According to Angus Mackay, sometime in the 1160s, the MacHeths and their supporters after conflict with king Malcolm IV of Scotland fled northwards over the hills of Ross into Strathnaver, where they were welcomed by the Norse Harald Maddadsson, Mormaer of Caithness who was then an enemy of the king. Malcolm MacHeth, Earl of Ross may well have been related to the early rulers or Mormaers of Moray. The Blackcastle MS claims that Iye Mackay, 1st chief of the Clan Mackay, who was born in about 1210, was a descendant of Malcolm MacHeth, 1st Earl of Ross who died in about 1168. Angus Mackay analyses what evidence is available to support each of the two genealogies and concludes that the one given in Alexander Mackay's Blackcastle Manuscript is by far the most accurate. The Blackcastle MS shows that the Mackay chiefs were related to the Farquharsons but gives a different connection to that given by Gordon. Historian Angus Mackay gives evidence that explains that Gordon's theory of the connection to the Forbeses was due to an extremely strong alliance between the two families that began during the 16th century in a long feud with the Gordon family. Gordon's genealogy also claims that the chiefs of the Clan Mackay shared a common ancestor with both the chiefs of the Clan Forbes and chiefs of Clan Farquharson. Both genealogies have similarities but there are also significant differences given for the ancestry of the Mackay chiefs. The first is by Sir Robert Gordon, a 17th-century historian and the second by Alexander Mackay of Blackcastle, an 18th- to 19th-century historian who had access to the charters and historical documents of the Mackay chief's family. Historian Angus Mackay in his Book of Mackay (1906) compares two different genealogies of the early chiefs of the Clan Mackay. The chief of the clan is Lord Reay and the lands of Strathnaver later became known as the Reay Country. In the 17th century the Mackay chief's territory had extended to the east to include the parish of Reay in the west of the neighbouring county of Caithness. However, it was not until 1829 that Strathnaver was considered part of Sutherland when the chief sold his lands to the Earls of Sutherland and the Highland Clearances then had dire consequences for the clan. The territory of the Clan Mackay consisted of the parishes of Farr, Tongue, Durness and Eddrachillis, and was known as Strathnaver, in the north-west of the county of Sutherland. In the centuries that followed they were anti- Jacobite. They supported Robert the Bruce during the Wars of Scottish Independence in the 14th century. Clan Mackay ( / m ə ˈ k aɪ/ mə- KY Scottish Gaelic: Clann Mhic Aoidh ) is an ancient and once-powerful Highland Scottish clan from the far North of the Scottish Highlands, but with roots in the old Kingdom of Moray.
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