The book Arran; - Cook Clan

ARRAN IN POLITICS 89
Arran : ^ on this issue there was uncertainty of judgment and
difference of action among the proprietors. The Eghnton
family continued its Protestant fervour into activity for the
cause of the Covenants : the Hamilton ' surname was wasted
in its devotion to Charles ii. before the Restoration as it had
been for adherence to the cause of Queen Mary, yet the Duke
of the latter half of the seventeenth century was to be the chief
agent, on behalf of Scotland, in supplanting King James with
William of Orange.^ But of what the actual thoughts and
convictions of the people themselves were at any stage, not
a word. Only here and there, at wide intervals, do we get
a passing glimpse on the life of the island.
Much, of course, they had to do and suffer at the bidding
of their masters, for whose political offences they are scourged.
The three leading families had their own local jealousies as
well as differences in state affairs. The sixteenth century is
stained with a Doulgas-Hamilton feud among the many
others, and this occasionally involved the Arran Stewarts,
in the clan interest as friends of the Douglases, against the
Hamiltons. In such a case the game was to make a grab
at Brodick Castle, just as it was the game of external enemies
to hit the Hamiltons by worrying Arran. We have already
had one example of the Stewarts occupying the island fortress.
Another occurs in 1528, the year of the Douglas downfall after
their brief tyranny over James v. It no doubt helped to
family bitterness that Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, in a
fight at Linlithgow in 1526, had slain the Earl of Lennox,
a Stewart, in cold blood. Anyhow we find western members
of the clan upholding the Douglas side against the King
and the Earl of Arran, who had made the usual political
' In Woodrow's list of fines imposed in 1662 upon compliers with the Commonwealth
Government we find, under Buteshire^ Donald and Neil MacNeil of Kilmorie,
and these have by some been attributed to Arran, but they are really of the wellknown
MacNeil(l) family of Kilmorie in Bute.
2 There had been, of course, a change of family in the interval. This Duke was
a Douglas. See p. 109.
VOL. II.
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