The Consequences for Alexander Kinnaird
Relief from taxation was granted but it did not ease Alexander Kinnaird's financial situation for long. Creditors still kept pursuing him for the annual rents of their bonds or wadsets (mortgages or pledges), and, the condition of the estate worsened with the ever-growing wastes of sand.
“In respect of the daily hazard it lies under from the sand, without which act of their Lordships' justice the petitioner was not able to subsist” |
Legal proceedings culminated when the estate was put up to public auction, and was bought, at the price of £20,509 10s 6d Scots, by Alexander Duff of Drummuir in Banffshire, who was son of Bailie William Duff of Inverness, the principal creditor. Kinnaird left Culbin forever.
|
“ON returning, the people of Culbin were spellbound. Not a vestige, not a trace, of their houses was to be seen. Everything had disappeared beneath the sand. The scene which met their anxious gaze that morning was what we now behold — desolate and oppressive enough to us, but how terribly painful and harrowing must it have been to them”.
|
|