the massacre of Glencoe, occasioned the re-enaction of the penal statutes
against the MacGregors. There are no reasons given why these highly penal
acts should have been renewed; nor is it alleged that the clan had been
guilty of late irregularities. Indeed, there is some reason to think that
the clause was formed of set purpose, in a shape which should elude
observation; for, though containing conclusions fatal to the rights of so
many Scottish subjects, it is neither mentioned in the title nor the
rubric of the Act of Parliament in which it occurs, and is thrown briefly
in at the close of the statute 1693, chap. 61, entitled, an Act for the
Justiciary in the Highlands.

It does not, however, appear that after the Revolution the acts against
the clan were severely enforced; and in the latter half of the eighteenth
century, they were not enforced at all. Commissioners of supply were
named in Parliament by the proscribed title of MacGregor, and decrees of
courts of justice were pronounced, and legal deeds entered into, under
the same appellative. The MacGregors, however, while the laws continued
in the statute-book, still suffered under the deprivation of the name
which was their birthright, and some attempts were made for the purpose
of adopting another, MacAlpine or Grant being proposed as the title of
the whole clan in future. No agreement, however, could be entered into;
and the evil was submitted to as a matter of necessity, until full
redress was obtained from the British Parliament, by an act abolishing
for ever the penal statutes which had been so long imposed upon this
ancient race. This statute, well merited by the services of many a
gentleman of the clan in behalf of their King and country, was passed,
and the clan proceeded to act upon it with the same spirit of ancient
times, which had made them suffer severely under a deprivation that would
have been deemed of little consequence by a great part of their
fellow-subjects.