Summer wanderers

Bearers of a name with a rather bewildering variety of spelling variations, the MacAlisters have been present in Scotland from earliest times, with their main territory the Kintyre peninsula, in Argyll, on the west coast.

The name derives from what is still the popular forename of Alexander, the Gaelic form of which is Alastair, or Alasdair, and with ‘MacAlister’ denoting ‘son of Alistair’ or ‘son of Alasdair’.

The Alasdair from whom Clan MacAlister takes its name was the thirteenth century Alasdair Mòr, a great-grandson of one of the most colourful characters from the pages of the vibrant drama that is Scotland’s history.

This was Somerled, and it is through their proud descent from him that a rich and heady brew of both Norse and Celtic blood courses through the veins of the MacAlisters of today.

By the mid-twelfth century, Somerled, or Somhairle, whose name means ‘summer wanderer’ or ‘summer sailor’, had carved out a vast west coast fiefdom that included the south isles from Bute to Ardnamurchan Point in addition to Kintyre, Argyll and Lorne.

Fiercely independent, he considered he owed allegiance to no man, not least the King of Scots himself.

It was following the death of David I in 1153 that his grandson, Malcolm, succeeded to the throne as Malcolm IV.

He inherited a troubled kingdom torn apart by not only internecine warfare on the mainland but the threat of invasion from the north by Vikings, who sacked Aberdeen in the same year that he succeeded to the throne, and invasion from the west in the form of Somerled.

A powerful group of ambitious magnates, mainly centred in the Moray area in the northeast of Scotland, resolved to depose Malcolm, replacing him with their own puppet king, and were joined in this bold venture by Somerled, who was always eager to exploit any opportunity for warfare and plunder.

In 1157, one year after he defeated his wife’s brother, Godfred, the King of Man, in a sea battle off Islay, in the Inner Hebrides, Somerled, described as “a well-tempered man, in body shapely, of a fierce piercing eye, of middle stature, and of quick discernment”, seized control of the islands of Bute and Arran.

Control of these strategically important islands increased the threat he posed to the west coast mainland and Malcolm, rather naively, sought to resolve the problem by ordering Somerled to surrender his domains into the hands of the Crown, thereafter holding them as a mere vassal.

Somerled’s answer was predictable.

He assembled a 15,000 strong force of kinsmen and, embarking in a fleet of 164 swift galleys, sailed up the Firth of Clyde and then up the Clyde to sack the town of Glasgow in a blood-crazed orgy of arson, rape and plunder.

Malcolm’s loyal magnate in the west, Walter Fitzalan, the High Steward, hastily assembled a rag-tag force of other loyal magnates and their retainers.

Somerled, eager to face the challenge, met the woefully inadequate royal army at Renfrew.

Accounts differ on what now actually transpired on that bitterly cold day of January 1st, 1164.

One account is that a fierce battle ensued and, as Somerled’s battle-hardened Islesmen rapidly gained the upper hand over the royal forces, the tide of battle turned when Somerled received a mortal thrust from a spear.

Dismayed at the loss of their leader, the Islesmen’s discipline broke down, and hundreds were slaughtered as they fled back to their galleys.

Walter Fitzalan had, against all the odds, achieved not only victory over a much superior force, but crushed the threat to the throne.

A rather less heroic account of the victory, however, is that the High Steward had realised he had no realistic hope of defeating Somerled in a set-piece battle and, accordingly, bribed Maurice MacNeill, Somerled’s nephew, to murder his uncle.

MacNeill accomplished this treacherous deed by gaining admittance to Somerled’s tent after his army had encamped at Renfrew and stabbed him through the heart, possibly while he slept.

One tradition is that when Walter Fitzalan and other nobles came in triumph to view Somerled’s corpse, one of them kicked it.

MacNeill, stung by this insult to what had been a great warrior and disgusted at his own treachery, stabbed the noble through the heart and fled the scene.

By whatever means Somerled met his end, one legend relates it came about through the supernatural agency of St. Kentigern, or Mungo, the patron saint of Glasgow, as revenge for the sacking of the town.

Somerled’s domains subsequently split up among his sons, and through this he is recognised as the progenitor or founder of the mighty MacDonald Lords of the Isles.

