 |
| Redcastle from the east. Photo credit: Paul Johnston |
In Part 2, I explained what feuing was but just a quick reminder: a feu was a lease which lasted in perpetuity. Feus also had their own terminology as follows:-
It was possible for a landowner to feu to one of his tenants the land he rented - convert his term limited lease to a perpetual feu, in other words - but more commonly landowners feued to outsiders over the heads of their tenants. That meant that, after a feu had been completed, the tenant paid his rent to the feuar and the feuar paid a feuduty to the landowner (the latter henceforth termed the superior). Whether to the tenant or an outsider, feus were normally granted for a one-off lump sum called a composition or grassum and an annual feuduty equal to the rent plus an increment called an augmentation. Although this is isn’t quite how the law viewed it, especially in the 16th century, and despite the analogy with leases, so far as the layperson in the 21st century is concerned, it is the feuar who was the owner of the land comprised in a feu and the superior’s was really a third party right over it to receive the feuduty.
Anyway, with that reminder about feuing in mind, in 1560, David Barton, a chaplain officiating at a side altar in Fortrose Cathedral, feued his benefice (endowment) consisting of Artafallie Farm on the Black Isle about a mile north west of Kessock to Rorie MacKenzie, the younger brother of Colin Cam (‘one eyed’) MacKenzie of Kintail, the 11th chief of clan MacKenzie. As was legally required, this feu was consented to by Queen Mary as patron of the benefice (i.e. the person with the right to nominate the next chaplain after the death of each incumbent). What composition Rorie paid doesn’t appear but the feuduty was £7 plus two muttons (sheep carcases), 4 kids and 2 dozen hens. That was the rent payable by the tenants of Artafallie to Barton with an augmentation of 6 shillings and 8 pence.
 |
| Kessock and the south east corner of the Black Isle with Artafallie Farm top left as seen on the OS 1 inch map of the 1890s: National Library of Scotland |
 |
| Although no mill is marked on any map now, the Mill of Redcastle's location can be inferred from the village of Milton immediately west of the castle. The pier was built for loading stone for building the Caledonian Canal taken from the nearby quarry (now disused). OS 6" map surveyed 1872. National Library of Scotland |
Three years later, in 1587, Parliament passed an Act permitting King James VI to feu the annexed estate of the Crown (the Crown’s property - including the Earldom of Ross and Lordship of Ardmannoch - which the King could not dispose of without the consent of Parliament.) Parliamentary approval of each feu would no longer be required provided the feuduty included an augmentation to the current rent paid by the tenants. Prior to this, about a third of the Earldom of Ross and Lordship of Ardmannoch had already been feued in about a dozen separate feus but the King took immediate advantage of the new Act to feu all the rest of it to the Master of his Wardrobe, William Keith, in a single huge feu to be called the Barony of Delny after the farm on the north side of the Cromarty Firth between Alness and Tain which was to be its seat. Of the farms later to become part of Redcastle Estate, this feu included Garguston, Newton, Hilton, Lettoch and Easter Kessock (with its salmon fishery in the Beauly Firth and the ferry across to Inverness). Keith paid a composition (one off lump sum) of 1,000 merks (£666 13 s 6d) on which he received a 10% discount for reasons not stated. The annual feuduty was expressed as so much per property included in the feu which I've not totalled up but it included an augmentation of 30 merks (£20) over the current aggregate rent of the properties feued.
 |
| Extract from the 1587 Act permitting James VI to feu the annexed estate of the Crown or, as that was expressed in the jargon of the time, dissolving the annexed lands |
In 1595, William Keith sold a big chunk of the Barony of Delny, including Garguston, Newton, Hilton, Lettoch and Easter Kessock (with fishery and ferry) to the 12th chief of the MacKenzies, Kenneth MacKenzie of Kintail: his father, Colin Cam, had died at Redcastle in 1594.
