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"Why was there not more resistance to evictions?" is a question often asked, even at the time,
'Were any such clearances attempted in England, I leave you to conceive the excitement which it would be certain to create, the mob procession, the effigy burning, the window-smashing'
wrote The Times special correspondent sent north to investigate the events in Glencalvie in 1845.
The articles on this site should show that there was often organised, and sometimes violent, protest by tenants. These protests collapsed for different reasons: an overwhelming show of force, including troops, by the landlords; weak leadership; pressure from local ministers to submit to the 'will of God'; or simply an air of resignation. One part of the country where the struggle succeeded was Coigach in Wester Ross where five attempts to evict tenants over an eighteen month period were successfully resisted.
Coigach had belonged to the Cromartie estate of John Hay-MacKenzie who died in 1849. A couple of weeks before his death his only child, Anne, married Lord Stafford, son and heir of the second Duke of Sutherland. Thus did Cromartie fall into the hands of that rapacious family. This prevented the estate being sold to meet the late landlord's debts which were considerable. The tenants on the estate were extremely poor: there had been several years of famine and the herring fishery established at Ullapool was in a poor way because of lack of fish. In 1852, therefore, to boost the estate's income by letting the hill grazing, the factor, Andrew Scott, attempted to clear the land at Achitilbuie and Badenscallie and offered the tenants new lots at Badentarbat. Eighteen families refused to go and fomented a spirit of resistance among the others.
There were three attempts to serve writs of removal between 1852 and March 1853. Each time a large crowd, and as often was the case composed mainly of women, met the officers. In February 1853,
'The summonses were forcibly taken from him and destroyed and himself grossly maltreated though fortunately without any serious injury to his person .... The officer was entirely stripped of his clothes by these rebels and was put into the boat in which he went to Coigach in a state of absolute nudity.'
Of course the factor huffed and puffed about the rule of law and Lady Stafford wanted 'the full force of the law' applied in defence of landlords' interests. The local police force being insignificant, this would have meant requesting troops. Scott and Lady Stafford were apparently in favour of this but, although Cromartie was operated as an independent unit of the Sutherland estate an not under James Loch's central control, advised caution, not least because he felt troops would be unwilling to fight in such circumstances. He was also well aware of the bad publicity which would ensue. There had been enough of that in the days of Patrick Sellar and newspapers were now more willing to take up positions against the landlords.
Ultimately the attempt to enforce the evictions were abandoned not because the resistance at Coigach was better organised or more violent than elsewhere but largely because of the remoteness and the impossibility of local enforcement. As someone remarked to me in a different context, 'That may be the law in Edinburgh but it doesn't reach as far as here'.
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