372 HISTORY OF THE OUTER HEBRIDES. 



tenth man was hanged or shot " ; * and the massacre of 

 Seaforth's adherents in Lewis does not redound to their 

 credit ; but their general behaviour, in view of all the 

 circumstances, appears to have been exemplary. The 

 discipline of the soldiers, in conjunction with the con- 

 ciliatory policy of Monck, went far to prevent the insurrec- 

 tion from assuming more formidable proportions ; and 

 served effectively to stamp out the embers of rebellion, 

 which a series of reprisals would have fanned anew into a 

 conflagration. But the disunion among the insurgents 

 themselves produced more fatal consequences to them, than 

 the measures taken by the English to subdue them. In 

 a letter from the King to Seaforth, dated October, 1654, he 

 deplored the jealousies existing among his friends ; and in 

 stating that the Earl's adherence to Middleton should serve 

 as an example to the other chiefs, he expressed the pathetic 

 hope that " poor Scotland " might be destroyed by the 

 malice of her enemies, not by the disunion of her friends.! 

 John Morison of Bragar tells us that Stornoway Castle 

 was " broken down by the English garrison in Cromwell's 

 time." This statement is doubtless correct, for, apart from 

 Morison's credibility, it is only reasonable to suppose that 

 prior to their departure from Lewis (in the reign of 

 Charles II.), the English would have dismantled and 

 demolished the forts. An undated document which, how- 

 ever, bears internal evidence of having been written early 

 in the seventeenth century, states that " the house of 

 Stornowa in the Lewis is fallen, albeit it had bidden the 

 canon be the Erie of Argyle of auld, and by the gentilmen 

 ventourares of lait"+ The latter reference, of course, is 

 to the Fife Adventurers, so it may be assumed that the 

 Mackenzies rebuilt, or restored the castle, after they 

 obtained possession of Lewis. The remains of the fort 

 were removed in the year 1882, owing to the exigencies 

 of increased harbour accommodation ; an act of apparent 



* Whitelocke. No other historian mentions this practice. 

 t Scott. Hist. Soc. t Vol. XXXI., pp. 206-7. 

 See supra> p. 147. 



