The Earl of Cromartie gives as the reason for this imprisonment and murder that, according to rumour John Glassich intended to prosecute his father's claim to the Kintail estates, and Kenneth hearing of this sent for him to Brahan, John came suspecting nothing, accompanied only by his ordinary servants. Kenneth questioned him regarding the suspicious rumours in circulation, and not being quite satisfied with the answers, he caused John Glassich to be at once apprehended. One of John's servants, named John Gearr, seeing his master thus inveigled, struck at Kenneth of Kintail a fearful blow with a two-handed sword, but fortunately Kenneth, who was standing close to the table, nimbly moved aside, and the blow missed him, else he would have been cloven to pieces. The sword made a deep cut in the table, "so that you could hide your hand edgeways in it," and the mark remained in the table until Colin, first Earl of Seaforth, "caused cut that piece off the table, saying that he loved no such remembrance of the quarrels of his relations." Kenneth was a man of good endowments "he carried so prudently that he had the good-liking of his prince and peace from his neighbours." He had a peculiar genius for mechanics, and was seldom found without his corc - "sgian dubh" - or some other such tool in his hand, with which he produced excellent specimens of hand-carving on wood. He married early, during his father's lifetime, Lady Elizabeth Stewart, daughter of John, second Earl of Athol, by his wife, Lady Mary Campbell, daughter of Archibald, second, and sister of Colin, third Earl of Argyll, and by her had three sons and several daughters - I. Murdoch, who, being fostered in the house of Bayne of Tulloch, was presented by that gentleman on his being sent home, with a goodly stock of milch cows and the grazing of Strathvaich, but he died before he attained majority. II. Colin, who succeeded his father. III. Roderick, who received the lands of Redcastle and became the progenitor of the family of that name. IV. Janet, who as his third wife married, first, Aeneas Macdonald, VII. of Glengarry, with issue - a daughter Elizabeth, who married John Roy Mackenzie, IV. of Gairloch. She married secondly, Alexander Chisholm, XIV. of Chisholm, with issue. V. Catherine, who, as his second wife, married Alexander Ross, IX. of Balnagown, with issue - one son Nicholas Alexander, who died on the 21st of October, 1592.