Clan MacGregor · 1671–1734
Rob Roy MacGregor
Cattle dealer, fugitive, and the closest thing the Highlands ever had to Robin Hood.
Robert Roy MacGregor — Raibeart Ruadh, 'Red Robert' — was born at Glengyle on Loch Katrine in 1671, the third son of a clan that was not legally allowed to bear its own name. He worked as a cattle dealer and grew rich on the protection trade — Highland landowners paid him to keep their herds safe from raiders, including, when business slowed, raiders he had himself recruited.
In 1712 a sum of £1,000 advanced to him by James Graham, Duke of Montrose, vanished with one of his drovers. Montrose called the loan, seized Rob Roy's house at Inversnaid, evicted his wife and children. Rob Roy declared open war on the duke. For more than two decades he raided Montrose's lands, stole his rents, and lived as an outlaw under the protection of the rival Duke of Argyll.
He took part in the 1715 Jacobite Rising in his own ambiguous way, was eventually pardoned in 1725, and died at home at Balquhidder in 1734 — by tradition having sat up to receive a visitor he refused to die before. Walter Scott's 1817 novel Rob Roy, more than any other single book, made the Highland outlaw a figure of world literature.