The Independent Highland Companies

Origins: Charles II and William III

Sanctioned clan policing in the Highlands had precedents reaching back to the "King's Guard" and the Privy Council captaincies of 1624, but the Independent Highland Companies proper are conventionally dated to the Restoration. In 1666 Charles II allowed the Earl of Argyll to raise a "watch" of 60 men for one year to guard his lands; in 1667 he gave a warrant to the Earl (later 1st Marquess) of Atholl to raise Highlanders "to keep the peace in the Highlands" and to "keep watch upon the braes" (documented). The Black Watch Memorial at Aberfeldy records this 1667 commission from Charles II — "for certain clan chiefs to raise independent companies to be a constant guard for securing the peace in the Highlands" — as the institution's origin.

Over the next seventy years companies were raised and disbanded according to the political weather. The early record is not uniformly creditable: some commanders, notably the Earls of Argyll and Caithness, "used the companies almost exclusively for their own needs," and Charles later disbanded two on cost grounds, folding them into the Earl of Mar's regular regiment (the 21st Foot) (documented).

After the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Jacobite rising of 1689, independent companies served the new Williamite regime. A Menzies company fought on the government side at Killiecrankie (1689) and was present at Cromdale (1690). Because English and Lowland troops disliked Highland service, five Independent Highland Companies were raised over a twenty-month period from February 1691 under William III. The first, under Major George Munro of Newmore, comprised two lieutenants, one ensign, six NCOs and 100 "sentinels" (as the private soldiers were known) — a good guide to typical early company strength of around 100 men. These companies were used until about 1694 (documented). Fresh companies followed in 1701 (Campbell of Fonab; Grant) and 1704 (Mackenzie), three of which appear on the army strength across the 1707 Union.

Function: policing, intelligence and "watching"

The companies were, in the words of the National Army Museum, "raised from loyalist Highland clans for policing and peacekeeping duties." Their remit, as set out for the 1725 companies, was to be "employed in disarming the Highlanders, preventing depredations, bringing criminals to justice, and hindering rebels and attainted persons from inhabiting that part of the kingdom" (documented).

In practice this meant patrolling remote glens and cattle-droving routes in small detachments (from six to eight men up to full platoons), apprehending thieves, assisting the courts, and — crucially — acting as the government's eyes and ears. They served as guides and interpreters for regular troops (most regulars had no Gaelic), monitored disaffected clans, and "watched" for signs of Jacobite mobilisation. Officers were commissioned in the British Army, but the companies were not counted as regiments of the line — a semi-professional, locally embedded security force with an intelligence function, sometimes likened to a gendarmerie.

Their political character should not be softened. They were recruited from clans loyal to the government and used partly to police, disarm and counterbalance clans sympathetic to the Jacobite cause. At Glen Shiel in 1719, a Munro company — the Munros being, in the sources' phrase, "a very staunch Whig clan" — guided Hanoverian forces through the mountains and helped defeat a Jacobite–Spanish force, demonstrating, as one account puts it, "how important it was to know the land and how to fight effectively against their own countrymen" (documented). This was an instrument of internal Highland control wielded by pro-government interests, not a neutral constabulary.

The blackmail / cattle-protection controversy

This is the ethically murkiest part of the story, and it deserves to be told straight. In the early-eighteenth-century Highlands, cattle were the principal measure of wealth, and cattle-raiding (creach, "lifting the spreagh") was an old and, in the culture of the time, not-dishonourable activity. Against this, landlords had long paid privately contracted "watches" — in one careful description, "gangs of former – or possibly, current – cattle-raiders" — an annual fee to guarantee that stolen beasts would be recovered or paid for. That fee was called blackmail (Gaelic màl dubh, "black rent/tribute"); the modern sense of the word descends from exactly this Highland and Border protection custom (documented).

The relationship between watch and thief was inherently ambiguous — "setting a thief to catch a thief." The best-known illustration is Coll MacDonald of Barrisdale, described in an account drawing on Edmund Burt's Letters as one who "carried out the art of plunder to the highest pitch of perfection" and "imposed that article of commerce called blackmail, to a degree beyond what was ever known by his predecessors," even while "restoring on proper consideration the stolen cattle to his friends." Rob Roy MacGregor ran a comparable protection operation in the same period (documented for the private watches; the Barrisdale quotation's precise attribution to Burt is contested — see Caveats).

