Whatever may be the value of Mr Skene’s conclusions as to the purity of descent of the present Highlanders, his researches, taken in conjunction with those of Mr E. W. Robertson, seem pretty clearly to prove, that from as far back as history goes the Highlanders were divided into tribes on the principle of _kin_, that the germ of the fully developed clan-system can be found among the earliest Celtic inhabitants of Scotland; that clanship, in short, is only a modern example, systematised, developed, and modified by time of the ancient principle on which the Celtic people formed their tribes and divided their lands. The clans were the fragments of the old Celtic tribes, whose mormaors had been destroyed, each tribe dividing into a number of clans. When, according to a recent writer, the old Celtic tribe was deprived of its chief, the bolder spirits among the minor chieftains would gather round them each a body of partisans, who would assume his name and obey his orders. It might even happen that, from certain favourable circumstances, a Saxon or a Norman stranger would thus be able to gain a circle of adherents out of a broken or chieftainless Celtic tribe, and so become the founder of a clan. As might be expected, this primitive, patriarchal state of society would be liable to be abolished as the royal authority became extended and established, and the feudal system substituted in its stead. This we find was the case, for under David and his successors, during the 12th and 13th centuries, the old and almost independent mormaordoms were gradually abolished, and in their stead were substituted earldoms feudally dependent upon the Crown. In many instances these mormaordoms passed into the hands of lowland barons, favourites of the king; and thus the dependent tribes, losing their hereditary heads, separated, as we have said, into a number of small and independent clans, although even the new foreign barons themselves for a long time exercised an almost independent sway, and used the power which they had acquired by royal favour against the king himself. As far as the tenure of lands and the heritable jurisdictions were concerned, the feudal system was easily introduced into the Highlands; but although the principal chiefs readily agreed, or were induced by circumstances to hold their lands of the Crown or of low-country barons, yet the system of clanship remained in full force amongst the native Highlanders until a very recent period, and its spirit still to a certain extent survives in the affections, the prejudices, the opinions, and the habits of the people.[119]