Balnagowan Castle (4)
This was for centuries the seat of the chiefs of Clan Ross, the chiefship falling to the lairds of Balnagowan on the death of the last Earl of Ross.  Hugh Ross of Rarichies, 1st of Balnagown (died c.1374), was the 3rd son of Hugh O'Beolan, 4th Earl of Ross, killed at the Battle of Halidon Hill in 1333.

Alexander Ross 8th of Balnagowan (died 1592), was a notoriously nasty piece of work - even for those times.  Fearless and unscrupulous, his career of destruction, pillage and intimidation kept the countryside in terror.  Continual complaints came to the Privy Council, and they were forced to act when they discovered that important tenants in the North could by no means pay their due taxes because they were so &quot;herreit and wrakkit&quot; by Balnagowan.  This was in 1569.  The Commendator of the Abbey of Fearn complained that he could not get <i>his</i> tenants rents because of the laird's 'barbarous cruelties, injuries and intolerable oppressions and bludesched' - the said tenants taking their rents to Ross instead of Fearn.  Alexander Ross was summoned before the Council, failed to appear and was declared rebel.  Captured, he was confined in Tantallon Castle.  

The 8th laird died in 1592, but his son George, though educated at St Andrew's, was evidently cut from the same cloth and proved to be little better than his father.  The same year that his father died, he with his brothers and sixty accomplices, took captive John Ross, of Edinburgh with violence and detained him against his will in Balnagowan Castle.  A drug debt I expect!  He was also accused of the slaughter of certain subjects, and with aiding the fugitive Earl of Bothwell, and was thereupon also declared rebel.  

His sister Katherine, wife of Robert Munro of Foulis, maintained the family reputation by her involvement witchcraft and poison, but though certain of her accomplices were &quot;brint for saim&quot;, the lady arranged a packed jury which acquitted her!
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