His great-grandson, Alasdair Mòr, who gave his name to the MacAlisters, was the son of Donald of Islay, Lord of the Isles, and a grandson of Somerled.

It was through this that the MacAlisters were for a time a cadet branch of the MacDonalds, more properly known as Clan Donald, although they soon became established as very much a clan in their own proud right.

The MacDonalds, meanwhile, became masters of a sprawling fiefdom, ruling a confederacy of clans while, from their base at Dunyveg on the south of Islay, they controlled a strategic sea route between the north of Ireland and Scotland’s western seaboard.

Alasdair Mór, whose name first appears in the historical record in 1253, in common with the MacDonalds, had close blood ties to Ireland, and he is referred to in the Irish Annals of the Four Masters, compiled between 1632 and 1636 at the Franciscan Monastery in County Donegal, as having been renowned for his “hospitality and excellence.”

In one of the many interminable clan feuds, he was killed in 1299 in battle against Alasdair McDougall, Lord of Lorne, and succeeded by Domhnall, one of his five sons.

The MacAlisters became firmly established on the Kintyre peninsula, with the main branches through time being the MacAlisters of Tarbert, who served until 1706 as constables of Tarbert Castle, on Loch Fyne, and the MacAlisters of Loup, whose seat was on the south shore of West Loch Tarbert.

In 1481, Charles MacAlister received a sizeable grant of lands after being appointed Steward of Kintyre.

Another important branch is the MacAlisters of Glenbarr, examined in further detail in Chapter three of this booklet.

It is the MacAlisters of Loup who are today recognised as the principal line, with, at the time of writing, William St John Somerville McAlester of Loup and Lennox recognised by the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs as Chief of the Name and Arms of MacAlister.

His Gaelic title is Mac Iain Dubh, while the clan’s historic seat is now Kennox House, situated between Torranyard and Stewarton, in North Ayrshire.

This came about when Charles McAlester, the only son of the then Clan Chief, Angus MacAlester of Loup, succeeded to his father’s title in 1797, five years after having married Janet Somerville, whose father, William Somerville, had succeeded to the Kennox estate in 1743.

The MacAlisters of today are represented by a number of official bodies that include the Clan MacAlister Society, while, in addition to their own proud motto of ‘Boldly’ and crest of a hand brandishing a sword, there are also a number of MacAlister tartans.

Not all of these are necessarily approved, but they include a MacAlister dress tartan, approved by the Clan Chief in 2005, while, because of their close links to Clan Donald, they are also entitled to wear the MacDonald tartan.

The Wild West

In his rather self-important manual on kingship known as Basilicon Doron (Royal Gift), James VI expressed in no uncertain terms his fear and loathing for his subjects on the far-flung Western Isles of Scotland.

Much earlier, in 1493, the situation had reached such a stage of anarchy, with royal authority being flouted at every turn, that James IV finally annexed the Lordship of the Isles to the Crown, with the monarch himself assuming the title of Lord of the Isles.

But this did little to curb the feuding.

Intended as a guide to royal conduct for his son, Henry, Basilicon Doron warned of the threat posed to the peace of the realm by the unruly Islesmen such as some of the MacAlisters, labelling them as no better than wolves and wild boars.

The Islesmen, James thundered, were “of nature very proud, suspicious, avaricious, full of evil deceit each against his neighbour.”

So cruel were they in exacting revenge, the monarch wrote, that “neither have they regard to person, age, time or cause.”

In all respects, James summed up, the Islesmen exceeded in cruelty “the most barbarous people that had ever been seen since the beginning of the world.”

While the king painted a grossly exaggerated portrait of his Western subjects there was some basis of truth to some of his claims.

Alasdair Mòr, progenitor of the MacAlisters, as noted, was killed in a clan feud, while, in 1572 the Clan Chief, John MacAlister, was ordered by an Act of Parliament to deliver hostages ‘for the security of his peaceable behaviour’.

In 1598, Godfrey MacAlister of Loup, for reasons that remain unclear, arranged for the murder of his former guardian and tutor, while in 1603, Archibald MacAlister of Tarbert, along with Campbell of Auchinbreck, led a force of 1,200 men who invaded and ravaged the Isle of Bute.

