Macneacail
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The History of the clanThe islands of Lewis and Skye remained part of the Scandinavian kingdom of Man and the Isles until 1266, and it seems likely that, in common with the Macleods, the Macneacails were of high Norse descent. The name-father of the Clan Nicail or Nicolson, a name popular in Scandinavia, must have flourished in the mid thirteenth century. The Macleods of Lewis appear to have extended their considerable possessions through marriage with the Macneacail heiress in the fourteenth century. The ancestral Nicail, therefore, probably lived in Lewis, where he and his ancestors would have served the kings of Man and the Isles in a mixed Norse and Gaelic environment. The first chief on record early in the fourteenth century is John, son of Nicail. He appears in the company of leading Hebridean chiefs, Macdonald, Macdougald and Macruairi, descendents of Somerled, who had rested control of the southern Hebrides from Man. In the next generation most of the clan lands passed to the Lewis Macleods, but the main line continued, finding a home in the Trotternish Peninsula in Skye. The Macdonalds of Sleat were Jacobites, and participated in the rising of 1715. After the Stuart defeat they were forfeited, and were more cautious in the Forty-five, when neither they nor the Macleods of Dunvegan came out for Bonnie Prince Charlie, the ‘Young Pretender’. In the nineteenth century the clan was badly affected by the Highland clearances. The chief was forced to abandon Scorrybreac and his family settled in Tasmania, where the present chief was born. Many of the clansmen were evicted from their crofts and sought refuge in emigration, but those that were allowed to remain played their part in the slow revival of the Highlands and islands. Some were prominent in the agitation which resulted in the passing of the Crofters Act of 1886, which signalled the beginning of a new social order in the Highlands. Sheriff Alasdair Nicolson was a member of the Commission that fathered the Act. In 1980 the Nicholsons and the MacNicols became separate clans. When Lord Carnock was recognised as chief of the Nicolsons, Lord Lyon accepted the petition of Ian Nicholson of Scorrybreac, to change his name and re-matriculate his arms as Iain Macneacail of Macneacail and Scorrybreac. Thus the Skye MacNicols are now members of the Clan Macneacail. Nicolson is still a common name in Skye, and the sense of family solidarity there remains strong. |
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