The first Assynt Clearances: 1812
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The clearances in Assynt were the result of cunning strategy on the part of William Young and Patrick Sellar acting for the Sutherland estate and the naivety of local tacksmen. In November 1811 Young organised an auction at the Golspie Inn for five sheep farms in Assynt. The Assynt tacksmen crossed the country to attend and, it is said 'promised anything rather than lose the land'. This promise entailed taking on the responsibility of clearing the people and of paying economically unaffordable rents. The evening ended with much revelry and Sellar singing Auld Lang Syne.
After a severe and famine-plagued winter, 81 families were cleared in the spring of 1812. The position of tacksmen in Highland society was crucial in this. Sellar reported,
'The gentlemen who were to receive possession had so much influence over the people that little or no interference of mine was necessary.'
Of course, these tacksmen were living on borrowed time also. In 1814, one of them was asking for a delay in paying rent because his sheep were suffering from braxy. This cut little ice with Sellar,
'these Assynt gentlemen have no skill. They won't expend money in travelling to acquire it, or, in sending their boys from home; and where they should all be affluent, they are in poverty. They are almost all behind in rents. They should look for some spirited Northumberland or Tweeddale man.'
Young saw little of value in the cleared population,
'unprofitable as such a race are the best must be done, and they may be at last useful as roadmakers an labourers at home and in the low Counrty, in place of, at present wasting their time in Sloth and idleness.'
Nevertheless, the betrayal of the people by their tacksmen, and the complicity of the church in this, meant that attitudes would not be the same again in Assynt.
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