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CAMPBELL OF CAWDOR.
War Cry: "Cruachan" (A mountain near Loch Awe).
Badge: Roid (Wild Myrtle); or Garbhag an t-sleibhe (Fir Club Moss).
to set her aside, and, with the aid of a kinsman, the precentor of Ross, they brought
forward some curious evidence to prove her illegitimate. But the little Muriel was
not unfriended. Her estates held of the crown, thus the King bestowed her ward
and marriage upon the Earl of Argyll, a powerful guardian, who, in her twelfth year,
bestowed her as a bride, on his third son, John, in 1510 a marriage that had many
advantages, and perhaps no other alliance in Scotland could have enabled the young
heiress to hold her own among rough and hostile neighbours.
He was "a Campbell of the old stamp," says the Book of Me Thanes of Cawdor,
" seeking incessantly to increase his possessions and extend hisinfluence. His treaties
with cousins of his own clan, with the Mac Leans, MacDonalds, and MacNeills show both his policy
and his acknowledged power ! . . . His possessions in Argyll were large and increasing. He seems
already to have pretended some right to Isla."
The grim keep of Cawdor, with its turrets and rambling outworks, is one of the most remarkable
baronial edifices in Scotland, and among some sculpture, on a stone, dated 1510 the year of
Muriel's marriage is carved a fox smoking a short tobacco pipe, seventy-five years before Sir Walter
Raleigh introduced smoking into England.
From 1524 till 1546, the year of his death, Sir John Campbell resided permanently at Cawdor.
Lady Muriel survived him long, and also their son Archibald. She died in 1573, resigning her thanedom
in favour of her grandson, John, who married Mary Keith, the daughter of an opulent, noble,
and honourable family, the Earl Marischal's. The Reformation brought him the accession of the
priory lands of Ardchattan.
Lady Cawdor, being a sister of the Countess of Argyll, on the death of the Earl in 1584, Sir John
Campbell was one of the six persons named to manage the Earldom during the young peer's
minority, and schemed with Campbell of Lochnell to seize itnd keep the boy's person by force, for
his own aggrandisement.
The Cawdor family did not figure much in Scottish history ; but, as Campbells, being obnoxious
to Montrose, after the battle of Auldearn, he desired their lands to be ravaged as Spalding records.
John Campbell of Cawdor, M.P., son and heir of Sir Alexander Campbell, married Mary,
daughter and co-heir of Lewis Pryse, Esq., and died in 1777. Pryse Campbell, his son and heir, also
inherited Stackpole Court, Pembrokeshire, represented Nairn in Parliament, and was a Lord of the
Treasury in 1766.
Hi son, John, was elevated to the Peerage of Great Britain, 1796, by the title of Lord Cawdor
of Castlemartin ; and his son, John Frederick the second Baron, was created Earl Cawdor and Viscount
Emlyn on the 5th October 1827.
Apart from its associations with MacBeth, Cawdor Castle has some little mysteries of its own.
In one of the dungeons stands a hawthorn tree, round which the walls were "
built. Freshness
"
to
Cawdor'* Hawthorn Tree ! is a family toast, and there is a legend connected with it, too long for
insertion here, but given in Carruther's Uiyhlaiul Knte-Book.
The first Earl died in 1860, and was succeeded by his son John, second Earl, born in 1817, who
died 1898, and was succeeded by his eldest son, the present Earl, born in 1847.