In February 1692, soldiers who had lodged for about two weeks in the houses of Glencoe were ordered to put everyone under seventy to the sword. Who gave that order? Three years later the king granted a commission to find out. The instructions it examined were signed by the king at the top and at the bottom. It blamed his Secretary, and stopped there.

The episode follows the written orders for the killing at Glencoe on 13 February 1692 up the chain of command: from Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, whose soldiers had been quartered on the MacDonalds for about two weeks, through Major Duncanson, Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton, Colonel Hill and the commander-in-chief, Sir Thomas Livingston, to the Master of Stair in London and to King William, who signed instructions that used the word extirpate. It then follows the king's own commission of inquiry of 1695, which cleared the instructions, blamed the Secretary, and stopped there. Every quotation is read from the printed record in its own spelling, and where the sources disagree the episode says so.

Chapters:

00:00 Cold open

01:18 Act One — The Captain in the Glen: Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, February 1692

05:04 Campbells against MacDonalds? The regiment in Glencoe and what the record supports

07:47 The morning of 13 February 1692, as the witnesses swore it in 1695

12:31 How many died at Glencoe: about 25, about 36, or 38, and the deaths no one counted

16:37 Act Two — The Officers Above Him: Duncanson, Hamilton, Hill and Livingston

19:12 Colonel Hill, and the oath sworn at Inveraray on 6 January 1692

25:26 Sir Thomas Livingston writes past Colonel Hill, 23 January 1692

29:24 Act Three — The Secretary: the Master of Stair's Letters, December 1691 to March 1692

33:06 "Secret and sudden": the letters of 16 and 30 January 1692, and the two Campbell earls

35:58 "All I regret": what the Master of Stair wrote after Glencoe, March and April 1692

38:50 Act Four — The King: What William Signed at Kensington, January 1692

42:13 Sect, set or sept? One word of the king's instructions, in eight printings

44:29 What did King William know? Burnet's memoir, Burnet's History, Macaulay and Paget

48:06 Act Five — The Inquiry of 1695: the King's Own Commission, and the Order It Never Had

51:03 The four findings of the Commission of Inquiry, 20 June 1695

53:55 "Killed men under trust": Parliament's address of 10 July 1695 and the act of 1587

56:31 Duncanson's order to Glenlyon, 12 February 1692: the paper that was never before the inquiry

60:48 The Price

67:09 What the people of Glencoe paid, and what the record cannot show

70:06 Who gave the order at Glencoe? What the record can and cannot settle

Full sources with links, and image credits, are in the pinned comment on the YouTube episode: https://youtu.be/2SX6JyWePG4

This episode is narrated by a synthetic voice. Research and writing used AI tools under human editorial review; every quotation was checked against the original texts.

Corrections: if we got something wrong, say so and the correction is posted with the date.

In November 1440 the young Earl of Douglas and his brother dined with James the Second, a ten-year-old king, at Edinburgh Castle, and neither guest left alive. The story says a bull's head was set on the table. The chronicle nearest the events says only that the two were put to death. Twelve years later the boy who watched it, now king, brought the next Earl of Douglas to Stirling under a safe-conduct, and the chronicle of his own day says he struck the first blow himself.

Scotland, 1437. James I is murdered in a drain at Perth, the killers let in by a door his own chamberlain had left open, and the crown passes to a boy of six. Two men who were not great lords, Chancellor William Crichton at Edinburgh and Sir Alexander Livingston at Stirling, fight over custody of the child, while the largest lordship in the kingdom, the Black Douglases, passes in 1439 to an earl in his teens; the sources put his age anywhere from fourteen to eighteen. On November 24, 1440, that earl and his younger brother David dine with the king at Edinburgh Castle. They are seized at the table, a doom is pronounced against them, and they are beheaded on the castle rock. Sir Malcolm Fleming of Cumbernauld follows within days. The bull's head that tradition sets before them was first written down about a hundred and thirty years later; the chronicle nearest the events says only that they were put to death.

The earldom passes to the boys' great-uncle, James the Gross, suspected of a hand in it and never proved to have had one, and Crichton keeps the chancellorship. Twelve years later the king is grown. In February 1452 he brings the next Earl of Douglas to Stirling Castle under a safe-conduct, charges him with a bond with the Earl of Crawford, the king's rebel, and, when the earl will not break it, the chronicle of his own day says the king strikes him first with his own knife. Twenty-six wounds are counted. Parliament clears the king that June. In 1455 the Black Douglases are broken at Arkinholm and forfeited. The Price, the closing ledger, counts what Crichton, the Livingstons, the Douglases and the crown each gained and each paid.

Sources:

The Auchinleck Chronicle: Ane Schort Memoriale of the Scottis Corniklis for Addicioun, ed. Thomas Thomson (Edinburgh, 1819).

Extracta e variis Cronicis Scocie (Abbotsford Club, 1842), pp. 237, 242.

Liber Pluscardensis / The Book of Pluscarden, ed. F. J. H. Skene, Historians of Scotland vol. X (1880).

The Dethe of the Kynge of Scotis, in The Life and Death of King James the First of Scotland (Maitland Club, 1837).

The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, vol. V (1437–1454), ed. George Burnett (1882), Preface.

Registrum Magni Sigilli Regum Scotorum, vol. II (1424–1513), ed. J. B. Paul (1882), nos. 246, 308, 315.

Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707, University of St Andrews, records 1439/9/1, 1450/1/1, 1452/6/1, 1455/6/6.

...and 14 more. Full sources with links are in the pinned comment on the YouTube episode: https://youtu.be/um7cwySvuNk

This episode is narrated by a synthetic voice. Research and writing used AI tools under human editorial review; every quotation was checked against the original texts.

Corrections: if we got something wrong, say so and the correction is posted with the date.

A ten-year-old king, a dinner at Edinburgh Castle in 1440, and two guests who did not leave alive. The Price of Loyalty tells one true betrayal an episode, at least a hundred years old, from the records that survive. Episode One, The Black Dinner, follows.

This episode is narrated by a synthetic voice. Research and writing used AI tools under human editorial review; every quotation was checked against the original texts.