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The principal seats of the chiefs of the Macleans were Duart and Aros Castles in Mull, Castle Gillean in Kerrara, on the coast of Lorn, and Ardtornish Castle in Morven. In 1632, on occasion of the visit of one of the chiefs, Lachlan, to the Court of Charles the First, he was created a Baronet of Nova Scotia, by the title of Sir Lachlan Maclean of Morven.
It is curious to think of the Lord of the Isles dealing as an independent prince, through a renegade Douglas, with the English king. A treaty was made at John's Castle of Ardtornish now a shell of crumbling stone on the sea-shore of the Morvern side of the Sound of Mull with the English monarch at Westminster.
I am, with all duty and respect, your Excellency's most, &c., "Robert Campbell." No. IVa. The following copy of a letter which passed from one clergyman of the Church of Scotland to another, was communicated to me by John Gregorson, Esq. of Ardtornish. The escape of Rob Roy is mentioned, like other interesting news of the time with which it is intermingled.
I am, with all duty and respect, your Excellency's most, &c., "Robert Campbell." No. IVa. The following copy of a letter which passed from one clergyman of the Church of Scotland to another, was communicated to me by John Gregorson, Esq. of Ardtornish. The escape of Rob Roy is mentioned, like other interesting news of the time with which it is intermingled.
By 1476 the Lord of the Isles, the Celtic ally of Edward IV., was reduced by Argyll, Huntly, and Crawford, and lost the sheriffdom of Inverness, and the earldom of Ross, which was attached to the Crown . His treaty of Ardtornish had come to light. The intrigues which follow, and the truth about the character of James, are exceedingly obscure.
In the autumn of 1853 the poet visited Ardtornish on the Sound of Mull, a beautiful place endeared to him who now writes by the earliest associations. It chanced to him to pass his holidays there just when Tennyson and Mr Palgrave had left "Mr Tinsmith and Mr Pancake," as Robert the boatman, a very black Celt, called them.
Bancroft sent in his card, which brought out instantly the key to the old castle, and in a few moments Capt. MacDougal and Mr. Phipps, a brother of Lord Normanby's, joined us. They pointed out the interesting points in the landscape, the Castle of Ardtornish, the scene of Lord of the Isles, etc., in addition to the fine old ruin we came to see.
The Celtic North, never quiet, made its last united effort in 1411, when Donald, Lord of the Isles, who was in touch with the English Government, claimed the earldom of Ross, in right of his wife, as against the Earl of Buchan, a son of Albany; mustered all the wild clans of the west and the isles at Ardtornish Castle on the Sound of Mull; marched through Ross to Dingwall; defeated the great northern clan of Mackay, and was hurrying to sack Aberdeen when he was met by Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, the gentry of the northern Lowlands, mounted knights, and the burgesses of the towns, some eighteen miles from Aberdeen, at Harlaw.
They walked in the rain, saw Tintagel and the Scilly Isles, and were feted by an enthusiastic captain of a little river steamer, who was more interested in "Mr Tinman and Mr Pancake" than the Celtic boatman of Ardtornish. The winter was passed at Farringford, and the Northern Farmer was written there, a Lincolnshire reminiscence, in the February of 1861.
But the walls, of formidable thickness, may long bid defiance even to the storms of this region; remaining to mark to future times the barbarous splendour of the ancient Highland chieftains, and, with the opposite fortress of Ardtornish, serving to throw a gleam of historical interest over the passage of the Sound of Mull."
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