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Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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SIR EWEN CAMERON OF LOCHIEL (1629-1719), Scottish Highland chieftain, was the eldest son of John Cameron and the grandson of Alan Cameron, the head of the clan Cameron. Having lost his father in infancy he passed part of his youth with the marquess of Argyll at Inveraray, leaving his guardian about 1647 to take up his duties as chief of the clan Cameron, a position in which he succeeded his grandfather. In 1653 Lochiel joined the earl of Glencairn in his rising on behalf of Charles II., and after the defeat of this attempt he served the Royalist cause by harassing General Monk. In 1681 he was knighted by Charles II., and in July 1689 he was with Viscount Dundee at Killiecrankie. He was too old to share personally in the Jacobite rising of 1715, but his sympathies were with the Stuarts, and his son led the Camerons at Sheriffmuir. Lochiel, who died in February 1719, is called by Macaulay the "Ulysses of the Highlands." He was a man of enormous strength and size, and one who met him in 1716 says "he wrung some blood from the point of my fingers with a grasp of his hand." An incident showing his strength and ferocity in single combat is used by Sir Walter Scott in The Lady of the Lake (canto v.). Lochiel's son and successor, John, who was attainted for sharing in the rebellion of 1715, died in Flanders in 1748. John's son Donald, sometimes called "gentle Lochiel," joined Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, in 1745, was wounded at Culloden, and escaped to France, dying in the same year as his father. The 79th regiment, or Cameron Highlanders, was raised from among the members of the clan in 1793 by Sir Alan Cameron (1753-1828).

See Memoirs of Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel (Bannatyne Club, 1842).