It was all a bit bloody ‘north of the wall’. You might have noticed that the Scots like to talk big about their turbulent past. For a law abiding bunch they are unhealthily proud of it. Was it a real life Game of Thrones? One suspects reality was less exciting but who wants to sing songs about a bad year for the kail?

Of course there is always the exception to any rule…..

James of the Glen & the Appin Murder

No 1 in this occasional series because it inspired one of the greatest books written for young people and loved by adults, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, published in 1886.

The murder of Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure in 1752 as he made his way with three companions through the Wood of Lettermore, in the district of Appin, on the west coast of Scotland, has long caught the public imagination. James Stewart, known as Seumas a’ Ghlinne in Gaelic or James of the Glen, was hanged as an accessory to the crime but went to his death protesting his innocence.

The murder and the execution took place at a time of great political upheaval. The Stewarts of Appin were Jacobites, supporters of the exiled Stuart king James VII and II and his descendants, most notably his grandson Charles Edward Stuart or ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’. Cailean Ruadh, or red-haired Colin, was a member of the neighbouring Clan Campbell which supported the House of Hanover, a dynasty which ruled the United Kingdom from 1714 to 1901. The Appin murder was a cause célèbre of its day but more than a century later it also caught the attention of a writer at the height of his powers.

Robert Louis Stevenson originally trained as a lawyer and as he studied contemporary accounts of the trial and mused on the identity of the killer, Kidnapped was born. In Stevenson’s ripping yarn, a young David Balfour is abducted on the orders of his uncle and after a series of misadventures witnesses the fatal shot that killed Campbell, memorably named the Red Fox by the author. Balfour is denounced as a conspirator and forced to flee across the wilds of Scotland with real life Jacobite rebel and lovable scoundrel Alan Breck Stewart. An early ‘bromance’, Stevenson described his feelings for his two characters thus:

“suddenly [the story] moved, David and Alan stepped out from the canvas, and I found I was in another world.”

For a writer, the Appin murder had it all. Highlanders in dire straits after the disastrous defeat of the Jacobite army at Culloden in 1746; evictions, clan feuds and a compromised jury; a victim trying to do an unpleasant job, a Jacobite spy and, it is rumoured, a vow of silence about the real murderer which survives to this day. All taking place in a hauntingly beautiful part of the world.

James of the Glen was born around the year 1703 and for some time raised cattle in Glen Duror before latterly taking over as a tenant elsewhere in the district. He was the illegitimate half-brother of Charles Stewart of Ardsheal, who raised the Appin Regiment which fought at Culloden. In the aftermath of that defeat, Ardsheal escaped into exile in France and the Ardsheal Estate was forfeited to the British Crown. It is generally assumed that James went into hiding although there is some evidence to suggest that he was captured and transported by ship to London. He may have been one of a group of prisoners recorded as being “delivered” to the British Commander in Chief, North Sea, at Leith in 1746. Another on that same list was Jacobite heroine Flora MacDonald who helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape from Scotland.

There is evidence of James being active in Duror again from 1747 by which time the staunchly pro-government Colin Campbell had been appointed factor or manager of the Ardsheal Estate. At first Campbell allowed James to continue as an unofficial sub-factor administering the estate in his half-brother’s absence but by late 1751 tensions were running high. It was a time of great hardship as tenants were not only paying rent to the government but through James were helping to maintain the exiled Charles Stewart of Ardsheal and his family in France. Now it seemed Colin Campbell wanted his own people to take over more tenancies in Appin. The two men had a drunken quarrel at an inn on New Year’s Eve and a few months later Campbell was shot as he made his way through the Wood of Lettermore. Campbell’s nephew Mungo Campbell claimed that he saw someone carrying a musket hurrying up the slope but that person was never positively identified. The prime suspect was James Stewart’s foster son Alan Breck Stewart who was acting as a courier between Appin and France. Archibald Campbell, Duke of Argyll and chief of Clan Campbell, was furious and the hunt was on. James was swiftly arrested but Alan Breck escaped and left the country.

James’ subsequent trial at Inveraray was overseen by Archibald Campbell himself who, as Lord Justice General, was the British government’s senior representative in Scotland. Of the 15 jurors, 11 were Campbells and all were supporters of the Hanoverian regime. Lawyers for the defence were denied access to their client until the eve of the trial. James admitted helping Alan Breck Stewart to escape by providing him with money but insisted he had no prior knowledge of the assassination. Unsurprisingly, he was convicted as an accessory to the murder of Colin Campbell. James may well have known the identity of the killer but he refused to provide a name, perhaps because he believed he would be hanged anyway. The popular family man fond of a wee dram of whisky was strung up on a gibbet near Ballachulish ferry in November 1752, the scaffold encased in iron and his body in chains to prevent his family and friends from retrieving it for burial. For more than eighteen months it served as a grim warning to all who passed.

Who was the real culprit? James Stewart maintained until the end that he had no prior knowledge of a plot to kill Colin Campbell. Nor was there firm evidence presented to court that Alan Breck was the assassin. On the day of James’ execution it was said that the man who actually fired the shot had to be held down at a house in Ballachulish to prevent him from giving himself up. According to legend the name of the true perpetrator has been passed down through generations of Stewarts sworn to secrecy. In 2001, an elderly descendant broke the family silence and claimed that the murder was planned by four young Stewart lairds and that the musket was fired by the best shot, Donald Stewart of Ballachulish. Historian Allan Macinnes, however, suggests that Colin Campbell’s ambitious nephew Mungo wanted his job and may have been responsible. Interest in the Appin murder has continued to the present day and the trial of James of the Glen is still considered by many to be a stain on Scottish legal history. As recently as 2008 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission was asked to consider a pardon but this was denied on the grounds that the case was too old to be in the interest of justice.

The ‘Red Fox’ was buried at Ardchattan Priory on the north shore of Loch Leven and there are memorials at the locations of the murder in the Wood of Lettermore, to the east of Loch Linnhe, and the execution site at Cnap a’ Chaolais, Ballachulish. James Stewart’s bones were eventually retrieved and buried in the ruined chapel at Keil, Duror. A statue by sculptor Alexander Stoddart was raised in 2004 in honour of the two heroes of Kidnapped, Alan Breck Stewart and David Balfour, and stands at the ‘Rest and Be Thankful’ on Corstorphine Hill, Edinburgh, where the two friends parted. In 2005 Ian Nimmo, then chairman of the Robert Louis Stevenson Club, published Walking with Murder, On the Kidnapped Trail and walkers can follow in the footsteps of David Balfour from the Isle of Erraid, where he was shipwrecked, through the Wood of Lettermore, to Rannoch Moor and down into lowland Scotland.

There are four guns in Scotland said to have been found near Ballachulish House, each reputed to have been used to kill Colin Campbell. An old Spanish musket called ‘an t-slinneanach’ or ‘shoulder gun’ is on display at the West Highland Museum, Fort William and tradition has it that it was identified by a late Laird of Ballachulish as the “black gun of misfortune.” In Glen Duror itself there is a walkers’ bothy and above it the footings of a house and associated buildings. Were these latter structures extant when James ‘of the glen’ was raising his cattle there? His last words before he was hanged were from Psalm 35:

“False witnesses did rise up; they laid to my charge things that I know not.”

To this day the 35th Psalm is known in Gaelic as Salm Seumas a’ Ghlinne.