Sorley Boy MacDonnell - Clan MacDonnell

Clan MacDonnell

The MacDonnells of Antrim were a sept of the powerful Clan Donald of the royal Clann Somhairle, (see Lords of the Isles), that the English crown had attempted to cultivate since the early 14th century in its efforts to influence the course of politics in Scotland. At the end of that century an ancestor of Sorley's, Iain Mhoir Tanistear Mac Dòmhnaill, had married Margaret Bisset, of the lordship on the Antrim coast known as the Glynns or Glens, which union would eventually lay the basis for Sorley Boy's claim to the lordship of that territory in Ireland. MacDonnell migration to the Glynns and Rathlin Island increased in the early 16th century (by way of swift galleys propelled by oar and sail), after the clan had rejected overtures from an increasingly powerful James IV, King of Scotland. However, the last known lord of the Mac Eoin Bissetts, a supporter of the O'Neills, was slain in battle in 1522, and it is only after this that the MacDonnells somehow emerge as claimants to the lordship. The precise circumstances of this transfer or encroachment have been lost to history, but the English authorities, themselves preparing to claim overlordship in Ulster and the rest of Ireland, still recognized the Bissetts as the lords of the Glynns as late as 1515.

The English feared the formation of a fifth column, with the Ulster clans of O'Neill and O'Donnell, which might lay the foundation of a Bruce-style invasion of Ireland, and the clan did spread into the adjacent territories of Clandeboy and the Route. This migration from Scotland was cemented when the king's successor, James V, chose to maintain favourable relations with the rival Clan Campbell, although he did swing around to favour the MacDonnells in the 1530s, restoring certain lands to them in Kintyre and Islay while encouraging their expansion in Ireland. This period of royal favour ended with the defeat in 1539 at the Battle of Belahoe of a combined Irish force (including the MacDonnells) by an English army: Scottish plans for an invasion of Ireland were then put off, while the French invasion of England that King Henry VIII had feared failed to occur.