For a time the unhappy chief refused to sign the bond thus demanded; for a year he resisted the oppression of his enemy, and bore his imprisonment, with the aggravation of declining health. At last his friends, alarmed at his sinking condition, entreated him, as the only means of release, to comply with the demand of Argyle. Sir Lachlan signed the document, was set free, and returned to Duart, where he expired in April, 1649. To his family he bequeathed a legacy of contention and misfortune. His successor, Sir Hector Maclean, the young hostage who had been kidnapped from Dumbarton, was a youth of a warlike and determined spirit, who resisted the depredations of the plundering clan of Campbells in Lorn and Ardnamuchan, and, on one occasion, hung up two of the invaders at his castle of Dunnin Morvern. Such, in spite of this summary mode of proceeding, were Sir Hector's ideas of honour, that, notwithstanding his doubts of the validity of the bond obtained from his father, he conceived that the superscription of his father's name to it rendered it his duty to comply with its conditions as he could. He is declared by one authority to have paid ten thousand pounds of the demand; by another that fact is doubted, since, when Sir John Maclean's guardians investigated it, no receipts for sums alleged to have been paid on account were to be found.[75] But this is again accounted for by the seneachie or family historian. Sir Hector Maclean fell in the battle of Inverkeithing, where, out of eight hundred of his clan who fought against General Lambert, only forty escaped. He was succeeded by his brother Allan, a child, subject to the management of guardians. By their good care, a great portion of the debt to Argyle was paid, but there still remained sufficient to afford the insatiable enemy of his house a fair pretext of aggression. The case was again brought before the Scottish Council; it was even referred to Charles the Second; but, by the representations of the Duke of Lauderdale, the Argyle influence prevailed. The famous Marquis of Argyle was, indeed, no longer in existence; he had perished on the scaffold: but his son still grasped at the possessions of his neighbour; and, although King Charles desired that Lauderdale "should see that Maclean had justice," the Duke, who was then Scottish Lord Commissioner, on his return to Scotland, decided that the rents of the estates should be made payable to Argyle on account of the bond, a certain portion of them being reserved for the maintenance of the chief.