Clan MacInnes

History

MacInnes comes from the Gaelic MacAonghais, 'son of Angus'. The clan society places the family among the earliest known people of Morvern, Ardgour, Ardnamurchan and Lochaber, the stretch of coast facing Mull. It says they were settled in Morvern by the time of Somerled, who died in 1164. That is the society's reading of a distant past, and surviving records are too thin to test it.

Kinlochaline Castle is the place most often tied to the clan. It sits on a rocky ridge at the head of Loch Aline. Historic Environment Scotland calls it a tower house, probably of the fifteenth century, and mentions the view that the MacLeans of Duart built it. Clan tradition has another version. A MacInnes woman, Dubh Chal, 'the lady of the black veil', is said to have settled with the builder by handing over butter in quantity to match the castle, hence the name Caisteal an Ime, the castle of butter. It is a good story, and we offer it as a story.

Tradition holds that the castle suffered in the wars of the seventeenth century. The clan society's account has it besieged and burned in 1644, during the campaigns of Montrose, with a MacInnes garrison inside. Historic Environment Scotland records a major restoration in 1890, and a later conversion to a dwelling is recorded in the late 1990s. We have not tried to trace what happened in the years between.

The clan society also tells of a turning point in the fourteenth century. Its account says that around 1358 the last MacInnes chief and his sons were killed, on the orders of the Lord of the Isles, and that the chiefship ended with them. The society places the killings at Ardtornish. We have only the society's telling of this, and we cannot say how well the detail stands up. What is clear is the result: the clan has no chief today.

The society says that after the loss of their leaders many MacInnes families moved away and sought the protection of neighbouring clans. One line became hereditary bowmen to the Mackinnon chiefs of Strath, known as Sliochd Neill a' bhogha, 'the line of Neil of the bow'. Later emigrants carried the name to Canada and elsewhere, among them settlers at Malagawatch in Nova Scotia.

Today Clan MacInnes is armigerous, meaning it has arms on record but no chief. The International Association of Clan MacInnes has corporate arms from the Lord Lyon, announced through the Council of Scottish Clans and Associations. The clan society gives the plant badge as holly. The motto we give is the one linked with the arms matriculated in 1960 by the Malagawatch branch, and an older motto, 'E Labore Dulcedo', is also recorded by the society.