Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 5

MORAY, PROVINCE OF
Bruce erecting the district once more into an Earldom,
ill favour of his nephew, Thomas Randolph, and the
King himself seems to have been several times in the
north, but almost nothing is known of his movements.
During the troubles that followed his death Moray
remained stanch to his son, and seems to have been
partly held by Sir Andrew Moray on his behalf ; and
later David II. himself came to Inverness in 1369 in
order to have an interview with John, Lord of the Isles,
some of whose turbulent subjects had been in rebellion.
In 1371 King Robert II. granted to Alexander, his
fourth son by his first wife, Elizabeth Mure, the whole
lands of Badenoch which had belonged to the Comyns,
and at a later date in the same year he was appointed
King's Lieutenant in the north. Two years later he
was made Earl of Buchan, and as he was Earl of Ross
in right of his wife, he was for a time the most power-
ful noble in the country. He scarcely, however, main-
tained the dignity of his position, for, better known
as the Wolf of Badenoch, he thoroughly deserved the
title, and some of his exploits will be found noticed in
the articles on Elgin, Forres, and Lochindorb.* Hardly
recovered from the effects of the Wolfs deeds the lower
part of the province again suffered in 1402 from an
inroad of Alexander, third son of the first Lord of the
Isles, at the head of a large following ; and in 1411 his
brother Donald, second Lord of the Isles, passed through
on his way to the battle of Harlaw. After the progress
of James I. through Moray in 1427 (see Inverness)
Donald, the then Lord of the Isles, assembled a force
and advanced with it as far as Lochaber, but there he
was met by the royal forces and his army dispersed.
He afterwards made submission, but his lieutenant,
Donald Balloch, in 1431, again advanced to Lochaber
with a large body of followers. This led to another
royal visit to the north, but the route is not clear. The
time indeed does not seem to have been a pleasant one
in the regions, for a writer in the Chartulary of Moray
says that ' in these days there was no law in Scotland,
but the more powerful oppressed the weaker, and all the
realm was one mass of robbery. Murder, plundering,
fire-raising went unpunished, and justice was banished
from the land. '
One of the Douglases being Earl of Moray, we find the
province concerned in the contests that arose in 1452
with the ' banded earls ' (see Elgin). The earl did not
succeed in getting his vassals to join him in any number
when he took part in the Douglas rebellion of 1454-55, but
after his death James Douglas stirred up Donald, Lord of
the Isles, with whom he had taken refuge, to invade the
mainland, where ' at last he past to Lochaber, and there-
from to Murray, where he invaded . . . with great
cruelty, neither sparing old nor young, without regard
to wives, old, feeble, and decrepit women, or yoimg
infants in the cradle, which would have moved a heart
of stone to commiseration ; and burned villages, towns,
and corns, so much thereof as might not goodly be
carried away, by the great prize of goods that he took. '
These disorders caused James II. to come north in 1455
and set the Earldom of Moray, which was now bestowed
on his infant son David, in thorough order. He
remained here for two years, and part of the country
was thrown waste to provide a forest for his hunting.
In 1464 James III. was here ; and in 1474 or 1475 John,
Lord of the Isles, surrendered to the Crown the sheriff-
doms of Inverness and Nairn, which were in 1492 granted
to the Earl of Huntly, whose influence in the north was
supreme from this time till the Reformation. James IV.
must frequently have passed through the province on
his way to and from the shrine of St Duthac at Tain,
which he often visited ; and in the Treasurer's accounts
for 1504 we find payments recorded to 'the maidens of
Forres that dansit to the king,' and others ' that dansit '
to him at Elgin and Darnaway. During the time of
James V. and the minority of Queen Mary, the whole of
the north and north-west was in a very disturbed state,
and the portions of Moray about Badenoch and Lochaber
* The inscription on his tomb in Dunkeld Cathedral was made
to record that he was a man ' hon(Z memorite I '
66
MORAY, PROVINCE OF
and to the NW of the Great Glen were in an almost con-
tinual state of warfare ; and in 1556 the Queen Regent,
Mary of Guise, advanced to Inverness to try to settle
matters, hut her attention on her return to the south
being almost immediately drawn off by the beginnings
of the Reformation, matters were but little improved,
the cause being in part the disturbances created by the
Lord of the Isles, in part the quarrels among the
clans themselves, and in part the bad government of
Huntly.
