He occupied his own wild and sterile region, and followed his own national usages.

In his dealings with the Saxons, he was rather the oppressor than the oppressed.

He exacted black mail from them: he drove away their flocks and herds; and they seldom dared to pursue him to his native wilderness.

They had never portioned out among themselves his dreary region of moor and shingle.

He had never seen the tower of his hereditary chieftains occupied by an usurper who could not speak Gaelic, and who looked on all who spoke it as brutes and slaves; nor had his national and religious feelings ever been outraged by the power and splendour of a church which he regarded as at once foreign and heretical.
The real explanation of the readiness with which a large part of the population of the Highlands, twice in the seventeenth century, drew the sword for the Stuarts is to be found in the internal quarrels which divided the commonwealth of clans.