Rob Roy’s life I propose to treat apart; and then something may be said of his clan’s part in the rising of 1715. In 1745 also, it can be taken as a matter of course that the Macgregors did not hold aloof from such a congenial chance of bestirring themselves, and in the _débâcle_ after Culloden, their contingent was the last to disband, after boldly marching through the Highlands to Balquhidder. Two separate bodies of them had joined Prince Charlie’s army, as Scott states; but they seem to have run together in the heat of Prestonpans; then there arose a certain jealousy as to which chief had the best right to be colonel. For the clan, as well as the country, was distracted by a pretender, and by more than one. A dispute as to headship seems almost essential to the dignity of a Highland stock; and the troubled life led by the sons of Alpin for two or three centuries had helped specially to tangle the line of succession into knots which Miss Murray Macgregor is at much pains to unravel, her history being twisted, not to say encumbered, by such contentions. She is naturally concerned to exalt her own family, the Macgregors of Glenstray, above rival branches that during a confused time had usurped precedence in a name legally extinct.
The law of proscription, indeed, had now become a dead letter, the Macgregors being practically free to bear their own name if they pleased, though for a time not to wear their own or any tartan, unless along with the king’s coat. If some sons of the race went into exile after Culloden, some to the gallows, and some are already found seeking fortune across the Atlantic, others gained scope for their warlike energy in the new Highland regiments that did such good service to the Georges. Half-way between the two Jacobite risings, negotiations had been set on foot by the kindred clans Gregor and Grant for taking either Grant or Macalpine as their common name. This proposal wrecked on the question of which clan should supply the chief; but some gentlemen of both appear to have then dubbed themselves Macalpine. Half a century later, the name of Macgregor was no longer in disgrace, its loyalty so well proved that the Government could be called on to redress what made now a mere sentimental grievance.