Series 4 > Argyll Estate instructions: Mull, Morvern, Tiree 1771-1805

INTRODUCTION
xi
Rosneath chamberlain,1 and his own letters burst with advice on
crops, prices, the treatment of animal ailments and whatever else
seemed relevant to the better management of his lands. Meanwhile
his Instructions, given in person at the time of the October meeting
at Inveraray for the clearing of accounts, were in the hands of each
chamberlain to reprove his past errors, encourage his zeal and
control his future activities.
The Duke’s interest in improvement was to a great extent con¬
trolled by the need for revenue. The management of a Highland
estate was then, as now, a matter of business. This was an age of
fast-rising rents, but it was also an age of insolvent landlords. In
the county of Argyll, the two hundred proprietors of the middle of
the century had dwindled to 156 by the end of it.2 There is scarcely
an estate that comes to one’s attention but is encumbered by debts,
a large part of them due to a more lavish style of living.
The old chief, as Dr. Johnson observed, had lost his prestige as the
leader of his followers, and must compensate by a larger income and
grandeur of living.3 The Highland chiefs followed in the wake of
such pioneer-lairds as Archibald Campbell of Knockbuy (1693-
1790), who from about 1728 devoted much of his estate on Loch-
fyneside to the grazing of cattle for the market, went in for extensive
cattle-dealing, and raised the rental to fourfold its earlier level in the
sixty following years. Even so, this practical and long-headed laird
was often financially embarrassed, and by 1786 was in debt to the
tune of ^S.ooo.4
It was clear that careful financial management would be indispen¬
sable if the Argyll estate was not to fall into similar but much greater
embarrassment. The 5th Duke had the experience of his pre¬
decessors to guide, and, at times, to warn him. They had long led
the field both in the magnificence of their expenditure and in the
development of the resources of their estate. The beginnings of
commercial management can be seen at least as early as the 9th Earl
of Argyll’s time in the third quarter of the seventeenth century,6 but
1 Robert Campbell, known as Baillie Rosneath. The terms ‘chamberlain’,
‘factor’ and ‘baillie’ were at this period used synonymously.
2 J. Smith: General View of the Agriculture of the County of Argyll (1805), 14.
2 S. Johnson: A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1825), 117-
118.
4 Knockbuy papers at Kilberry Castle; Trust Disposidon dated April 20th, 1787,
Scottish Record Office, Reg. of Deeds (Dalrymple), vol. 251, fo. 57.
6 A. McKerral: Kintyre in the Seventeenth Century (1948), 86.