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in 2002 I began researching the history of the Galloway Levellers
uprising of 1724 for a BBC Radio Scotland series on the Lowland
Clearances. The series was broadcast in 2003 and turned into a book
called The Lowland Clearances later that year, with a chapter on the
Galloway Levellers. I was fascinated by the Levellers and was able to
use my research for a 50 000 word M.Phil thesis via Glasgow
University Dumfries in 2009.
A
problem I found when trying to understand the Galloway Levellers was
that later in the eighteenth century the whole landscape of Galloway
was transformed by agricultural improvements. The farm buildings were
rebuilt, the fields were drained, new hedges and dykes were made and
new roads, towns and villages were built. More recently, the
mechanisation of farming has also altered the landscape, as has the
process of afforestation.
However,
a few traces of the older landscape have survived. I have visited a
few of the surviving sites and tried to photograph them, but I have
found it difficult to represent them in photographs. The following
illustrates the possibilities and the problems I have encountered.
1. Kilnair
(near Lochnivar Loch) NX 665 879
Kilnair is from the Gaelic cuil an air which
means 'the corner of the ploughing'. The site therefore dates back at
least to the twelfth century. There is a tck (lease) of the farm from
1669 which shows that cattle and sheep were kept, and that ewes milk
cheese was made. The tack also says that a horse was kept for
ploughing the arable land where oats and bere (a type of barley) were
grown. At Kilnair today there is the remains of a early nineteenth
century shepherd's cottage which was abandonded in the 1950s. There
are also traces of the arable fields, now under grass.
Kilnair March 2008
2.Darngarroch
NX 62 63
This site is on the Laurieston to Gatehouse road, just
past Darngarroch bridge. Below the road there is a large area of
short grass with the remains of field enclosures and rig and furrow
cultivation. In the seventeenth century, Darngarroch was a farm/croft
owned by the Griersons of Bargatton in Balmaghie parish. William
Grierson of Bargatton was a member of the War Committee of the
Covenant in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright in 1640/1, when Threave
castle was beseiged by the Covenanters. By 1724, the Griersons no
longer owned Bargatton but William Grierson's granddaughter Grisel
was married to Thomas Moire who owned Beoch farm near by. Grisel and
Thomas joined the Galloway Levellers and were fined for their actions
in January 1725.
As with Kilnair, it is difficult to imagine crops of
oats and barley being cultivated here, but they were, until the land
was given over to sheep farming in the late eighteenth century.
Remnant of medieval field system at Darngarroch May 2008
3.
Stroan Hill NX 64 69
There are remains of field boundaries and rig and
furrow on this hill above Loch Stroan. This has been survey by Piers
Dixon of RCAHMS, who found the remains of several houses and a grain
drying kiln on the site. In the sevenenth century the settlement on
Stroan Hill was owned by the Charteris family of Duchrae in Balmaghie
parish, until William Craik ( a Dumfries merchant) bought Duchrae
estate. The Craik family still owned Duchrae estate in 1724 and the
'last stand' of the Galloway Levellers took place on a 'motte' built
by John of Dunbar who was gifted Duchrae estate by James II in 1455
as a bribe for surrendering Threave castle to James. The Stroan Hill
fermtoun was probably abandoned in the late eighteenth century when a
new Stroan farm ( now also abandoned) was built.
Map by Piers Dixon of Stroan Hill field system
Finally one I haven't visited.
4. Dunrod on the Kirkcudbright Training Area
(Dundrennan Range)
In 1160, King Fergus of Galloway was forced into exile
at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh. Fergus gifted Holyrood the 'vill' of
Dunrod. Around the remains of Dunrod kirk and the nearby site of a
medieval moated manor house there are extensive areas of broad and
narrow rig and furrow. These have been surveyed, mapped and
photographed by RCHAMS and are the largest area of rig and furrow
surviving in Dumfries and Galloway. Some of the broad, curved rig
and furrow also survives near Netherlaw Burn. The curving shape of
this type of rig and furrow was created by the use of oxen drawn
ploughs.
The survival around Netherlaw gives an interesting link
to the Galloway Levellers. In 1688, Robert Maxwell of Orchardton
Tower gave instructions that his cattle park at Netherlaw 'should not
be put to the plough'. There was still a cattle park at Netherlaw in
1724, when its dykes were demolished by the Levellers, who claimed
that the cattle in the enclosure had been illegally imported from
Ireland. (Some of the cattle were later killed at Dundrennan Abbey by
a blacksmith called McMin who had a croft nearby.) The conversion of
arable land to pasture 'fossilised' the rig and furrow, thus
preserving part of the landscape of medieval Galloway.
