Chapter 6: John of Islay and the Making of a Maritime Kingdom
The Bruce years had ended with high drama and deep loyalty. My 21st great-grandfather Robert the Bruce had won Scotland’s freedom at Bannockburn, and his heart had been carried into battle by the Black Douglas. But the royal blood that flowed from him did not stay only in the Lowland castles. It moved quietly into the Highlands and Islands through his daughter Matilda, and soon it would fuel one of the most remarkable maritime kingdoms Britain has ever seen.
That kingdom was the Lordship of the Isles.
Its founder was John of Islay — my 18th great-grandfather on both sides of the family through different branches.
John MacDonald was born around 1310, the son of Angus Og MacDonald and a direct descendant of the great Somerled, the 12th-century warrior who first carved out a Gaelic-Norse sea kingdom in the west. In the turbulent years after Bruce’s death, John quietly and skillfully united the old MacDonald territories with the vast MacRuari inheritance. By the 1350s he had become the most powerful Gaelic lord in Scotland.
In 1353 he received a royal charter from King David II formally recognizing his power. But John’s greatest move was yet to come. Around 1350 he married Margaret Stewart, daughter of the future King Robert II (and granddaughter of Robert the Bruce through the royal Stewart line). This marriage was more than a political alliance — it poured fresh royal Bruce and Stewart blood directly into the Lords of the Isles.
With this union, John styled himself Dominus Insularum — Lord of the Isles. He ruled a vast maritime empire that stretched from the Outer Hebrides (Lewis, Harris, the Uists) in the north, through Skye and the Inner Isles, down to Islay and Jura, and across large stretches of the western mainland from Kintyre to Lochaber and Ardnamurchan. It was a sea-based kingdom held together by fleets of fast birlinns (galleys) rather than castles and feudal knights.
At the heart of this empire was Finlaggan on the island of Islay — a beautiful crannog palace built on a small island in a loch. Here John held court, met with his council of chiefs, administered justice according to Gaelic law, and entertained poets, harpists, and warriors. Finlaggan was the political and ceremonial capital of a realm that often acted as an independent principality, paying only nominal homage to the Scottish crown.
John of Islay created something remarkable: a Gaelic sea kingdom that blended the old Norse seafaring tradition with Highland clan loyalty and fresh royal Stewart blood. At its height, the Lordship of the Isles was more powerful than many European duchies. Its galleys dominated the western sea lanes, its chiefs were nearly sovereign, and its culture remained proudly Gaelic.
From John of Islay would spring two powerful sons who would split and strengthen the Lordship:
- Donald, by his wife Margaret Stewart (my 17th great-grandfather on Dad’s line)
- Ranald, by his first wife Amie MacRuari (my 19th great-grandfather on Mom’s line)
These half-brothers would carry the noisy jarl’s blood, mixed with the fire of Bannockburn, into the next dramatic chapter of our family saga.
The longships had returned — this time flying the banners of the Lords of the Isles.
Chapter 7: The Half-Brothers Who Split an Empire
John of Islay, first Lord of the Isles, had built a maritime kingdom that stretched from the storm-lashed Outer Hebrides to the western mainland. He had married twice, and from those two unions came two remarkable sons who would carry the family blood — and the noisy jarl’s roar — into the next century.
They were half-brothers, born of different mothers, yet both carried the same powerful mixture: the old Norse-Gaelic seafaring fire of Somerled’s line and the fresh royal Stewart-Bruce blood that had entered the family through their father’s second wife, Margaret Stewart.
The elder was Ranald MacDonald — my 19th great-grandfather on Mom’s line — born to John’s first wife, Amie MacRuari. Around 1372 his father granted him the vast MacRuari inheritance: the lordships of Garmoran, Lochaber, and the Rough Bounds. These were wild, beautiful lands of mountains, sea-lochs, and islands that became the heart of Clanranald. Ranald became the undisputed founder of Clanranald and the Glengarry cadet branch. Charters from the period show him ruling with the same authority his father had wielded, and the Book of Clanranald preserves his memory in Gaelic poetry and genealogy. His descendants would become some of the most famous Highland chiefs, fierce Jacobites, and keepers of the old ways.
