James "Seamus" Gunn

James of Kildonan and Kinbrace is believed to be the oldest son of George Gunn the Crowner, (Coroner). There were eight siblings. James is said to have survived the battle of Tears with some of his brothers. James took from his brother, Henry, their father's broach of office, armor, and clamor, which had been stolen at Tears by the Kieths, and retrieved by Henry. Henry claimed rights to them, having risked his life to retrieve them. But James took them claiming rights to them as signs of chief, and of the office of coroner, titles James inherited from their father. This caused a rift between the brothers. Henry swore that he and his family would no longer be called Gunn. Henry took his family and followers and left. Henry's descendants' surname became Henderson, and variations of that name. James kept the name Gunn, and was also known as James the Crowner, and Seumas, Chief of Clan Gunn, or Gunne. Some of James descendants took the surname Jameson and variations of name.

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After the Crowner's death, his eldest son, Seumas, succeeded as chief. He was not at the Battle of Saint Tair in 1478 (1464). He established the line of the Gunns of Killearnan. From him, the chiefs took the Gaelic patronymic, Mac Sheumais Chataich, that is, son of James of Caithness. Seumas, pronounced shaymus, is the Gaelic equivalent of James. Sheumais, pronounced hamish, is the genitive case of the same name, meaning of Seumas. He was the ancestor of the Jameson, Jamison, Jamieson and MacIamais Gunns.

He moved with his family and the greater portion of his clan into the valley of the Helmsdale, and settled in the parish of Kildonon in Sutherland, which was subsequently known as Gleann na Guineach or Gunn's Glen. He obtained extensive lands there from the Earls of Sutherland. The Gunns held these by the old clannish tenure of undisturbed possession, or lease in perpetuity, for the Highland reddendum of watching, warding, hunting, and hoisting, when required by the superior. The principal dwelling house of the chiefs in Kildonan was Killearnan, until the house was accidentally destroyed by fire about 1690.

"Thereafter, the possessions of Clan Gunn lay in the Kildonan district, about the upper waters of the River Helmsdale, where Ben Grainmore towers two thousand feet against the sky, and the mountain glens come down to the fertile strath of the Helmsdale itself. The soil is fertile, the little mountain lochs abound with trout and char, and red deer, grouse, ptarmigan, and blackcock have always been plentiful on the moors, while grains of gold are even yet to be found in the sand and gravel of the streams. It was a country to attract the wild Norse rover, and round the Pictish towers or castles, of which the ruins still remain, many a desperate onslaught must have taken place between the older Pictish inhabitants and the Viking adventurers before these latter secured possession of the region."

James' descendants remained in the valley of the Helmsdale for the next three centuries, wedged in among the MacKays, the Sutherlands and Gordons, and the Sinclair Earls of Caithness. A feud also continued between the Gunns and the Keiths. Thomas Sinclair wrote, "Nothing is clearer than that to suit the political purposes of the Gordons, Sinclairs, and MacKays, the Clan Gunn were kept in a constant state of intestine and frequently sanquinary division." In one place Sir Robert Gordon, alluding to "the inveterat deidlie feud betuein the clan Gun and the Slaightean-Aberigh, " - a branch of the MacKays, - he says, "The long, the many, the horrible encounters which happened between these two trybed, with the bloodshed and infinit spoils committed in every part of the diocy of Catteynes by them and their associats, are of so disordered and troublesome menorie, " that he declines to give details.

The MacHamishes resided here under Adam Gordon, who, in 1516 gave the Stratullie to John Sinclair, Earl of Caithness. By 1527, the lands were conceded to John, 3rd Earl of Sutherland, and again switched in 1545 to John, 4th Earl of Caithness. How this affected the localities of the Gunns for the Sutherlands or Caithness Earls is not recorded, though subsequent chiefs of the clan adopted the paternal surname of MacHamish and remained at Killearnan and Kildonan as Sutherland Gunns.

