EMIGRATION AND ITS CAUSES. 475 



parties.* As a reward for his loyalty or perhaps, more 

 correctly, that of his father he was in 1766 raised to the 

 peerage, with the titles of Baron Ardelve and Viscount of 

 Fortrose in the County of Wicklow. In 1774, he was 

 created Earl of Seaforth, also in the Irish peerage.t 

 While these honours were being showered upon him, his 

 Lewis tenantry were in a state of ferment ; and for the 

 following reasons. 



In 1772, there was a failure of the crop of oats in Lewis. 

 The scarcity of oatmeal was such that the people were 

 obliged to resort to unwholesome food, and an epidemic 

 of putrid fever broke out, of which an alarming account 

 reached the South, the current rumour being that the 

 plague was raging in Stornoway.J In 1773 and 1774, the 

 emigration fever was at its height. Glowing accounts of 

 the wonderful riches of America were published throughout 

 the Highlands. It was an auspicious moment for emigra- 

 tion on a large scale. The sudden rise in rents, a suc- 

 cession of bad crops, the high prices of provisions, and the 

 backward state of manufactures, were all factors which 

 impelled the people to listen greedily to the stories of the 

 Eldorado on the other side of the Atlantic. Soldiers who 

 returned to the Highlands from America, inflamed the 

 imaginations of their compatriots by their accounts of its 

 wealth. Some of them got tacks of land, but on the pro- 

 prietors suddenly raising their rents, they declined to pay 

 the advance, and threatened to return to America, hoping 

 that the threat would induce the landlords to modify their 

 terms. Being disappointed in that hope, they did their 

 best to allure their friends across the sea, frequenting all 



* Eraser's Earls of Cromartie, Vol. I., p. XXI. Presumably this charter 

 waived the rights of the Crown in the Burgh of Stornoway. In 1863, Sir 

 Tames Matheson obtained a Crown charter of Stornoway Harbour, a grant 

 which gave rise to the " foreshore " question. 



t The Scottish titles were given in the Irish peerage because the Act of 

 Union rendered it impossible to create a peerage of Scotland. 



1 Home Office Papers, 4th- 1 4th November, 1772, p. 574. 



The Long Island sent out between four and five hundred men to the 

 war with France in North America, most of whom were killed in action, 

 including Roderick Macneill of Barra, who fell at Quebec in 1759. Captain 

 Donald Macdonald of Clanranald was also killed at Quebec. 



