The Mackay Country Project

Maciver had applied for the factorship at Scourie in 1837 but had not been successful.  The job became available again and in October 1844 he was asked if he would be interested.  He went to London to meet the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland and was offered the position from Whitsunday 1854 at a salary of £400 a year, a free house and a small farm. 

 

Though large sums of money passed through Maciver’s hands, no audit was ever conducted and total trust was shown in him.  The Duke of Sutherland was sixty years old and deaf and left the management of his vast estates in the hands of his Commissioner, Mr James Loch. 

 

 

Maciver remained the factor at Scourie until 1895 when he retired on a pension of £300 with the farm and Scourie House rent free for life.  He still remained the agent for the Duke of Westminster.  During his fifty years as factor he had served three Dukes of Sutherland and two Dukes of Westminster and he found them all excellent proprietors.

 

He and his wife Mary had many personal trials, enduring the deaths of seven of their eleven children and on 24th January 1895 Mary died too.  Maciver died on 10th January 1903 aged ninety.  His longevity too had worked in his favour and he became a venerable old gentleman living in style in Scourie House and visited by gentry and aristocracy alike.  He was always able to arrange a day’s salmon fishing or stalking for a friend.

 

 

His family enabled him to receive a good education and his time in Edinburgh at the Academy and University gave him town gloss.  Though a native Gaelic speaker from Lewis, Maciver knew where his advantage lay.  His father had died bequeathing some money but many debts which were not repaid by the ‘impecunious people’ his father’s business had been built on.