One of the most famous events related to the first Jacobite uprising (1689-1691), the 1692 Massacre of Glencoe was a horrific event that shocked many across Britain and Europe. This 1703 document, published to dispel claims critical of the Crown’s involvement in the events, records the Scottish government’s official narrative of the Massacre, the findings of the Commission selected to investigate the matter, as well as the proceedings of the Scottish Parliament as it pertains to that investigation. The document speaks to themes of Scottish politics, religious conflict, and violence in the wake of the Glorious Revolution as well as broader topics on the development of the British state. As a means of directing the blame for the Massacre, this document reveals the desire of the Scottish Parliament to protect the precariously placed King William of Orange. Any fault for the Massacre is shifted away from the monarch onto six officers of the Earl of Argyll’s Regiment of Foot and the Secretary of State of Scotland, Sir John Dalrymple. Despite this, neither Dalrymple nor the six officers were prosecuted for their actions, a decision noted in post scriptum within the document to place the blame whilst avoiding further bloodshed.

The massacre of Glenco : being a true narrative of the barbarous murther of the Glenco-men, in the Highlands of Scotland, by way of military execution, on the 13th of Feb. 1692 : containing the commission under the Great Seal of Scotland for making an enquiry into that horrid murther, the proceedings of the Parliament of Scotland upon it, the report of the commissioners upon the enquiry, laid before the King and Parliament, and the address of the Parliament to King Wiliam for justice upon the murderers : faithfully extracted from the records of Parliament and publish'd for undeceiving those who have been impos'd upon by false accounts. By George Ridpath and Charles Leslie. London : Printed and sold by B. Bragg at the Blue-Ball in Ave-Mary Lane, 1703. 32 pages; 22 cm. Archival & Special Collections, University of Guelph Library (s0338b16)

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