Assuming there were any left 'oop north' to wonder where the money went.
The MacDonald chief on Skye was content to send for money when he ran out of funds in Nice for his gambling debts. He did this by raising the rents etc. When there was a rebellion he sent the police in and later evicted his tenants destroying their houses to make sure they couldn't come back.
The MacLeods were made of sterner stuff. They actually sold their own people into slavery in the Americas.
'Isabel Grant gives a thorough and honest account of Long nan Daoine in her book “The MacLeods”, even though it marks the lowest point in the history of the clan. It’s well worth remembering this year as we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. In November 1739 the magistrates of Donaghadee in Ireland reported
that ninety “felons” had escaped from a ship, the William, that had touched there on her way from Skye and Harris to America.
On closer examination, the magistrates found that nearly thirty of the “felons” were women and children, “many of whom did not seem to exceed ten years of age”. The rest were mostly young men, “and in the whole they were the most miserable objects of compassion and the most helpless creatures that had ever appeared to us”.
These people had been snatched from their communities in Skye and Harris by a representative of their own chief, Norman MacLeod of Dunvegan, to be sold as slaves (or “indentured servants”, to use the technical expression). MacLeod was short of money; by tradition he was absolute ruler of his people, and he thought he would sell a few. But knowing there were moral and legal arguments against it, he had arranged for Norman MacLeod, younger of Berneray, to do the dirty work for him. His neighbour Sir Alexander MacDonald of Sleat, whom he had under his thumb, was also complicit.'
It looks like the two clans found common cause for once.
http://www.macaskillsociety.org/files/R ... n-Hill.pdf
