Between the end of the fourteenth century and the middle of the
eighteenth, the clan had developed a complete organization, consisting
of the chief and his kinsmen, the common people of the same blood, and
the dependants of the clan. Each clan contained several septs, founded
by such descendants of chiefs as had obtained a definite possession in
land. The writer of _Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland
in 1726_, mentions that the Highland clans were "subdivided into smaller
branches of fifty or sixty men, who deduce their original from their
particular chieftains, and rely upon them as their more immediate
protectors and defenders".
The Hanoverian government had thus to face, in 1746, a problem in some
respects more difficult than that which the descendants of Malcolm
Canmore had solved. The clan organization was complete, and clan loyalty
had assumed the form of an extravagant devotion; a hostile feeling had
arisen between Highlands and Lowlands, and all feeling of common
nationality had been lost. There was no such important factor as the
Church to help the change; religion was, on the whole, perhaps rather
adverse than favourable to the process of Anglicization. On the other
hand, the task was, in other aspects, very much easier. The Highlands
had been affected by the events of the seventeenth century, and the
chiefs were no longer mere freebooters and raiders. The Jacobite rising
had weakened the Highlands, and the clans had been divided among
themselves.
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