Clan MacQuarrie

History

The MacQuarries were a small clan of the Inner Hebrides. Their home was Ulva, a low island just off the west coast of Mull. They also held Staffa and some ground on Mull itself. Lachlan, the last chief to live on Ulva, is reported to have said that his people had been there since the ninth century. The surviving records of the chiefs only begin in the fifteenth.

Their origins are uncertain. A Gaelic manuscript of 1450 is cited for descent from Guaire, said to be a brother of Fingon, ancestor of the Mackinnons. Electric Scotland presents this as the historian William Skene's view and adds that another writer thought it unlikely. Skene did note that both clans came to rely on the Lords of the Isles.

Tradition fills the earlier centuries. A family history says Cormac Mor of Ulva joined Alexander II's campaign against the Norwegian-held islands in 1249 and was killed after the king died. His sons are said to have fled to Ireland, and a descendant, Hector, is said to have fought at Bannockburn. We cannot check these stories against records of the time.

The documented line starts with John Macquarrie of Ulva, who died in 1473. When the Lordship of the Isles was forfeited, the clan became independent but fought alongside the Macleans of Duart. A chief was summoned over the Donald Dubh rebellion in 1504, and another was named among the chiefs accused of dealing with England in 1545. In 1609 Gillespock Macquarrie attended the gathering on Iona that passed the Statutes of Iona. In 1651 Allan Macquarrie was killed with most of his followers at Inverkeithing, on the Scottish side against Cromwell.

In 1773 Samuel Johnson and James Boswell were guests of Lachlan, the sixteenth chief, on Ulva. Debts later cost him the island. Our sources give the sale as 1777 or 1778. He then served in the army and died in 1818 at the reported age of 103, leaving no male heir. Electric Scotland calls him the last chief, and says the chiefship has been dormant since.

The best-known bearer of the name is Lachlan Macquarie, a cadet of the family and later Governor of New South Wales. Electric Scotland says he bought back much of the lost land. His mausoleum is at Gruline on Mull, and Australians still visit it. The clan has no recognised chief today, and the name is kept alive by clan societies and by descendants who visit Ulva.