The Statutes of Iona in Context

Abstract

In the long history of the relationship between the Scottish state and the Highlands, three dates have always stood out. In 1493, the Lordship of the Isles was forfeited, ending the possibility that a semi independent state might develop in the West. In 1746, the defeat of the last Jacobite rebellion signalled the end for the autonomous military power of the Highland clans. Halfway between these two dates, in 1609, we find the Statutes of Iona. Why exactly is it, though, that all the textbooks mention the Statutes? The content of their nine clauses1 can be puzzling if we read them as transforming the nature of clanship or the authority of the state. Why was it considered so important, for instance, to establish inns throughout the Western Isles (clause 2), or to prohibit the import of wine and whisky into the region (clause 5) which would hardly have attracted custom to the proposed inns? Or again, bans on the use of firearms had been periodically enacted by Parliament without attracting much interest from contemporaries or from historians, so why did it matter so much when the ban was repeated (clause 7) for the Isles? That the Statutes were important was first suggested by Donald Gregory in his fine pioneering history of the West Highlands, first published in 1836; his interpretation was endorsed and amplified by David Masson in the 1880s in his edition of the prime source on the subject, the Register of the Privy Council.2 The topic then languished for a century, in which little further research was done on the Statutes although Gregory's and Masson's views were received into every textbook.3 Two recent studies have shed further light on the subject: Maurice Lee's seminal study of early seventeenth-century Scottish 1 Summarised and discussed below, pp. 50-5. 2 D. Gregory, The History of the Western Highlands and Isles of Scotland, 1493-1625 (2nd edn, London and Glasgow, 1881), 330-3 (where they 'deserve the particular attention of the lover of Highland history'); Register of the Privy Council of Scotland [RPC], viii, pp. lxiv-lxv; ix, pp. xxvi-xxxii (where they have grown to become 'one of the most important transactions in the History of the Scottish Highlands'). Gregory gave the Statutes their name ('Statutes of Icolmkill'): see his edition of parts of their text in Collectanea de Rebus Albanicis (Iona Club, 1847), 118. At the time he wrote, no significant histories of Scotland extended beyond 1603. 3 Notable discussions of the Statutes were in W. C. Mackenzie, History of the Outer Hebrides (Paisley, 1903), 240-2, and I. F. Grant, The Macleods: The History of a Clan (London, 1959), 208-13. They were strikingly described as 'the Magna Charta of the Western Isles' by F. T. Macleod, 'Sir Rory Macleod', Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness [TGST], xxviii (1912-14), 416.