History
Glencoe, What's in the Name?
It is the most-asked question at the museum: "So, tell me, why is the house called Glencoe?" Here is the short answer: Glencoe is a town in Scotland, infamous for the "Massacre of Glencoe" in 1692, when the Campbell clan, acting out an age-old feud with the MacDonalds, murdered a significant part of the latter, including the clan chief, women and children. General Wharton, the builder of Glencoe, was married to Anne Rebecca Radford, who, on her mother's side, had some Campbell ancestry. The General, unafraid of the negative publicity associated with the Campbells and Glencoe, decided to name the house "Glencoe" in honor of his wife.
Glen Coe is a glen (valley) in the
Scottish Highlands. Glencoe Village, the
site of the massacre is situated in this glen.
So what drove General Wharton to name his house after such a blood-drenched part of his wife's family history? Maybe he had actually looked into the history behind the incident and named the house in a defiant effort to clear the Campbells' bad reputation. What actually happened at Glencoe?
The story brings us back to the world of the Scottish highlands in the 16th and 17th centuries. Clans were kind of extended families and, as is customary with big families, they harbored deep historic rivalries and suspicions about each other, even though by this time most had forgotten really why. The MacDonalds, living at Glencoe, had built a hard-earned reputation for raiding, pillaging, and cattle-rustling, mostly at the expense of the neighboring Campbell clans.
In 1688, during the "Glorious Revolution", William III of Orange arrived in England, effectively ending the rule of Roman Catholic King James II. Even though he was preoccupied with other, more important, matters, William ordered the highland chiefs - most of them supporters of James II - to swear an oath of allegiance to him by January 1st, 1692 or "be punished with the extremity of the law". The driving force behind this order was Secretary of State John Dalrymple, a Lowlander and a Protestant who disliked the Highlanders and viewed their whole way of life as a hindrance to Scotland. Also, for some reason, he just couldn't stand the MacDonalds of Glencoe.
The Highlanders found themselves in a bit of a quandary, since they were still bound by an oath to James II. Finally, on December 28th, 1691, they received the message that they were released from this oath, only three days before the deadline. On December 31st, in the midst of a severe winter, the MacDonald clan chief called Maclain went to nearby Fort William to take the requested oath but was turned away with the order to take it in front of the sheriff in Inverarary, the principal town of the Campbells. The Campbells didn't miss the chance to hinder the progress of their old enemy. Maclain was delayed and detained before he was eventually allowed to take the oath in January.
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