Pepysman

By Pepysman

There's been a murder...

...to use the immortal words of Inspector Taggart. In this case it was the murder of Colin Campbell in woods south of Ballachulish as he made his way down from Fort William. This would have been about his last view as he stopped to talk to a passing stranger just as a musket ball ripped into him. This was in 1752 though Robert Louis Stevenson puts it in 1751 to help the narrative of KIDNAPPED.

Campbell had just evicted Camerons from their lands on Morvern and was on his way to do the same to the Stuarts of Appin. Very quickly one of Stuarts, James of the Glen, was arrested and tried at Inverary before a Campbell judge and a jury made up of 12 Campbells and three of their tenants. A guilty verdict was duly and quickly delivered, James was hanged at Ballachulish and his dead body displayed there for two years, pour discourager les autres.

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