The Lords of the Isles at Inverness
In 1431, Alexander MacDonald, Earl of Ross and Lord of the Isles, besieged Inverness Castle in a dramatic assertion of Highland power against the Scottish Crown. The Lords of the Isles were the rulers of a vast maritime domain stretching from the Hebrides to the northern Highlands — a kingdom within a kingdom that the Stewart monarchs regarded as a permanent threat to their authority.
The MacDonalds' power was built on the legacy of Somerled, the 12th-century Norse-Gaelic warrior who had carved out a territory encompassing the western seaboard of Scotland. His descendants, the MacDonald Lords of the Isles, commanded fleets of galleys, levied armies from their island territories, and conducted their own foreign policy with England, Ireland, and Scandinavia. They held court at Finlaggan on Islay, where a council of fourteen advised the Lord — a form of governance that combined Norse, Gaelic, and feudal traditions.
The siege of Inverness Castle in 1431 was part of a broader MacDonald challenge to royal authority. Alexander's father, Donald, had fought the bloody Battle of Harlaw in 1411 in an attempt to claim the earldom of Ross. The siege of Inverness was a continuation of that struggle. The MacDonalds saw the castle as a symbol of royal interference in their domain — a Lowland imposition on the Highland world they claimed to rule.
The conflict between the Lords of the Isles and the Scottish Crown was a defining struggle of 15th-century Scotland. It ended in 1493 when James IV finally forfeited the Lordship, absorbing the MacDonald territories into the Crown. But the cultural legacy of the Lords of the Isles endures — in the Gaelic traditions of the Hebrides, in the clan structure that survived until Culloden, and in the fierce independence of the Highland spirit. Finlaggan on Islay, where the Lords held their parliament, is now an archaeological site that offers a window into a lost world of Gaelic maritime power.