as a family name until the middle of the sixteenth century, when
it was introduced by the marriage of one of the Mackenzie chiefs
to a daughter of the Earl of Atholl, whose mother was Lady Mary
Campbell, and who, calling her second son after her own uncle
Colin, third Earl of Argyll, for the first time brought that name
into the family genealogy of Kintail.

It will also be seen as we proceed, although the Earls of Ross were
superiors of the lands of Kintail as part of the earldom, and that
it was therefore impossible that Colin Fitzgerald or any other person
than those earls could have had a gift of it from the Crown, that
the Mackenzies occupied the lands and the castle, not as immediate
vassals; of the King, but of their own near relatives, the O'Beolan
Earls of Ross and their successors, for at least two hundred years
before the Mackenzies received a grant of it for themselves direct
from the Crown. This is proved beyond dispute by genuine historical
documents. Until within a few years of the final forfeiture of
the Lords of the Isles in 1476, the Mackenzies undoubtedly held
their lands, first from the O'Beolan Earls and subsequently from
the Island Lords as Earls of Ross; for the first direct Crown
charter to any chief of Kintail of which we have authentic record,
is one dated the 7th of January, 1463, in favour of Alexander
"Ionraic," the sixth Baron.

To show the intimate relations which existed between the original
Earls of Ross and the ancestor of the Mackenzies, a quotation
may be given from a manuscript history of the clan written by Dr
George Mackenzie, nephew of Kenneth Mor, third Earl of Seaforth,
in the seventeenth century. Although he is a supporter of the
Fitzgerald origin, he is forced to say that, "at the same time