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250 HIGHLAND PAPERS
Archibald Campbell, late Marquess of Argyll, and David Leslie
and these in armes with them, and pursued to the fort of Dunavertie
in Kintyre, which not being able to hold out Ther being
ane message sent into these within the fort that if they did not
come forth again ten hours the next day they should not have
quarters, and if they came out they should have quarters. And
the said Johne M'dougall being within the fort with his friends,
who having punctually as wes desired at the verie hour of the day
com forth and rendered themselves they wer all be the instiga-
tion of the deceast Archibald Campbell, late Marquess of Argyll,
to the number of fyve hundredth men, officers and souldiers,
cruellie and inhumanelie butchered in cold blood (The said John
M'Dougall being then a child and in nonage wes only spared).' :
From this decree it is clear that at that time it was believed
that quarter had been promised, and the minutely detailed statement
of the circumstances seems to show that belief to have been
well founded, and this will be confirmed a little later when
Leslie's record has been considered. Turning for the moment to
the next question— who was responsible for this butchery ?—Bishop
Guthry alleges that Argyll was responsible, and so also does the
decree above quoted. In view of the wholesale murder of the
Lamonts by the Campbells in June 1646, it is easy to believe that
Argyll, whose own people had suffered so much at the hands of
Alastair Macdonald, 2 may have been pleased with the killing of
the prisoners, and may even have done his best to bring it about.
And his instigation of the massacre was actually one of the
charges brought against him, not only in the action already
referred to, but also in his trial for treason. 3 But Turner, who
was a witness in that trial, after saying that there was no evidence
against him, goes on to give his account of what really happened :
' Mr. John Nave (who was appointed by the Commission of the
Kirke to waite on him (Leslie) as his chaplaine) never ceased
to tempt him to that bloodshed, yea and threatened him with the
curses befell Saul for spareing the Amalekites, for with them his
theologie taught him to compare the Dunavertie men.' And in
the Appendix, p. 240, he is even more emphatic : 'It is true
1
Act. Pari. Scot., vol. vii. p. 337.
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2 The traditional account of this bloodshed and devastation is given in
\ Adventures in Legend, by the Marquis of Lome, K.T.
Cobbett's State Trials, vol. v. col. 1409.