An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707)Rait, Robert S. (Robert Sangster)
History
An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707)
Rait, Robert S. (Robert Sangster)
England -- Foreign relations -- Scotland; Scotland -- Foreign relations -- England
We have attempted to explain the Anglicization of Scotland, south and
east of "the Highland line", by the combined forces of the Church, the
Court, Feudalism, and Commerce, and it is unnecessary to lay further
stress upon the importance of these elements in twelfth century life. It
may be interesting to compare with this the process by which the
Scottish Highlands have been Anglicized within the last century and a
half. It must, in the first place, be fully understood that the interval
between the twelfth century and the suppression of the last Jacobite
rising was not void of development even in the Highlands. "It is in the
reign of David the First", says Mr. Skene,[98] "that the sept or clan
first appears as a distinct and prominent feature in the social
organization of the Gaelic population", and it is not till the reign of
Robert III that he finds "the first appearance of a distinct clan".
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".
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