The MacGregors of Glengyle show how long and how openly the system ran. The historian David Stevenson, in The Hunt for Rob Roy (2004), finds that up to the 1740s even great landlords on the Highland edge entered in their accounts what each tenant paid in rent and what in blackmail (documented). Rob Roy's father, Donald Glas MacGregor, was running a watch paid for by Perthshire parishes in 1655, and was said to be charging for thirty men though authorised to raise twenty-four. In February 1691 the privy council let the landowners of Stirlingshire and Dunbartonshire set up a watch at their own expense, commanded by Donald's eldest son John and Archibald MacGregor of Kilmannan, days after the order freeing Donald from prison on security for his family's good behaviour. Stevenson finds no evidence that this watch ever operated, or that Rob Roy served in it, and dismisses the later image of him as a "Highland constable" (documented; the verdict is Stevenson's). In 1719 Stirlingshire landowners meeting at Drymen debated paying for a new watch under Rob Roy's nephew, Glengyle, "by the assistance of Rob Roy his uncle", even though Rob was an attainted rebel and the leading raider in the district. In 1725 an army officer, Captain John Crossley, reported Rob Roy's wife touring the land around Stirling to collect the family's dues. In 1741 Glengyle signed a seven-year contract to protect subscribers' stock, excluding "small pickeries" of fewer than six sheep, and had it recorded in the register of deeds in Edinburgh (documented).

The official companies blurred the same line. Rob Roy's two eldest sons, Coll and James, held places in Wade's companies, in Campbell of Lochnell's and Campbell of Carrick's, while being accused around 1729 of taking part in, and receiving, stolen cattle. When Breadalbane's chamberlain tried to prosecute James, his company commander took custody of the key witness and let him escape (documented, from Stevenson's archival account).

The official Independent Companies were partly intended to replace and suppress this racket — landlords hoped the new security arrangements would end the private protection payments and save them money. But the official companies were not immune to the same temptations. Earlier companies had a reputation for being used for their commanders' private ends, and when Wade re-established the companies in 1725 he "warned the captains that any breach of financial dealings, which had previously been reported, would be severely dealt with" (Simpson, 1996) — a documented acknowledgment that financial malpractice had been a real problem (documented). The honest verdict: the companies operated in a world where policing, extortion and cattle-dealing overlapped, and the line between suppressing blackmail and profiting from the same system was not always clean.

The disputed etymology of "Black Watch"

The site's accuracy standard requires that we resist a single confident origin story here, because there is not one. The Gaelic Am Freiceadan Dubh translates as "the Black (or Dark) Watch," and at least three explanations circulate:

1. The dark tartan theory (traditional, and problematic) — that "black" referred to the sombre, dark government-issue tartan worn by the companies, in contrast to the scarlet-coated regulars known in Gaelic as Saighdearan Dearg ("Red Soldiers"). This is the version in Encyclopædia Britannica and, in part, the National Army Museum, and it was endorsed by the regiment's earliest historian, David Stewart of Garth (1822). However, specialist analysis notes a decisive chronological problem: the name "Black Watch" is documented from 1735, whereas the individual companies wore brighter tartans of their commanders' choosing until the dark "Government" sett was issued around 1748. The name appears to predate the dark tartan, which undercuts the tartan as the primary origin.
2. The "watching"/blackmail-policing theory (favoured by the regimental museum) — that "black" related to the companies' role patrolling cattle routes and suppressing màl dubh (blackmail). The Black Watch Castle & Museum's own 2025 account leans to this reading.
3. The "black hearts" theory (traditional, weakly evidenced) — that the name referred to the "black hearts" of pro-government men who had sided against "true Highland spirit." No primary documentation supports this; it appears mainly in popular histories.

