This despatch had scarcely been sent off when news arrived in London that the rebel chiefs, after holding out long, had at last appeared before the Sheriffs and taken the oaths.  Lochiel, the most eminent man among them, had not only declared that he would live and die a true subject to King William, but had announced his intention of visiting England, in the hope of being permitted to kiss His Majesty’s hand.  In London it was announced exultingly that every clan, without exception, had submitted in time; and the announcement was generally thought most satisfactory.226 But the Master of Stair was bitterly disappointed.  The Highlands were then to continue to be what they had been, the shame and curse of Scotland.  A golden opportunity of subjecting them to the law had been suffered to escape, and might never return.  If only the Macdonalds would have stood out, nay, if an example could but have been made of the two worst Macdonalds, Keppoch and Glencoe, it would have been something.  But it seemed that even Keppoch and Glencoe, marauders who in any well governed country would have been hanged thirty years before, were safe.227 While the Master was brooding over thoughts like these, Argyle brought him some comfort.  The report that Mac Ian had taken the oaths within the prescribed time was erroneous.  The Secretary was consoled.  One clan, then, was at the mercy of the government, and that clan the most lawless of all.  One great act of justice, nay of charity, might be performed.  One terrible and memorable example might be given.228

Yet there was a difficulty.  Mac Ian had taken the oaths.  He had taken them, indeed, too late to be entitled to plead the letter of the royal promise; but the fact that he had taken them was one which evidently ought not to have been concealed from those who were to decide his fate.  By a dark intrigue, of which the history is but imperfectly known, but which was, in all probability, directed by the Master of Stair, the evidence of Mac Ian’s tardy submission was suppressed.  The certificate which the Sheriff of Argyleshire had transmitted to the Council at Edinburgh, was never laid before the board, but was privately submitted to some persons high in office, and particularly to Lord President Stair, the father of the Secretary.  These persons pronounced the certificate irregular, and, indeed, absolutely null; and it was cancelled.

Meanwhile the Master of Stair was forming, in concert with Breadalbane and Argyle, a plan for the destruction of the people of Glencoe.  It was necessary to take the King’s pleasure, not, indeed, as to the details of what was to be done, but as to the question whether Mac Ian and his people should or should not be treated as rebels out of the pale of the ordinary law.  The Master of Stair found no difficulty in the royal closet.  William had, in all probability, never heard the Glencoe men mentioned except as banditti.  He knew that they had not come in by the prescribed day.  That they had come in after that day he did not know.  If he paid any attention to the matter, he must have thought that so fair an opportunity of putting an end to the devastations and depredations from which a quiet and industrious population had suffered so much ought not to be lost.