The great Highland family now represented by the Marquis of Breadalbane had at this time for its head Sir Duncan Campbell of Glenurchy, ordinarily called _Donacha Dhu nan Curich_ (Black Duncan of the Cowl), a man of considerable force of character, and, for his time, large means, who died at an advanced age in 1631. He was distinguished for building, planting, and _improving_; had the taste to hire artists to decorate his house; and, some years after this time, was one of the most prominent patrons of the Scottish Vandyke, George Jameson. [Sidenote: 1590.] The household books of this great Celtic chief exhibit his style of life about the time here noted. His rents were principally paid in kind, and the corn, cattle, and poultry thus supplied by the tenantry went directly to the support of the laird and his household. ‘In 1590, the family spent their time between Balloch and Finlarig. The oatmeal consumed was 364 bolls; the malt, 207 bolls (deducting a small quantity of _struck_ barley used in the kitchen). They used 90 beeves (“neats,” “stirks,” or “fed oxen”), more than two-thirds consumed fresh; 20 swine; 200 sheep; 424 salmon, far the greater portion being from the western rivers; 15,000 herrings; 30 dozen of hard fish; 1805 “heads” of cheese, new and old, weighing 325 stone; 49 stones of butter; 26 dozen loaves of wheaten bread; of wheat flour, 3-1/4 bolls. The wine brought from Dundee was claret and white wine, old and new, in no very large quantities. [The malt furnished abundance of ale of three kinds--ostler ale, household ale, and best ale, serving, doubtless, for the different grades of persons in the family.] Of spices and sweetmeats, we find only notice on one occasion of small quantities of saffron, mace, ginger, pepper, “raises of cure,” plumdamas, and _one_ sugar-loaf.’[177] While the Laird of Glenurchy thus kept house in Strathtay, Lord Lovat supported a _ménage_ not greatly different in Inverness-shire. The weekly expenditure of provisions in his house included seven bolls of malt, seven bolls of meal, and one of flour. Each year seventy beeves were consumed, besides venison, fish, poultry, kid, lamb, veal, and all sorts of feathered game in profusion. His lordship imported wines, sugars, and spices from France, in return for the salmon produced by his rivers. He was celebrated for a liberal hospitality; and when he died in 1631, five thousand armed followers and friends attended his funeral, for all of whom there would be entertainment provided.[178]