#GutenMorgen
Heute geht's schon als Tagesausflug nach #Colonsay.
Und natürlich gibt es nur ein T-Shirt, das ich da tragen kann:

(Dieses Shirt ist tatsächlich mit für den Urlaub hier verantwortlich 🤭)

Cycling #Arran and South Hebrides ( #Islay #Jura #Colonsay ) by ebike
https://youtu.be/Fpcz9bjmuF4

#ebikelife #Ebikeadventures

The piratical Prior of Colonsay

This post has since been updated; the new version can be found at https://new-cleckit.dominie.scot/the-piratical-prior-of-colonsay/.

On 12 August 1583, the Bailies of Glasgow heard an unusual case, when Malcolm MacDuffie or Macilfies, the Prior of Colonsay, appeared before them on a charge of piracy. It’s a peculiar story, which as you dig into it makes more sense in some ways and less in others, and hints distinctly at more than the Burgh Records tell.

The charge was brought by “William Someruell, burges of Renfrew, Normound MacKynnie and Johnne Dikkie, merchandis”. They alleged that in May, they and others had been aboard “ane bark of Renfrew” bound for the fishing of “Lochefewle” — presumably the rich salmon fishery of Lough Foyle — when they were attacked by a birlinn and a “grite boit” crewed by Macduffie, his accomplice Gorrie MacFauld, and a miscellaneous crew of fifty or so “robberis, brokin men, and sornaris”. (“Brokin men” were bandits answering to no chief; a sornar is defined by DSL as a “person who exacts free quarters and provisions by threats or force, as a means of livelihood”.)

After a brief sea battle, in which William Somervell and Normound MacKynnie each received an arrow through the arm, another of their party was shot in the face and another in the thigh, one was hit in the face with a sword and a sixth lost a finger, the Renfrew party surrendered. The robbers stripped their bark of its cargo, down to the victims’ clothes, to a total value of around a thousand merks — roughly 667 pounds Scots, or about £56 sterling — and took their spoils ashore near Culdaff.

The despoiled merchants complained to King James VI, and obtained letters from the Privy Council ordering the apprehension of the offenders. They had alerted the Bailies of Glasgow when they discovered that MacDuffie and MacFauld had “come furth of the Heland”, together with one Gilechalum MacForsum, another of the gang and apparently the owner of the boat, and were lying at Dumbarton. By the time the case reached them, MacForsum had done a runner but MacDuffie and MacFauld had brought the boat blandly upriver and were lying innocently at Glasgow Bridge.

The Bailies had little choice but to summon Prior Malcolm MacDuffie and his servant MacFauld, and at this point matters took a twist. Apparently there was no material evidence against them: it was word against word, which left no option other than to refer “the haill clame and contentis thairof simpliciter to the said Malcolm Macilfies ayth”. The Prior happily took his “grite ayth”, sworn on the Gospels and thus considered the highest standard of testimony, that “he was neither art nor parte of the away taking of the complineris guidis, and geir abone expremit nor knew thairof, and was nather manteinar not defender of the said rubberis”, and that neither was MacFauld. They had hired MacForsum’s boat, and that was all they knew.

The Bailies dismissed the case and absolved MacDuffie and MacFauld from the claim for ever.

Let’s start with a detail that makes more sense than first appears. The Prior of Colonsay, in 1583, was not a buccaneering monk with a cutlass girt about his habit. The Augustinian priory on Oronsay had been dissolved at the Reformation, and the temporalities transferred to Malcolm Macduffie. The MacDuffies were the lords of Colonsay under the superiority of Clan Donald; one Donald MacDuffie had been Prior a generation before, and Murdoch MacDuffie, described as the “gentle captain”, was the current ruler of the island. Malcolm apparently held the parsonage and vicarage of Colonsay, but the title of Prior was probably no more than customary.

It was a warlike and unsettled period in the seas to the west of Glasgow. Notionally Clan Donald and their vassals answered to the Crown, but in practice the royal writ had difficulty extending over salt water. Notionally the north of Ireland was under English sovereignty, but Ulster was as yet unplanted: to the east of Lough Foyle was the territory of the O’Neills, and to the west was Tír Chonaill under the O’Donnells. These powerful earls were still the rulers of what were still effectively independent, and frequently warring, kingdoms. Goods landed at Culdaff in Tír Chonaill were likely to remain beyond Scots or English law.

