Here we may note the habit of a Highlander: their doublets are slashed in the sleeves, and open on the back; their breeches and stockings are either all on a piece, and straight to them, plaid colour; or otherwise, a sort of breeches, not unlike a petticoat, that reaches not so low, by far, as their knees, and their stockings are rolled up about the calves of their legs, and tied with a garter, their knee and thigh being naked. On their right side they wear a dagger, about a foot or half-a-yard long, the back filed like a saw, and several kinnes (? skeans) struck in the sheath of it; in either pocket a case of iron or brass pistols, a sword about a handful broad, and five feet long, on the other side, and perhaps a gun on one shoulder and a sack of luggage on the other. Thus accoutred, with a plaid over the left shoulder and under the right arm, and a cap a-cock, he struts like a peacock, and rather prides in than disdains his speckled feet.[43] It is somewhat remarkable that this testimony, which decides the vexed question of the separate use of kilt and plaid prior to the eighteenth century, has hitherto escaped the notice of all writers on the subject. During the turbulent period of the wars of Montrose and Dundee many bodies of armed Highlanders were imported into the Lowlands. One of the largest, known as the Highland Host, consisted of ten thousand men employed in the repression of the Western Shires. A letter in the Wodrow MSS., Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, written under date 1st February 1678, states:—