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 embellished with titular claims to the kingship of long-vanished early medieval sovereignties. Yet the Anglo-Normans did not prevail as they had done elsewhere and indeed the fourteenth century saw a resurgence of Irish fortunes during which time 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 eastern 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 seem finally to have accommodated themselves to such an institution by abandoning their antiquarian nomenclature of kingship for one of chiefship of family as marked by the use of surname as title.
The annals disclose that eleven members of the MacLochlainn family were killed at the battle of Cameirge in 1241, victims of an unusually thorough slaughter that placed the family at the point of extinction. The genealogies trace two continuing lines of descent beyond this time (proceeding through two sons of Domhnall of Cameirge) whereas the annals indicate that the chiefship was held by his grandson Diarmaid by 1260 (less than nineteen years after 1241) so it would appear that these two lines actually spring from two of his grandsons rather than two of his sons, their fathers having presumably been killed in 1241. Outwith the genealogies Domhnall is known to have had a daughter named Seisilin who lived beyond 1241. Her death notice in the annals in 1250 implies that she was married to Brian O Neill 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 with Brian against Anglo-Norman forces so it would appear that the marriage reflected a post-1241 alliance between the two leading families of Cenél nEoghain against the Anglo-Norman threat. 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 to a legendary ancestor of the Uí Néill named Conn Cétchathach ('Conn of the Hundred Battles'), so it would seem that Diarmaid was considered a successor to Brian O Neill as ruler had he survived. Irish lords maintained few of the legal and administrative records that form such a staple of medieval history elsewhere in Europe but fortuitously one such text entitled Ceart Uí Néill ('Right of O Neill') has survived to indicate that the MacLochlainn family continued to hold on to the lordship of Inishowen for some time after 1241. This is borne out in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century annals and ecclesiastical records which show that the MacLochlainn family retained sufficient standing to take part in regional political disputes and to provide the Church with two bishops of Derry. Their influence 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. Though in 1333 an English inquisition recorded that the manor of Northburgh was lost to the earldom, the O Doherty family extended their sphere of influence north from Tír Conaill around that time so that in 1339 the annals describe O Doherty as effective lord of Inishowen and in 1413 they record O Doherty in full possession of the lordship. The O Doherty annexation of Inishowen appears to have left its mark as a stratum within the MacLochlainn genealogy with most lines of descent terminating around this time, presumably reflecting their fall into unimportance, leaving only two lines being continued (proceeding through the brothers Aibhne and An Oifistel). The descendants of An Oifistel were to find a new role as officials in the Church whereas the descendants of Aibhne held on to a fragment of the former lordship. By the early seventeenth century this had been reduced to a small enclave defended by two castles (pictured above) on the eastern coast of Inishowen.
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