They called him a traitor: how the MacLeods lost Assynt

By the time we reach Ardvreck Castle, I have usually introduced guests to the conflict commonly called the English Civil War, although it was neither confined to England nor particularly civil. James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, had become the great military champion of the Stuart monarchy in Scotland. After his army was defeated at Carbisdale, he escaped into the hills and eventually fell into the hands of the MacLeods of Assynt. He was held at Ardvreck before being delivered to the Covenanters, taken south and brutally executed in Edinburgh.

What happened at Ardvreck remains disputed. One version presents Neil MacLeod as the man who betrayed an exhausted fugitive for money, while another argues that Montrose was recognised, arrested and handed over by a laird whose political allegiance lay with the Covenanters. Neil may not even have been at the castle when Montrose arrived. Nevertheless, the word ‘betrayal’ clung to the MacLeods, particularly after the monarchy was restored and Montrose was transformed from condemned rebel into royalist martyr. Whether the accusation was fair mattered less than the damage it could inflict.

Montrose’s capture did not immediately destroy the MacLeods of Assynt, but it weakened the standing of a family already under pressure. The Mackenzies had coveted Assynt for years, while debts, disputed titles and hostile legal claims left Neil increasingly vulnerable. Violence followed paperwork, and paperwork legitimised violence. Mackenzie forces eventually arrived at Ardvreck armed with government authority, and after a short siege Neil surrendered the castle. The MacLeods continued to challenge their dispossession, but possession of the estate had passed to their enemies.

This is the domino effect I explain beside Loch Assynt. One dramatic capture damaged a reputation, political change turned that damage into a liability, and financial and legal pressure helped a more powerful neighbour seize the opportunity. Ardvreck declined, while the Mackenzies later built Calda House nearby as the centre of their own estate. The empty landscape around both ruins therefore conceals a story of imprisonment, propaganda and calculated acquisition, in which the fall of one desperate fugitive helped hasten the fall of the family that captured him.

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