Lt-Gen. Sir James Stewart

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∼James Stewart ("James of the Glen" or "Seumas a' Ghlinne") conspired in the killing of Colin ("the Red Fox") Campbell of Glenure on 14 May 1752. Campbell, the local Government Factor (and rent collector) was on official duty when he was shot twice in the back while traveling on a trail in Appin above Loch Linnhe.

This was the famous "Appin Murder," the subject of hundreds of books and articles and numerous films which discuss and portray Scotland's most notorious unsolved murder.

As to who actually fired the shots, Alastair Campbell's A History of Clan Campbell, vol. 3, pp. 157-159 (Edinburgh Univ. Press; 2004), states:

"Chief among the suspects was one Allan Breck Stewart, the hero of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel "Kidnapped" which has done so much to obfuscate the truth about what actually happened. ***

"[But, rather than Allan, it] was James Stewart who was arrested on 16 May.... The normal process of law was set in motion and ... evidence was collected.... It was a lengthy business and several score of the local people were called on to testify. On the basis of this evidence, a charge was brought against James Stewart, of having been actor or art and part [i.e. aiding and abetting] in the murder together with the absent Allan Breck Stewart.

"The trial opened at Inverary on 21 September.... [The jurors convicted and the judges pronounced their verdict] on 25 September: James was found guilty. He was taken on 5 October to Fort William and then, on 7 November, to Ballachulish where, the following day, he was executed and his body hung in chains on the gibbet erected on the rocky knoll overlooking the tidal narrows....***

"The story has been hotly debated ever since; yet again, it is claimed to be an iniquitous story of Campbell double-dealing and injustice with the wretched James Stewart as the victim.... But [because it is tied so closely with the Jacobite rebellion of 1745] this story inflames such passions that a balanced view of what took place is more than can be hoped for. ***

"[U]npalatable as it may be to his apologists, there is little doubt that James Stewart was guilty as charged [that is, with aiding and abetting the killing]."

Probably the most thorough study of these events is that by Prof. Lee Holcombe, Ancient Animosity, The Appin Murder and the End of Scottish Rebellion (Author House; Bloomington, IN; 2004). At p. 257, she wrote: "Jacobite propaganda would make much of the fact that the investigation of Glenure's murder was the work of his Campbell kinsmen…. But this Jacobite version of events misrepresented the legal and social realities of the time.

"The investigation and prosecution of criminal cases by private individuals was an ancient custom and common practice in eighteenth-century Scotland. *** It was natural that the Campbells, both as kinsmen of the murdered man and as public servants, should investigate and prosecute the case."

Regarding the legalities, Prof. Holcombe wrote (p. 382): "James Stewart … was guilty ‘art and part' as the accessory who helped plan and execute the crime. The charge of ‘art and part' could be proved by showing, for example, that the person had some quarrel with the murder victim and some ascendancy over the actual murderer; that he had urged or commissioned the deed and shown how it could be done; that he had given immediate and material aid in the commission of the crime, such as by furnishing weapons or disguises to the murderer; and that he afterward harboured the murderer or otherwise enabled him to escape."

Prof. Holcombe wrote, finally (pp. 382-83, 448): "Long afterward, Baron David Hume of the Scottish Court of Exchequer, the great authority on Scottish criminal law…, [wrote] in his Commentaries on the Law of Scotland respecting…Crimes [vol. I, pp 442-443](1797), which became a classic reference work *** ‘I see no reason to believe that the verdict was not according to the justice of the case, or different from what the jury were warranted to return upon the evidence laid before them.'"

After James was executed at Ballachulish, according to Alastair Campbell's "A History of Clan Campbell, vol. 3, p. 159, "His body hung there for [about 18] months, a dire warning to all who passed that way.... Finally, his people were permitted to remove his remains, and these were at last given proper burial at the church of Kilcomkill in Duror of Appin, on the shore's edge.

Prof. Holcombe's Ancient Animosity," p. 455, put it slightly differently: "In January 1755 the body fell from the gibbet, more than two years after it was hung there…. Lord Justice … Tinwald … ordered that the body be hung up again…. At last the body and the gibbet disappeared…. [Another story was that young John Stewart of] Ballachulish gathered up the bones, and his daughter, then about ten years old, washed the skull with her own hands…. Then, according to a family tradition, the bones were placed in a goatskin bag and buried under a few inches of earth in the burial ground of the ruined church at Keil."

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