At the present day the Wee Cumbrae, as it is popularly called, is practically uninhabited. At its westermost point it has a lighthouse with the usual staff, and opposite the castle itself there are two houses serving, the one as a shooting-box, the other as a dwelling for the present tenant's gamekeeper. Closer examination of the island, particularly in winter, when the ground is free from bracken, reveals the remains of a dozen or more cottages, which tell of the existence in former days of a small colony on the less exposed half of it. In the last year of the sixteenth century several of the families that composed the small population were of the name of Montgomery. The castle itself was inhabited by Robert Boyd of Badinhaith. He was a man of some initiative, and had formed a plan for the building of a harbour for "the commone welle and benefite of the haill liegeis of this realme haveing ony trade and handling in the west seyis". In the year 1599, as a first step towards the accomplishment of this praiseworthy scheme, he had purchased "eleven score of joists of oak of twenty-four foot long and a foot and a half of the square". The cost of each joist was £8, and the whole outlay amounted to £1760. Although this, being in Scots currency, represented less than £150 sterling, the sum in view of the value of money in those days was not inconsiderable. Whatever may have been the relation in which Robert Boyd stood to the other inhabitants of the Little Cumbrae, their attitude towards him was distinctly hostile. There is good reason to believe that these immediate neighbours of his were not all respectable, peace-abiding folk, but that the island served as a convenient refuge for "rebels, fugitives, and ex-communicates". And it is quite intelligible that these outlaws did not approve of the laird's enterprise, one of the results of which would be to bring their sea-girt asylum into closer touch with the outer world and its justice. Whether for this reason or for the mere sake of plunder, it happened that one day, in 1599, some thirty men, with half a dozen of the Montgomerys as their leaders, came to the fortalice with hagbuts, pistols, culverins, swords, and other weapons, and violently, "with engyne of smythis", broke up the doors and gates, and, after having destroyed the glass windows, boards, and ironwork, "spuilzied" the furniture, together with the materials intended for the construction of the harbour. The perpetration of this outrage was followed by the forcible occupation of the castle by four of the Montgomerys, who fortified it "with men, ammunition, and armour", and "resetted within it not only the disorderit thevis and lymmaris of the Ilis, but also such other malefactors as, for eschewing punishment, resorted towards them".