On this day are entered in the records of the Privy Council two complaints which illustrate in a remarkable manner the state of society at that time. First, James Lord Ogilvie of Airly, ancestor of the Earls of Airly, complains that, while he was living quietly in the protection of the law, and dreading harm from no man, the Earl of Argyle, without any provocation from him, hounded out a set of broken Highlandmen to the number of about five hundred, to attack him, and spoil his lands. He had ‘retired in sober and quiet manner, to dwell and make his residence in Glen Isla,’ when, on the 21st of August, they entered the district under silence of night, ‘with sic force and violence, that the said lord, lying far from his friends, was not able to resist them, but with great difficulty and short advertisement, he, his wife and bairns, escaped.’ The invading party are described as having slain all the people they could lay their hands on, eighteen or twenty in number; besides, they ‘spulyit and away-took ane grit number of nolt, sheep, and plenishing [furniture], to the utter wreck and undoing of the haill poor inhabitants of the country.’ Having at the command of the king retired, they still hovered on the neighbouring hills, and some weeks after made a new attack upon Glen Isla, as well as Glen Clova, slaying three or four persons, and taking away much spoil; ‘sae that the poor men dwelling in Glen Clova, Glen Isla, and other parts adjacent to the Month, wha are not able to make resistance, are sae oppressed by the broken men and sorners hounded out by the Earl of Argyle and his friends, and maintainit and reset by them, that neither by his majesty’s protection, nor assurance of the party, can their lives and gudes be in surety.’ This seems very mysterious, till we read the second entry, which is a complaint that, on the 16th of August bypast (five days previous to the above incident), Leighton of Usan and sundry of the Ogilvies, to the number of about threescore persons, had, at the instigation of Lord Ogilvie, gone with jacks, spears, harquebuses, and other weapons, and attacked Robert Campbell in Millhorn, William of Soutarhouse, Thomas Campbell of Keithock, and John Campbell of Muirton, whom they had mercilessly slain. How this outrage had been provoked, does not appear; but there can be no doubt that the invasion of Lord Ogilvie’s privacy in Glen Isla was a consequence of this earlier and similar incident. * * * * *