By 1700 the Macphersons had acquired a distinct reputation in the Highlands as excelling in the arts of both peace and war. James Grant of Auchernich described them as "a downright honest people, hates trick and cheat, the best and firmest friends can be, but where they have a just prejudice, fierce and implacable enemies."
Jeremy Collier's Great Dictionary of 1701 records them: "In time of peace they are said to be as courteous as the Lowlanders, and in time of war can endure the fatigue of the rudest Highlanders."
John Murray of Broughton, Secretary to Prince Charles Edward Stuart, once described them as a clan "who are by all their neighbours allowed to be a sober, regular, sedate people" and in his Account of the Highland Clans, written in the Tower of London in August 1746, he wrote that "this clan is looked upon as one of the most civilised in the Highlands."
In the latter connection it is noteworthy that one of the earliest grammar schools in the Highlands was instituted at Kingussie in 1658 by John Roy [ruadh or red-headed] Macpherson of Ballachroan, while a few years later John Macpherson of the Ostaig family was conducting a school at Orbost on the Isle of Skye which was famous throughout the Northwest coast of Scotland and the Hebrides. After 1650, bright young clansmen with Badenoch connections began to matriculate in the colleges of Aberdeen University, among them Andrew, the 15th Chief, who graduated from Marischal College in 1660, aged 18 years.