precipitated the battle by an uphill charge, without orders from the general, a charge, however, which contributed greatly to the victory which followed.
After the battle Alaster entered Glasgow with Montrose, and was sent forward into Ayrshire, where he plundered and levied contributions (Letter of Neill Montgomery, 13 Sept., in Hill, Macdonnells of Antrim). He was knighted by Montrose on 3 Sept., but he shortly afterwards forsook him, leaving, however, behind him seven hundred of his men, who shared Montrose's fortunes at Philiphaugh. There is not sufficient evidence to enable us to trace the motives of Alaster's withdrawal. He may have intended to return as he had returned before, and his leaving seven hundred behind, a number which must have been the entire remains of the force which he brought with him from Ireland, looks as if it was so. His Macdonald allies were anxious to return to resist the barbarities of the Campbells, and Alaster may very well have shared their feelings. He was never a royalist in the sense in which Montrose was a royalist. He fought for his race and religion, not for any special form of government.
At all events, Alaster held out in the western highlands. In the summer of 1646 he was joined by Antrim, and refused to disband at the bidding of the king, who was by that time in the hands of the Scots. He remained in arms after Montrose left Scotland. He was unable to hold out very long. In May 1647 he was attacked in Kintyre by the combined forces of Argyll and David Leslie (Thurloe, i. 89; Sir James Turner, Memoirs, pp. 45, 47; Montreuil to Mazarin, June 8–18, Archives des Affaires Étrangères at Paris, vol. lvi. fol. 145, 163). The greater part of his followers were butchered by the victorious covenanters, but he himself, with a few companions, escaped to Islay, and before long to Ireland.
Once in Ireland Alaster brought his sword, and the swords of men whom he had probably recruited among his kinsmen in Antrim, to the service of the confederate catholics. He was present on 8 Aug. at the battle of Dungan Hill, where the confederates were defeated by Michael Jones and four hundred of Alaster's men slain (‘Relation of the Battle of Trim’ in Rinuccini, Nunziatura, p. 243). After this he joined Lord Taaffe, the commander of the forces of the confederates in Munster; and at Knocknanuss, between Mallow and Kanturk, where Taaffe was defeated by Inchiquin on 13 Nov. 1647, he was killed by an officer of Inchiquin's while he was either negotiating for a surrender (ib. p. 268) or, according to other accounts, after he had been admitted to quarter (‘Aphorismical Discovery’ in Gilbert, Cont. Hist. of Affairs in Ireland, i. 175; Hist. of the War in Ireland, by a British Officer, p. 73).
[Besides the authorities quoted above, see Wishart's Res Gestæ Marchionis Montisrosarum, vol. i.; Napier's Memoirs of Montrose, vol. ii., and Gardiner's Great Civil War treat of his career incidentally.]
MACDONALD, ALEXANDER, or MacIAN of Glencoe (d. 1692), was the chief of a sept of the Macdonalds inhabiting Glencoe, a desolate valley on the borders of Argyll and Inverness. The founder of the clan was John, surnamed Fraoch, natural son of Angus Og of Isla, and brother of John Macdonald, first lord of the Isles [q.v.] . His mother was a daughter of Dougal MacHenry, then the leading man in Glencoe, where Fraoch settled as a vassal of the Lord of the Isles. This branch of the Macdonalds was also known as the Clan Ian Abrach, probably from the fact that one of their chiefs was fostered in Lochaber (Gregory, Western Highlands, p. 67). Macdonald of Glencoe was one of the chiefs who joined Graham of Claverhouse at Lochaber in 1689, and also took part in the rising in the northern highlands under General Buchan. He is represented in the ‘Grameid’ as ‘terrible in unwonted arms, covered as to his breast with raw hide, and towering far above his whole line by head and shoulders’ (p. 124). The author of the ‘Life of Ewan Cameron’ describes him as ‘a person of great integrity, honour, good nature, and courage,’ and as ‘strong, active, and of the biggest size, much loved by his neighbours, and blameless in his conduct’ (p. 321); but the eulogy must be interpreted according to highland notions of honour. The clan were probably the most inveterate robbers in the highlands; but as those they spoiled were for the most part either Campbells or lowlanders, their thieving exploits rather elevated than lowered them in the esteem of the other highland clans. They had, however, necessarily earned the special enmity of the Marquis of Breadalbane, who, when the government began negotiations for a settlement with the clans that had been in rebellion, gave MacIan to understand that he expected reparation for their long-continued depredations. As MacIan would thus at least be deprived of any share in the money distributed to win over the chiefs, he had no interest in the success of the negotiations, and he used every effort to thwart them. It was not till he learned that every other chief but himself had succumbed to bribes or
