Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

290 HISTORY OF LF.WIS.
and to bastardize her only son ; a specimen of the do-
mestic morals of the times, as it is of the accuracy with
which the law of lineal and legal descent, of which we
have heard so much, was maintained, and of the respect
which was paid to it. By a third wife, he had two sons,
besides three others, illegitimate. At the death of this
old Rory, the eldest son of the third wife, Torquil Dhu,
took possession of the Lewis ; on which the bastardized
brother, Torquil of Coygach, applied for the assistance
of his mother's kindred, the Mackenzies of Kintail, to re-
cover his inheritance. The event of this was, that a ser-
vant of Torquil Dhu was employed to murder the usur-
per; which he effected by enticing him, with seven of
his friends, to dinner, on board a Dutch ship which he
had seized for that purpose; and there, having secured
the whole party, he delivered them over to Kintail, by
whom they were beheaded in 1597. No advantage, how-
ever, was derived from this heroic act : the conspirators
having been pursued and worsted, with the usual slaugh-
ter, by Neill, one of the bastard brothers ; who appears to
have been the only honest man of the tribe, since he se-
cured the island for the benefit of the children of Torquil
Dhu and of his legitimate brother by the last wife, Tor-
mot, Kintail had now married the daughter of Torquil
of Coygach ; and having kidnapped young Torrnot, per-
suaded his son-in-law to surrender to him his whole right
over this contested possession.
But it was not destined that he should enjoy it so
easily; and the subsequent events afford an amusing
picture of the light in which these people were viewed
in the Lowlands, even at so late a period as that above-
mentioned. The gentlemen of Fife, having heard of an
island, the seat of such troubles, and reported to be a
fertile spot, engaged in what was then looked upon as a
bold and difficult enterprise, namely, no less than an