The clan took part in the Battle of Flodden in 1513. There, James IV of Scotland faced the English army and was decisively defeated. King James fell along with 12 Earls, the Archbishop of Saint Andrew, and 10,000 of his army. Among the Earls who died was William Sinclair, 2nd Earl of Caithness, who led the right wing of the Scottish army, which included the Guuns. The Earl and most of his men were slain. One Gunn escaped.

The clan took a decisive part in the 1517 Battle of Torran Dubh in Rogart when the Sutherlands, supported by Gunns and Rosses, routed the MacKays and their allies. When Adam Gordon, Earl of Sutherland, went to Edinburgh in 1517 John MaKay of Strathnaver decided to take advantage of this by gathering up his forces to wrest control for himself. In the process, he assembled them from the outlying regions of Sutherland and those from the outer western Isles and from Caithness, too. Alexander Sutherland, Adam Gordon's brother-in-law, alarmed by his sister's news of MacKay's invasion at Rogart quickly collected what men he could, marched to Torran Dubh, and met the enemy just a little north of the Strath Fleet River. Outnumbered, he fought them until his men were about to give way, when William MacHamish, son of James Gunn, with 100 men arrived and throwing their weight against the MacKays, Polsons, and Thomas' defeated them.

After the Battle of Torran Dubh, William MacHamish and his followers avenged the death of George Gunn, William's grandfather, the Crowner. This, too, was in 1517 and occurred at Drummoy about nine miles west of Golspie, though another historical version places the main story further north at the Helmsdale River. It was rumored that the Keiths had left Inveruie and were traveling toward Caithness when MacHamish heard of their journey. Moving to meet them, he and his followers settled in a house and were inebriated when George Keith and 12 of his men actually passed them. Hearing the clamor outside, Gunn apparently dunked himself and his men into a barrel of cold water, dried off, and left the house setting up an ambush further along the trail. Keith of Ackergill, his son, and his 12 followers were all killed. When word reached the clan in Caithness and Sutherland, the Gunns appointed William MacHamish chieftain of the Sutherland Gunns. The Keiths of Ackergill became extinct, and as Mark Gunn says in his book the, History of the Clan Gunn, "indeed for [the Keiths] their treachery at the chapel of Saint Tears had a terrible sequel."

In the second half of the 16th century, the chief was Alistair, whose mother was an illegitimate daughter of the Earl of Aboyne, and whose wife was a daughter of the Earl of Sutherland. He was "a very able and strong man, and indued with sundrie good qualities" and was a man of much note and power in the north. One day, about the year 1562, marching along the High Street of Aberdeen with his "tail" of followers behind him, Alistair Gunn encountered Queen Mary's half-brother, the Earl of Moray, also with his followers. Because of the condition of the streets in those days, the preferred path was always the middle (or "crown") of the street. When two groups met, the group of greater status expected to keep to the middle and to have the group of lesser status move to the side. In practice, contention for the middle of the street often led to bloodshed. On this occasion, the Earl, because of his rank, considered himself entitled to the middle, but the Gunn chief refused to yield. In the upshot the Earl by means of one Andrew Munro, trapped the chief at the Delvines, near Nairn, and had him carried to Inverness, where Moray had him executed "under pretence of justice."

Feuds continued between the Gunns and the MacKays on one side, and the Earls of Caithness and Sutherland, the heads of the most powerful houses then in the north, on the other. In 1585, the Earls of Sutherland and Caithness met at Girginoe Castle and planned to attack the Gunns. It looked as if the Gunns were to be the earthen pipkin crushed between two iron pots, yet they seemed no whit dismayed, and managed to hold their own in valiant fashion. The two earls planned to come upon the Gunns from both sides at once and "thereby so to compass them that no place of retreat might be left unto them." The Gunns took up a position in an advantageous spot on the rising ground of Ben Grian. Their enemies, seeing them much fewer in number than themselves, made the fatal mistake of thinking lightly of them. Instead of waiting for the Sutherlands to come up and attack simultaneously, the Sinclairs rushed impulsively forward. The Gunns waited until their enemies, breathless with the steep ascent, were close upon them. Then, they poured a flight of arrows into them at close quarters and, rushing down the slope, cut down the commander of the Sinclairs with 120 of his men. The rest they pursued. Only darkness prevented a greater slaughter. The Gunns, however, were followed by the Earl of Sutherland's force, which pursued them west to the shores of Lochbroom. There, the Gunns were brought to encounter and defeated. Their captain, George Gunn, was wounded and taken prisoner, and thirty-two of the clan were slain.

