Clan MacInnes

Clan MacInnes, in Gaelic Mac Aonghais or Mac Aonghuis, is a patronymic from the personal name Aonghus and means simply son of Angus. The clan traces itself to the Cinel Angus of Dalriada, the kindred of Angus son of Erc, who settled Islay and Jura, and the name appears in the early Dalriadic survey known as the Senchus fer n’Alban. On the mainland the MacInnes belong to Morvern, at the head of Loch Aline near the Sound of Mull, where their seat was Kinlochaline Castle, called Caisteal an Ime, the Castle of Butter. They were reckoned part of the Siol Gillivray grouping alongside the MacGillivrays, MacEacherns and MacMasters, dispersed in the reign of Alexander II, and their lands took in Morvern, Ardgour, Ardnamurchan and Lochaber.

The clan’s history effectively breaks in the fourteenth century. About 1358 the chief and his sons were killed at Ardtornish by MacLeans acting on the orders of the Lord of the Isles, and by around 1390 most MacInnes land had passed to Clan MacLean. Survivors crossed to Skye, attached themselves to Clan MacKinnon and served as hereditary bowmen to the MacKinnon chiefs. Kinlochaline was fought over again in the civil wars: in 1645 Irish auxiliaries in Montrose’s service besieged the castle, and the MacInnes held out until a breach was made in the wall and further defence was hopeless. Some accounts date that siege to 1644 and record a further attack by the Campbells of Argyll in 1679, after which the castle was abandoned about 1689; it was restored in the late 1990s and is lived in again. Clan MacInnes has had no chief since the Ardtornish killings and is an armigerous clan. The Campbells of Craignish have claimed the succession, but no chief has been matriculated, the clan is absent from the roll of the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs, and the clan’s own society reports little current appetite for pursuing the matter. The crest badge sold under the MacInnes name is a further complication: it was granted on 25 January 1961 to William John MacInnes of Malagawatch, head of one branch, and has been taken up commercially as though it belonged to the whole clan, which it does not.

The MacInnes tartan

The Scottish Register of Tartans returns six records for MacInnes. The principal sett is recorded under the plain name MacInnes and credited to a named individual, John MacInnes — identified by the clan society as John MacInnes of Onich — with no date of design recorded. The others are MacInnes (MacGregor-Hastie), MacInnes Ancient Hunting, MacInnes Dress, a Dress variant filed under Fashion and credited to D. C. Dalgliesh of Selkirk, and MacInnes Homecoming, credited in the Register to Trudie Ainsworth and produced for Homecoming Scotland in 2009.

A note on honesty: there is no old MacInnes cloth behind any of this. No MacInnes sett comes from Wilsons of Bannockburn, and none appears among the plates of the Vestiarium Scoticum. Every record is a modern design, and the earliest of them is credited to a private individual whose work the Register cannot even date. The chronology is the plain problem: the clan lost its lands and its chief between about 1358 and 1390, four centuries before anyone in Scotland wove a sett and sold it under a surname. Nothing connects a medieval Morvern kindred to the patterns now offered in its name. The word “Ancient” in MacInnes Ancient Hunting is part of a registered tartan name and says nothing about age, and where MacInnes Ancient, Modern or Weathered are offered as alternatives they are one threadcount in lighter or muted dye shades, with no separate record in the Register for any of them.

Clan facts

References

1. MacInnes tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. About the Clan MacInnes — Clan MacInnes Society
3. Clan MacInnes