In 1543, under the regency of the Earl of Arran, Donald Dubh, the grandson of John, last Lord of the Isles, again appeared upon the scene. Escaping from his long imprisonment, he was received with enthusiasm by the insular chiefs, and, with their assistance, he prepared to expel the Earls of Argyll and Huntly from their acquisitions in the Isles. At the head of 1800 men he invaded Argyll’s territories, slew many of his vassals, and carried off a great quantity of cattle, with other plunder. At first he was supported by the Earl of Lennox, then attached to the English interest, and thus remained for a time in the undisputed possession of the Isles. Through the influence of Lennox, the islanders agreed to transfer their alliance from the Scottish to the English crown, and in June 1545 a proclamation was issued by the regent Arran and his privy council against ‘Donald, alleging himself of the Isles, and other Highland men, his partakers.’ On the 28th July of that year, a commission was granted by Donald, ‘Lord of the Isles, and Earl of Ross,’ with the advice and consent of his barons and council of the Isles, of whom seventeen are named, to two commissioners, for treating, under the directions of the Earl of Lennox, with the English king. On the 5th of August, the lord and barons of the Isles were at Knockfergus, in Ireland, with a force of 4000 men and 180 galleys, when they took the oath of allegiance to the king of England, at the command of Lennox, while 4000 men in arms were left to guard and defend the Isles in his absence. Donald’s plenipotentiaries then proceeded to the English court with letters from him both to King Henry and his privy council; by one of which it appears that the Lord of the Isles had already received from the English monarch the sum of one thousand crowns, and the promise of an annual pension of two thousand. Soon after the Lord of the Isles returned with his forces to Scotland, but appears to have returned to Ireland again with Lennox. There he was attacked with fever, and died at Drogheda, on his way to Dublin. With him terminated the direct line of the Lords of the Isles.
All hopes of a descendant of Somerled again governing the Isles were now at an end; and from this period the race of Conn, unable to regain their former united power and consequence, were divided into various branches, the aggregate strength of which was rendered unavailing for the purpose of general aggrandisement, by the jealousy, disunion, and rivalry, which prevailed among themselves.
After the forfeiture of the Lords of the Isles, and the failure of the successive attempts which were made to retrieve their fortunes, different clans occupied the extensive territories which had once acknowledged the sway of those insular princes. Of these some were clans, which, although dependent upon the Macdonalds, were not of the same origin as the race of Conn; and, with the exception of the Macleods, Macleans, and a few others, they strenuously opposed all the attempts which were made to effect the restoration of the family of the Isles, rightly calculating that the success of such opposition would tend to promote their own aggrandisement. Another class, again, were of the same origin as the family of the Isles; but having branched off from the principal stem before the succession of the elder branches reverted to the clan, in the person of John of the Isles, during the reign of David II., they now appeared as separate clans. Amongst these were the Macalisters, the MacIans, and some others. The Macalisters, who are traced to Alister, a son of Angus Mor, inhabited the south of Knapdale and the north of Kintyre. After the forfeiture of the Isles they became independent; but being exposed to the encroachments of the Campbells, their principal possessions were ere long absorbed by different branches of that powerful clan. The MacIans of Ardnamurchan were descended from John, a son of Angus Mor, to whom his father conveyed the property which he had obtained from the crown. The Macdonalds of Glencoe are also MacIans, being descended from John Fraoch, a son of Angus Og, Lord of the Isles; and hence their history is in no degree different from that of the other branches of the Macdonalds. A third class consisted of the descendants of the different Lords of the Isles, who still professed to form one clan, although the subject of the representation of the race soon introduced great dissensions, and all adopted the generic name of Macdonald in preference to secondary or collateral patronymics.
We shall now endeavour to give a short account of the different branches of the Macdonalds, from the time of the annexation of the Lordship of the Isles to the crown in 1540.
Since the extinction of the direct line of the family of the Isles, in the middle of the 16th century, Macdonald of Sleat, now Lord Macdonald, has always been styled in Gaelic Mac Dhonuill nan Eilean, or Macdonald of the Isles.[149]
As the claim of Lord Macdonald, however, to this distinction has been keenly disputed, we shall here lay before the reader, as clearly as possible, the pretensions of the different claimants to the honour of the chiefship of the clan Donald, as these have been very fairly stated by Mr Skene.
That the family of Sleat are the undoubted representatives of John, Earl of Ross, and the last Lord of the Isles, appears to be admitted on all sides; but, on the other hand, if the descendants of Donald, from whom the clan received its name, or even of John of the Isles, who flourished in the reign of David II., are to be held as constituting one clan, then, according to the Highland principles of clanship, the jus sanguinis, or right of blood to the chiefship, rested in the male representative of John, whose own right was undoubted. By Amy, daughter of Roderick of the Isles, John had three sons,—John, Godfrey, and Ranald; but the last of these only left descendants; and it is from him that the Clan Ranald derive their origin. Again, by the daughter of Robert II. John had four sons—Donald, Lord of the Isles, the ancestor of the Macdonalds of Sleat; John Mor, from whom proceeded the Macconnells of Kintyre; Alister, the progenitor of Keppoch; and Angus, who does not appear to have left any descendants. That Amy, the daughter of Roderick, was John’s legitimate wife, is proved, first, by a dispensation which the supreme Pontiff granted to John in the year 1337; and secondly, by a treaty concluded between John and David II. in 1369, when the hostages given to the king were a son of the second marriage, a grandson of the first, and a natural son. Besides, it is certain that the children of the first marriage were considered as John’s feudal heirs; a circumstance which clearly establishes their legitimacy. It is true that Robert II., in pursuance of the policy he had adopted, persuaded John to make the children of these respective marriages feudally independent of each other; and that the effect of this was to divide the possessions of his powerful vassals into two distinct and independent lordships. These were, first, the lordship of Garmoran and Lochaber, which was held by the eldest son of the first marriage,—and secondly, that of the Isles, which passed to the eldest son of the second marriage; and matters appear to have remained in this state until 1427, when, as formerly mentioned, the Lord of Garmoran was beheaded, and his estates were forfeited to the crown. James I., however, reversing the policy which had been pursued by his predecessor, concentrated the possessions of the Macdonalds in the person of the Lord of the Isles, and thus sought to restore to him all the power and consequence which had originally belonged to his house; “but this arbitrary proceeding,” says Mr Skene, “could not deprive the descendants of the first marriage of the feudal representation of the chiefs of the clan Donald, which now, on the failure of the issue of Godfrey in the person of his son Alexander, devolved on the feudal representative of Reginald, the youngest son of that marriage.”
