Matheson Collection > Macleods of Dunvegan from the time of Leod to the end of the seventeenth century

SOME LATER EVENTS 171
his clan would give him the fullest support, but, as far
as I know, there is absolutely no evidence that he had
ever given any promises whatever, and Murray was not
a man whose unsupported testimony is worth anything
at all.
Moreover, it appears from the history of the clan that
the MacLeods had not been devotedly attached to the
cause of the Stuarts since the fatal day of Worcester,
nearly a hundred years before. Their Chief had been
profoundly disgusted by the neglect of Charles 11. to
express any thanks for the services his clan had rendered,
and had vowed that no clansmen of his should ever
again draw the sword for the ungrateful Stuarts. The
MacLeods had not joined Dundee in 1689 or Mar in 1715.
In a word, their traditions were not Jacobite. There
can be no doubt, however, that MacLeod had often been
approached by Jacobite agents. If he listened to them
and gave them fair words, he was only doing what men
of all parties, wishing to have a footing in both camps,
had been doing ever since James 11. lost his throne in 1689.
There is one circumstance which points to his having
been concerned in Jacobite plots in 1732. At that time
Lord Grange was one of the Scots Lords of Session.
He was a brother of the Lord Mar who had commanded
the Highland army in the unfortunate rising of 1715, and
was himself an ardent Jacobite. The adherents of the
' King over the Water ' often met in his house at
Edinburgh.
He had married Rachel, a daughter of Chiesly of Dairy
(now part of Edinburgh) . Lady Grange was a woman of
ungovernable temper, and, it is said, made her husband's
life a burden to him with the incessant quarrels in which
she constantly involved him. She was also a pro-
nounced Hanoverian, and it was believed that she was
a spy in the pay of the English Government.
One night in 1732 a meeting of Jacobites was held