Page:A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland - Johnson (1775).djvu/114

 right attended on the strongest. This was, in ruder times, the common practice, which the kings of Scotland could seldom control.

Even so lately as in the last years of King William, a battle was fought at , on a plain a few miles to the south of Inverness, between the clans of Mackintosh and Macdonald of ''Keppoch. Col. Macdonald, the head of a small clan, refused to pay the dues demanded from him by Mackintosh'', as his superior lord. They disdained the interposition of judges and laws, and calling each his followers to maintain the dignity of the clan, fought a formal battle, in which several considerable men fell on the side of Mackintosh, without a complete victory to either. This is said to have been the last open war made between the clans by their own authority.

The Highland lords made treaties, and formed alliances, of which some traces may Errata