The Army established the Training Area in 1942, over 150
years since oxen drawn ploughs had been replaced by cast iron horse
drawn ploughs. It is possible that this taekover preserved areas of
rig and furrow there which have been lost in other areas through the
intensification and mechanisation of farming since the 1940s.
Rig and furrow at Dunrod RCHAMS photograph
The
landscape and history.
In response to the
Highland Clearances, Gaelic poet Duncan Ban Macintyre composed Oran
nam Balgairean (The Song of the Foxes) which contains the lines
The customs that
were followed
They
have perished now in Gaeldom
For
the poet, the clearance of people from the land marked a break in the
continuity of the people's history, a history that was rooted in the
land. In contrast, despite their resistance to clearance through
enclosure, in 1724 the Galloway Levellers only reference to the past
was confined to anti-Jacobite rhetoric directed against Basil
Hamilton, an enclosing landowner who had joined the local Jacobite
forces in 1715. Why was there this difference in response?
By
the eighteenth century, Gaelic had been the language of the Highlands
for over 1000 years. In Galloway, the continuity of language, land
and people had been disrupted many times over the same period. When
the Romans entered Galloway around 80 AD, the local language was
Brittonic (related to modern Welsh). Although the Romans soon
withdrew from Galloway, it likely they established/ supported a
client kingdom in Galloway to help protect their roads through
Nithsdale and Annandale and the western end of Hadrian's Wall.
After
the end of Roman rule in Britain, the evidence from Whithorn, the
Mote of Mark and (most recently) Trusty's Hill shows that there was
an important Dark Age (Early Historic) kingdom in Galloway with
trading links to Gaul and the Mediterranean. As well as importing
high status goods, the kingdom produced fine metalwork and glassware.
This kingdom flourished between the fifth and seventh centuries. It
was then taken over by Angles from Northumbria between 675 and 700
AD, an event marked by the destruction by fire of Trusty's Hill and
the Mote of Mark. At Whithorn, the existing monastery was also taken
over by the Northumbrians.
Northumbrian
rule lasted for about 200 years. Then, during the tenth century,
Vikings who had settled in Ireland and in Argyll extended their
influence into Galloway. The Argyll group reached Galloway vai the
Firth of Clyde and Ayrshire and were called by irish chroniclers the
'gall-ghaidheil' -the foreign Gaels. Galloway takes it name from
these people who were Gaelic speakers. Then, around 1120, a
descendant of the 'foreign Gaels' called Fergus emerged as king of
Galloway. Galloway was then ruledd by Fergus and his descendants for
the next hundred years, until the death of Alan of Galloway in 1234.
The Annals of Ulster noted Alan's death, describing him as 'king of
the Gall-Gael'.
The
next phase of Galloway's history is also part of Scotland's history.
When Fergus died in 1161, Galloway was jointly ruled by his two sons,
Gill-Brigte and Uhtred. Then, in 1174, Gill-Brigte fought against
Uhtred. Uhtred was captured by Gille-Brigte and ritually mutilated-
Uhtred's eyes and tongue were cut out and he was castrated so he
could not act as a ruler/ king. Uhtred died of his injuries soon
afterwards. After Gill-Brigte died in 1185, Uhtred's son Roland
invaded Galloway and became its new lord. To prevent further
conflict, Gille-Brigte's son Duncan was made earl of Carrick (south
Ayrshire). Carrick then passed to Duncan's son Neil and then his
only daighetr Marjory – who married the father of Robert the Bruce.
Similarly, Alan of Galloway's inheritance passed to his daughter
Dervorgilla who married John Balliol, father of King John Balliol.
The
struggle between Bruces and Balliols for the Scottish Crown lasted
from the death of King Alexander III in 1286 until Edward, son of
King John Balliol, gave up his claim to the Crown in 1356, leaving
David II, son of Robert Bruce, as undisputed king of Scotland. But
even after 1356, David II could not control Galloway which remained
loyal to Edward Balliol as its 'special lord' until his death in
1365.
Rather
than David II, it was Archibald 'the Grim' Douglas who took over
Galloway and decalred himself its new Lord. After the 2nd
earl of Douglas died at Otterburn in 1388, Archibald became the 3rd
earl of Douglas, controlling a huge swathe of southern Scotland and
even lands around the Moray Firth. This set up a power struggle
between the Douglases and the Stewart kings of Scotland which led to
the downfall of the 9th earl of Douglas in 1455. In the
summer of 1455, James II himself oversaw the seige of Archibald's
castle on Threave island on the river Dee. The castle only fell to
James after he bribed its defenders to surrender.
