When in course of
erection, the ball on the top of the flag-staff fell off. This was
regarded by the Highlanders as a bad omen, and it cast a gloom over
the proceedings of the day.
Meanwhile Colonel Sir Hector Munro, who bad served as Captain in
the Earl of Orkney's Regiment with reputation in the wars of Queen
Anne, raised his followers, who, along with a body of Rosses,
numbered about 600 men. With these, in November, 1715, he encamped
at Alness and on the 6th of October following he was joined by
the Earl of Sutherland, accompanied by his son, Lord Strathnaver,
and by Lord Reay, with an additional force of 600, in the interest
of the Whig Government, and to cover their own districts and check
the movements of the Western clans in effecting a junction with
the Earl of Mar, whom Earl William and Sir Donald Macdonald had
publicly espoused, as already stated, at the pretended hunting
match in Braemar. The meeting at Alness was instrumental in
keeping Seaforth in the North. If the Earl and his mother's clans
had advanced a month earlier the Duke of Argyll would not have
dared to advance against Mar's united forces, who might have pushed
an army across the Forth sufficient to have paralyzed any exertion
that might have been made to preserve a shadow of the Government.
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