supported by interest as they are landlords, but as lineally descended from the old patriarchs or fathers of the families.’ CHAPTER IX. THE CLANS AND THEIR GENEALOGIES. [Sidenote: State of the Highlands in the sixteenth century.] The forfeiture of the last Lord of the Isles, and the annexation of a great part of his territories to the crown, finally brought the whole clans of the Highlands and Islands into direct subjection to the royal authority, but the removal of the old hereditary rulers of the provinces, and the substitution of a central authority which could make itself but little felt beyond the Highland Line, left the clans without any practical control, and the sixteenth century is mainly characterised by internal conflicts between the clans themselves, which increased the power of some, and broke up the solidarity of others, and by the gradual advance in influence and extent of territory in Argyllshire of the Campbells, whose astuteness and foresight led them to a uniform support of the royal authority, while the Mackenzies acquired a hardly less influential position in Ross-shire.[457] From the early part of the fifteenth century, when Donald of the Isles had invaded the Low Country at the head of a Highland army of ten thousand men, till the outbreak of the civil war in the reign of Charles the First, the clans had never broken through the barriers which separated them from the Lowlands in the form of one united army; and it was not till Montrose raised the Highland clans to make a diversion in favour of the king in the north that their power as a united people was at all recognised. The rapid and brilliant campaigns of Montrose showed what the clans were capable of effecting when brought together and skilfully handled, though opposed by all the power and influence of Gillespie Gruamach, the Earl of Argyll and head of the Campbells. The normal relation of the Highlanders and Lowlanders to each other is graphically put by one of the greatest of modern writers, who was thoroughly acquainted with the subject, when he says, ‘The inhabitants of the Lowlands were indeed aware that there existed, in the extremity of the island, amid wilder mountains and broader lakes than their own, tribes of men called clans, living each under the rule of their own chief, wearing a peculiar dress, speaking an unknown language, and going armed even in the most ordinary and peaceable vocations. The more southern counties saw specimens of these men following the droves of cattle which were the sole exportable commodity of their country, plaided, bonneted, belted, and brogued, and driving their bullocks, as Virgil is said to have spread his manure, with an air of great dignity and consequence.[458] To their nearer Lowland neighbours they were known by more fierce and frequent causes of acquaintance; by the forays which they made upon the inhabitants of the plains, and the tribute, or