In 1585, the clan was "invaded by the Earles of Sutherland and Cateynes [Caithness], becaus they wer judged to be chief authors of troubles which wer then like to ensue; and to this effect, it was resolved that two companies should be sent by the Earles against the Clan Gunn, thereby to compass them that no place of retreat might be left unto them." The Gunns took up their position on the Beanngruaine. The Sinclairs were the first to attack the devoted clan, who, although much inferior in numbers boldly prepared for the onslaught, and, having the advantage of rising ground, they reserved themselves until the enemy had come close up to their line, when they poured a flight of arrows on the Sinclairs, and, rushing down, their commander, with 120 of his men, were killed, and the survivors pursued until darkness covered their precipitate retreat! The party of the Earl of Sutherland immediately followed the Gunns, who fled to Lochbroom in the height of Ross, where they were brought to an engagement and defeated, with the loss of thirty-two men slain, and their captain, George, wounded and taken prisoner!

In 1616, John, Chief of the Gunns, suffered for the part he was compelled to play as an ally of the Earl of Caithness. The earl, being desirous of visiting his displeasure upon a certain William Innes, brought pressure upon the Chief of the Gunns to burn the corn stacks of Innes' tenants. This, John Gunn long refused to do, offering instead to "do his best to slay William Innes." The earl, however, continued to insist; in the end the corn stacks were burned. As a result, the Chief of the Gunns was rigorously prosecuted and imprisoned in Edinburgh.

In 1736, the chief's brother was charged with claiming payment on a forged bill, and while fighting off his accusers with a chair, he swallowed the evidence.

Strangely enough, after the long warlike history of the clan, the chief means of its dispersion was the introduction of the peaceful sheep. In the 20 years between 1811 and 1831 sheep raising as a new industry displaced the old breeding of black cattle in the Highlands of Scotland. To make way for it in this district the notorious Sutherland clearances took place. In the former year the population of Kildonan parish, which measures some 250 square miles, numbered 1,574. To make way for sheep-farming most of that population was removed to the neighboring parish of Loth, and in the glens where hundreds of families of the name of Gunn had for centuries had their happy though humble and too often abjectly poor homes, nothing was to be heard but the bleat of the sheep, the call of the grouse, and the crow of the blackcock. In 1851, the parish of Loth was united to that of Kildonan, and by this means, the number of the population was more than restored. Meanwhile, however, many of the old clan of the Gunns had gone out to the world, never to return to the scenes of the doughty deeds of their ancestors.

The MacSheumais Gunns continued to live in Strath Kildonan, first at Killearnan and later at Badenloch at the top of the Strath, until the old line died out in 1782. William Gunn, the 8th MacKeamish, an officer in the army, was killed in India, without leaving issue. The chiefship devolved on Hector, great-grandson of George, second son of Alexander, the 5th MacKeamish, to whom he was served nearest male heir, in 1803. His only son, George Gunn, Esq. of Rives, county of Sutherland, who became the 10th MacKeamish, succeeded Hector. The direct line became extinct in 1874 on the death of the son of George Gunn of Rhives and the chiefship is now dormant. The head of the Clan, in the absence of a recognized chief is Iain Gunn of Banniskirk, who has been appointed Commander of the Clan by the Lord Lyon King of Arms at the request of the landed and armigerous members of the Clan.