The Massacre of Glencoe occurred within the context of Highland policing following the largely suppressed Jacobite rising of 1689. In late 1690, clan leaders loyal to the exiled House of Stuart agreed to swear allegiance to William II/III and Mary II in exchange for a cash payment of £12,000. However, disagreements over how to divide this payment meant that by December 1691, none of the clans had taken the oath. Lord Stair, Scottish Secretary of State, decided to demonstrate the consequences of further delay by taking action against those who refused to pledge allegiance to the new monarchs.
On 13 February 1692, Scottish government forces carried out the massacre in Glen Coe in the Argyll region of the Scottish Highlands. While other clan leaders, including the Keppoch MacDonalds, also missed the December 1691 deadline, the Glencoe MacDonalds appear to have been selected due to a combination of clan politics and a reputation for lawlessness. The attack resulted in the killing of an estimated 30 members and associates of Clan MacDonald of Glencoe.
The massacre marked a significant turning point in Scottish Highland history. Although similar violent events were not unknown in earlier Scottish history, the brutality of this incident was no longer typical by 1692. The event demonstrated both the government's determination to enforce allegiance among Highland clans and the changing nature of political and military relations in Scotland during this period.
European colonization of North America accelerated after 1600, with England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands establishing competing settlements along the Atlantic coast, the St. Lawrence River, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi Valley. The first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia (1607) struggled with starvation and conflict; the Plymouth colony (1620) and the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630) followed. By the mid-1700s, thirteen English colonies stretched along the Atlantic seaboard, governed through a mix of royal charters, proprietary grants, and elected assemblies. The colonial economy depended on tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, rice and indigo in the Carolinas, and maritime trade in New England — all increasingly reliant on enslaved African labor after 1619. Conflict with Indigenous peoples over land was continuous, punctuated by major wars including King Philip's War (1675–1676) in New England and the Yamasee War (1715–1717) in the South. The French and Indian War (1754–1763), part of the global Seven Years' War, ended French power in North America and left Britain deeply in debt — triggering the taxation disputes that would lead to revolution.
c.30 members and associates of Clan MacDonald of Glencoe killed
Content adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the US, drawing on NRHP records, battlefield archives, census history and geological data to tell the full story of a place.