Historical memoirs of Rob Roy and the Clan Macgregor

30 INTRODUCTORY SKETCH.
sovereign than to be desired as subjects. The
hereditary unlimited jurisdictions enjoyed by
their chieftains gave those personages a com-
mand dangerous in such hands, lest it might
still be exerted, as it had formerly been, in hos-
tility to royal authority.
King James, though a man of puerile parts and
degenerate mind, foresaw, or at least was per-
suaded by others to see, the hazardous con-
sequences of permitting the exercise of such pri-
vileges by any of his subjects, and jealousy
awakened him to oppose the evil. He sanctioned
many fruitless trials for restraining those immu-
nities, for reforming the condition of the natives,
and for reclaiming the waste and uncultivated
surface of their country; but it was not until 1748
that this desirable end was accomplished, and
the power of Pit and Gallows, as it was called,
wholly wrested from the hands of the chieftains.
But so tenaciously were these hereditary juris-
dictions adhered to in Scotland, that, previous
to their abolition by Act of Parliament, a com-
pensation was demanded for giving them up,
and one hundred and sixty persons received
various sums, according to the supposed right
they relinquished, amounting to several thou-
sand pounds.