those
tributaries.[72] From the bold and aspiring chief was Sir John Maclean
of Duart descended. The marriage of Lachlan Lubanich with Margaret of
the Isles took place in the year 1366.[73]

Between the time of Lachlan Lubanich and the birth of Sir John Maclean,
the house of Duart encountered various reverses of fortune. It has been
shown how the chief added the rock of Eriska to his possessions; in the
course of the following century, a great part of the Isles of Mull and
Tirey, with detached lands in Isla, Jura, Scarba, and in the districts
of Morven, Lochaber, and Knapdale, were included in the estates of the
chiefs of Duart, who rose, in the time of James the Sixth, to be among
the most powerful of the families of the Hebrides. The principal seats
of the chiefs of the Macleans were Duart and Aros Castles in Mull,
Castle Gillean in Kerrara, on the coast of Lorn, and Ardtornish Castle
in Morven. In 1632, on occasion of the visit of one of the chiefs,
Lachlan, to the Court of Charles the First, he was created a Baronet of
Nova Scotia, by the title of Sir Lachlan Maclean of Morven. But various
circumstances, and more especially the enmity of the Argyle family, and
the adherence of Maclean to the Stuarts, had contributed to the decline
of their pre-eminence before the young chief, whose destiny it was to
make his name known and feared at the court of England, had seen the
light.

The family of Maclean in all its numerous and complicated branches, had
been distinguished for loyalty and independence during the intervening
centuries between the career of Gillean and the birth of that chieftain
whose devotion to the Jacobite cause proved eventually the ruin of the
house of Duart. Throughout the period of the Great Rebellion, and of the
Protectorate, the chief of the Macleans had made immense sacrifices to
support the interests of the King, and to bring his clan into the field.
In the disgraceful transactions, by which it was agreed that Scotland
should withdraw her troops from England upon the payment of four hundred
thousand pounds, in full of all demands, the faithful Highland clans of
the north and west, the Grahams, Macleans, Camerons, and many others,
had no participation. One main actor in that bargain, by which a monarch
was bought and sold, was the Marquis of Argyle, the enemy and terror of
his Highland neighbours, the Macleans of Duart. Upon the suppression of
the royal authority, domestic feuds were ripened into