Colonsay and Oronsay were bound to supply a fighting force of up to a hundred men should Clan Donald call for them, and it’s not surprising that the island should have been able to put forth a birlinn — the war galley characteristic of the Norse-Gaelic chiefs — with fifty desperados on board. What is harder to believe is that the incident described was a straightforward act of piracy.

According to the merchants’ deposition, their cargo included luxury goods — “sewin punscheounes of wyne”, “threscoir gallownes of acquavitey”, “sax pund of salferon [saffron]” as well as madder and ale — and also a significant stock of weaponry: “tuelf peice of ordinance”, “powlder and billetis worth saxtein pund”, “xvij ane handit suordis and twa twa handit suordis”, “ane dosane steilbonetis” and a “haberschone” [i.e. a habergeon, or coat of mail]. It seems like a very peculiar collection to take on a salmon fishing trip, and a very fortunate haul for pirates randomly boarding a fishing vessel.

Prior MacDuffie’s attitude is also interesting. Assuming that he had some knowledge of the charges — and we can presume from MacForsum’s disappearance that he had — it must have taken considerable nerve to sail up the Clyde to Glasgow and present himself for trial. Perhaps, after all, he was innocent; perhaps he was a man prepared to do some hard swearing and buy his freedom for a little extra tarnishing of his soul. If the latter, he must have been extremely confident that by disposing of his stolen goods in O’Donnell country he had removed any evidence that might be more convincing than his own “grite ayth”.

Or was the Prior, perhaps, confident that the Bailies would take his side? It seems unlikely: mercantile lowland Scots were far more likely to sympathise with fellow merchants than with the “notorious clannis” of the unruly Gaels or, even worse, the defiantly Catholic Irish. Though we might well guess that Somervell and co were themselves up to no good, perhaps running weapons and high-class goods into disputed territory.

And that royal writ of arrest? It may have been a simple judicial procedure, or it may have been more political. Murdoch Macduffie was inclined to defy authority, and disputed the right of the Protestant Bishop of the Isles to the tithes of his estates — the Bishop had brought an action against him in 1580. Possibly the wily king saw a chance to clip the wings of a troublesome clan. In any event, they seem to have been forgiven by 1592, when the possibly piratical Prior Malcolm died and the king presented one Donald MacDuffie to the title.

It’s possible to dream up still more enjoyably elaborate explanations. Did the merchants collude with their robbers to dispose of goods they were carrying, or smuggling, for someone else? Or, in story-book style, we might guess that the MacDuffie aboard the birlinn was the warlike Murdoch, and it was his brother Malcolm who in all innocence was sent to Glasgow to testify without risk of perjury.

In the end, it may simply be that the Bailies of Glasgow looked at the complexities of the case and bottled it. Was it just easier to accept the great oath and to dismiss the charges than to risk being trapped between the scheming King in Edinburgh and the ravaging Gaels to the west? But it’s a reminder that early modern Glasgow sat near the edges of authority, in a place where law and power might sometimes have to be negotiated as much as obeyed, and where a little piracy might sometimes be the price one must pay for peace.

Sources

The story can be found in Extracts from the Burgh Records of Glasgow, 1573 to 1642. There’s a paraphrase with useful background about the Priors and other MacDuffies in Frances Murray’s Summer in the Hebrides (1887). For the nature of the Great Oath I consulted Peter G B McNeill, The Jurisdiction of the Scottish Privy Council 1532-1708 (PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, 1960). I am grateful to Isabel Stainsby for many things, but in particular for at least one of the rival Theories of the Crime.

#bailies #colonsay #oronsay #piracy #priorMalcolmMacduffie

My day by day video diary from #bikepacking #Scotland this summer - this playlist is the first half coving the islands of #Arran #Islay #Jura #Colonsay #Mull #Iona the cycle from Mull to #Mallaig on the mainland and then my 4 days on #Skye

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRcr37Lk8e4UOwZYukJ4QHoJNBUvgKYyV&si=UQXvmjrNToRpo75p

Fabulous on Beinn Eibhne today.

#walking #colonsay #hebrides #scotland #visitscotland

Good morning campers

#colonsay #hebrides #scotland #visitscotland #mountains #learnleadinspire #wildcamping #Jura

Lovely view of the Paps of Jura from Colonsay as the sun went down tonight.

grahamuneymountaineering.co.uk

#jura #colonsay #mountains #hiking #learnleadinspire #papsofjura #hebrides #scotland