The clan Ranald are believed to have derived their origin from this Reginald or Ranald, who was a son of John of the Isles, by Amy MacRory, and obtained from his father the lordship of Garmoran, which he held as vassal of his brother Godfrey. That this lordship continued in possession of the clan appears evident from the Parliamentary Records, in which, under the date of 1587, mention is made of the clan Ranald of Knoydart, Moydart, and Glengarry. But considerable doubt has arisen, and there has been a good deal of controversy, as to the right of chiefship; whilst of the various families descended from Ranald each has put forward its claim to this distinction. On this knotty and ticklish point we shall content ourselves with stating the conclusions at which Mr Skene arrived ‘after,’ as he informs us, ‘a rigid examination’ of the whole subject in dispute. According to him, the present family of Clanranald have no valid title or pretension whatever, being descended from an illegitimate son of a second son of the old family of Moydart, who, in 1531, assumed the title of Captain of Clanranald; and, consequently, as long as the descendants of the eldest son of that family remain, they can have no claim by right of blood to the chiefship. He then proceeds to examine the question,—Who was the chief previous to this assumption of the captaincy of Clanranald? and, from a genealogical induction of particulars, he concludes that Donald, the progenitor of the family of Glengarry, was the eldest son of the Reginald or Ranald above-mentioned; that from John, the eldest son of Donald, proceeded the senior branch of this family, in which the chiefship was vested; that, in consequence of the grant of Garmoran to the Lord of the Isles, and other adverse circumstances, they became so much reduced that the oldest cadet obtained the actual chiefship, under the ordinary title of captain; and that, on the extinction of this branch in the beginning of the seventeenth century, the family of Glengarry descended from Alister, second son of Donald, became the legal representatives of Ranald, the common ancestor of the clan, and consequently possessed that jus sanguinis of which no usurpation could deprive them. Such are the results of Mr Skene’s researches upon this subject. Latterly, the family of Glengarry have claimed not only the chiefship of clan Ranald, but likewise that of the whole clan Donald, as being the representative of Donald, the common ancestor of the clan; and it can scarcely be denied that the same evidence which makes good the one point must serve equally to establish the other. Nor does this appear to be any new pretension. When the services rendered by this family to the house of Stuart were rewarded by Charles II. with a peerage, the Glengarry of the time indicated his claim by assuming the title of Lord Macdonnell and Aros; and although, upon the failure of heirs male of his body, this title did not descend to his successors, yet his lands formed, in consequence, the barony of Macdonnell.
Donald Gorme, the claimant of the lordship of the Isles mentioned above as having been slain in 1539, left a grandson, a minor, known as Donald Macdonald Gormeson of Sleat. His title to the family estates was disputed by the Macleods of Harris. He ranged himself on the side of Queen Mary when the disputes about her marriage began in 1565. He died in 1585, and was succeeded by Donald Gorme Mor, fifth in descent from Hugh of Sleat. This Donald Gorme proved himself to be a man of superior abilities, and was favoured highly by James VI., to whom he did important service in maintaining the peace of the Isles. “From this period, it may be observed, the family were loyal to the crown, and firm supporters of the national constitution and laws; and it is also worthy of notice that nearly all the clans attached to the old Lords of the Isles, on the failure of the more direct line in the person of John, transferred their warmest affections to those royal Stuarts, whose throne they had before so often and so alarmingly shaken. This circumstance, as all men know, became strikingly apparent when misfortune fell heavily in turn on the Stuarts.”[150]
Donald Gorme Mor, soon after succeeding his father, found himself involved in a deadly feud with the Macleans of Dowart, which raged to such an extent as to lead to the interference of government, and to the passing in 1587 of an act of parliament, commonly called “The general Bond” or Band for maintaining good order both on the borders and in the Highlands and Isles. By this act, it was made imperative on all landlords, bailies, and chiefs of clans, to find sureties for the peaceable behaviour of those under them. The contentions, however, between the Macdonalds and the Macleans continued, and in 1589, with the view of putting an end to them, the king and council adopted the following plan. After remissions under the privy seal had been granted to Donald Gorme of Sleat, his kinsman, Macdonald of Islay, the principal in the feud, and Maclean of Dowart, for all crimes committed by them, they were induced to proceed to Edinburgh, under pretence of consulting with the king and council for the good rule of the country, but immediately on their arrival they were seized and imprisoned in the castle. In the summer of 1591, they were set at liberty, on paying each a fine to the king, that imposed on Sleat being £4,000, under the name of arrears of feu-duties and crown-rents in the Isles, and finding security for their future obedience and the performance of certain prescribed conditions. They also bound themselves to return to their confinement in the castle of Edinburgh, whenever they should be summoned, on twenty days’ warning. In consequence of their not fulfilling the conditions imposed upon them, and their continuing in opposition to the government, their pardons were recalled, and the three island chiefs were cited before the privy council on the 14th July 1593, when, failing to appear, summonses of treason were executed against them and certain of their associates.