Some of my MacFfadden and MacDubhshithe ancestors are listed as tenants at Tapul, Scobul and Camis & Shinconnel townships in the records of the Loch Buie estate of 1781 : with annual rents of between £4 and £3 15/-[i]. These townships were in In the Parish of Kilfinichen in South West Mull.
The area of South West Mull includes the adjacent island of Iona, the monastic settlement founded by Colm Cille and 12 companions in 563 CE. which lay at the heart of Celtic Christianity in Scotland and which was the burial place of the kings of Dal Raita and Alba up until 1097 CE.[ii]
The MacDubhshithe are recorded as being descended from an Erainn cleric related to the Ulaid clan who was lector at the Columban Abbey of Iona in 1194. In later days, the MacDubhshithe sept had lands in Colonsay but remained closely related to the areas around Iona.
The MacFfaddens are probably descended from another Ulain tribe, the Dal Riada, who settled in Argyll. They had the lands of Lochbuie in South West Mull until the 14th century when the then Lord of the Isles granted the land, instead, to two brothers of the MacGillEthain (MacLean/MacLaine) clan[iii]. Although dispossessed by the new charter, the McFfaddens, over time, became a sept of Clan MacLaine.
The Siol Alpin clans[iv], including the MacDubhshithes , provided the eranachs (hereditary abbots) on Iona until their male line failed in about 1200. There is no way of telling in ‘my’ MacFfaddens and MacDubhshithes are distant descendants of the ‘founders’ of these clans or whether their ancestors simply associated with the clan name.
Mull had been a site of intense conflict throughout the Early Modern period[v]. During the 16th century, Mull had been the domain of MacGillEthain of Duart. In 1633, however, Archibald Caimbeul, 1st Earl of Argyll, bought up Lachlan MacGillEthain’s substantial debts and took possession of his estates on Mull [vi]. As the 17th century’s religious, political and clan conflicts evolved into internecine warfare, the Argyll interest, in alliance with Cromwell’s forces, ravaged Mull and, finally, wrested control from the MacGillEthains after the 19th MacGillEthain chieftan, and most of the men he had rallied to the Royalist cause, were killed at the Battle of Inverkiething in 1651.
The Civil Wars left the Duart lairds deeper in debt, a situation the Caimbeuls exploited during the Republic. The Restoration of Charles Stuart in 1660, and the subsequent execution of Archibald Caimbeul for treason, did not significantly shift the balance of power however. Recovering their influence, the Caimbeuls were licensed in 1674 to invade Mull to recover debts and violently evict MacGillEthain tenants [vii]. By 1691 the Caimbeuls had used their legal, financial and military power to wrest control of most of Mull from the MacGillEthains and began implementing a policy of colonisation, resettling Caimbeul tacksmen on formerly MacGillEthain tenancies.
The Caimbeul resettlement of Mull, however, coincided with King William’s Ill years[viii] when crop failure and unusually cold winters – associated with volcanic activity on Iceland – brought famine to Europe and, particularly, to the Western Highlands of Scotland. It has been estimated that, in areas of the Highlands, the population declined by around 20%. In Kilfinichen, according to the Old Statistical Account, “people were dying for want on the high road, buried where they breathed their last as the few surviving relations had neither the strength nor means to carry them to the common burial places.”[ix]
Although most were now tenants of new landowners, the local folk remained politically bound to the MacGillEthain (and therefore, at that time, the Jacobite) interest, however.
In 1715, supporters of the MacGillEthain, Cameron, MacDhòmhnaill and Mac an Tòisich interests marshalled at the head of Loch na Keal on Mull before proceeding to the mainland in support of the Old Pretender[x] . The Jacobite forces, led by John Erskine, the Earl of Mar, were defeated by Hanoverian forces under the command of John Caimbeul, 2nd Duke of Argyll in November 1715.
Following the (Second) Disarming Act (1737), the 2nd Duke of Argyll commenced a programme of ‘improvement’ on his Mull estates, intent on increasing the financial return from his land-holdings. He commissioned Duncan Forbes of Culloden to review the management of his estates on Mull. Forbes advised Campbell to “ deliver [subtenants] from the tyranny of Tacksmen[xi], to free them of the oppression of services[xii] and…encourage them to improve their farms by giving them… nineteen years by lease… offering frankly for their farms such rent as they fairly and honestly could bear”.
Under the Argyll’s new land management policy, tacksmen were to be by-passed by offering 19 year leases of farms, ‘at will’, to the highest bidder rather than to the current leaseholder. The incoming tenants, moreover, were forbidden from sub-letting their land. Though not immediately successful due to a number of environmental and political factors, this change in policy substantially eliminated the pre-eminence of social status and kinship in Mulleach society. The policy dispossessed many in the tacksman class whilst also creating a larger class of cottars – who would previously have farmed on sub-let plots. In the first years, communal, run-rig farmtouns continued to operate however. The process of clearance (or improvement) was just beginning.
Due to the hegemony of the Argyll interest on Mull, the island was relatively unaffected by the rebellion of 1745. The island’s communities were affected, however, by the suppression of local social and cultural norms imposed in retribution for the rebellion. The Act of Proscription in 1747 prohibited the wearing of highland dress, public (or private) gatherings and teaching of or in gaidhlig. A further Disarming Act of the same year, and the subsequent Heritable Jurisdictions Act, legislated to eliminate the local military agency of Highland society.
The programmatic colonisation and improvement projects of the Dukes of Argyll dominated the political and economic landscape of Mull.