The Rosses set fire to the church with the survivors still inside it. That is the sentence the chroniclers can't quite shake. The Tarbat peninsula is gentle country, low and green, edged with sand beaches and farmland - not the obvious stage for one of the more savage episodes in late medieval Highland history. But sometime in the 1480s, a Mackay raiding party reached this shore, fought a losing battle, and ran for the only sanctuary available. The Rosses followed, barred the doors, and lit the roof.
The second half of the fifteenth century saw a series of cross-border raids between the Mackays of Strathnaver in north Sutherland and the Rosses of Balnagown in Easter Ross. Earlier in the century, at the Battle of Drumnacoub in 1433, the Mackays of Strathnaver had killed Neil Neilson Mackay, his brother Morgan, and Morgan's father-in-law Murray of Cubin. The aftermath of that battle saw the Mackays recover lands in Ross-shire that had belonged to those relatives - and the Rosses pick up some of the lands too, particularly in the parishes of Edderton and Kincardine. Both sides had grievances. Both sides had charters. Both sides had memories that did not fade in a single generation.
The Blackcastle Manuscript, written by Alexander Mackay of Blackcastle with access to the chief's family papers, says the Rosses had made "a predatory incursion" into Mackay territory first. Sir Robert Gordon's seventeenth-century Genealogical History of the Earldom of Sutherland, written around 1630, says the Mackays "often molested with incursions and invasions" the lands of the Rosses. The Wardlaw Manuscript by James Fraser of Wardlaw, written around 1674, gives the most detailed account but dates the event to 1438 - which most historians regard as too early. The most commonly cited year is 1486, but the honest answer is the 1480s. Highland chroniclers told stories with grievances of their own.
Whatever started it, the end was clear. Angus Mackay led a band across the Meikle Ferry from Sutherland, ignored the warnings of the monks of Fearn Abbey - whose interdictions could usually deter even hardened raiders - and ran loose across the peninsula. The Rosses caught them at Tarbat. "Killing all his men," the Wardlaw Manuscript records, they "persued himselfe to the church of Tarbit, takeing sanctury in the temple, quher they killed and burnt him." Archaeology supports the chroniclers. The Tarbat Discovery Programme excavations led by Martin Carver of the University of York found that the medieval "Church 4" on the Portmahomack site suffered a major fire during the Middle Ages - fire that scorched the sandstone walling to a bright orange, even down in the crypt, with charcoal from possible roof timbers found in the nave.
John Riabhach Mackay - Iain the Brindled - avenged his father in 1487 by leading a raid back into Ross territory. It ended at the Battle of Aldy Charrish at the head of the Kyle of Sutherland, where Alexander Ross of Balnagowan and many of his kinsmen were slaughtered. The Clan Ross never really recovered from that defeat. The cycle that had begun at Drumnacoub in 1433 burned itself out within a single human lifetime, leaving two clans diminished and one church reduced to scorched stone. Today the foundations sit quietly under Tarbat Old Church at Portmahomack, where visitors can still see the orange-burnt sandstone in the crypt - the only physical witness to what the chroniclers could not stop describing.
Coordinates 57.83 N, 3.82 W on the Tarbat peninsula in Easter Ross. Inverness Airport (EGPE) lies about 30 nm south. From cruising altitude the peninsula juts northeast into the Moray Firth as a flat green wedge between the Dornoch Firth to the north and the wide Moray Firth basin to the south. Tarbat Old Church and the Discovery Centre at Portmahomack sit near the centre of the peninsula. Tarbat Ness Lighthouse, with its broad red bands, marks the northeastern tip and is visible from a long way off in clear weather.