Then, in 1599, Kenneth of Kintail transferred Garguston, Newton, and Easter Kessock (and fishery and ferry) - but not Lettoch or Hilton - to his uncle, Rorie of Artafallie. The charter effecting that transfer was the first explicitly to include the castle of Redcastle itself which until now had remained in the hands of the Crown, un-feued. And in case you’re wondering how Kenneth and Rorie MacKenzie could effect a transfer of the Crown’s property between them like that, it needs a quick digression into the niceties of feudal conveyancing to explain: a feuar could not transfer his feu (or a part of it) to a purchaser directly. He had to resign it back to the Crown as the superior so that it (the Crown) could regrant the feu (or part) to the purchaser. (The Crown always co-operated in this provided it was paid a new composition (fee) over and above the feuduty for the current year.) If, as was normally the case, the purchaser was to hold the feu on exactly the same terms and conditions as the seller had done, the charter which the Crown granted the purchaser was called a Charter of Resignation. But if, as occasionally happened, there was to be some change in the feu agreed to by the Crown, it was called a Charter of Novodamus (‘new grant’). Thus, the charter Rorie MacKenzie of Artafallie got from the Crown in implement of the transfer of Garguston et al to him from his nephew, Kenneth of Kintail, was a Charter of Novodamus because the feu was enlarged to include the castle. The composition Rorie paid the Crown for it was £100 and the feuduty he became responsible for was £47 16 shillings and 12 pence; 2 chalders, 10 bolls and 2 firlots of bere (barley); 5 muttons, 3 marts, 12 capons and 16 hens; and 80 cartloads of peat.
To summarise where we’ve got to by now, in 1599, Rorie MacKenzie of Artafallie is the owner (feuar) of:
- Artafallie (a feu held of David Barton, the chaplain at a side altar in Fortrose Cathedral, then, after his death after the Reformation following which it no longer appointed new incumbents to such offices, the Crown: feuduty £7, 2 muttons, 4 kids, 2 dozen hens);
Mill of Redcastle (part of a feu from the Lordship of Ardmannoch of Kilcoy and other properties held by the Stewarts of Muirends: feuduty to the Crown of £2)
- Redcastle, Garguston, Newton and Easter Kessock with its salmon fishery and ferry (part of the Barony of Delny which was a large part of the Lordship of Ardmannoch and Earldom of Ross feued to William Keith, a part of which he sold to Mackenzie of Kintail who in turn transferred a part of what he'd acquired from Keith to his nephew, Rorie of Artafallie: feuduty to the Crown of £47: 16: 12; 2 chalders, 10 bolls and 2 firlots of bere (barley); 5 muttons, 3 marts, 12 capons and 16 hens; and 80 cartloads of peat.)
There are still three pieces of the jigsaw that make up the modern estate of Redcastle - Hilton, Lettoch and Coulmore - still to be acquired: I'll come to them presently.
 |
| OS 1" map published 1967: National Library of Scotland |
The 1608 transfer from Rorie to Murdoch was another novodamus because the charter from the Crown effecting it (here) contained the following new additional grant (approximate translation from the Latin):
The King, considering that Newton of Redcastle was one of the principal places of the Lordship of Ardmannoch, where there existed from time immemorial a public fair once a year called St. Andrew's Fair at St. Palmer's Chapel, ratifies the said fair; and grants of new a licence to hold a fair, to levy customs and toll-penny, to create bailiffs and deputies, to establish taverns and breweries, to establish inns and hostelries for the reception of foreigners and strangers, and to use other lawful merchandise for the supply of the inhabitants.
