of the North with which he was more immediately connected by property and residence. We have received-and we doubt not our contemporaries have also received - many communications seeking to give expression to the deep and general sense of loss and bereavement. Elsewhere, too, the tributes of commemoration due to one whose life has been beneficial to his country and honourable to himself have been freely bestowed by the organs of public opinion. Not only the northern counties, where he lived, worked, and was best known, but broad Scotland feels with sorrow that a great chief and noble Scotsman has departed from our midst. On Saturday the spontaneous sorrow of overflowing hearts, which neither birth nor station can purchase by all the wealth of the world, surrounded his ancestral place of sepulture in his native Strathspey. From widely separated districts, notwithstanding the extremely inclement weather, hundreds upon hundreds of men who represented burghs, clachans, lonely hill-sides, and distant glens, gathered there to pay to a chief whom they honoured, and a man whom they loved, the last tribute of earthly reverence.
[xix] What was the secret of Lord Seafield's great popularity? We believe it was simple, honest, unostentatious fulfillment of the duties of his high station. He exercised his trust, not so much as a man who could do whatever seemed good in his own eyes, but as a steward responsible for all his actions. He was not a seeker for popularity, and lie probably never knew during his earthly career how much beloved he was, and what a princely and more than princely influence he had secured in his corner of the world. He was an unambitious man, of retiring disposition, who never sought ephemeral laudations by the means which the wealthy can command. Although he had strong convictions, he did not mingle in the conflicts of political life. As heir of the Ogilvies, and hereditary chief of the Grants, birth opened to him the chance of a public career. That was not his line; hut he gained, unsought, a fame as bright as the highest political success could have secured, by the noble use he made of the opportunities which the accident of birth had conferred upon him. He resided on his estates almost all the year round. He knew most of his people and their conditions, and they all knew him and understood his character. He planted, drained, fenced, and farmed as well as the most skilful of his tenants. Among the breeders of Highland cattle, his name became a household word. In all relations of life he was good and true, lie was loyal to the principles of his House and the history of his Clan. He was an elder of the National Church - a Presbyterian of Presbyterians - which counted for much in a country where there is too often for the general well-being and union of classes a religious separation that divides ranks and sympathies. He was a just landlord. His people possessed their minds and holdings in peace and security. The landlord right was tempered by the fine old tie of chiefship and clannishness; and under no circumstances did Lord Seafield himself desire to worry those under hi by tyrannical harshness, or whims of temper and purpose.
Just and kindly-human, but far from lax and careless relations with tenants and dependants; faithful discharge of the duties of a high position; the patriarchal feeling which became the chief of an ancient clan; Scottish community of faith and sentiments with his fellow-Scotsmen-such were the causes which gave the departed peer a deeper hold in the heart of his country than in his modesty perhaps he even imagined, but which his death fully revealed. He enjoyed home-life in the country; he disliked London, and for him the distractions of human life, or the pursuits of vain pleasures, had no allurements. He enjoyed rural avocations, and formed associations with the people whose well-being was bound up with his own. The wild charms of his Highland glens spoke to him in language that went to his heart. lie had not the tongue-gifts of his ancestor the Bard, but he inherited his mind and susceptibilities. So it happened that in the slow course of thirty busy years he grew into a great prince in his own country, and that he never knew of it. The people who say that our land laws are all wrong, and wish to make a clean sweep of them, attack particularly large estates. It is, however, only on such estates that there is full scope for the virtues which Lord Seafield illustrated, and it is pleasing to believe these are still to be found among many of the old families which connect the nineteenth century with the distant past." "Northern Chronicle," Wednesday, March 2, 1881.
[xx] Such in the eyes of his clan and countrymen generally was the late Earl of Seafield.
Ludovick Grant of Grant, the son and successor of James Grant, whom King Charles the Second had designed to make Earl of Strathspey, occupied, as chief of the clan, an influential position in the north of Scotland during his tenure of the Grant estates, extending over the long period of more than half a century. It is recorded that Ludovick took exception to certain measures proposed while James Duke of York was Commissioner to the Parliament of Scotland, and in the Legislative Assembly on one occasion desired that his protest might be recorded, on which the Duke of York remarked that the wishes of his Highland Majesty would be attended to. Laird Ludovick was afterwards popularly known as the "Highland King," and the designation was extended to his successors.
