Clan MacGregor · 1603
The Battle of Glen Fruin
A skirmish over Loch Lomond cattle in 1603 became the pretext for the proscription of the entire MacGregor name.
Draft entry · awaiting review
The MacGregors and the Colquhouns of Luss had been at feud over cattle and grazing along the western shore of Loch Lomond for a generation. In February 1603 — days before James VI departed Edinburgh for the English crown — Alasdair MacGregor of Glenstrae led perhaps four hundred clansmen down Glen Fruin and onto the Colquhoun lands.
The Colquhouns met them with horse and foot. By the day's end roughly 140 Colquhouns lay dead and the MacGregors had taken hundreds of cattle north into the hills.
The widows of Luss travelled to Stirling and presented the bloodied shirts of the dead to the king. James, on the eve of inheriting an English throne and intent on showing the southern court a settled north, signed a Letter of Fire and Sword. The very name MacGregor was abolished — anyone bearing it could be hunted and killed. The proscription was renewed under Cromwell, and again after the 1715 Rising. It was finally repealed in 1774, after 171 years. No other Scottish clan ever bore a sentence so total.