Giving The Devil His Due: Malcolm McLaurin, Chamberlain of Tiree, and the Creation of a Crofting Island

Crofting was introduced to the Inner Hebridean island of Tiree in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Central to its introduction was Malcolm McLaurin, a native of Ardchattan and a former student of medicine, who was appointed to Tiree as Chamberlain or factor by the 5th Duke of Argyll in 1801.

This book is both a detailed biography of McLaurin and a close study of the background to, and the implementation of, what was no less than a tenurial revolution in the island, completed in its main outline by 1807. Building on the pioneering work of the social historian and ethnologist, Eric Cregeen, it argues that, although McLaurin has been regarded hitherto as an ‘unsuccessful’ factor, he was highly competent, and discharged his factorial duties expeditiously, despite his personal faults and idiosyncrasies.

The book explores the tensions with which he had to contend in Tiree, caused by both his employers and his Tiree tenants, and provides an unusually comprehensive picture of the duties of one Highland factor in the early nineteenth century. Alongside sound recordings in the School of Scottish Studies Archives, University of Edinburgh, it draws extensively on the rich resources of the Argyll Estates Archives and the National Records of Scotland, which have preserved an exceptionally full ‘paper trail’ relating to the life and work of Malcolm McLaurin, the contentious Chamberlain, the caring ‘Doctor’, and the combative ‘Devil’, who was remembered in later Tiree tradition for consulting his supernatural ‘Black Book’.

Author: Donald Meek
ISBN: 978-1-917834-01-8
Published: 2025