Earliest documented written uses: Major Lewis Grant's letter of 20 December 1735 ("Our Northern troops alias Blak Watch") and Lord Lovat's letter of 7 April 1739. Current position: reference works still often default to the tartan story, but institutional and specialist opinion (National Army Museum; the Black Watch Museum; historian Neil Ritchie of ScottishHistory.org) has shifted toward the watching/blackmail explanation on the strength of that chronology. The honest conclusion is that the origin remains genuinely uncertain.

1715, 1719 and the Disarming Acts

The companies were active around the 1715 rising: those under Campbell, Grant and Munro operated before, during and after the campaign, disarming rebel clans, garrisoning key points and forcing surrenders (Sir Robert Munro was for a time governor of Inverness). There are unsubstantiated reports that Grant and Munro men fought at Sheriffmuir (documented that they were active; the Sheriffmuir claim is uncertain).

The Disarming Act of 1716 (the Highlands Services Act 1715; effective 1 November 1716) outlawed the bearing of "broad sword, poignard, whinger, or durk, side pistol, gun, or other warlike weapon" in defined parts of Scotland. It failed badly: loyal (Whig) clans complied and disarmed, while disaffected Jacobite clans concealed good weapons or surrendered broken and obsolete ones, leaving pro-government Highlanders more vulnerable than before — a point made bitterly at the time. A second, tougher Disarming Act (1725) followed the 1719 rising, and was enforced by Wade (documented).

Stevenson sees the 1717 disbandment as a political victory for the Squadrone party, which persuaded George I that the companies were ineffective, corrupt and expensive. Its real target, he argues, was Campbell of Finab's company, controlled by the Duke of Argyll. Montrose's allies complained that the companies could not stop Rob Roy's raids, and hinted that Finab, a Campbell who had given Rob a protection after his surrender at Inveraray in 1716, could not be trusted (documented; the interpretation is Stevenson's).

Paradoxically, after 1717 the companies had themselves been reduced or disbanded, with security handed to regular garrisons at Fort William, Fort Augustus and Ruthven. In 1724 Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, wrote to George I complaining that the 1717 disbandment had let lawlessness "run riot" and that the Disarming Act had left loyal clans defenceless — a lobbying intervention that helped prompt the companies' revival (documented; note Lovat was himself a self-interested and later treacherous figure).

General Wade's 1725 re-establishment and the clan politics

Sent north in 1724 to "inspect the present situation of the Highlanders," Major-General George Wade reported that a large proportion of Highland fighting men were ready to rise for the Pretender, that the 1716 Disarming Act had been ineffective, and that the answer lay in new forts, military roads and the re-establishment of the Independent Highland Companies. George I accepted the recommendations and appointed Wade Commander-in-Chief, North Britain, on 10 May 1725.

Wade's road-and-bridge programme — per Historic Environment Scotland, "Between 1725 and 1737, Wade oversaw the construction of 250 miles of road and 40 bridges," including the Tay Bridge at Aberfeldy — is properly the subject of another card in this collection and is kept brief here. On the companies: a warrant of 21 May 1725 authorised the first three, commanded by William Grant of Ballindalloch (the senior officer), Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, and Sir Duncan Campbell of Lochnell; three more followed under George Munro of Culcairn, and two further Campbell captains (variously given as Campbell of Skipness and Campbell of Carrick), giving six companies in total. The first three each had about 100 men; the later three about 75 (documented; sources differ slightly on names and exact completion dates through 1725–29).

The recruiting base was pointedly political. Personnel were drawn from crown-loyal clans — Campbell, Grant, Munro, Fraser of Lovat, and men of Menzies, MacPherson, Mackintosh and (loyalist) MacGregor stock. Several sources note three of the six companies were Campbell-affiliated. Selecting Whig clans to police, disarm and watch their Jacobite-leaning neighbours was not incidental; it was the point. Wade's intelligence came partly from former rebels. Rob Roy surrendered twenty guns and twenty-one broadswords with his MacGregors at Finlarig on 8 October 1725, submitted to Wade at Dunkeld, and was pardoned. In 1726–27 Wade paid him £100 to spy on the Jacobite agents Captain Brown and Captain Sinclair, and used his reports to redeploy the companies, dismissing men whose loyalty was suspect (documented; Stevenson, 2004). Wade also tightened discipline and training and — as noted above — warned captains against the financial malpractice that had dogged earlier companies. It should be added, per the regimental association, that these were "not clan militias" in a narrow sense: senior officers came from influential families, but junior officers could be posted without regard to clan, and companies patrolled a broad territory from Caithness to Killin.