The furious authorities ordered MacAlister and Campbell to appear before the Privy Council, a summons that they scornfully ignored and, accordingly, they were denounced as rebels.

When not engaged in fighting one another throughout their own domains, the Islesmen were only too eager to lend their fighting support to their Gaelic counterparts in Ireland, the MacDonnells, as they resisted the power of the English Crown.

One MacAlister, killed in a battle in Ulster in 1571, was recorded by the victorious English as having been “Owen McOwen duffe McAlastrain, called the Lord of Loop.”

Following what is known as the Glorious Revolution of 1688 that brought William of Orange and his wife Mary to the thrones of England and Scotland, John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, raised the Royal Standard in favour of the exiled Stuart monarch James II (James VII of Scotland).

Gathering a 2,500-strong force of clansmen that included a contingent of MacAlisters led by Alexander MacAlister of Loup, he engaged a 4000-strong government force under General Hugh Mackay of Scourie at the Pass of Killiecrankie on July 27, 1689.

Both sides suffered terribly in the battle and the outcome proved to be inconclusive.

Alexander MacAlister of Loup survived the carnage and, along with what was left of his kinsfolk, escaped to Ireland, where he sided with the Jacobites against the forces of William of Orange in what is known as Cogadh an Dá Rí, or The War of the Two Kings.

It ended when the Jacobite and Williamite forces finally clashed on the morning of July 12, 1690, in the battle of the Boyne.

The Jacobites were routed but, again, Alexander MacAlister of Loup survived.

In later centuries, and in more peaceful times, Sir Donald MacAlister, 1st Baronet of Tarbert, born in Perth in 1854, was the eminent physician who served in the prestigious posts of Principal and Chancellor of Glasgow University.

It was at that university that he achieved the highest score in his final examinations, while he later studied mathematics and medicine at Cambridge University.

Taking up the teaching of medicine at Cambridge in 1881, he was later elected Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and, from 1904 until three years before his death in 1934, served as president of the United Kingdom’s General Medical Council.

Appointed Principal of his old alma mater of Glasgow University in 1907, he served in this post until his retirement in 1929, a period during which the university expanded greatly in the range of subjects offered.

Elected Chancellor following his retirement, he was also the recipient, in 1924, of a baronetcy and of honorary doctorates from no less than thirteen universities.

Back in the original MacAlister territory of Kintyre, south of Tarbert and on the north bank of the Barr water near the village of Glenbarr, are the magnificent house and grounds of Glenbarr Abbey – now home to the MacAlister Clan Centre.

It was in 1796 that Matthew MacAlister and his brother returned to their native Kintyre after having amassed considerable wealth as sea captains.

Matthew MacAlister used his fortune to buy Barr House, renaming it Glenbarr Abbey after having it painstakingly rebuilt in Gothic revival style.

This has remained the impressive seat of the MacAlisters of Glenbarr ever since.

It was here that Angus MacAlister of Glenbarr, 5th of Glenbarr and Representative of the name of Glenbarr, died in 2007.

His eldest son, Duncan MacAlister, succeeded him in his titles.

Twenty-three years before his death, Angus MacAlister had arranged, through the National Trust for Scotland, for Glenbarr Abbey to be placed in the grateful ownership of Clan MacAlister as the MacAlister Clan Centre.

Now the responsibility of the Clan MacAlister Charitable Trust, the operation of the centre is overseen by a board of trustees with the support of MacAlister clansfolk from not only their original homeland of Scotland but also as far afield as North America and Australia.

Set in 26 acres of grounds that offer woodland walks and with attractions that include a museum and gift shop, Glenbarr Abbey is open to the public from Easter to the middle of October, closing on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Of interest not only to bearers of the MacAlister name, guided tours of the house are conducted by Jeanne MacAlister, Lady Glenbarr, widow of Angus MacAlister.

Particularly interesting attractions include a pair of hunting gloves worn by Mary, Queen of Scots and a lock of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s hair – in addition to family jewellery, a collection of Sevres and Derby china, a Spode dinner service, fashions from throughout the ages and a rare thimble collection.

It is through the MacAlister Clan Centre at Glenbarr Abbey that the proud heritage of the clan is carefully preserved.