Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/162

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Mackenzie
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Mackenzie

troops were marched to St. Thomas's Mount, and there encamped. On 25 Aug. Sir Hector Munro [q. v.] arrived from Calcutta, where he had been in command, and took command of the troops, and a movement was made to effect a junction at Conjeveram with the detachment from Guntoor under Colonel William Baillie (d. 1782) [q. v.], which ended in the destruction of Baillie's detachment, and of a small reinforcement, including the flank companies of Macleod's regiment, which Munro sent to its aid. Munro's troops returned to Madras, and their safe return is said to have been due to the skill of Macieod. Soon after their return, Sir Eyre Coote (1726–1783) [q . v.] arrived and assumed the chief command. Macieod, on 12 Dec. 1780, was appointed president of a general court-martial for the trial of Brigadier Stuart. He appears to have had a dispute on some point of military etiquette with Coote, who wrote to him on 16 Aug. 1781, from camp Chaultrie, 'I cannot help expressing my regret that your lordship should have experienced a necessity for coming to the resolution of going home upon the principle your lordship has mentioned' (Fraser, i. cclv). Macieod went home, and in 1783 became a major-general on the British establishment.

After the 71st highlanders, raised in 1776 by Lieutenant-general Simon Fraser [see Faser, Simon, 1726-1782], had been disbanded at the close of the American war, the 73rd or Macleod's highlanders, which had greatly distinguished themselves under Eyre Coote, were renumbered as the 71st. They are now the 1st highland light infantry (late 71st foot), and are not to be confused with a battalion of the 42nd highlanders, which under Colonel (afterwards General) Norman Macieod performed distinguished service at Mangalore and elsewhere in the war with Hyder Ali, and succeeded Macleod's regiment in the position of 73rd foot.

In December 1780, when still in India, Macieod was returned to parliament, amid great local rejoicing, as member for Rossshire. The family estates were restored to him in 1784, on payment of a sum of 19,000l. to relieve the property of certain burdens. He commenced rebuilding Tarbat House, destroyed in 1746, and improving the policies. He died at Edinburgh 2 April 1789, aged 62. He was laid beside his mother in the old churchyard of the Canongate, where is a monument to mother and son. He married in 1786 Margery, eldest daughter of the sixteenth Lord Forbes, but had no issue. His widow married, secondly, John Murray, fourth duke of Atholl. She died in 1842. The Cromarty estates devolved on his cousin Kenneth Mackenzie of Cromartie, son of the Hon. Roderick Mackenzie, second son of the second earl. They now have passed through the female line to the Duke of Sutherland.

George Mackenzie (1741–1787), a younger brother of Lord Macleod, was long an officer of the 1st royal Scots, and commanded the 2nd battalion 73rd at the defence of Gibraltar. After the disbanding of that battalion at Stirling, in October 1783 he was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the surviving battalion, which became the 71st (late 73rd) highlanders. He died at Wallajaoad, 4 June 1787, aged 46. A monument was erected to him in the burying-ground of Fort St. George 'by the officers of his regiment and by his nephew and name-son, George Mackenzie, 75th regiment, who had fought and bled at his side.'

[Burke's Peerages under 'Cromartie,' 'Elibank,' and 'Sutherland;' Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), i. 399 ; Sir William Fraser's Earls of Cromartie, Edinburgh, 1876, 2 vols.; Stewart's Scottish Highlanders, ii. 124–56; Cannon's Hist. Rec. 71st Highland Light Inf.; Mill's Hist, of India, vol. iv. ; Wilks's Sketches of South of India.]

H. M. C.


MACKENZIE, JOHN (1806–1848), Gaelic scholar, was born on 17 July 1806 in the parish of Gairloch, Ross-shire. His father, Alexander Mackenzie, held some lands on the north side of Lochewe, and claimed kinship with the lairds of Gairloch. The family had been in comfortable circumstances, but misfortune had overtaken it. Mackenzie left the parish school of Gairloch at an early age, and was apprenticed to an itinerant carpenter and joiner of the district. During his wanderings Mackenzie began to write down the popular songs and airs which he heard sung. An accident met with while at work compelled him to return to Gairloch, and there he collected the poems of William Ross [q. v.], which were then only preserved orally. The volume was published in Inverness in 1830, and contained a prefatory memoir by Mackenzie. With a view to publishing other of the poems which he had collected, he went to Glasgow in 1833, and he published a second edition of Ross's poems there in 1834. In 1836 he was appointed a book-keeper in the Glasgow University printing-office, and sold his collection of Gaelic poetry to a publisher. The book appeared in 1841, under the title of 'The Beauties of Gaelic Poetry,' and it occupies a position in Gaelic literature second only to the collections that have been made of Ossian. It contained biographies in English of thirty-six of the better-known authors, and an introduction, also in