Background
Margery appears to have been the daughter of the Mac Eoin Bissett, Lord of the Glens, and Sabia O"Neill (died 1387), a princess of the O"Neill dynasty.
Margery appears to have been the daughter of the Mac Eoin Bissett, Lord of the Glens, and Sabia O"Neill (died 1387), a princess of the O"Neill dynasty.
She is the ancestress of the Clan MacDonald of Dunnyveg and their powerful descendant sept the MacDonnells of Antrim, through whom she is an ancestor of many of the Irish and British nobility and royalty living today. This is all that is relatively certain, however, because no medieval Bissett pedigree has survived, the family falling from power in the Glens of Antrim in or not long after 1522, following the Battle of Knockavoe, and not being recorded by Duald Mac Firbis in the mid-17th century except in reference to their maternal kin the MacDonnells, who replaced them. Mac Firbis uniquely describes the Bissetts as being of Greek origin, first arriving in England with William the Conqueror.
As far as Margery"s likely mother Sabia it is possible she was one of the four daughters of Aodh Reamhar Ó Néill, King of Ulster, whose names were unknown to the 19th century genealogist John O"Hart, the O"Neill pedigrees themselves being imperfectly preserved.
She was "no doubt presented to him, as the daughter of a great northern lord", and retained a memory of his face. After she had come to reside with John in the Isles, the contemporary Scottish poet Andrew of Wyntoun tells of her recognition of a man whom she believed to be the deposed king travelling as a poor manitoba
Although Richard is widely believed to have starved to death in captivity in Pontefract Castle in early 1400, Margery vouched for the man, whomever he may have been, and the Scots believed her. He was naturally dismissed as an impostor by Henry IV, but had a kind of career as an anti-Lancastrian figurehead anyway and died in 1419.
Donald Balloch MacDonald
possibly Ranald Bane MacDonald.