The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

CHAP. VI] OFSCOTLAND 89
disposed them the less to yield a ready obedience to the Scottish
monarch. Had the Macdonalds been a united clan, they would
have had little difficulty in compelling the earls of Ross to
submit to their authority, and with them to have presented a
powerful opposition to the government, but the Highland law
of succession had produced its usual effect over their extensive
territories, and the clan being divided into several rival branches,
they were able to do little more than ground against
merely to hold their
the earls of Ross. And as the jealousy and
hereditary enmity between the two great tribes of Ross and
Argyll was too great to allow them to unite together in any
object, the government consequently experienced but little
difficulty in effecting its object of overawing the Highland clans,
and compelling the adoption of the feudal law.
The extinction of some of the branches of the Macdonalds,
and the forfeiture and utter extermination of one of its principal
branches in the wars of Bruce and Baliol, at length threw
the whole power and force of that great tribe into the hands
of the lords of the Isles, who accordingly began now to present
an alarming aspect to the government. The earldom of Ross,
too, had at this time shared the fate of the other Highland
earldoms, and had become extinct, while the honours and
territories fell into the possession of a Norman baron ; so that
it was only by the exercise of the greatest foresight and prudence
on the part of government that the enmity between the Gael
and Saxons was prevented from breaking out into open hostilities,
until at length a circumstance occurred to bring down
upon the country the storm of Gaelic fury which had so long
been dreaded. That event was brought about from the male
line of the earls of Ross having once more failed, and the
lord of the Isles, who had married the heiress of the title,
immediately claimed the earldom as an appanage to his former
power. It was at once perceived by Government, that however
undeniable this claim might be, to admit it would be to con-
centrate the whole power which the Gael still possessed col-
lectively in the person of one chief, and that by means of
that union he would become so formidable an opponent, as
to render the result of any struggle which might occur between
the two races, a matter of considerable doubt. The government