1739–40: the transition to a regular regiment

By the later 1730s the six companies were an established fixture, known colloquially as Am Freiceadan Dubh. With war against Spain looming and Britain needing manpower, King George II ordered in 1739 that four additional companies be raised and the whole embodied as a regiment of the line. A royal warrant of 25 October 1739, addressed to John Lindsay, 20th Earl of Crawford (the first colonel), created the 43rd Regiment of Foot ("Crawford's Highlanders"). Per ScottishHistory.org (Neil Ritchie), "four additional companies were raised and added, increasing the regiment's strength to 1,000 men by the time they gathered at General Wade's Taybridge outside Aberfeldy in May 1740," under Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Robert Munro of Foulis. David Stewart of Garth (1825) recorded that "the men were not assembled until the month of May 1740. The whole were then mustered, and embodied into a regiment in a field between Taybridge and Aberfeldy, in the county of Perth" — the ground at Weem, across the Tay from Aberfeldy. The unit was renumbered the 42nd in 1748 (documented).

This is the institutional hinge. The moment the companies were regimented, the "Independent Highland Companies" as a distinct phenomenon effectively ended, and the history of the Black Watch as a formal British Army regiment began. The regiment's subsequent tartan development, dress, imperial and world-war service, battle honours and modern legacy are the subject of Card #4 and are not covered here.

The wider picture: Highland soldiers before 1740

Devine stresses that the companies were not the only route by which Highlanders entered state military service before the Black Watch existed (documented). Clan gentry had long sent younger sons into Lowland and English regiments, and into the Scots Brigade in Dutch service, which had grown to over 5,000 men by 1745 and whose officers moved back and forth into the British army. From the 1720s John Drummond of Quarrell, a Scottish financier and East India Company director, used his influence to find Company military posts for sons of Jacobite families in Perthshire and Ross-shire, explicitly to counter disaffection. In the 1730s Scottish imperial officials recruited clansmen from the central and northern Highlands to Georgia as a defensive barrier against Spanish Florida, which Devine calls the first systematic use of Highland troops on the colonial frontier. Highland officers also served on Lord Cathcart's West Indies expedition of 1740.

The idea of turning disaffected clans into soldiers was also in the air before the '45. Devine notes that Whig politicians in the Highlands, including Duncan Forbes of Culloden and the Duke of Argyll, had suggested raising regiments among the Jacobite clans on the argument that commissions for the clan gentry would cure disaffection (documented). That logic, rejected before 1745, became policy after it, with the Highland regiments raised from 1757 onwards.

The 1743 mutiny (brief note)

The 1743 "Black Watch Mutiny" is best treated as the difficult closing episode of the companies' transition to regular status, and we include it only briefly for that reason. Many of the men — a notably high-status body of Highlanders, including "cadets of gentlemen's families" — understood their service to be home service, policing the Highlands. Ordered south in 1743 supposedly for a royal review by George II, then directed toward embarkation amid rumours of deployment to the disease-ridden West Indies, around 100 men (some 139 in total were implicated) deserted on the night of 17 May and set off to march back to Scotland. They were intercepted near Oundle in Northamptonshire and returned to the Tower of London. Three were shot on 18 July 1743 — Corporals Malcolm and Samuel MacPherson and Private Farquhar Shaw (whose figure tops the Aberfeldy monument) — and the rest were dispersed to regiments overseas (documented). Figures vary by source: the historian T. M. Devine, in To the Ends of the Earth (2011), gives 120 men as mutinying and deserting, and records that many of those dispersed ended up in the Caribbean and Georgia, the very postings they had feared (documented; exact numbers differ). The episode crystallised the grievance at the heart of the transition: local watchmen had become regular soldiers of empire. Its aftermath belongs to Card #4.

