This system of land tenure, which in theory and practice made the laird the landowner and the tenant, or worker of the soil, a virtual serf or semi-slave, sufficiently indicates the grounds and nature of the Highland chief’s power and the degradation of the average or common man. In almost every clan, there were subordinate chiefs, cadets of the principal family, that had acquired a territory and founded separate septs. In this community, the majority of commoners were distinct from the “gentlemen,” who were persons who could clearly trace their derivation from the chiefs of former times and assert their kinsmanship to the present one. Below this clan aristocracy were the mass of plain fellows (“kerns”) who could not tell how or why they came to belong to the clan and who were always distinctly inferiors. There were several distinctions, based on ability, of status and condition. The commoners were little better than serfs, having no certain idea of a noble ancestry to nerve their exertions or to purify their conduct. It was not to these, but to the gentry, that the chief looked for active service and upon whom he depended in time of war. These upper grades of men did most of the fighting, while the larger body of common retainers (“kerns”) were left behind, during a raid, to perform the humbler duties of driving the cows or tilling the fields. Or, if they accompanied the foray, they were put in the rear ranks and given poor arms, sometimes being provided only with dirks. To illustrate these facts there were and are many stories told and traditions handed down. Note the incident in “The Lady of the Lake”: “Because a wretched kern ye slew, Homage to name to Roderick Dhu?” In a word, in Scotland and in Japan, of which we can bear witness from personal experience, social evolution among clansmen and arms-bearing men had begun and continued, though separation had early taken place between the fighters and the field laborers. In both countries the process and result were much the same. Moreover, after the Reformation, the proud Highlanders, clinging to the old faith and traditions, looked down, with even greater contempt than before, upon the commercial Presbyterians of the Low Countries. They regarded with absolute horror the newer social and political order, which in their eyes was but a dark system of Parliamentary corruption. They were only too ready to believe the stories of luxury, extravagance, and predatory dishonesty, which were supposed to be rife and chronic in London. Here, too, human nature, Japanese and Scotch, was as much alike as in a pair of twins, born of the same mother, and throughout history running in parallel lines of action.