[1] His Royalist grandfather, Sir James Mor Macdonald, had supported Charles II in the Anglo-Scottish war.

Macdonald inherited his father's titles and estates in 1695, but moved to Glasgow and had little interaction with his clan on the Isle of Skye until 1715.

In 1714, he was briefly arrested under suspicion of Jacobite sympathies, but he was released in the autumn of 1714 after the friendly intercession of the Duke of Montrose.

At the beginning of October 1715, the baronet at the head of his men joined the Earl of Seaforth at Brahan, and they together proceeded to Alness.

[1] He fled to France and joined the exiled Stuart court at Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye where, on 23 December 1716, he was created Lord Sleat in the Jacobite peerage.