t of the maintenance of a predatory war against the
Duke of Montrose, whom he considered as the author of his exclusion from
civil society, and of the outlawry to which he had been sentenced by
letters of horning and caption (legal writs so called), as well as the
seizure of his goods, and adjudication of his landed property. Against
his Grace, therefore, his tenants, friends, allies, and relatives, he
disposed himself to employ every means of annoyance in his power; and
though this was a circle sufficiently extensive for active depredation,
Rob, who professed himself a Jacobite, took the liberty of extending his
sphere of operations against all whom he chose to consider as friendly to
the revolutionary government, or to that most obnoxious of measures--the
Union of the Kingdoms. Under one or other of these pretexts, all his
neighbours of the Lowlands who had anything to lose, or were unwilling to
compound for security by paying him an annual sum for protection or
forbearance, were exposed to his ravages.

The country in which this private warfare, or system of depredation, was
to be carried on, was, until opened up by roads, in the highest degree
favourable for his purpose. It was broken up into narrow valleys, the
habitable part of which bore no proportion to the huge wildernesses of
forest, rocks, and precipices by which they were encircled, and which
was, moreover, full of inextricable passes, morasses, and natural
strengths, unknown to any but the inhabitants themselves, where a few men
acquainted with the ground were capable, with ordinary address, of
baffling the pursuit of numbers.

The opinions and habits of the nearest neighbours to the Highland line
were also highly favourable to Rob Roy's purpose. A large proportion of
them were of his own clan of MacGregor, who claimed the property of
Balquhidder, and other Highland districts, as having been part of the
ancient possessions of their tribe; though the harsh laws, under the
severity of which they had suffered so deeply, had assigned the ownership
to other families. The civil wars of the seventeenth century had
accustomed these men to the use of arms, and they were peculiarly brave
and fierce from remembrance of their sufferings. The vicinity of a
comparatively rich Lowland district gave also great temptations to
incursion. Many belonging to other clans, habituated to contempt of
industry, and to the use of arms, drew towards an unprotected frontier
which prom