By the later middle ages, Balconie was one of the five lordships of Ross, as well as an individual seate of the Earls of Ross. Place-name evidence suggests that the site was once a Pictish residence. Their territory was Faster Ross and the first documented Chief was Fearchar Mac ant – Saqairt (a Farquhar), the Priest’s son, who helped King Alexander II against the old Celtic dynasty. With Cumberland Westmoreland parishes (lakes), a conference held in York, respecting these disputed counties, in the yeare 1237, at which the Pope's nuncio was present, Alexander II of Scotland gave up the forest, with all the forfeited estates possessed by the Scots in the three northern counties, in consideration of which Henry III gave him and his heirs the choice of 200 librates. Northumbria, as a kingdom from the Humber to the Forth, then defined the boundary between the two kingdoms as running between the Solway Firth (in the west) and the mouth of the River Tweed (in the east). However, Melrose was positioned on one of the main roads running from Edinburgh to the south making it particularly vulnerable to attack.
Farquhar joined forces with the King to crush a rebellion in the province of Moray in 1215. Even though he was a direct descendant of the Irish King Niall of the Nine Hostages, he was granted a Norman knighthood by King Alexander and, a few years later, the Earldom of Ross (1234). By the thirteenth century, Tain, an early shrine created by St. Dutlac, was the capital of Ross. A charter granted by Aodh (Hugh), Earl of Ross in 1281 records the name Petkenny, but in a charter of 1333 refers to a location called Balkenny, was the third successor of Ferchar mac in tSagairt as Mormaer of Ross (1323-1333). He was also Chief of Clan Ross. William III of Ross, was the fourth successor and William married Màiri, the daughter of Aonghus Óg MacDomhnaill and cultivated the friendship of the Stewarts. Uilleam died in 1372, and the Mormaerdom was given to his daughter Euphemia with her husband Sir Walter Leslie thus ending the dynasty started a century and a half before by the great Ferchar and favored by King Robert I of Scotland. The dominions eventually passed to the MacDonald Lords of the Isles.
Following the Reformation, the capital was transferred to the town of Dingwall. By the fifteenth century the earldom of Ross formed part of the patrimony of the MacDonald lords of the Isles. After the Battle of Largs, the Treaty of Perth (1266) ended military conflict between Norway under Magnus the Law-mender and Scotland under Alexander III over the sovereignty of the Western Isles, the Isle of Man and Caithness.
Wester Ross is a western area of Ross and Cromarty, notably containing the villages on the west coast such as: Lochcarron, Applecross, Shieldaig, Torridon, Kinlochewe, Gairloch, Poolewe, Aultbea, Ullapool, Achiltibuie...Ross and Cromarty was formerly a district within the former Highland region. The county was formed as a merger of the older counties of Ross-shire and Cromartyshire-consisting of the lands of Cromarty in the north of the peninsula of the Black Isle. Despite its name, the Black Isle is not an island, but a peninsula of firths Cromarty, Beauly, and Moray. Scattered throughout Ross-shire, most notably the districts around Ullapool and Little Loch Broom on the Atlantic coast, the area in which Ben Wyvis is situated, and a tract to the north of Loch Fannich - which was acquired by the ancestors of Sir George Mackenzie (1630 - 1714), afterwards Viscount Tarbat (1685) and 1st Earl of Cromartie (1703).
The territory within these boundaries seems to have nominally formed part of the earldom of Orkney, and to have belonged at different periods to different proprietors; but from the peculiar situation of Ross, it appears to have retained its independence, and to have been an earldom of itself, to which were attached some of the Western Isles; and in several ancient charters William, son of Hugh, Earl of Ross, who was killed at the battle of Hallidon-Hill, is not only styled Earl of Ross, but also Lord of Skye. Kenneth Mackenzie himself married Morna or Morba, daughter of Alexander Macdougall, styled, “De Ergedia,” Lord of Lorn by a daughter of John, the first Red Comyn, Lord of Badenoch, who died in 1273.
| John, "Earl of Ross and Lord of the Isles," apparently exercised a kind of regal authority, and, as an independent prince, entered into treaties with Edward of England; but it was not till about the yeare 1630 that Ross was made a sheriffdom, including the district of Cromarty, which formerly gave the title of earl to a branch of the Mackenzies, of Seaforth. The race of Somerled continued to rule the islands, and from a younger son of the same potentate sprang the lords of Lorne, who took the patronymic of Macdougall. Eventually the MacDougalls “De Ergedia,” lost the lordship of Lorn, which (like many other old Scottish Dignities) passed almost inevitably to the House of Stewart. |  |
The Clann an tSaoir, or Maclntyres (Mac an tSaoir) are also a branch of the Clan Ranald, during the fourteenth century, having come from the Hebrides, were hereditary foresters to the Stewart lords of Lorn. The Lord of the Isles would continue to rule the Inner Hebrides as well as part of the Western Highlands as a subject of the King of Scots until John MacDonald, fourth Lord of the Isles during the 1400s. John Macdonald of Islay, who died about 1386, was the first to adopt the title of Lord of the Isles.