Breadalbane
|
|
- For the Australian town, see Breadalbane, New South Wales
Breadalbane is one of the four main branches of the Clan Campbell.
One of the interesting aspects of the Campbells' history is the way in which they are hated in many parts of the Highlands still, largely, but not solely, because they were triumphant 'winners' when competing clans failed. However, the Breadalbane Campbells, who occupied vast lands to the north and east of the Argyll Campbells, their kin, from the 14c onwards were, in the end, conspicuous failures too.
Things started to go wrong from the second half of the 18c, when the 3rd Earl, John Campbell, failed to produce issue and had to 'groom' the son of a fairly distant relative by means of school fees and a hurried Grand Tour of Europe for the succession. He, as 4th Earl and 1st Marquis, although successful in increasing the power and wealth of the Breadalbanes, produced only one son, criticized in his time as 'The Exterminator,' who himself died without issue, provoking a nasty legal battle between aspirants to the title.
By the 1920s profligate living and Liberal Government taxation combined to ruin the family, whose lands were sold off until nothing, not even their extraordinary castle at Taymouth remained in their hands.
Today almost nothing remains as a monument, except their original castle of Kilchurn, at Loch Awe, which, appropriately, is no more than a picturesque ruin.