In the scene recounted by George Borrow, Rob Roy MacGregor entered the inn of Chapel-Arroch, near Aberfoyle, to the sound of bagpipes. Graham of Orchil, factor to the Duke of Montrose, was dining there with several gentlemen after collecting the rents. Rob laid his claymore upon the floor to signify that he came in peace, then seated himself at the board. He had already posted twenty men in the neighboring wood. They were awaiting a signal.
During the repast, Rob watched the factor deposit the gathered monies into a bag. When the dishes were cleared, he commanded the piper to strike up an air once more. Six men entered, their broadswords bared. Rob demanded the coin he claimed was rightfully his. Orchil yielded it; Rob handed him a receipt. Rob likewise held the factor complicit in the loss of his lands and was resolved to punish him. The factor was carried off to an island on Loch Katrine and detained there for several weeks. Upon his release, Rob forbade him to collect further rents throughout the district, intending to assume that office himself.
The tale Borrow attaches to this act begins with a ruined venture and a contested title of ownership. Rob had engaged in the cattle trade with an associate to whom he entrusted a considerable sum. The man vanished with the money. To cover his losses, Rob conveyed his lands to the Duke of Montrose, under condition that he might redeem them upon reimbursing the advance. When his fortunes mended, he offered to tender the payment. Montrose, according to Borrow, refused to receive it; legal proceedings thereupon transferred the estate to the Duke. In this version of the affair, Rob viewed that refusal as a gross injustice. The factor who collected the rents became, in his eyes, the instrument of this dispossession. His receipt asserted a right; the drawn sword that accompanied it rendered it extortion.
To understand why a man of gentle birth treated rents as disputed spoil, Borrow turns back to the history of the clan. The MacGregors had suffered an act of proscription that outlawed their very name and exposed its bearers to relentless pursuit. The author condemns the severity of this statute, while acknowledging that clan warfare was inextricably bound with cattle reiving. Robert MacGregor, surnamed Roy by his kin because of his red hair, had initially lived by trading herds. In 1703, a deed designated him as Robert Campbell of Inversnaid; among his clan, he remained Rob Roy.
The loss of his patrimony did not transform him into a disinterested righter of wrongs. Borrow records that he also laid waste to the district of Atholl, driving off the cattle and putting to death any who offered resistance. Rob claimed he was merely requiting the MacGregors for the cruelties inflicted upon their ancestors. This justification lent each raid an ancient lineage, yet it did not render the threatened men less real, nor the plundered herds less lost.
One of the men charged with apprehending him believed he might approach him through guile. Presenting himself as an errant traveler, he was courteously directed by Rob into a spacious chamber. Fear presently struck the messenger dumb. Rob’s men carried him to the river and cast him into the current, leaving him to scramble out by his own devices. His companions, believing him drowned, took flight. They reached Stirling and related their misadventure to the governor of the castle. A detachment of troops was forthwith dispatched into the Highlands.
The MacGregors, forewarned by scouts, were not to be taken unawares. After several days of fruitless searching, the soldiers sought rest in an empty house, carpeted with heather for the night. Clan men set the place ablaze. In the ensuing confusion, several soldiers were wounded, others lost their arms, and one man was killed by the accidental discharge of a musket. A pursuit born of an attempt at arrest had degenerated into a pitched skirmish. Borrow depicts Rob as the principal object of the expedition, but offers no proof that he personally directed every action of that night.
He was equally adept at obtaining money without abducting the debtor. Campbell of Abruchil had neglected an annual payment for several years. Rob rode to the castle accompanied by armed followers, but left them at a distance and first requested an audience with the proprietor. The porter feigned never to have heard of any Rob Roy MacGregor. Rob blew the great horn slung at his side; his men came running and received orders to drive off the beasts of the estate. The laird thereupon appeared, apologized, invited Rob across his threshold, and paid him all he demanded. They parted as friends, according to the chronicler. The horn had taken the place of the sword, yet the menace had not diminished in the least.
Upon another estate, the factor Drummond had evicted a tenant farmer of the clan. Rob presented himself at Drummond Castle and felled the factor with a single blow, without a word of explanation. The Earl of Perth came out to parley. Rob refused every show of hospitality: he demanded that the lease be restored to his kinsman, failing which his men would descend upon the estate. The Earl yielded; Rob sat down to breakfast. The episode illustrates the power he could exert on behalf of a tenant, but also the heavy price extorted from any man lacking the means to withstand him.
Rob cultivated little grain of his own. When his followers, a pauper, or he himself ran short of meal, he repaired to the storehouse kept by Montrose at Moulin, took what was needed, and signed a receipt. The tenants were subsequently obliged to transport the grain with their own horses to his dwelling or to whatever place he appointed. Thus, the relief he dispensed to those loyal to him was drawn from the very stores and livestock of the estates against which he waged his feud. This system of debt and protection sustained his alliances quite as much as his forays.
The sanctuary from which he launched his raids was a cavern at the foot of Ben Lomond, close by the loch. There he maintained a band of men, within striking distance of the drovers' roads and herds. An expedition sent by Montrose found his house deserted. The pursuers learned where he had gone and surprised him at dawn in an inn at Crianlarich. The Grahams battered down the door. Rob sprang to his feet, weapon in hand, and beat back the intruders; his men, roused by the tumult, fell upon the assailants from the rear. Several were wounded. Rob served out whisky to his companions, then led them up into the hills. The skirmish continued: his men fired upon the soldiers, drowning one in a mill-lead. The pursuers ultimately withdrew.
A reward was set upon his head. Rob lived for several months in the woods and his cavern, while his family was conveyed in secret to a more distant retreat in the mountains of Argyll. That sanctuary proved too unmanageable, and they returned once the heat of the pursuit had cooled. Politics, too, demanded allegiance. When the Duke of Atholl came to Balquhidder to bring him prisoner to Perth, the vassals attending the duke marched with heavy hearts, several being MacGregors themselves. Rob spoke of his mother’s funeral, claiming his visitor had come to share in their mourning. When the escort moved to seize him, he wrenched himself free and drew his sword. Atholl discharged a pistol; the ball missed its mark. One of Rob’s sisters seized the nobleman by the throat and threw him to the earth. Rob, seeing the duke was suffocating, bade her release her grip.
In 1715, Argyll, Rob’s former protector, declared for King George. Borrow depicts Rob divided in his loyalties, following the armies only to remain a bystander at the Battle of Sheriffmuir. National Museums Scotland likewise notes this tradition of a man who held back during the fray. After the Highlanders dispersed, the MacGregors marched upon Falkland and levied contributions on the king’s adherents. The subsequent Act of Indemnity expressly excluded members of the clan, even those who had assumed another name. Rob was cited therein as Robert Campbell, alias MacGregor, commonly called Robert Roy.
The years that followed were by no means a tranquil retirement beyond the arm of the law. The record of National Museums Scotland notes his participation in the Battle of Glen Shiel in 1719, where he was severely wounded, and his subsequent arrest in 1722. Five years later, the clemency of George I spared him from transportation to Barbados. The chieftain who had shifted so many borders to his own profit had narrowly escaped being carried far beyond his native hills.
Rob died on December 28, 1734, the date accepted by Future Museum. Borrow places his death at Inverlochlarigbeg, in the braes of Balquhidder. His resting place, according to Borrow, was marked by nothing more than a plain stone upon which someone had carved a sword. It said nothing of rents, of cattle, or of wounded men. It bore only the emblem of a life wherein justice had all too often been rendered by the strength of the arm alone.