The famous Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, married Margaret Grant, the youngest daughter of the "Highland King." In this way Lovat became the brother-in-law of Sir James Grant of Grant, the son of Ludovick, and the uncle of Sir Ludovick Grant, the son of Sir James. Lovat was in constant correspondence with these relatives, and without anticipating his numerous and characteristic letters, printed in the second volume of this work, we need only notice here his frequent allusions to the regal majesty of the Highland chief. He styles Sir James Grant "the Highland King." Vol. ii. of this work, p. 299. On the occasion of the marriage of Sir James's son, Ludovick Grant, and Lady Margaret Ogilvie, eldest daughter of James, fifth Earl of Findlater and Seafield, Lovat was profuse in his congratulations. Amidst many other things he says in a letter to the bridegroom: "May the offspring of your body and hers be great, numerous, and flourishing, and may they reign in Strathspey, and in your other territories, as long as there is a stone subsisting in Castle Grant, or a drop of water in the river of Spey." Ibid. p. 336. In letters of a later date, when the offspring of the union had increased, his Lordship alludes to "the good Lady Margaret, and the young Palatine of Strathspey and the Infanta", Ibid. p. 369. the designation Palatine of Strathspey being occasionally diversified with that of Prince of Strathspey, [xxi] in fact, the allusion to the children of Sir Ludovick Grant as princes and infantas of Strathspey became habitual with Lord Lovat. Vol. ii. of this work, pp. 377, 391, 392, 395, 397, 399, 407.
Too much importance will not be attached to the letters of Simon Lord Lovat by those who are acquainted with his peculiar style. It was his wont to indulge in expressions of admiration, and even adulation, towards such of his friends as he particularly fancied. But, making allowance for his partiality to special friends or near relations, his letters strengthen the evidence of the prominence and power of the chiefs of Grant in the highlands, 'arid especially in the wide district of Strathspey, which had long been peopled so exclusively by the clan, that no landowner held possessions there who did not bear the name of Grant. When, about the middle of last century, Baron Grant of Elchies proposed to sell his estate in Strathspey, Sir Ludovick Grant was anxious to secure it, either for himself or one of the clan. In a letter to his law-agent he wrote that he wished to preserve all the lands lying between the two Craigellachies in the name of Grant. These two rocky eminences are conspicuous objects in Strathspey. The upper or western Craigellachie forms the dividing boundary between Badenoch and Strathspey, and was the rendezvous for the Grant clan in time of war. The lower Craigellachie stands at the confluence of the Fiddich with the Spey, and forms the point of contact of the four parishes of Aberlour, Knockando, Rothes, and Boharm. The upper Craigellachie is generally supposed to have furnished the crest of the Grant family, which is a mountain in flames. When the chief wished the clan to assemble, fires were kindled on both Craigellachies, hence the name, "Rock of alarm." The war-cry of the clan was Stand Fast, Craigellachie, and their armorial motto is the same. So much were the Grants identified with these crags, that Lord Lovat frequently commenced his letters to his brother-in-law, the Laird of Grant, "My dear Craigellachie," and Sir James Grant himself, in writing to his brother-in-law, Colonel Grant of Ballindalloch, occasionally adopted "Craigellachie" as his signature. Letters in Ballindalloch Charter-chest. In "A Cry from Craigellachie," the accomplished author, Principal Shairp of St. Andrews, describes his feelings on his first journey by the Highland Railway which sweeps past Craigellachie: [xxii]Grisly storm-resounding Badenoch,
With grey boulders scattered o'er,
And cairns of forgotten battles,
Is a wilderness no more.
Ha! we start the ancient silence,
Thundering down the long incline,
On Strathspey and Rothiemurchus
Forests of primeval pine.
Boar of Badenoch! Sow of Athole!
Hill by hill behind we cast
Rock and craig and moorland reeling,
Scarce Craigellachie stands fast.
Although the Grant family have been so long connected with Strathspey, it was not the original country of the Grants. Their first known territorial designation was Lords of Stratherrick, from a district in the county of Inverness, now part of the Lovat estates. At an early period they acquired the lands of Inverallan in Strathspey, and about the middle and end of the fifteenth century added to their possessions Freuchie and Glencarnie. Vol. iii. of this work, 22, 41, 43. The title of Grants of Freuchie, with the occasional local designation of Lairds of Grant, continued in the family for ten generations, from 1450 to 1694, when Ludovick Grant, the "Highland King," having obtained a Crown charter erecting his lands into the regality of Grant, dropped the territorial designation of Freuchie, and adopted that of Grant of Grant, by which his descendants continued to be known until they succeeded to the title and dignity of Earl of Seafield.
The personal history of the successive chiefs of the Family of Grant, contained in their memoirs, will be rendered more intelligible, as well as more interesting, by a short account of the lands and baronies which the Grants from time to time acquired in Stratherrick and Strathspey, the latter of these districts, as we have said, having been long popularly known as the COUNTRY OF THE GRANTS.
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Volume I Introduction (i) |
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