Argyll’s infamous 1752 murder case – known as the Appin Murder – saw an obviously innocent man, James Stewart, or James of the Glen (Glen Duror), hanged for the shooting of the ‘Red Fox’, Colin Campbell of Glenure.
Campbell was the Factor appointed by the Hanoverian Government to manage the forfeited North Argyll estates of the Jacobite Stewart Clan.
Before his murder in the Lettermore wood, he had ordered evictions of some of the Stewarts to be carried out.
When he was shot, suspicion – not unreasonably – fell upon the Stewarts. The man considered responsible at the time, Allan Breck Stewart had vanished so James Stewart, chief of the Stewarts of Appin, was arrested and tried for the crime in the Campbell stronghold of Inveraray, before a jury of Campbell’s and a Campbell Judge – the 3rd Duke of Argyll.
He could not have committed the murder. There was no evidence against him of conspiracy but these were not the days where evidence carried much weight, especially in such a weighted judicial situation.
Stewart was found guilty, hanged at Ballachulish Bridge and left there to swing and rot as a warning to others. He maintained his innocence to the last and is said to have recited the 35th Psalm before facing the gibbet. This is still referred to in Highland circles as ‘The Psalm of James of the Glen’ – and it’s worth reading to hear what James Stewart said through those words.
In 2001, a descendant of the Chiefs of the Stewart of Appin, Anda Penman, then 89 years old, revealed the secret handed down through her family.
The shooting of the Red Fox had actually been carried out by Donald Stewart of Ballchulish, the best marksman among four young Stewart lairds who, without the knowledge of James of the Glen, plotted to be rid of the hated Factor.
Donald Stewart had evidently wanted to confess when James was arrested but was physically restrained by his peers.
Several years after his hanging, when the remains of James of the Glen were finally returned to his family, Donald Stewart is said to have washed the bones in preparation for burial.
As we reported in 2008, a Campbell from Motherwell, John Campbell, who had researched the detail of the case against James Stewart for a couple of decades, instructed Glasgow solicitor John Macaulay to pursue, through the judicial system and on his behalf, the case for clearing the name of James Stewart.
Macaulay duly submitted the case to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) but, given the chance to right a historical wrong, the SCCRC refused to do so on those very grounds – saying that, after 250 years, it would not be in the interests of justice to do so. So much for Shakespeare’s happy notion that ‘the quality of mercy is not strained’.
John Campbell, however, is not one to be deterred. Macaulay has now submitted the papers to the next authority in line, the Scottish Justice Department, which is to consider the case.
The Justice Department is, of course, headed by Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill who courageously demonstrated that mercy need not indeed be ‘strained’ when he released the dying Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie Bomber.
Let’s see if MacAskill’s mercy can reach back a few years. Time does not diminish wrong, although it leaves the case for right with fewer advocates.
As someone who has roots that go deep in Appin I feel that this is a rather pointless gesture. Nobody seriously considers that the trial and verdict were anything other than contrived from start to finish.
Nobody who has studied the history of this event – and many books have been published over the years – could have any doubt that the choice of James Stewart as a convenient fall guy for the murder of the Red Fox was a political set up and that he was tried and found guilty “art and part” for a crime he did not commit. As a vigorous supporter of the exiled Ardsheil and an outspoken critic of the new order he was an obvious target for the charge. A posthumous reprieve is meaningless.
I am sure that Seumas a Ghlinne was not guilty. I would be far more interested in seeing justice done for the aircrew of the Chinook that crashed on the Mull of Kintyre or to learn why the UK and US governments are so keen to supress evidence for the true cause of the Lockerbie disaster. These are events where the verdicts impinge on living people and deserve far greater attention that they receive from official sources.
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God has all the best tunes and Kenneth MacColl has all the best replies.
If you don’t believe me sing Abide with Me in the bath at full pitch and read Kenneth’s replies.
Ian Hamilton
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James of the Glen and the aircrew of the Chinook helicopter are part of a long-drawn-out
pattern. The UK government have been suppressing inconvenient truths ever since they lied
that King James VII had abdicated and the Whig machine took over with its puppet monarchs.
They are still lying, and will continue to do so until the whole UK thing and its fake monarchy
are demolished and replaced with something else; a state that is founded on a lie can but continue
lying.
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For Kenneth MacColl:
We agree that justice today is a priority and that, as we have persistently campaigned
to see, the gross injustice inflicted on the names of the dead pilots of the 1994 Chinook crash at the Mull of Kinyre and upon their surviving families simply must be righted.
But it’s not an ‘either or’ situation.
We believe strongly that time does not diminish wrongs and that, when they can retrospectively be recognised and shown to be such, they should be addressed.
As you say, it has long and widely been accepted that James of the Glen was an innocent man but the verdict of murder still stands against his name.
This need not be a time consuming or complicated issue. Kenny MacAskill could resolve it at the stroke of a pen. Who would argue against that – on the evidence?
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