Series 1 > Loyall dissuasive

Ixii
THE LOYALL DISSUASIVE
Thus the Dissuasive failed for a time under the persuasions
of Kinrara and his daughter, the mother of Lachlan of Cluny.
The new laird of Invereshie also was carried away with their
dissembling, and many other Macphersons deserted the old
tradition. They admitted the right of Eva to carry chiefship
to Mackintosh. It took twenty years to effect reconversion.
However, better late than never. Lachlan himself, with his
son Ewen (of the ’45), supported by Simon, Lord Fraser of
Lovat, and Simon, Master of Lovat, and Donald Cameron of
Lochiel, did ‘take matters into consideration, and perceived
how dishonourable and injurious had been their former action,
to them, their family, and kindred, who never descended from
the family of Mackintosh, nor had any dependence upon it.’
‘ On the contrary,’ they say, ‘ that they, the Macphersones, are
the true and lineal male descendants of the head of Clan
Chattan, and that Cluny is their real Chief.’ The whole clan
now supported this view. George Macpherson of Invereshie,
James of Killyhuntly, John, and Donald, elder and younger
of Crubin, John of Stramashie, Malcolm of Phoness, John, and
Andrew, elder and younger of Benchor, Donald of Culline,
John of Garvamore, James of Invernahaven, James of Crathie
Croy, and William of Killarchile, adhere to the Band of 1744.
The document is a Band of Friendship 1 between the Frasers,
the Camerons, and the Macphersons, and it embraces a Revoca¬
tion by the Macphersons of the Minute of Agreement between
them and the Mackintoshes in 1724. It is dated 19th April,
17th June, and 7th July 1744. Cluny’s wife,2 Jean Cameron,
was the daughter of Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, and this
alliance accounts for the inclusion of the Camerons in the
document; and for the appearance of the Frasers in it we have
only to remember that Lord Lovat’s daughter, Jean, had lately
married young Ewen Macpherson, whose heroic helpmeet she
1 The Band is printed in Glimpses of Highland Life by the late Alexander
Macpherson, p. 439.
2 The marriage contract, dated 2nd January 1704, is preserved at Cluny, along
with the register of their children, duly certified. They were fifteen in number.