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In 1709, spelling had improved, but the education policy of the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) continued in the same vein. (In fairness to the Society, the policy was later reversed.)

Nothing can be more effectual for reducing these Countries to order and making them usefull to the Commonwealth, than teaching them their duty to God, their King and Countrey, and rooting out their Irish language, and this has been the care of the Society so far as it could, for all the Schollars are taught in English.

Not surprisingly, distancing the Gàidhealtachd from Lowland life provided a seedbed for political action, culminating in the Jacobite risings of 1689, 1715, 1719 and 1745. The last ended ignominiously at the Battle of Culloden and prompted the 1747 Act of Proscription, which banned bagpipes and the wearing of Highland dress. It marked the end of the clan system.

Clan chiefs soon came to see people on their land as tenants rather than a source of manpower for private armies. Their priority turned to earning as much as possible from their estates. New economics led to the introduction of large-scale sheep farming run by Lowlanders and the consequent clearance of small-scale agricultural tenants from the hinterland and their forced resettlement on the coast, or emigration. For place-names scholars, such narratives can help explain why the fertile and distinctive landscapes of Strathnaver and Kildonan in Sutherland and Loch Tayside and Glen Quaich in Breadalbane show a marked absence of mapped names, whilst coastal areas in Assynt often display a more diverse toponymy.