Rob Roy MacGregor: The Outlaw Whose Cattle Racket Gave Us Blackmail

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A cocktail, an undefeated Japanese racehorse, and a glacier in New Zealand all carry the name of an 18th century Scottish outlaw. Robert MacGregor was born in 1671 into a clan whose very surname had been banned by the Crown, so he lived under his mother's name, Campbell, and earned the nickname Roy for his red hair. At 18 he joined the 1689 Jacobite Rising with his father, who was then jailed for two years on treason charges. Rob Roy rebuilt the family's fortunes in the cattle trade, selling protection to lowland herd owners for a fee paid in black cattle.

Then a trusted herder vanished with a huge borrowed sum, and Rob Roy defaulted to the Duke of Montrose. Montrose seized his land, turned his wife and children out in midwinter, and burned the house. This episode follows the 30 year feud that came next: a private guerrilla war fought from the lands of Montrose's rival, the Duke of Argyll, two more Jacobite risings, and a strange rescue by a bestselling book.

The word blackmail traces to the Highland protection fee, mail being Old Scots for rent or tax.
Rob Roy claimed Montrose offered to cancel his debt if he gave false testimony to frame Argyll for treason, a charge that won him Argyll's shelter.
Told to surrender his weapons, he handed over a pile of useless rusty swords and kept the working ones.
He was excluded by name from the Indemnity Act of 1717 and fought again at Glenshiel in 1719 alongside Spanish troops.
The 1723 book The Highland Rogue made him so popular that King George I pardoned him. He died in his bed in 1734, and Sir Walter Scott's 1817 novel made him immortal.

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