Orkney’s Landed Gentry
In Gow’s Folly we encounter two of the lairds, the landed gentry of Orkney, Honeyman and Fea. Whether they be regarded as the cream or the scum of their little world, as benevolent despots or as petty tyrants, there is no doubt of their important role in economic management and social control. For better or worse the lairds dominated the Orcadian population which, during Gow’s visit, numbered around 23,000 people.
Orkney lairds had a distinctive lifestyle and status. They spent summer in their two or three-storey mansion houses, each with its walled vegetable garden sufficient to feed a large household, with mill, corn store and landing place for their sailing boat nearby. They spent winter in their town houses in Kirkwall, mixing in social activities and exchanging hospitality.
John Gow’s pirate crew attempted to burgle the home of laird, Robert Honeyman, at the Hall of Clestrain which proudly overlooked his first ever purchase, the island of Graemsay. Grandson to the Bishop, Honeyman became an acquisitive laird and Tacksman of the Bishopric. Usually fortunate in his dealings, occasionally his schemes became unstuck as when a Captain Moodie challenged him (vainly) to a duel and later when Gow’s men looted his drinks cabinet and stole his piper servant.
We also meet James Fea on his wife’s estate at Carrick on the island of Eday. The Fea family had been granted a charter to Clestran on Stronsay by the notorious, illegitimate half-brother to Mary Queen of Sots, Orkney’s Earl Robert Stewart. The talents of James Fea made the family conspicuous in triumph and disaster. After acquiring Jacobite connections in France and, of course, Scotland Fea returned to the islands where he married eleven year-old heiress, Janet Buchanan, thereby increasing the family fortunes. He pioneered the kelp, or seaweed, industry which was to make huge fortunes for future lairds and, we must not forget, he captured his old school pal, John Gow. Eventually Fea’s Jacobite dealings drove him from the islands. Several years after his death in London the lands acquired from his young wife were sold.
There is, today, a dark stain on the drawing room floor at Carrick House said to be the blood spilled by our notorious Pirate Gow in a failed attempt to escape.
