Reformation Times. The Battle of Dunkeld

After the Reformation Dunkeld’s great days were over, though it was still the gateway through which most of the traffic went to the Highlands, and was itself a flourishing market town of some importance to the neigh-
bouring countryside. Queen Mary passed through it in 1562 on her way to the great hunting which the Duke of Atholl held for her. The famous hunting at Dunkeld had been in 1529, when the third Earl entertained King James V. at the rate of £1000 a day, to a great hunting in Clunie Forest, where he built a great palace of wood, richly furnished with tapestries and silver, which after standing for three magnificent days was set on fire as the King left it, and vanished in a blaze of glory. The
same Earl built or became possessed of Dunkeld House to the north of the Bishop’s Palace.

In 1567 King James founded the Royal Grammar School in Dunkeld to take the place of the choristers’ school founded by Bishop Brown. One of the two remaining houses of old Dunkeld, the Rectory, was the head
master’s or ‘Rector’s’ house. The Rector was bound by the charter of the school to reside in Dunkeld. It is many years since the Rectory has been used as the Rector’s house, and the Royal Grammar School, after several
moves, is now merged in the junior secondary school, more convenient but 1ess picturesque than any of its predecessors, which disfigure Little Dunkeld.

In 1578 the Earl of Atholl, newly made Chancellor of Scotland, attempted to rescue the young king from the Regent Morton. An accommodation was arranged by Bowes, the English ambassador, and a dinner of reconciliation was given by Regent Morton. On his way home from it Atholl was taken suddenly ill, and died at Kincardine. There was of course a strong suspicion of poison, but neither his widow nor his son could fasten any proof upon the Regent. His son died without issue, and the Earldom reverted to the Crown. King James VI made another Stewart. John, Lord Innermeath who had married Atholl’s widow, Earl in 1596. In 1603 he was succeeded by his son, a weak and turbulent ruler, who kept such ill order in his estates that he was imprisoned for his negligences, and finally became so weary of his ill success that in 1622 he sold the title to the Earl of Tullibardine, who had married the daughter of the fifth Earl, and whose children therefore continued the earlier line, though on the distaff side.

The Great Civil War made little mark on Dunkeld. Montrose passed through it several times on his way to Dundee, skirmishing parties marched through it and individual noblemen took advantage of the troubled times
to pursue private feuds.

To march by the back of Dunkeld
To plunder the Castle of Airly,

and such exploits: but for the most part the gateway to the Highlands was fairly tranquil. Cromwell’s army beleagured Perth, and the Highlanders fought their fiercer feuds at Crieff or Aberfeldy, but Dunkeld’s most tragic day was not to come till after the Restoration.

In July of 1689 Grahame of Claverhouse won the Battle of Killiecrankie, and was killed in the hour of victory. The feeling of the Blair Atholl men was strongly in favour of Claverhouse, and they were only held in with the greatest difficulty by the prudent John Murray, the eldest son of the Marquis. Indeed some thirty of them under Patrick Stewart of Ballechin, the Athol bailiff, had seized Blair Castle and held it for King James. After the victory the Atholl men melted away to join Colonel Cannon, the new general, and an army reinforced in numbers though
weakened in generalship marched down to Dunkeld where Cleland, who had been sent with his Cameronians to reinforce Mackay’s depleted army, was already encamped.

The Cameronians held the centre of the town, where there was the Cathedral, the Bishop’s Palace and Dunkeld House. The Highlanders held the ford, and gradually pressed in through the town, possessing themselves of all the houses except two, the Rectory and the Dean’s
House. Superior artillery and the possession of the tower was all that enabled the Cameronians to hold their ground. Colonel Cleland was killed early in the battle, fighting at the barricades. His Major fell soon after,
but Captain Munro, the next in command, locked the Highlanders into the houses they held and set fire to the town. It was a terrible carnage. Only the two houses held by the Cameronians remained at the end of the
day. The surviving Highlanders drew off dismayed, just as the last of the Cameronian bullets were expended. This was the last battle of the war. After it Cannon’s army melted like snow. Dunkeld too was never the same again. Another town rose upon the ruins of the old, but smaller and rather differently placed. The Cathedral had been in the middle of the town. Some houses were rebuilt to the west of the Cathedral, but the main development was to the east, up the steep brae over which the road then plunged. The Bishop’s Palace was never rebuilt. Since the beginning of the century the Episcopalian bishops had lived at Meigle rather than Dunkeld, and with the success of the Revolution Presbyterianism was established in Scotland, and even the very Presbyterian Episcopacy
of seventeenth-century Scotland came to an end. After this time the Episcopalians in Scotland enjoyed the advantages and disadvantages of disestablishment.

Dunkeld, once the ecclesiastical capital, became one of the smallest and poorest parishes in Scotland. Although by virtue of its ancient prestige it still headed a presbytery it had, as a former cathedral, no parochial position and no local endowment. By a curious remnant of the past Meigle was supposed to be responsible for the upkeep of its ministers, and naturally Meigle contributed as little as it could. It says much for the sturdy stuff
of which its burgesses were made that Dunkeld survived its double misfortune, and did not sink at this time into a deserted village.

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