A stumbling-block to those hereditary warriors in their new course was the campaign of Killiecrankie. However much set against the law, the Macgregors had always been ready to stand for the king when bloodshed and plunder were in question; and now a body of them, though not the chief, followed Dundee to his fatal victory. This defiance of the Whig Government, and the general disturbed state of the Highlands, prompted a renewal of the clan’s proscription. Perhaps at the instigation of Breadalbane, the special penal act against it was re-enacted early in William’s reign; then the Macgregors’ conduct in 1715 and 1745 did not invite its repeal.
For nearly a century now it was illegal to use the name of Macgregor. That had been a matter of less importance when every Highlander was known as the son of his father and of his own deeds; but now that even Macgregors had occasion to put their hands to documents and to be specified in records, it behoved them to answer to some convenient surname, while secretly cherishing their own proscribed patronymic. Some disguised it as Gregory, Gregorson, Grierson, and so forth. Some, since better might not be, took the names of neighbours or of the lords on whom they were now more or less dependent. Dr. Johnson understood that David Malloch, the poet, was a Macgregor by birth, that “beggarly Scotchman” who softened his assumed name to Mallet for London ears. Most of the clan seem to have submitted to adoption as Campbells, Drummonds, Grahams, and Murrays, names borrowed from the ducal houses, that, originally besetting the Macgregor country, had gradually squeezed themselves over it, where room was left by such encroachers as the Menzies and the Campbells of Breadalbane. Near the Trossachs country Rob Roy had to do with both Atholl and Montrose, as landlords and superiors; but, when on his good behaviour, he chose to call himself Campbell as recognising Argyll for his special patron. A good deal later, it was not uncommon to find Perthshire men who knew themselves as Macgregors, but passed before the world by other names. In the middle of last century, Professor Macdougall could tell how one of his Edinburgh students gave his name as Macgregor, then being asked to spell it, unconsciously did so as C-a-m-p-b-e-l-l.