Appin Murder


The Appin Murder occurred on 14 May 1752 near Appin in the west of Scotland, and it resulted in what is often held to be a notorious miscarriage of justice. It occurred in the tumultuous aftermath of the Jacobite Rising of 1745.
The murder inspired events in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 novel Kidnapped.

Overview

On 14 May 1752, Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure, 44, the government-appointed Factor to the forfeited lands of the Clan Stewart of Appin in north Argyllshire, Scotland, was shot in the back by a sniper in the wood of Lettermore near Duror. The search for the killer targeted the local clan, the Jacobite Stewarts of Appin, who had recently suffered evictions on Campbell's orders.
The chief suspect, Allan Stewart having fled, James Stewart, the Tanist of the Stewarts, was arrested for the crime and tried for the murder. Although it was clear at the trial that James was not directly involved in the assassination, he was found guilty "in airts and pairts" by a jury consisting of people from the locality where the crime occurred. The presiding judge was pro-Hanoverian Archibald Campbell, 3rd Duke of Argyll, Chief of Clan Campbell; 11 Campbell clansmen were on the 15-man jury.
James Stewart was hanged on 8 November 1752 on a specially commissioned gibbet above the narrows at Ballachulish, now near the south entrance to the Ballachulish Bridge. He died protesting his innocence and sang the 35th Psalm in Scottish Gaelic before mounting the scaffold. To this day in the Highlands, it remains known as "The Psalm of James of the Glens."

Satire

Ironically, Colin Roy Campbell of Glenure had actually been very well liked, even by many veteran Jacobites. Shortly before his murder, Jacobite poet and propagandist Alasdair MacMhaighstir Alasdair poked fun at Colin's loyalties in his Anti-Whig polemic An Airce.
In the poem, which begins by skewering the conventions of Aisling poetry, the poet describes meeting the ghost of a beheaded Jacobite who prophesies that his Campbell clansmen will soon be punished for committing high treason against their lawful king by a repeat of the Ten Plagues of Egypt followed by a second Great Flood on their lands. The bard is instructed to emulate Noah by building an Ark for Campbells loyal to the Stuart cause. Some, however, are first to be purged of their "treason" by receiving a good, proper soaking.

Recent scholarship

In 2001, Anda Penman, an 89-year-old descendant of the Clan Chiefs of the Stewarts of Appin, revealed what she alleged to be a long-held family secret. She said the murder was planned by four young Stewart tacksmen without the sanction of James of the Glens. There was a shooting contest among them and the assassination was committed by the best marksman among the four, Donald Stewart of Ballachulish. According to other stories, Donald desperately wanted to turn himself in rather than allow James to hang and had to be physically held down to prevent this. Several years after James' execution, when the body was finally delivered to the Stewart Clan for burial, Donald Stewart of Ballachulish was responsible for washing the bones before the funeral.
Lee Holcombe, PhD, has written the most thorough examination of the Appin Murder published to date. She concluded, based on substantial evidence, that James of the Glens was indeed guilty of ordering the murder of Colin Campbell. She also reported the information that Donald Stewart, rather than Allan Breck Stewart, was probably the actual shooter.
In Walking With Murder: On The Kidnapped Trail, Ian Nimmo has addressed the mystery of who shot Colin Campbell, applying modern police methods to the documents in the case, including two post-mortem reports. According to Nimmo, Alan Stewart did not pull the trigger, and the secret of who did has been handed down through the Stewart family for 250 years. Nimmo does not choose to reveal it, stating that "it is not mine to give away".
In 2008 Glasgow lawyer John Macaulay asked the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission to reconsider the case on the grounds his study of the trial transcripts shows there was "not a shred of evidence" against Stewart. This was, however, rejected.