Isles, at the instigation of his haughty mother, deserted the Court
of James I., while young Kintail remained, sedulously improving
himself at school in Perth, till he was called to display his
gratitude to his Royal master in counteracting the evil arising from
the opposite conduct of Macdonald. Thus, by one happy circumstance,
the attention of the King was called to a chieftain who gave such
early promise of steady attachment, and his future favour was
secured. The family of Kintail was repeatedly recognised in the
calendar of the Scottish Court, while that of the once proud
Macdonalds frowned in disappointment and barbarous independence
amidst their native wilds, while their territories, extending beyond
the bounds of good government and protection, presented gradually
such defenceless gaps as became inviting and easily penetrable by the
intelligence of Mackenzie, and Alastair Ionraic acquired a great
portion of his estates by this legitimate advantage, afterwards
secured by the intractable arrogance of Macdonald of Lochalsh and the
valour and military capacity of Coinneach a Bhlair."

In 1513 John of Killin is found among those Highland chiefs summoned
to rendezvous with the Royal army at Barrow Moor preparatory to the
fatal advance of James IV. into England, when the Mackenzies, forming
with the Macleans, joined that miserably-arranged and ill-fated
expedition which terminated so fatally to Scotland on the disastrous
field of Flodden, where the killed included the King, with the flower
of his nobility, gentry, and even clergy. There was scarcely a
Scottish family of distinction that did not lose at least one, and
some of them lost all the male members who were capable of bearing
arms. The body of the King was found, much disfigured with wounds,
in the thickest of the slain. Abercromby, on the authority of
Crawford, includes, in a list of those killed at Flodden, "Kenneth