The word 'fair' is used there in its original sense of a market and refers to the fact that, in the 17th century, the right to trade was restricted to certain elites, typically the burgesses of a burgh having a monopoly in the territory around their burgh. Membership of that elite could only be added to by a grant from the King and it was quite common for the Crown to grant trading privileges along with land even if, in many cases, little came of it. It looks as if there were already market rights at Redcastle which perhaps had fallen into disuse and the King was trying to reinvigorate. What was in it for the MacKenzies of Artafallie was a cut of the profits ('levy customs and toll-penny'). Whether any inns, taverns or hostelries were established in pursuit of this grant, I don't know, although an inn at Milton of Redcastle is marked on the first edition (1872) of the OS 6" map (see above) but not on the second (1907)
Nor do I know where St Palmer's Chapel was although the Origines Parochiales tell us (here): "At Redcastle, about half a mile west from the church [i.e. the parish church of the parish of Killearnan], stood a chapel dedicated to Saint Andrew, at which a fair was of old held about Lammas (1 August)". Newton of Redcastle, where the 1608 charter said the fair was, isn’t half a mile west of the parish church, though, but, anyway, St. Andrew’s Fair was still being held in 1839, on 16 July that year, at Milton of Redcastle. In 1845 it was moved to Beauly.
 |
| Inverness Courier, 3rd July 1839: British Newspaper Archive |
Upon consulting his charters, it appeared that the Crown rent roll according to which Highfield was being charged contained an error by overstating his feuduty by two bolls, one firlot and two pecks of bere (barley). But a hornets' nest had been poked because the deeds also revealed that the rent roll seemed to be further mistaken in not including as part of the feuduty for Drumderfit 80 cartloads of peat to be delivered to Dingwall Castle each year. Foulis' position was that the extra bere over and above the amount stated in Highfield's charter he was being charged was, in fact, an amount in lieu of that peat. Highfield defended this by pointing out that no peat, or anything in lieu of it, could now be due since Dingwall Castle had long since ceased to exist and in any case there were no longer any peat mosses on Drumderfit for it to come from. Legal arguments were heard by Lord Auchinleck (father of James Boswell of Johnson and Boswell fame) and he remitted to the full bench of the Court of Session for a decision. It was that Highfield was due the peat (or an equivalent in lieu of it): it mattered not that the place it was intended to heat no longer existed nor that there was no longer any peat on the feu.
 |
| Extract from the decision in Sir Harry Monro of Foulis, Bt., His Majesty's Chamberlain of the Earldom of Ross v Thomas MacKenzie of Highfield |
The “new house” reference is in a contemporaneous account of the Covenanting Wars (the Scottish end of the English Civil War) called the Wardlaw Manuscript because it was written by the Minister of the Parish of Wardlaw, opposite Redcastle on the south side of the Beauly Firth and now called Kirkhill. I can never remember who the various factions were in these wars, who was on whose side or who or what they were fighting for at any given moment (did they even know themselves, I wonder?) but suffice to say for present purposes that, in February 1649, not long after King Charles I had been executed, there was a rising in favour of the exiled King Charles II in the north of Scotland in which Rorie MacKenzie of Redcastle took part. But after sundry manoeuvres including seizing the Covenanter stronghold of Inverness, the Royalists were routed by the Covenanters under Colonels Kerr and Strachan in May 1649 at Balvenie Castle on Speyside. Rorie was taken prisoner and sent first to the Bog o’ Gight (later called Gordon Castle) at Fochabers and then Edinburgh whence he was eventually released upon payment of a fine of 7,000 merks (about £400 sterling). In the meantime, Kerr and Strachan had laid siege to Redcastle and its laird’s homecoming was not a happy one: in the words of the Wardlaw Manuscript (here):-
Rory Reedcastell, who, while he was prisoner at Bogg Castle, his own new strong house of Redcastle kept out against the troopes [i.e the Covenanters] by a madd crew, one Lieutenant John M’klain was shot dead out at a window, for which in a rage they brunt the castle to ashes, with all the good furnitur, two of the defendants shot at the post, his own 2d sone Kenneth the flour [of] all his ofspring by a fall off the wall top was braind dead; himselfe comming home, and seing all this dismall loss, with greefe and melancholy dyed of a malignant fever, lying in a killbarn, haveing no other lodging left him. Of all these cross casualties I myselfe was eye witness.
