James Mor MacGregor

James Mor MacGregor, also known as James More Drummond, was a son of Rob Roy MacGregor and a participant in Jacobite and clan politics during the first half of the eighteenth century.

He served with the Jacobite forces in 1745 and later became associated with government intelligence, imprisonment and disputed schemes within the Jacobite exile community. James Mor MacGregor is generally dated to c. 1695–1754.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Catriona makes James Mor MacGregor important through both politics and family. David Balfour falls in love with Catriona Drummond, James Mor’s fictional daughter, while trying to expose the injustice surrounding the Appin Murder trial. In the Netherlands and France, James Mor’s Jacobite connections and betrayals create further danger, giving Stevenson a historical figure whose compromised loyalties sharpen the novel’s contrast between clan allegiance, personal honour and political survival after the 1745 rising.