“The property of these Highlands belongs to a great many different persons, who are more or less considerable in proportion to the extent of their estates, and to the command of men that live upon them, or follow them on account of their clanship, out of the estates of others. These lands are set by the landlord during pleasure, or a short tack, to people whom they call good-men, and who are of a superior station to the commonality. These are generally the sons, brothers, cousins, or nearest relations of the landlord. The younger sons of famillys are not bred to any business or employments, but are sent to the French or Spanish armies, or marry as soon as they are of age. Those are left to their own good fortune and conduct abroad, and these are preferred to some advantageous farm at home. This, by the means of a small portion, and the liberality of their relations, they are able to stock, and which they, their children, and grandchildren, possess at an easy rent, till a nearer descendant be again preferred to it. As the propinquity removes, they become less considered, till at last they degenerate to be of the common people; unless some accidental acquisition of wealth supports them above their station. As this hath been an ancient custom, most of the farmers and cottars are of the name and clan of the proprietor; and, if they are not really so, the proprietor either obliges them to assume it, or they are glaid to do so, to procure his protection and favour. “Some of these tacksmen or good-men possess these farms themselves; but in that case they keep in them a great number of cottars, to each of whom they give a house, grass for a cow or two, and as much ground as will sow about a boll of oats, in places which their own plough cannot labour, by reason of brush or rock, and which they are obliged in many places to delve with spades. This is the only visible subject which these poor people possess for supporting themselves and their famillys, and the only wages of their whole labour and service. “Others of them lett out parts of their farms to many of these cottars or subtennants; and as they are generally poor, and not allways in a capacity to stock these small tenements, the tacksmen frequently enter them on the ground laboured and sown, and sometimes too stocks it with cattle; all which he is obliged to redeliver in the same condition at his removal, which is at the goodman’s pleasure, as he is usually himself tennent at pleasure, and for which during his possession he pays an extravagantly high rent to the tacksman. “By this practice, farms, which one family and four horses are sufficient to labour, will have from four to sixteen famillys living upon them.”[7]