In 1513 a dispute arose between the descendants of Garrett MacQuillin and those of Walter MacQuillin for Dunluce, then in the former’s hands. O’Donnell seems to have placed the Walter MacQuillins in possession.
Sir Thomas Cusake mentions the castle in his account of the expedition against the MacDonnels in 1551, and four years later a fierce dispute arose between the MacQuillins and MacDonnels for the chieftainship of the Route district.
These MacDonnels were of Scotch descent, and in 1565 the famous Shane O’Neill set out to expel the Scots from Antrim.
A great fight ensued, in which James and Sorley Boy (yellow or swarthy Charles) MacDonnel were taken prisoners.
Dunluce held out for three days longer, but Shane kept Sorley Boy without food until the garrison should surrender, which they accordingly did for his sake as well as their own.
O’Neill then put his men in the castle, and is reported to have “kylled and banyshed all the Skottes out of the north.”
James MacDonnel died in Tyrone Castle in 1567--probably from poison. Two years later his death was avenged by one of the clan, who assassinated Shane, and after this Sorley Boy was set at liberty.
At this time an English garrison was in possession of Dunluce, and Sorley Boy crossed to Scotland, and returned with eight hundred picked Redshanks to demand his castles and lands returned by a grant from the Crown.
This request not being at once acceded to, he commenced hostilities, and in a year had re-possessed himself of all his strongholds and lands, except Dunluce. He then renounced all allegiance to the Oueen, raised some more Scotch troops, and took the surrounding country without opposition.
In 1573 he made a partial submission to the Crown, and asked to have the part of the Glynns, which he claimed through the Bysetts, confirmed to him by letters patent, but when the title deeds arrived he cut them up and threw them in the fire, saying--
“By my sword I got these lands, and by the sword I will hold them.”
The next year Mr. Francis Killaway was granted Dunluce under Essex’s scheme of plantation, but in those days possession was more than “nine points of the law,” and when the Lord Deputy, Sir John Perrott, set out with a great army against the Scots of Ulster, in 1584, Sorley Boy’s warder occupied Dunluce.