[244] The manuscript from which the life of the Master of Sinclair was taken, was found by Sir Walter Scott among the papers of his mother, who was distantly related to the family of Greenock. The proceedings of the court-martial were attested by the subscription of John Cunningham, probably a clerk of the court. [245] The MS. Memoirs of the Master of Sinclair are at present in the possession of the Countess of Rosslyn. [246] Burke's Peerage. CAMERON OF LOCHIEL.[247] The clan Cameron, from whom were descended the chieftains who took an active part in the Jacobite cause, had its seat in Lochaber, of which one of their ancestors had originally received a grant from Robert Bruce. They sprang, according to some accounts, from the same source as that of the clan Chattan: they became, nevertheless, in the course of the fourteenth century, an independent state. In a manuscript history of the clan Cameron, they have been traced so far back as to the year 404; and their origin in Scotland ascribed to the arrival of a younger son of the royal family of Denmark, their progenitors acquiring the name of Cameron from his crooked nose. The clan consisted of three septs; but the family of Lochiel were acknowledged as the chief, and, according to the singular system of clanship, the Camerons freely gave up their wills to that of their head. The history of this family, whilst it shows by what decision of character and intrepidity of conduct this superiority was maintained, presents little else than a tissue of successive feuds between the clan and its neighbours, until, during the seventeenth century, the events of history brought forth qualities of still greater importance to distinguish the house of Lochiel. From henceforth the disputes with the clan Chattan, and the long-standing feuds with the Mackintoshes, merged into obscurity compared with the more stirring interests into which the chieftains were now, fatally for their prosperity, intermingled.