Alexander MacKenzie’s ‘History of the MacKenzies’ says (here) that the walls of Redcastle were razed to the ground on this occasion but I wonder if that’s correct because the Wardlaw Manuscript and another contemporary account, the Ardintoul Manuscript (named after the home on Loch Alsh in Wester Ross of its author, the Rev. John MacRae: see here) say only that it was burnt which could, of course, have left the walls standing with just the woodwork of floors and roof reduced to ashes. On the other hand, Rorie’s 1641 date and initials stone could have been reincorporated in a complete rebuild of the castle.
 |
| Photo credit: David Geddes |
Anyway, in so far as ‘History’ can be relied on (and it also appears to be mistaken about the name of Rorie 3rd’s second son which it says was Alexander while Wardlaw says (above) it was Kenneth), Colin MacKenzie, 4th of Redcastle, was “a very prudent man and amassed a large fortune”. That no doubt allowed him to restore the castle and also buy Coulmore in 1678 from the Roses of Kilravock. They had acquired it in 1485 from a family called Hunter and Coulmore wasn’t a feu, it was what was called a ‘ward holding’ in the Lordship of Ardmannoch. These were generally of much greater antiquity than feus and meant that the owner (‘ward vassal’) didn’t have to pay the Crown as feudal superior any annual duty while he was alive, only in the period between the death of an ancestor and his heir being served, which a ward vassal was not allowed to do unless he was at least 21 years of age. Ward vassals also had to make a payment to their feudal superior upon their (the vassals) marrying, which feuars didn’t have to do.
 |
| Coulmore Farm today looking west up the Beauly Firth. Photo credit: Lynden Schofield |
According to ‘History of the MacKenzies’, Colin 4th of Redcastle was “killed at Killearnan” (no details of that given) in 1704 when he was succeeded by his eldest son, another Rorie known as Ruairi Dearg, Gaelic for ‘Red Rorie’. There’s no sign of his having been involved in the 1715-16 Jacobite Rebellion which was the downfall of his chief, William, 5th Earl of Seaforth, who forfeited his title and estates for his involvement. There followed two more Rories of Redcastle - Ruairi Mor (‘Big Rorie’ 1725-51 - there's a story (here) that he was about to join the 1745-46 Rebellion when his wife 'accidentally' spilt boiling water down his boot which kept him at home) and Ruairi Ban (‘Fair haired Rorie’, 1751-85) - until we arrive at the penultimate and most notorious laird of Redcastle, Captain Kenneth MacKenzie.
After a period in the Seaforth Highlanders, in 1781 (before he’d inherited the estate), Kenneth raised an independent company for service in the British Army. Hoping to gain glory and prize money (the value of captured enemy military materiel) in the American War of Independence, he was appalled, first, to find his recruits poached to serve in other units and replaced by convicts who’d agreed to join the army in commutation of their sentences and, then, to be dispatched to guard British slave trading forts on the Gold Coast of West Africa (now Ghana). Kenneth seems to have been a pretty disreputable character and his temper didn’t improve in Africa. Possibly deranged by the tropical climate so deleterious to the health of Europeans in these days, he treated his men and the local Africans abominably but the nadir was firing a cannon at one of his men who’d deserted. That was something that couldn’t be overlooked even by the harsher standards of the 18th century and MacKenzie was sent home in 1783 to stand trial for murder. He was convicted but pardoned in 1785 after a year in jail. He then went and joined the Russian army and was eventually killed in a duel in Constantinople in 1789. You can read all about the extraordinary career of Captain Kenneth MacKenzie, briefly the 8th of Redcastle, here (start at Chapter 5, ‘Africa’).
 |
| Captain Kenneth MacKenzie of Redcastle is bottom left in this portrait by Edinburgh caricaturist John Kay. This was drawn in 1786 between MacKenzie's release from prison and his joining the Russian Army. Picture credit: British Museum |
 |
| Photo credit: arjayempee |
