The failure of the Forty-Five Rising resulted in punitive legislation that deprived the clans of their arms, the wearing of the kilt and the music of the pipes, annexed the rebel estates (including Clunie) to the Crown, and withdrew from the lairds and barons many of the effective forms of jurisdiction which they were required by law to exercise over their clansmen and tenantry. These factors all contributed further to the weakening of the clan structure but the basis of clanship had been weakened a century earlier by acceptance of forms of individual land tenure in place of communal possession. Other factors included the intensive recruitment of men into the British Army, the steadily worsening economic conditions during the century after 1770 and the reduction of marriages within the clan that had strengthened its social cohesion in previous times. It is particularly noteworthy that the leading families of the clan failed to maintain contact with the main body of clansmen by intermarriage.

      As a consequence of these factors the chiefships of Duncan of the Kiln and his son Ewan saw the gradual dissolution and dispersal of the clan, so that today there are but a few Macphersons left in Badenoch. This exodus is illustrated in the chart at the right.