Page "Hebrides" Paragraph 23

With the implementation of the Treaty of Union in 1707, the Hebrides became part of the new Kingdom of Great Britain, but the clans ' loyalties to a distant monarch were not strong.

A considerable number of islesmen " came out " in support of the Jacobite Earl of Mar in the " 15 " and again in the 1745 rising including Macleod of Dunvegan and MacLea of Lismore.

The aftermath of the decisive Battle of Culloden, which effectively ended Jacobite hopes of a Stuart restoration, was widely felt.

The British government's strategy was to estrange the clan chiefs from their kinsmen and turn their descendants into English-speaking landlords whose main concern was the revenues their estates brought rather than the welfare of those who lived on them.

This may have brought peace to the islands, but in the following century it came at a terrible price.

In the wake of the rebellion, the clan system was broken up and islands of the Hebrides became a series of landed estates.