The
Douglas lords of Galloway were Scots speakers who introduced Scots
speaking tenants to their lands. This is likely to have hastened the
decline of Gaelic in Galloway.
The
Douglas lands were forfeit to the Crown and then sold of piecemeal
over the next hundred years. The end result was a fragmented pattern
of land ownership in Galloway, with several hundred
'bonnet
lairds' owning many small estates comprising fewer than ten farms. No
one family ever dominated Galloway again. The other main landowner
had been the Church. Glenluce Abbey owned all of new and Old Luce
parishes in Wigtownshire, Dundrennan Abbey owned Rerrick parish and
part of Kirkpatrick Durham, Sweetheart Abbey owned New Abbey parish
and the rest of Kirkpatrick Durham. Lincluden Abbey (later a
Collegiate Church) had most of Crossmichael parish.
After
1560, the Scottish Reformation led to the break-up of these Church
lands. Most of the people in Galloway became Protestant, but the
Maxwell family (lords and earls of Nithsdale) did not, staying loyal
to the Roman Catholic church and- significantly- the Stuart kings
through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. So when Charles I
was opposed by Scottish protestants in 1640, both Threave castle and
Caerlaverock castle were held by the Maxwells for Charles and were
beseiged by the Army of the Covenant. With varying degrees of
intensity, the religious and political struggle which began then
continued for another 100 years, ending only with the defeat of
Charles Edward Stuart's army at Culloden in 1746.
What
I hope this rapid summary of Galloway's history shows is that, unlike
the Gaelic speaking Highlanders who were cleared from their lands in
the late eighteenth/ early nineteenth centuries, the Galloway
Levellers of 1724 were separated from their ancestors' customs and
traditions by a whole series of breaks and discontinuities, including
several changes in language.
The
shift from Gaelic to Scots, which occurred between the fourteenth and
sixteenth centuries was the most significant, since it involved the
loss of oral traditions, of folk memories and folk histories which
had provided a link between land and people. It is possible that the
Reformation provided a religious substitute for this cultural loss.
Cut off from their past by this language change, the Covenanters of
the seventeenth century drew on the Old Testament to imagine
themselves as Israelites struggling to reach the Promised Land.
At
the same time, the Kirkcudbright Sherif Court Deeds 1623-1700 show
that the land (farms) had become a commodity to be bought and sold.
Farms were leased to tenants for up to 19 years at a time (although 5
or 7 year leases were more common) and the tenants moved from farm to
farm at the end of each lease. This constant movement and change
meant there was no popular sense of ancestral attachment to a
particular plot of land.
The
main grievance of the Galloway Levellers was economic. Sometime
before 1625, the Murrays of Broughton (near Whithorn) began taking
herds of cattle from lands they had acquired in Donegal as part of
the Planation of Ulster through Galloway and Dumfriesshire for sale in
England. Then, in 1666, the import of Irish cattle to England was
banned. This led to an illicit trade in Irish cattle, which, after
being briefly pastured in Galloway, were sold on to England as
'Scottish' cattle. Significantly, this illicit trade was developed by
Episcopalian and Roman Catholic landowners who were loyal to Charles
II. The authorities, including Robert Grierson of Lag, seemed to have
turned a blind eye to the trade since they were more interested in
persecuting Covenanters. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688,
Presbyterian familes like the Herons of Kirroughtrie developed a
legitimate trade in cattle raised in Galloway. This commercial cattle
trade had, the Galloway Levellers later claimed, a depopulating
effect on the parish of Minnigaff.
The Revolution of
1688/9 also led a shift in local political power and influence.
Presbyterian William Craik replaced a Roman Catholic member of the
Maxwell family as provost of Dumfries and his son-in-law Robert
Johnston became provost later. Johnston represented Dumfries in the
pre-Union Scottish Parliament and bought Kelton (now Threave) estate
from William Maxwell, earl of Nithsdale in 1706. A few Presbyterian
ministers were able to return from exile in Ireland or England and
some of the landowners who had lost their estates through fines and
forfeitures were able to reclaim them. [Some had first to return from
banishment in the American colonies.]
Then, in 1715, all
of these changes were threatened by a Jacobite uprising. While the
main action took place in the north of Scotland, a small group of
Jacobites led by viscount Gordon of Kenmure and the earl of Nithsdale
attempted to seize Dumfries in October 1715 with the aid of Jacobites
from the north of England and a 1000 strong army of Highlanders. The
regular army and local militia had been sent north, so the defence of
Dumfries relied on local volunteers organised by, amongst others,
Robert Johnston of Kelton. The minister of Urr parish, John Hepburn
was a militant Presbyterian and organised an armed group of 300
(called the Hebronites) who also marched to the defence of Dumfries.
