The
MacLaines of Lochbuie, Mull, claim that they are descended from Hector Reaganach, brother
of the ancestor of the Macleans of Duart. He received his lands from John, 1st Lord of the
Isles, during the fourteenth century. John Og, 5th Chief of Lochbuie, had them confirmed
to him by King James IV, but it is said that after his only son had rebelled against him
and been killed, he was incarcerated on an island by Maclean of Duart, with an elderly
female retainer as company. She gave birth to Murdoch (known as 'the Short'), who escaped
to Ireland, from where he returned in due course to recover by arms the estate and castle
of his now dead father, his birth being officially legitimised in 1538. Donald, 20th Chief
of Lochbuie, made his fortune in Java in the nineteenth century with which he cleared the
estate of debt, but in the 1920s it was claimed and appropriated by an English bondholder,
in whose hands it remained. |
