THE END OF THE OLD ORDER

At the end of the eighteenth century the chief proprietor in Morvern had owned land there for 125 years; there had been MacLeans in uninterrupted possession of their territories for more than twice as long; and no Lowland Scot or other sasunnach held an acre of land in the parish. Yet in the twenty-five years from 1813 to 1838 every single property in Morvern changed hands, and by 1844 there was scarcely a proprietor left who had any traditional or lengthy association with the parish, or (in most cases) with anywhere else in the Highlands either. Only the minister—now John MacLeod, who had succeeded his father in 1824—tayed on as a link with the old order, increasingly saddened as its last traces disappeared.

John, the enthusiastic, reforming fifth Duke of Argyll, died in 1806, and was succeeded by his infamous son George. The sixth Duke was a dandy, a rake and a spendthrift familiar of the Prince of Wales, whose only interest in his inheritance was to discover how much money could be squeezed from it to feed his pleasures and pay his debts.