However, the civil authorities did not allow them to enter the town.
Heburn's group were not needed since up to 3000 volunteers from
Nithsdale and the Stewartry had rallied to the defence of King George
I and the Revolution of 1688. This was enough to deter the Jacobites
who turned south instead and were defeated in the battle of Preston
in November 1715.
Amongst the local
Jacobites captured at Preston in 1715 was the 18 year old Sir Basil
Hamilton. Although condemned to death, his grandmother, duchess Anne
of Hamilton and his mother, Mary Dunbar of Baldoon, managed to save
him. They also managed to prevent Sir Basil's estates (amounting to
70 farms in Galloway) from being forfeit to the Crown. However, Sir
Basil's father, Lord Basil Hamilton, had been a keen promoter of the
failed Darien Project and the estates were burdened with debt.
In 1723, Sir Basil
Hamilton was busily engaged in trying to restore the family fortune.
His grandfather and great grandfather (both called David Dunbar) had
built a large cattle park at Baldoon near Wigtown and engaged in the
illicit import of Irish cattle. Basil attempted to follow this model,
evicting several familes from his lands near Kirkcudbright to create
a cattle park which was then stocked with Irish cattle which he hoped
to export to England.
What had begun as a
small scale protest against the import of Irish cattle at Netherlaw
in March 1724 involving only a few Levellers became a large scale
(attracting an estimated 1000 people) protest when Sir Basil's dykes
were thrown down in May 1724. Sir Basil's Jacobite background touched
a raw nerve, evoking the recent memories of 1715 and older memories
of the Covenanters' struggles in the previous century. This led on to
the levelling of dykes belonging to the Maxwells of Munches near
Dalbeattie (who had been Jacobites in 1715 and where there was a
Roman Catholic chapel) and the dykes of Robert Neilson at Barncalzie
near Kirkpatrick Durham, who was another Roman Catholic landowner.
Although John Hepburn of Urr had died in 1723, the anti-Catholic
element of these actions can be traced to his militant followers who
still retained the muskets they had been issued with in 1715.
For the moderate
Presbyterian landowners in 1724, their biggest fear is likely to have
been that the Levellers actions might start to extend beyond Galloway
via the Cameronians or Society People. This group had their origins
in 1680 when Richard Cameron and his followers declared holy war on
Charles II and his brother James. In 1724, the leader of the
Cameronians was John McMillan, minister of Balmaghie parish. Although
expelled from the Church of Scotland in 1703, McMillan still occupied
the manse and church at Balmaghie, however most of the Cameronians
lived in Upper Nithsdale, Ayrshire and Lanarkshire. Perhaps
fortunately, McMillan and the Cameronians believed that Hepburn and
the Hebronites had forsaken ' the poor, wasted, misrepresented,
Remnant of the Suffering, Anti-Popish, Anti-Prelatick, Anti-Erastian,
Anti-Sectarian, True Presbyterian Church of Christ in Scotland ' (as
the Cameronians described themselves) by volunteering to support an
un-Covenanted king – George I.
On the other hand,
if Sir Basil Hamilton had prevailed and the troops sent to supress
the Galloway Levellers had been ordered to 'shoot to kill', this may
well have re-started the cycle of violent actions and reactions which
could have reawoken the still bitter memories of the Killing Times of
the 1680s. To prevent events spiralling out of control (and much to
Sir Basl hamilton's annoyance), negotions took place with the
Levellers. At Kelton, Robert Johnston was able to pesuade a group of
Levellers not to demolish his dykes. At the Steps of Tarff, Colonel
William Maxwell of Cardoness, who had begun his military career in
King William's army in 1688, also negotiated with a group of armed
Levellers, managing to defuse a potentially violent situation.
The troops brought
in to control the situation were under the command of John Dalrymple,
the second earl of Stair. In 1714/5, Dalrymple was a diplomat in
France and managed to limit French support for the Jacobites in 1715.
In June 1724, Major Gardiner was appointed field-commander in
Galloway. Gardiner had fought against the Jacobites at the battle of
Preston in 1715. He was also a deeply religious Presbyterian
Christian, as was Maxwell of Cardoness, whose father had been
minister of Minnigaff parish, signing the National Covenant in 1638
and who was forced out of the parish after the restoration of Charles
II.
