Kingis rabellis” to Cuidich 'n' Rìgh

This article examines the emergence of the Mackenzie clan in Ross-shire, northern Scotland onto the historical record at the end of the fifteenth century. Although Mackenzie clan histories and genealogies dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries stress the unswerving loyalty of the kindred to the crown from their alleged origins in the thirteenth century, a rather different picture can be drawn by comparing these clan histories with surviving contemporaneous sources dating from c.1463. The early relationship between the Mackenzies and the Macdonalds is re-assessed here, against the background of the forfeiture of the earldom of Ross, which was stripped of John Macdonald, the 4th Lord of the Isles by James III in 1475 and the violence and unrest that gripped the area for the next quarter century.