Dunaverty Castle (15 of 15)
By the beginning of the 16th century, Dunaverty had already seen more mayhem that most Scottish castles ever experience, but the worst was still to come!  As we have seen with so many other castles around the country, there were few prominent families or castles that avoided involvement in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and Dunaverty, out of the way as it is by modern standards, is set right slap bang between Scotland, England and Ireland - the aforesaid 'three kingdoms'!

If you have been following my photos along in chronological order, you will recall how Alasdair Mac Colla, after separating from the Marquess of Montrose in 1645, returned to western Scotland with his Irish gallowglasses to harry Campbell lands, during which he captured and sacked, amongst other places, Castle Sween.  With General David Leslie's army bearing down upon him, Mac Colla left garrisons in the castles he had taken, including Dunaverty, and withdrew from Kinlochkilkerran (now called Campbelltown) via a fleet of birlins to Islay and subsequently Antrim.  And so by May 1647, the scene was set!

It is said that by the time General David Leslie and Archibald Campbell, Marquis of Argyll arrived here, there were some two to three hundred men, women and children, principally MacDonalds and MacDougalls, holed up within the castle - which must have been quite a squeeze!  They were mostly Scots and not Irish and had chosen to remain in Scotland, rather than having been abandoned here by Mac Colla.  The garrison was under the command of Archibald Og of Sanda (the island just offshore from here).

The Covenanters laid siege to the castle, but with little or no artillery, there was effectively little they could do to force their way in, but what they did manage to do, was isolate the castle from its water supply.  By now it was June and an early hot summer, which meant it wasn't long before the defenders requested a surrender on fair terms.  General Leslie offered them quarter if they surrendered, which was accepted.  However, despite the promised quarter from the Covenanters, no sooner had the garrison surrendered than they were almost entirely slaughtered, many, it is said, being thrown over the cliff from Dunaverty's summit.  Only four people are believed to have survived.

Apart from the intriguing horror of the garrison being thrown to their deaths by the evil Covenanters, what is interesting about this event is trying to unravel who was responsible for it.  There were three main players on the Covenanting side - General David Leslie, the military commander; Archibald Campbell, Marquess of Argyll, the leader of the Covenanting faction in Scotland, and of course the chief of the clan whose lands Alasdair Mac Colla had made it his self appointed task to ravish; and the Reverend John Naves, the man appointed by the Scottish Committee of Estates to ensure that moral judgement was duly passed down by Leslie's army.

There are many and varied versions of who said what to whom, both before and after the garrison's surrender.  Sir James Turner, Leslie's Adjudant-General, stated that, having been ordered by Leslie to negotiate with the garrison, he was instructed to inform the garrison that they were to &quot;yield themselves to the kingdome's mercy&quot; - the important distinction here being that they were not yielding themselves to General Leslie's mercy! 

(Sir James stated that only one man's life was saved, although the general belief is that 4 were saved, including the infant Ranald MacDonald, son of Archibald Og of Sanda.)

Whether General Leslie is as free of blame as his Adjudant-General suggests, is questionable.  His past form would suggest otherwise.  David Leslie was in command of the Covenanters that surprised and routed the Marquess of Montrose's army at the Battle of Philiphaugh, following which about 100 Royalists surrendered on promise of quarter.  Some Presbyterian Ministers who accompanied Leslie persuaded him that this clemency was foolish, and the prisoners and 300 camp followers (many of them women and children) were slaughtered in cold blood.

In Bishop Guthry's Memoirs, it is distinctly stated that the Dunaverty garrison had been promised quarter, &quot;But having surrendered their arms, the Marquis of Argyll and a bloody preacher, Mr. John Nevoy, prevailed with him to break his word, and so the army was let loose upon them and killed them all without mercy.&quot;  Argyll also had previous form, having been responsible for the wholesale murder of the Lamonts by his Campbells in June 1646.

It is plain that Sir James Turner, as a soldier of fortune, was anxious to clear his boss, General Leslie, from the charge of having broken his promise of quarter.  However further light is thrown on Leslie's character by a significant admission by Turner himself.  After the fall of Dunaverty, Turner tells how the Covenanters attacked Dunyveg in Islay, where old Coll Ciotach (Alasdair Mac Colla's father) was in command.  Turner recounted 'Before we were masters of Dunneveg the old man Coll, coming fulishlie out of the house where he was Governour on some parole or other to speak with his old friend the Captaine of Dunstaffnage Castle, was surprised and made prisoner not without some staine to the Lieutenant-Generall's honour.'  So much for any arguments based on the character of David Leslie as a man of honour.

But while Leslie must ever bear the shame of his cowardly weakness and his broken word, the true blood guiltiness rests on the Reverend John Nevoy and on the Kirk whose official representative he was. Religious fanaticism was a common feature of Scottish Presbyterianism at this time - as it has been since, and still is, with many other forms of religion worldwide.  While General Leslie and the Marquess of Argyll share nominal responsibility for the Dunaverty massacre, the influence exerted by Nevoy should not be underestimated.

The three officers left in command of Dunaverty by Alasdair Mac Colla - Archibald Mor, as Sanda was called, his son Archibald Og, and Donald M'Odhrayhain of Pennnygown, were executed for their part in the battle, at the nearby farm of Machribeg, which was probably being used as the Covenanters headquarters.  They &quot;asked for time to go about their devotional exercises, and were told thereupon to go upon their knees, and were shot before they had finished their prayer&quot;.

A little over half way from Dunaverty to Machribeg, on the south side of the B842, what appears to be a roofless barn in a field is in fact a mausoleum, in which are interred the bones of the deceased (I have marked it on the photo).

The Covenanting Army brought the plague with them to Kintyre, which killed most of the population - there were only three houses left in Southend from which smoke continued to rise.  The Marquis of Argyll took the opportunity to import farming families from the Scottish Lowlands to replace the Gaelic Highlanders, which explains why so many of the established surnames in Kintyre - Ralston, Johnston and so on - are of Lowland origin.
dji077073 scotland 2022 dunavertycastle southend kintyre argyll machribegfarm machribeg massacre archibaldogofsanda archibaldcampbellmarquisofargyll generaldavidleslie covenanters reverendjohnnaves alasdairmaccolla