True enough, the chiefship was decided by the clan in former days, but things tend to change once courts and lawyers get involved. In the case of the Mackinnon chiefship, the Court of Lord Lyon decided against Mackinnon if Mishnish on account of Mishnish’s pecuniosity. There are as never a means test back when the clan decided such matters. Except that the wealthier claimant had obvious advantages.
When Sir Neil Menzies, Baronet and Chief, died in 1920, my Menzies relations were send letters from lawyers inviting them to claim the estate. A successful claim to the physical estate would deliver the chiefship also. Let’s not kid ourselves that the lawyers motives were altruistic. Obviously they hoped to make money. They had already invested money in tracing the descendants of the Menzies chiefs through the Lairds of Comrie, who were disposed at the “Glorious Revolution”, removed from Glenlyon by the Campbells, relocated to Mull under the protection of the Macleans, and emigrated to Australia. To trace potential claimants that far was quite a financial investment, so one can only ponder how much the lawyers hoped to make out if it, and how expensive it really is to claim a dormant chiefship.
Given that it’s an “all or nothing” situation each time a chief dies and a replacement succeeds, the successor gets it all and the losers get nothing. Descendants of the losers are not likely to have the wealth from which to finance a claim for the chiefship.
Amongst my Menzies relations, Captain Duncan Menzies JP LLB was always the most likely, as not only the wealthiest but also a barrister. He chose to pass it up, being busy in his career and not the gambling type. In the end, it went to the wealthiest claimant, Steuart-Menzies of Culdares, paternally a Stewart of Cardney. His Menzies descent was through the female line.
So the clincher wasn’t primogeniture, legitimacy, or who the clan chose, it essentially came down to wealth. One had to have enough of it to sustain one’s claim.
