Nothing is known with certainty of this clan before its settlement in Mull, although it is evidently of the original stock of the Scots of Dalriada. It takes its name from the 13th-century Gill' Eathain na Tuaigh, Gillean of the Battle-axe. The two principal branches of the Mac Laines of Lochbuie and the Mac Leans of Duart descend from the brothers Hector and Lachlan, who first received these properties from John of Islay, 1st Lord of the Isles, in the mid-l4th century. Which of the brothers was the elder was still a matter of litigation in the 19th century.
Hector of Lochbuie' s son Charles was the ancestor of the Siol Tearlaich, or Descendants of Charles, the Mac Leans of the North who became members of the Clan Chattan confederation. Murchadh Ruadh, Murdoch Redhead, succeeded to Lochbuie, to which his successor lain Og received a charter from James IV after the Lordship of the Isles had been annexed to the Crown. In about 1494 he was followed by his son Murchadh Gea' n' , Stunted Murdoch, in circumstances long remembered in fireside tradition.
It was told that lain Og' s elder son Ewen rose against him and was killed in the insurrection. Mac Lean of Duart shut away the now childless chief of Lochbuie on a small island, with only an ugly crone to attend him. She however gave birth to Stunted Murdoch, who escaped to Ireland, while his uncle seized the estate. Murchadh Gearr returned, recovered his inheritance by force of arms, obtained his legitimisation in 1538, and is the ancestor of the present chief of Lochbuie.
The Mac Laines of Lochbuie fought for Charles I in the army of Montrose, with all the more alacrity because Lochbuie and his entire family had recently been converted to the Catholic faith by the Irish Franciscan missionary, Cornelius Ward. Lochbuie himself sent an account of his conversion to the Pope. Hector of Lochbuie led 300 of his men in the victorious charge of Dundee at Killiecrankie in 1689. Thereafter they escaped the ruin that overtook so many Jacobites, as Boswell and Johnson discovered during their Hebridean journey in 1773. Dr. Johnson describes how they landed in Mull, to be "entertained for the night by Mr. Mac Lean, a Minister that lives upon the coast, whose elegance of conversation, and strength of judgment, would make him conspicuous in places of greater celebrity. Next day we dined with Dr. Mac Lean, another physician, and then traveled on to the house of a very powerful Laird, Mac Lean of Lochbuy; for in this country every man' s name is Mac Lean."By this time the castle had been abandoned Lochbuy has, like other insular Chieftains, quitted the castle that sheltered his ancestors, and lives near it, in a mansion not very spacious or splendid."Its owner receives equally faint praise. "We found a true Highland Laird, rough and haughty, and tenacious of his dignity."
By the following century the estate was burdened with debt. But Donald the 20th of Lochbuie, who was born in 1816, went to Java as a merchant and made the fortune which enabled him to clear it of its encumbrances. In the time of his grandson Kenneth, however, the ancient castle was impounded by an Englishman, and Gillean the 23rd of Lochbuie has not recovered it.