The younger half-brother was Donald MacDonald — my 17th great-grandfather on Dad’s line — born to John’s second wife, Margaret Stewart. Donald inherited the main Lordship of the Isles when his father died in 1386. He married Mariota Leslie, heiress to the Earldom of Ross, and pressed that claim aggressively. In 1411 Donald led perhaps ten thousand clansmen south in one of the bloodiest battles the Highlands ever saw — the Battle of Harlaw.
The English called it “Red Harlaw.” Donald’s great army of Islesmen and western Highlanders clashed with the forces of the Earl of Mar and a Lowland coalition near Inverurie. The fighting was savage and hand-to-hand. Though the battle ended in a tactical draw, Donald’s bold march and the sheer ferocity of his clansmen earned him the lasting nickname “Donald of Harlaw.” It was the high-water mark of the Lordship’s power — a moment when the Lords of the Isles showed the Scottish crown that the west could still field an army capable of shaking the kingdom.
Both brothers ruled with the same restless spirit that had once driven Eystein Glumra to shout across fjords and Torf-Einarr to burn peat instead of wood. They were sea-lords in the old Viking tradition, yet they also carried the royal blood of Robert the Bruce through their mother’s Stewart line. From Donald of Harlaw the title of Lord of the Isles passed down the main stem to his son Alexander and eventually into the Sleat branch — Dad’s direct line — that would one day reach my great-grandfather Allen McNeill. From Ranald sprang the great Clanranald and Glengarry chiefs — Mom’s direct line — whose galleys and claymores kept the family fire burning in the western Highlands for centuries.
The empire John of Islay had built was now split between two powerful brothers, but the blood remained one. The noisy jarl’s roar, mixed with the thunder of Bannockburn, now echoed from the deck of birlinns and the halls of Highland castles. The Lords of the Isles had reached their zenith.
Soon the Scottish crown would grow uneasy with such power in the west. The Lordship itself would eventually be forfeited, but the clan spirit never died. The fire simply moved on — into the Atholl Stewarts, the Mackenzie alliances, and the Urquhart lairds who would one day cross the Atlantic.
The maritime kingdom had done its work. The saga was turning inland and then westward again — toward the glens, the moors, and eventually the New World.
Chapter 8: The Atholl Stewarts — Black Knight to Mackenzie Alliance
The great maritime empire of the Lords of the Isles had reached its peak with John of Islay and his two powerful sons. But the royal Bruce blood that had entered the family through Margaret Stewart was about to take a new path — one that would lead deep into the central Highlands and the proud Stewart cadet lines.
That path began with my 20th great-grandmother, Isabel MacDougall of Lorn. As the granddaughter of Matilda Bruce (daughter of Robert the Bruce), Isabel quietly carried the precious royal blood from the Wars of Independence. She married John Stewart of Innermeath, a member of the royal Stewart family. Their son would become one of the most colorful and ambitious figures of the 15th century.
His name was James Stewart, known to history as the “Black Knight of Lorne.” Bold, dark-featured, and fiercely ambitious, James earned his nickname through his prowess in battle and his stormy temperament. In 1439, after the murder of King James I, the widowed queen, Joan Beaufort, was in a precarious position. James saw his chance. In a daring and politically explosive move, the Black Knight married the Queen Dowager herself. This marriage shocked the Scottish court but brought the Stewart of Lorne line even closer to the throne. Their children included my ancestor John, who became half-brother to the young King James II.
James’s son, John Stewart, was granted the title Earl of Atholl by his half-brother the king around 1457. As 1st Earl of Atholl, John became one of the most powerful magnates in Scotland. He married first the wealthy heiress Margaret Douglas (“the Fair Maid of Galloway”) and later Eleanor Sinclair. He expanded the family’s power, helped crush rebellions, and served as ambassador to England. Blair Atholl Castle, deep in the Perthshire Highlands, became the family stronghold and one of the grandest seats in Scotland.
The title passed to his son, John Stewart, 2nd Earl of Atholl. He strengthened the family’s position through a strategic marriage to Janet Campbell, daughter of the powerful Earl of Argyll. This alliance helped stabilize the often turbulent Highlands. The 2nd Earl lived through the dramatic reign of James IV and the early years of the Scottish Renaissance.
