ROB ROY (Gaelic, "Red Robert"), the Scotch Robin Hood; born in 1671; sec ond son of Lieut.-Col. Donald Macgregor of Glengyle. Till 1661 the "wicked clan Gregor" had for more than a century been constantly pursued with fire and sword; the very name was proscribed. But from that year till the Revolution the severe laws against them were some what relaxed; and Rob Roy, who married a kinswoman, Mary Macgregor, lived quietly enough as a grazier on the Braes of Balquhidder. His herds were so often plundered by "broken men" from the N. that he had to maintain a band of armed followers to protect both himself and such of his neighbors as paid him black mail. And so with those followers, es pousing in 1691 the Jacobite cause, he did a little plundering for himself, and, two or three years later having purchased from his nephew the lands of Craigroy ston and Inversnaid, laid claim thence forth to the chief of the clan.
In consequence of losses incurred about 1712 in unsucoessful speculations in cattle, for which he had borrowed money from the Duke of Montrose, his lands were seized, his houses plundered, and his wife shamefully used, turned adrift with his children in midwinter. Maddened by
these misfortunes, Rob Roy gathered his clansmen and made open war on the duke, sweeping away the whole cattle of a dis trict, and kidnaping his factor with rents to the value of more than $15,000. This was in 1716, the year after the Jacobite rebellion, in which at Sheriff muir Rob Roy had "stood watch" for the booty, and had been sent by the Earl of Mar to raise some of the clan Gregor at Aberdeen. Marvelous stories are current round Lock Katrine and Loch Lomond of his hair-breadth escapes from capture, of his evasions when captured, and of his generosity to the poor, whose wants he supplied at the expense of the rich. Rob Roy enjoyed the protection of the Duke of Argyll, having assumed the name Campbell, his mother's. Late in life he is said to have turned Catholic, but he remained a Protestant. He died in his own house at Balquhidder Dec. 28, 1734. He left five sons, two of whom died in 1734—James, an outlaw, in Paris; and Robin, the youngest, on the gallows at Edinburgh for abduction.