No sooner, however, had Queen Mary assumed the
government, than, acting probably under the advice of
the great Earl of Murray, she determined to adopt severe
measures, and, setting out in 1562, reached Elgin on 6
Sept. Her doings at Inverness, where she was from
the 11th to the 15th of the same month, are noticed in
that article ; and Huntly's power was broken almost
immediately afterwards at the battle of Corrichie in Aber-
deenshire. Fresh feuds again broke out in consequence
of the murder of ' the bonny Earl of Moray ' by the Earl
of Huntly at Donibristle in 1592, and these were pro-
longed and intensified by the proceedings in 1594 against
the Earls of Himtly, Angus, and Errol, who were charged
with plotting with Philip of Spain for the restoration of
the Catholic religion in Scotland. It was on this occa-
sion that mass was said for the last time in Elgin
Cathedral, though groups of worshippers of the old
faith are said to have by stealth frequented corners of
it down to the reign of Queen Anne.
In 1603-4 the district seems to have suffered severely
from plague, for the magistrates of Elgin sent to
Edinburgh for Thomas Ahannay and two servants ' for
clenging of the infected parts, together mth the bodies
of the persons infected,' and the sheriffs of Elgin, Nairn,
and Inverness were authorised by the Lords of Council
to assess for the expenses, amounting to 600 merks.
The province suffered considerably during the civil
wars in the time of the Stewart kings, partly in conse-
quence of the people generally declaring for the cause
of the Solemn League and Covenant, and partly from
the district becoming the scene of one of the campaigns
of Montrose and his ally. Lord Lewis Gordon, who
indeed obtained the unenviable notoriety of being classed
by a rhymer of the period with two of the worst plagues
of an agricultural country: —
* The gule, the Gordon, and the hoodie-craw
Are the three warst e\ils Moray ever saw,'
Probably, however, the author had more than Lord
Lewis in his mind when he thus irreverently spoke of
the descendants of the ' Cock of the North.' In Sept.
1644 Montrose came northward by Aberdeen, and ' begins
to marche touardis Spey side, hot could not win over the
water, the boitis being drawin on the uther side, and
Moray convenit in armes ; ' and so he tm-ned back, only,
however, to return again after his victory at Inverlochy.
In the following year he marched rapidly on the low
country, and ' merchit bak throw Lochquhaber with
displayit baner touardis Innerniss with incredibill
diligens ; and fynding the toune stronglie fortifeit and
garisonis lying about or rather within the toune, . . .
thairfoir merchit peceablie by Innerniss doun throw the
countrie of Moray ; ' and of such of the proprietors as
would not join him he ' plunderit, spolzeit, and brynt'
the houses and lands, and ' sent out pairteis throw the
countrie with fyre and plundering.' The Committee of
Estates sitting at Elgin broke up, and many of the
townspeople fled, with 'thair wyves, barnes, and best
goodis,' to Sptnie and other strongholds. The Marquis
reached Elgin on 19 Feb., and was joined by Lord Lewis
Gordon shortly after. He received 4000 merks to save the
town from being burned; 'hot his soldiouris, especiallie
the Laird of Grantis soldiouris, plunderit the toun piti-
fullie, and left nothing tui'sabUl oncareit away, and brak
doun bedis, burdis, insicht, and plenishing. ' Thereafter
he marched southward, but returned again in May,
following up Hurry and his Covenanters, who preceded
him by two days, and whom he shortly afterwards
defeated at the battle of Auxdeakn. This victory was