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• The word "blackmail" is genuinely Highland (and Border) in origin. It meant protection money — màl dubh, "black rent" — paid to armed watches to keep cattle safe, long before it acquired its modern sense of extortion by threat of exposure. (documented)
• The companies were the first distinct Scottish groups identified by a common tartan — Wade ordered in 1725 that each company's plaid be "as near as they can of the same sort and Colour," predating the invention of clan tartans by Lowland weavers by more than fifty years. (documented)
• The private soldiers were called "sentinels," not "privates," and many were of higher social standing than ordinary recruits — the earliest historian, Stewart of Garth, records men riding to drill "followed by servants carrying their firelocks." (traditional)
• The name "Black Watch" is older than the famous dark tartan. It is documented from 1735, but the dark "Government" sett was not issued until about 1748 — which is why the "dark tartan" etymology is now doubted. (documented)
• Lord Lovat helped lobby the companies back into existence in 1725 — then lost his own company and turned Jacobite. Wade stripped Simon Fraser of his Fraser company in 1740; Lovat later cited this as a reason he joined the 1745 rising, and he was ultimately executed for treason in 1747. (documented)
• A Highland company helped defeat a Jacobite–Spanish force at Glen Shiel in 1719 by guiding government troops through the mountains — a stark example of Highlanders policing Highlanders. (documented)
• The first muster site is marked today by General Wade's Bridge and the Black Watch Memorial at Aberfeldy (unveiled in 1887 by the Marquis of Breadalbane), topped by a statue representing the mutineer Farquhar Shaw. (documented)
• Old Gaelic usage treated "The Black Watch" as a proper name of unusual dignity: a saying held that "The" was used before only three names — The King, The Mackintosh, and The Black Watch. (traditional)

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• The name "Black Watch" does not have a settled origin. The confident "dark tartan versus red coats" story that appears in many popular accounts is contradicted by chronology: the name is documented from 1735, before the dark Government tartan was issued (c.1748). Competing explanations — the "watching" role, the suppression of blackmail, or a "black"/sinister reputation — are all plausible, and none is proven. Treat any single-cause claim with caution.
• The companies were not romantic "border police." They were a deliberate instrument of state control, recruited from pro-government Whig clans to police, disarm and counterbalance Jacobite-leaning clans. This is documented, not speculative, and should not be softened.
• The blackmail/cattle-protection role was ethically murky. "Blackmail" was a real, institutionalised protection system; the private "watches" the companies partly replaced were often staffed by cattle-raiders, and even the official companies were dogged by financial malpractice that Wade felt compelled to warn against in 1725. The picture is one of overlap between policing, extortion and cattle-dealing, not of clean law enforcement.
• The Barrisdale quotation is contested. The vivid line that Coll MacDonald of Barrisdale "carried out the art of plunder to the highest pitch of perfection" is widely attributed to Burt's Letters, but the attribution is doubtful (Barrisdale was active later than Burt's residence, and the passage may derive from a later edited edition). We present it as illustrative tradition, not secure primary quotation.
• The tartan etymology still appears in good scholarship. T. M. Devine (2011) gives the dark-tartan explanation for Am Freiceadan Dubh without qualification; this card's chronological objection still stands, so treat it as one view, not a settled answer.
• Mutiny numbers differ. Accounts give around 100 deserters, 120 (Devine, 2011) or some 139 implicated; quote a range.
• Rob Roy was not a "Highland constable". Do not say he led or served in the 1691 watch commanded by his brother and Kilmannan; David Stevenson finds no evidence that the watch ever operated. His documented role is as a raider who was also paid for protection, and later as Wade's paid informer.
• Some tactical details are uncertain. Whether Grant and Munro company men actually fought at Sheriffmuir (1715) is described in the sources as "unsubstantiated." Exact company names and completion dates under Wade's 1725–29 raisings differ slightly between sources.
• Black Watch regimental history is out of scope here. The tartan's later standardisation, the regiment's imperial and world-war campaigns, battle honours and modern legacy belong to Card #4 and are deliberately not covered on this card.

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