Historical memoirs of Rob Roy and the Clan Macgregor

20 HISTORICAL MEMOIRS OF
sundric other nobill men ;" and Sir Colin himself stood
over the executioner who beheaded Macgregor, to see
that he did his duty. This knight is said to have been
** ane great justiciar, all his tyme, and to have caused
execute to the death many notable lymmaris."
But this clan, though proscribed and harassed on all
hands, still bore up against the torrent of opposition with
unsubdued spirit, and a resolution that never forsook
them ; and which, even in the times of their greatest
adversity, would not submit to an insult or an act of in-
justice, with impunity.
Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, the laird of Luss, and his
followers, about this time, seem, with others, to have been
their determined enemies ; and if contemporary historians
are to be relied on, were generally the aggressors in ex-
citing quarrels, or commiting depredations, and heirships,
as they were called, on the clan Gregor ; but these were
usually balanced by similar acts of retaliation on the lands
and effects of Luss and his tenantry.
The contiguity of their possessions rendered such
hostility more frequent and fearful, until at length their dis-
sensions became so enormous as to call for the interference
and mediation of their friends: and the chief of the
Macgregors, (Alexander of Glenstrae,) not being averse
from a reconciliation, went from his country of Rannach
to Lennox, in the spring of 1602, accompanied by two
hundred of his friends and kinsmen, for the purpose, and
with a full resolution of extinguishing the feud that had
so long subsisted betwixt his brother, who lived in Balqu-
hidder, and the chief of the Colquhouns.
This crafty individual, though aware of the purpose of
Macgregor's approach, had no wish that any amicable
arrangement should be effected : and having laid his plans