It was the 2nd Earl’s daughter — my 16th great-grandmother, Lady Elizabeth (Isabel) Stewart of Atholl — who carried the accumulated blood of Bruce, Stewart, and the Lords of the Isles into one of the rising powers of the Highlands. In the 1530s she married Kenneth Mackenzie, 10th Chief of Kintail. This marriage was a brilliant union between two ambitious Highland families. The Mackenzies were on the rise, and this Stewart blood helped cement their status. Their stronghold, Eilean Donan Castle on Loch Duich, became a symbol of Mackenzie power.
From Lady Elizabeth Stewart and Kenneth Mackenzie came their daughter Elizabeth Mackenzie — my 15th great-grandmother — who married into the Urquhart family of Cromarty. The royal and Viking blood that had roared at Bannockburn and ruled the Hebrides now flowed into the lairds and sheriffs of Ross-shire.
The noisy jarl’s blood had traveled far: from longships in the North Sea, to the battlefield at Bannockburn, to the galleys of the Lords of the Isles, and now into the heart of the Scottish Highlands. The stage was set for the flamboyant Urquharts, the Covenanter ministers, and the great crossing to America.
The wind was shifting once more — this time toward the moors, the kirks, and eventually the open Atlantic.
Chapter 9: Sir Thomas Urquhart and the Covenanter Minister
Before the royal and Viking blood flowed into the Urquhart lairds of Cromarty, it made one final, romantic loop back to the very islands where our saga began.
My 17th great-grandfather Henry Sinclair — Henry I, Earl of Orkney and Lord of Roslin — was a 14th-century mariner-prince whose life still sparks the imagination. He held the same Orkney earldom our Norse ancestors had ruled centuries earlier. Legend (recorded in the disputed Zeno Narrative) says he sailed west in 1398 with a fleet of galleys, possibly reaching North America a century before Columbus. Whether or not the voyage happened exactly as the old maps claim, Henry was a real, well-documented adventurer and power-broker. He built Roslin Castle and laid the foundations for the famous Rosslyn Chapel that would later be completed by his descendants. Through his granddaughter Eleanor Sinclair, who married John Stewart, 1st Earl of Atholl, Henry’s blood merged once more with the Stewart line we already carry. The noisy jarl’s roar had come full circle — from the longships of Orkney back to an Earl of Orkney again.
From that Highland alliance the line passed to Elizabeth Mackenzie and then into the Urquhart family of Cromarty.
Sir Thomas Urquhart — my 14th great-grandfather — was exactly the kind of larger-than-life character you would expect to inherit such blood. Born around 1582, he was a knight, a scholar, a duelist, and one of the most flamboyant minds of the Scottish Renaissance. He served as Sheriff of Cromarty, fought for the Royalist cause in the Civil Wars, and is best remembered today as the brilliant (and wildly eccentric) translator of the French writer Rabelais. He claimed — with a straight face — that his own family descended all the way from Adam and Eve through a long line of heroes. Sir Thomas lived large, wrote with flair, and died around 1660, leaving behind a reputation as one of Scotland’s most colorful literary figures.
His son, my 13th great-grandfather James Urquhart (1632–1701), took a very different path. A Presbyterian minister in Moray and Ross during the turbulent “Killing Times,” James refused to accept the king’s supremacy over the Kirk. Like thousands of Covenanters, he was “outed” (deposed) in 1663. For decades he preached in secret — holding forbidden field conventicles on remote moors, often under cover of darkness while government dragoons hunted “hill-men.” The Scots Worthies remembers these ministers as heroes of conscience. James survived the persecutions, lived to see the Revolution of 1688, and died in 1701.
His son John Urquhart of Newhall — my 12th great-grandfather — carried both the scholarly fire and the Covenanter faith across the Atlantic. Around the late 1680s or early 1700s he immigrated to the American colonies (likely Massachusetts or New Hampshire). He brought nothing but his name, his Bible, and the same restless Urquhart spirit that had roared since Eystein Glumra first shouted across a Norwegian fjord.
The longboat had become a sailing ship, and the New World was waiting.
By A Drifting Cowboy aka Jerry England
(with narrative collaboration from Grok xAI)
Next: PART IV -- The Noisy Jarl’s Bloodline: A 36-Generation Saga from Viking Longships to American Frontiers
https://a-drifting-cowboy.blogspot.com/2026/04/part-iv-noisy-jarls-bloodline-36.html
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