The Highlands of Scotland have been well documented for their conflicts and betrayals in fact it is surely legitimate that from the reign of James IV in the 1490’s life in the Highlands had been fairly tumultuous. In 1493, James went against the powerful chiefs of the MacDonald Clan and forfeited the MacDonald Lord of the Isles in favour of himself along with the Campbell Clan. Therefore the Campbell’s took over as powerhouse in that time at the expense of the MacDonalds.

Issues arose not only with the MacDonalds but also with several additional Scottish clans because of this harmful power divide that the Campbells kept over all others. The Campbell were in such a position that they could buy up readily available land and charge a kind of lease upon anybody that wished to utilize the area for cows or sheep. The MacLeans were especially aggrieved Clan. As a sidenote here, the actual word Clan emanates from the Gaelic expression “clann” which actually means “children”.

It would seem to be this could mean that each person in the clan were closely associated but this was not necessarily so. Just the higher echelons of a specific clan were linked to the chiefs. Everyone else just considered the chief as the chief instead of as a relative as such.

The particular system of clans came from a mixture of early Celtic idealism and feudal ways, the main point being the ownership of lands. The clan chief was the owner of the lands of the clan and he had the capability to grant the land out to his fellow clans men. The status of a clan nonetheless wasn’t necessarily about the amount of land that the family owned or operated but more concerning the number of males the clan could possibly muster to be able to fight in war. Because of the Highlands being extremely militaristic they would be looked to for fighting men during the time of conflict between the King and his opponents. For the highland clans this became problematic because they often became embroiled in lowland politics.

When James VI came to be King however, civil war broke out. When he called on the clans to help the Campbells resolved otherwise. It was not only the Campbells who were to cause issues for James – he extirped (sent away) the clan MacGregor in 1603, and in 1609 he introduced fresh laws in to force that limited all clan chiefs from making use of and abusing their previous influence.

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