It is therefore
likely that the Galloway Levellers last stand at Duchrae in October
1724 was a face saving exercise, arranged by Maxwell and Gardiner to
bring the conflict to a peaceful end. The troops were ordered to use
minimal force and although 200 Levellers were captured, all but a
handful were allowed to escape on the journey back to Kirkcudbright.
Sir Basil Hamilton did pursue a group of Levellers, including Grisel
Grierson (mentioned above) for damages (Colonel Maxwell of Cardoness
was the Presiding Magistrate), but there are no records of criminal
prosecutions brought against any of the Levellers.
Although the events
of 1724 were long remembered in Galloway, unlike the Highland
Clearances, they left no legacy of bitterness and resentment.
Significantly, when the rationalisation of the farmed landscape began
in the 1760s, landowners like James Murray of Broughton and Cally
(whose father's cattle parks had been levelled in 1724) took great
efforts to provide alternative employment for their surplus tenants
and cottars. Gatehouse of Fleet and many other of Galloway's planned
towns and villages are the result of such policies. John Maxwell, who
had witnessed the Levellers in action as a child in 1724, was factor
to improving landowner Richard Oswald in Kirkbean and Colvend 40
years later. Rather than force through evictions, Maxwell negotiated
with Oswald's tenants to bring about gradual rather than rapid
'improvement'.
Perhaps
significantly, in one of their carefully composed (in good English,
not the Scots they spoke) pamphlets, the Galloway Levellers argued
for rather than against enclosures.
The Gentlemen should
enclose their grounds in such parcels that each may be sufficient for
a good tenant and that the Heritors lay as much rent on each of these
enclosures as will give him double the interest of the money laid out
on the enclosures. If he cannot get this enclosure set to a tenant
whom he may judge sufficient, he may then lawfully keep that ground
in his own hand till he finds a sufficient tenant , taking care that
the tenant’s house be kept up and that it may be let with the first
opportunity and that a lease of twenty-one years be offered. This
will considerably augment the yearly rent of the lands and the tenant
will hereby be capable and encouraged to improve the breed of sheep
and black cattle and the ground, which without enclosures is
impossible.
Again, this reveals
a dramatic contrast between Galloway and the Highlands. Such words
are hardly those of a group of people attempting to preserve their
ancient way of life against economic change and modernity. Rather,
they show that even by 1724, even before the agricultural revolution
of the later eighteenth century, the medieval/ feudal farming economy
of Galloway was fading fast. The farmed landscape and the day to day
practice of farming may still have been that of the past, but the
seeds of the future were already present.
This creates a
strange situation when attempting to connect the history of
Galloway's people with the history of Galloway's landscape. As a
rural and agricultural region rather than an urban and industrial
region, one might expect a high degree of continuity between present
and past, with a slow unfolding of change. Instead, the past is
marked by frequent breaks and discontinuities. Over the past 2000
years, settlement patterns, rulers, languages and types of farming
have all changed numerous times.
Of these changes,
the most significant have involved the loss of a language. When a
language dies out, the living culture associated with the language is
also lost. For the Brittonic language spoken in Galloway when the
Romans arrived, only fragments of archaeology and a scatter of place
names has survived. The Old English speaking Northumbrians who took
over as the ruling elite left a clear imprint at Whithorn, but little
else. The Gaelic speakers of Galloway have left an enduring imprint
on the place names of the region and, through Scottish and English
sources, we know the names and histories of Galloway's kings and
lords.However, of the everyday lives and histories of the ordinary
folk of Gaelic speaking Galloway there is only silence.
Some fragments of
everyday life survive amongst the records of the Douglas lordship of
Galloway, such as a list of the farms and the names of their tenants
for the parish of Buittle circa 1374, but it is only after the
collapse of Douglas power in 1455 that the history of Galloway starts
to become a history of its people. First in Latin, then in Scots,
first a trickle and then a flood of documents survive to allow
historians to understand the everyday lives of Galloway's people. For
the Stewartry in particular, the 6000 entries in the Kirkcudbright
Sheriff Court Deeds 1623-1700 provide a rich and fascinating
insight into the day to day lives of its inhabitants.
To the extent that
'history' means the written record of past events, the history of
Galloway's people (rather than their rulers) only begins in the
seventeenth century, when the spread of literacy which followed the
Reformation had become more widely established. By then, Scots had
replaced Gaelic as the everyday language of Galloway. From around the
same time, beginning with Timothy Pont's maps of Galloway (surveyed
circa 1590), successive changes in the landscape can also be traced.
The maps can be cross-referenced with documentary sources so that
even lost (I.e not shown on modern maps) and abandoned sites can be
located, visited and photographed.
