John Barbour's 1375 epic, The Brus, suggests that by 1316, the clan had switched allegiance to Robert I, and made a decisive intervention in the new theatre of Anglo-Scottish conflict in Ireland.

The marriage of an heiress to the MacLeods of Lewis brought a severe loss of lands and power in the following generation, forcing the clan chiefs to relocate to the surviving estates on Skye.

This rollcall renders the pedigree one of the most substantial in the MS., and identifies the clan among the important followers of the Lords of the Isles - the document serving to detail those kindreds who upheld their authority.

Although the credibility of the earlier parts of the pedigree is highly uncertain, the list mixes together Gaelic and Scandinavian names, and claims to take the male line of the MacNicols back to the Early Medieval Norse princes of Dublin.

[4] The MacNeacails were also one of the families whom the Irish genealogist John O'Hart purported to trace back to Adam and Eve via the early kings of Ireland.

John is recorded in three English documents which associate him with the leading West Highland supporters of Edward I of England during the Scottish Wars of Independence.

One document records that, in 1306 letters were delivered from Edward to his supporters, William I, Earl of Ross, Lachlan MacRuairi, his brother Ruairi, and John "mak Nakyl".

However, long-standing Gaelic tradition, backed up by the evidence of place names and the MS. 1467, suggests that their power had once been much greater - extending through the thirteenth century over a great part of the northern Hebrides and the north-western mainland.

[9] The garbled Bannatyne Manuscript indicates that the MacNeacails held Lewis from the Kings of Mann, and that the clan's possession of the island terminated though the marriage of an heiress to a MacLeod.

[8] Producing a description of Assynt to accompany the Statistical Account of 1794, Rev William Mackenzie drew upon a local tradition that the district had been granted by the Thane of Sutherland to one 'MacKrycul', in recognition of his service against Viking cattle-raiders.

The local belief that MacKrycul was the 'potent man' from whom the MacNicols descended is seemingly backed up by the MS. 1467, in which the first of the two Nicails - living approximately in the later twelfth century - is listed as the son of 'Gregall'.

If it was indeed the case that the MacNicols of Coigach were granted Assynt and surrounding territories for action against Norse raiders, these two events together indicate the slow loosening of the clan's Scandinavian allegiances, as the kings of Scotland began to exert their claims over the Western Isles.

[8] Put together, these stray accounts and traditions bolster the impression of the MacNicols as a significant political and territorial force in the Medieval north-west, who experienced a traumatic loss of status in the fourteenth century that disrupted the balance of power across the region.

A MacLeod pedigree, now in the collection of the Royal Irish Academy, appropriates the MacNicol family tree of 1467, running without a break into the familiar rollcall of early Medieval names.

'[11] The MS. 1467 can credibly be considered in the light of these events, in view of the surprising omission of the MacLeods from a document conceived to demonstrate the power of the Lords of the Isles and their allied families.

With the MacNicols serving as councillors under the lordship, Ronald Black has suggested that the MS. 1467 aimed to assert their continuing claims over lost territories: placing John, the chief of the family, in lineal descent from the royal Norse line and the earlier possessors of Lewis.

[12] If this interpretation is followed, John's father, Ewen MacNicol, could speculatively be positioned as a brother of the heiress - either illegitimate or too young to prevent the forcible transfer of his ancestral territories into other hands.

By the sixteenth century, the MacNicol chiefs were based at Scorrybreac House on Skye, reputed to have been gifted by the Scottish crown originally in 1263, in recognition of service at the Battle of Largs.

Twenty-eight chiefs of the clan are believed to lie buried within its grounds, and a small chapel bears the name MacNicol's Aisle in honour of their generosity as benefactors.

[13] Sorley MacNicol was listed as one of the 'friends and followers' who had supported Sir James MacDonald in raising his clan for the service of Charles I and the Marquis of Montrose.

The Reverend Donald Nicolson of Scorrybreac, head of the clan at the end of the 17th century, is reputed to have had 23 children, through whom he is a common ancestor of many Skye families.

[14] Donald's attachment to the Episcopalian faith, and refusal to swear allegiance to William III after 1689 seems to have resulted in his being driven from his parish as a Non-juror - the religious position strongly aligned with Jacobitism - some time after 1696.

Another man of the clan, Donald Nicolson from Raasay, also helped to protect the Young Pretender during his flight, and was recorded by Bishop Robert Forbes in The Lyon in Mourning as suffering torture for his refusal to reveal the whereabouts of the prince after arrest by government troops.

[16] The Skye poet Sorley Maclean noted a family tradition that his maternal ancestor Eóghan (Ewen) Nicolson 'was evicted from good land that he held... near Portree for his part in helping in the escape of Prince Charles'.

[19] On Lewis the ravine separating Dùn Othail from the mainland is called "Leum Mhac Nicol", which translates from Scottish Gaelic as "Nicolson's Leap".