The Anglo-Norman incursion of the late twelfth century shattered the nascent kingship of Ireland and ushered in a period of decentralised warlordism. Kingship fragmented and fell back upon the regional dynasties that had once contended for the national kingship. These in turn found themselves undermined by freebooting Anglo-Norman warlords and reduced to equality with their own newly-militarised minor lords. The kingly pretentions of these minor lords were likewise reinvigorated and their titular claims to kingship of long-vanished early medieval sovereignties create the misleading impression of moribund continuity with the tribal kingships of early medieval times. The Anglo-Normans were not to prevail, however, and the fourteenth century saw a resurgence in Irish fortunes during which many of the losses of previous centuries were reversed and the authority of the English state in the form of a lordship of Ireland subsidiary to the English crown became restricted to a small enclave on the east coast. Though a national kingship failed to re-emerge from the patchwork of Irish and naturalised Anglo-Norman lordships lying beyond, the leading Irish families accommodated themselves to such an ideal by abandoning their antiquarian nomenclature of kingship for one of chiefship of family as marked by the use of surname as title.
The annals tell us that eleven members of the MacLochlainn family were killed at the battle of Cameirge in 1241 being victims of an unusually thorough slaughter that placed the family on the point of extinction. While the genealogies trace two continuing lines of descent beyond this time each through a son of Domhnall of Cameirge the annals indicate that the chiefship skipped a generation to his grandson Diarmaid by 1260 so it would appear that these two lines actually spring from his grandsons, those in the intervening generation having presumably been killed in 1241. Domhnall is also known to have had at least one daughter who survived the bloody events of 1241. Her name was Seisilin and her death notice in the annals in 1250 implies that she was married to Brian O Neill the very person who had led the O Neill family at Cameirge. The annals subsequently record that Diarmaid was killed in 1260 at the battle of Down fighting alongside her husband against Anglo-Norman forces so it would appear that the marriage reflected a post-Cameirge alliance between the two leading families of Cenél nEoghain against external threat rather than something more sinister. This finds resonance in a contemporary poem by Giollabrighde MacConmidhe concerning the battle of Down which relates that:
Ní bhiath lagadh i Leith Chuinn
Muna marbhthaoi Mág Lochluinn
Ón lósa oighidh Bhriain bhuig
Doiligh na dhiaidh gan Diarmuid
'There would be no weakening in Leath Cuinn
If MacLochlainn had not been killed
Since the day of gentle Brian’s death
It is hard to live after him without Diarmaid'
In the poem Leath Cuinn ('Conn's Half') is a literary conceit for the northern half of Ireland referring back to a legendary ancestor of the Uí Néill named Conn Cétchathach ('Conn of the Hundred Battles') so it would seem that Diarmaid was considered successor to Brian O Neill as ruler had he survived. While Irish lords kept few of the legal and administrative records that form such a staple of medieval history elsewhere in Europe there is fortuitously one such text entitled Ceart Uí Néill ('Right of O Neill') that indicates that the MacLochlainn family did enjoy favoured status and held onto the lordship of Inishowen for some time after 1241. This is borne out in late thirteenth and early fourteenth century annals and ecclesiastical records which show that the MacLochlainn family retained sufficient resources to remain active in regional political disputes and to provide the church with two bishops of Derry. Their lordship would have been severely curtailed in 1301, however, when the Anglo-Norman earldom of Ulster reached its westernmost extent upon the erection of Northburgh castle (modern Greencastle) in northeastern Inishowen. In 1333 an English inquisition records that the manor of Northburgh had been lost to the earldom but it is around this time that the O Doherty family extended their sphere of influence northwards from Tír Conaill so that in 1339 the annals describe an O Doherty as effective lord of Inishowen. The latest entry in the annals relating to the MacLochlainn family of Inishowen records the death of their chief in 1375. In 1413 the annals unambiguously record an O Doherty in possession of the lordship. The O Doherty annexation of Inishowen appears to have left its mark in the appearance of a stratum within the MacLochlainn genealogy. Most of the lines previously traced terminate around this time presumably reflecting their descent into obscurity at the hands of the incomers. The genealogies show only two continuing lines of descent proceeding through the brothers Aibhne and An Oifistel. In the aftermath of the O Doherty annexation the descendants of An Oifistel were to find a new role as officers of the church whereas the descendants of Aibhne held on to a fragment of their former lordship. By the early seventeenth century this had been reduced to a small enclave defended by two castles (pictured above) along the eastern coast of Inishowen.
Further Reading