The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

364 THE HIGHLANDERS [part ii
possessions in Strathnaver appears to have been as late as the
year 1499. This charter was obtained in consequence of Y.
Mackay, at that time chief of the clan, having apprehended
Alexander Sutherland of Dalred, his own nephew, who had
incurred the vengeance of government in consequence of the
murder of Alexander Dunbar, brother of Sir James Dunbar,
of Cumnock, and delivered him over to the king with ten of
his accomplices. The power of the government had now so far
penetrated into the Highlands that the Highland chiefs began
to feel the necessit}^ of possessing some sort of feudal title
to their lands, while the government, aware of the advantage
to its influence which the want of such a title occasioned, were
not always willing to grant it ; in consequence of this, the
Highland chiefs now began to take advantage of any service
which they might have rendered to the government, to demand,
as their reward, a feudal investiture of their estates ; and to this
was probably owing the charter which Y. Mackay now obtained,
and which his descendants took especial care that when once
procured, it should be frequently renewed.
It would be tedious and uninteresting to follow this clan
through all the domestic broils and feuds with the neighbouring
clans, of which their history is entirely composed, and in which
in no respect differed from that of the other Highland clans.
It may be sufficient to mention that considerable military
genius, some talent, and more good fortune, contributed to
raise the chief of the clan to the dignity of the peerage in the
person of Donald Mackay, first Lord Reay,
and thus to confer
upon the clan a fictitious station among the other clans, which
their power had not previously enabled them to attain. Donald
Mackay had raised a regiment of fifteen hundred men of his
clan, which he carried over to Germany to the assistance of the
king of Bohemia ; and after having taken a distinguished part
in all the foreign service of the time, he returned to England, at
the commencement of the civil war in the reign of Charles I.,
with some reputation, acquired during the Continental wars, and
having been of considerable service to that unfortunate monarch,
he was by him raised to the peerage with the title of Lord Reay.
His successors in the peerage maintained the station to
which they had been thus raised, but, being as willing to remain