8o HISTORY OF THE OUTER HEBRIDES. 



claim to the property, but was opposed by the Crown. The 

 Lord of the Isles overcame all opposition after his accus- 

 tomed fashion. Although a man of ability and a good 

 Churchman, he cannot be commended as a pattern either 

 of chivalry or of loyalty. Now a partisan of Baliol ; now a 

 pillar of the patriots ; once more a supporter of Baliol ; 

 yet again a Nationalist : he veered round as the wind of 

 political aggrandisement directed his sympathies. But his 

 treatment of his first wife which appears to be well- 

 authenticated was the shabbiest of all his acts. Having 

 secured her property, he divorced her, as we have seen, for 

 no apparent reason other than to enable him to marry a 

 daughter of the Steward of Scotland. The seanachies 

 endeavour to shield him from obloquy by asserting that 

 Amy Macruari was his concubine, but this is apparently a 

 mis-statement ; and the evidence seems to show that his 

 sons by his first wife were deprived of their just rights, in 

 order that these might be conferred upon the grandsons of 

 the King of Scotland.* 



By each of his two wives, John of the Isles had three 

 sons. Amy Macruari bore him John (who pre-deceased 

 his father), Ranald, and Godfrey ; and a daughter Mary, 

 who married Maclean of Duart. By the daughter of 

 Robert II. his sons were : Donald, his successor as Lord 

 of the Isles; John Mor (the Tanister), from whom descended 

 the Macdonalds of Dunyveg in Islay and the Glens in 

 Antrim ; and Alastair Carrach, from whom the Macdonalds 

 of Keppoch trace their descent. There was another son 

 Angus, of whose descendants there is no record ; it is 

 uncertain whether he was the fruit of the first or the second 

 marriage.t 



The children of Amy Macruari being legitimate, his 

 eldest son by his first marriage was his feudal heir as Lord 



* The author relies here, to some extent, upon the accuracy of Gregory and 

 other writers in respect of the Papal dispensation of divorce, a copy of which 

 he (the author) has not seen. But the inferential proofs of the legitimacy of 

 Amy Macruari's sons are strong. 



f The seanachies disagree in the number and names of John's sons ; but that 

 Ranald and Godfrey were his sons by his first wife, and Donald, John, and 

 Alexander, by his second wife, is undisputed. 



