power of this aspiring family reached the
zenith. The Marquess of Argyle was the head of a party as well as the
head of a tribe. Possessed of two different kinds of authority, he
used each of them in such a way as to extend and fortify the other.
The knowledge that he could bring into the field the claymores of five
thousand half heathen mountaineers added to his influence among the
austere Presbyterians who filled the Privy Council and the General
Assembly at Edinburgh. His influence at Edinburgh added to the terror
which he inspired among the mountains. Of all the Highland princes whose
history is well known to us he was the greatest and most dreaded. It was
while his neighbours were watching the increase of his power with hatred
which fear could scarcely keep down that Montrose called them to arms.
The call was promptly obeyed. A powerful coalition of clans waged war,
nominally for King Charles, but really against Mac Callum More. It is
not easy for any person who has studied the history of that contest
to doubt that, if Argyle had supported the cause of monarchy, his
neighbours would have declared against it. Grave writers tell of the
victory gained at Inverlochy by the royalists over the rebels. But the
peasants who dwell near the spot speak more accurately. They talk of the
great battle won there by the Macdonalds over the Campbells.

The feelings which had produced the coalition against the Marquess
of Argyle retained their force long after his death. His son, Earl
Archibald, though a man of many eminent virtues, inherited, with the
ascendancy of his ancestors, the unpopularity which such ascendancy
could scarcely fail to produce. In 1675, several warlike tribes formed
a confederacy against him, but were compelled to submit to the superior
force which was at his command. There was therefore great joy from sea
to sea when, in 1681, he was arraigned on a futile charge, condemned to
death, driven into exile, and deprived of his dignities. There was great
alarm when, in 1685, he returned from banishment, and sent forth the
fiery cross to summon his kinsmen to his standard; and there was again
great joy when his enterprise had failed, when his army had melted away,
when his head had been fixed on the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and when
those chiefs who had regarded him as an oppressor had obtained from the
Crown, on easy terms, remissions of old debts and grants of new titles.
While England and Scotland generally were exec