Since Trying to unravel the ‘seventh in descent’ puzzle, I have been doing a lot more wide ranging research.

 

I started carefully going through the Muster Roll of the Jacobite army in 1745, and found that disappointingly there are very few Grays mentioned.

The idea began to form in my mind that the Grays were not clansmen at all. Any research one does into tartans if followed by the discovery that, yes, one is entitled to wear the Old Sutherland, but Gray is not a clan at all.

 

In my earlier pages I have asserted that the original Grays were Templar Knights partly seafaring, but mostly driven out of France on Friday 13^th Nov 1306.

 The Scottish contingent fought with the Bruce against the English in 1314, and after their victory, they were rewarded with lands and titles in Scotland. Thus the Grays became part of the ‘establishment’, indeed the descent is well known through the various Lords of Gray.

Andrew (Scutifer Regis) progenitor of the Grays of Skibo is our line of descent.

The Templars, proscribed by Papal Bull, did not disappear, they went underground into the secret Masonic society, taking their secrets with them. It is now well known that the Scottish rite of freemasonry is one of the oldest, and has closer links with the original form than any other.  

A fascinating account can be read in the book, The Second Messiah, by Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas.

The history of Scotland from that time is a complex story of English supremacy. At times requiring Scottish leaders and Kings to swear fealty, and then leaving the country alone to be run by various kings, Lairds, and at times rebel groups and armies. It is by no means clear who, and which families and groups had allegiance to whom at any one time. Treachery was common, most famously during the battle of Falkirk with some Scots deserting Wallace to the English side at the commencement of the battle.

 

The Grays, along with the Sinclairs, and others, would have been aware of the importance of their religious survival. To this end, along with other houses in Scotland, they did not get involved in fighting, or the Jacobite cause, perhaps this is what Dr Murray Rose referred to in his jibe at the Grays being more of a praying race than a fighting one. Interesting too, that he refers to them as a race. French descent of course.

 

To what extent freemasonry continued in the descent of the family is not known. However in Lesley Ketteringham’s book there is a passage describing the friendship between William Gray of Lairg and William, Earl of Sutherland.

Indeed it has been my assertion that it was this link that led to “preferment for his two sons” also extended to Old Angus.

 

Many accounts of the clearances make them out to be benign improvements to the estates in the north. Lesley Ketteringham’s account of the period is typical, in that no mention is made of the ’45 at all and certainly nothing of its after effects on the population. The clearances were however the final end of the dismantling of the old clan system which had been routed after Culloden.

 

I began to read more accounts of Culloden, because it is at that time we seem to have lost our family’s links. The more I read the less I began to be surprised. The fact that the battle has been removed from the Battle Honours of all the English regiments involved is an indication of it’s terrible story.

The slaughter which followed and the laying waste of the population of the highlands is only matched in its barbarity of the clearances which were to follow in later years.

John Prebble’s books on the two subjects make harrowing reading.

 

So where were the Grays?

They were I suggest on the loyalist side. I can find mention of one ore two, but certainly no more than the odd ones fighting for Bonnie Prince Charlie.

I think the Scottish loyalists kept well out of it. (William Gray you will recall kept watch on the passes in Sutherland for the clans and reported back to the Earl) More than that I can find out very little. How truthful his intelligence was I cannot say.

Some of the Grays of Lairg by that time, from whom we are descended, were not mere farmers, tenants on the land here and there, nor were they clansmen. They did not follow the call to arms of the clan chief.

It almost follows by implication, or omission, that the Grays were not of the clans, they were not of the feudal system, and were thus probably not on the land before 1745.

 

Now came the slaughter after Culloden. The population would disappear into the hills on arrival of soldiers to their cottages. Looting and burning was common, rape, and certain death for the menfolk if anyone could be found.

It is against this backdrop that Alex of Inverbrora managed his existence.

The kilt was proscribed. The Black Watch regiment was only formed as a sop to the horror being felt in the England at the subjugation of the highlanders.

A Loyalist Regiment no less.

 

Angus was a child at this time, aged 6 or 7 whilst the population was being savaged by the Duke of Cumberland’s army.

 

I suspect we will find out little more about this period. Certainly the growing Angus appears as a tenant in Lairg. In what way this came about we can only speculate, but as a son of Alex the friend of the Earl it would be possible.

 

After the loss of so many men at Culloden, and the subsequent laying waste of the highlands, many holdings and ‘properties’ would be empty. Perhaps new tenancies were taken up by those people left, and able to work the land.

Sons of a cattle drover, friendly with the Earl must be prime candidates.

If indeed old Angus, or young Angus as he would be then, came by his holding by this means, and we know he had a formal letter giving him that holding, no wonder he fought through the Courts to avoid being evicted again from it during the clearance of Lairg some years later.

 

 

 

He would feel that he was part of the new order, if you like, and that it was his right to stay. Indeed he re-appears in Culmaily almost immediately after. I can find no direct account of the Lairg clearance, to say if the cottages were destroyed.

 

When the clearance started in Lairg around 1805 Angus is in his 60’s having lived through these turbulent times. He is well armed in his court case he fights against his removing. At length he inevitably loses, and it appears as though he goes to live with his sisters? In Rinacoup.

 

The heart of neither side of the population was in the conflicts that followed. The Ministers did not oppose the clearances, they couldn’t, but they sympathised with the people. MacKid by all accounts did all he could to oppose Patrick Sellar the worst of the improvers, and finished up a broken and almost exiled man as result.

Lieutenant Gray in the Sutherland Fencibles a loyalist regiment got old Angus off a charge sheet for cutting down trees for firewood.

 

However we have reports of Angus living back at Culmaily very soon after that. Quite how and what became of the planned sheep run in the area we cannot say, but possession of the property has continued in the family to the present day.

 

 

Post script

 

Culmaily is such an odd name for there to be two houses of that name within a few miles, and no others in the world. They must be connected in some way.

The Culmaily by the sea is close to Dunrobin and quite near Skibo. Stone built, and quite a fine house. Culmaily in Lairg is a small cottage, perhaps built on the site of even an old hillside hut, common at that time.

We know the Grays held Skibo. We know Alex of Inverbrora was a good friend of the Earl, indeed seems to have spent some time at Dunrobin.

It would be perfectly possible for Culmaily to have been the home of some part of the Gray family maybe, even after the loss of Skibo.

Throughout the time of the clearances the brutal, and hated Patrick Sellar lived in Culmaily. I always thought it strange that we should have named our holding in Lairg after such a man’s residence, indeed it would have stirred up terrible ill feeling amongst the people so it cannot have been so. However if Culmaily had been previously the home of the Grays, displaced in some way by this man, then it would be quite reasonable to have called their exile home by the same name.

Earlier references to the holding or area use the name Easter Lairg, Culmaily only appears during “Old” Angus’s period there.