The MacInnes's are of ancient Celtic origin, with the name MacAoghuis being Gaelic for "son of Angus". The ancestors were probably amoung the earliest settlers of Dalriada and were said to have formed a branch of the Siol Gillebride, believed to be the original inhabitants of Morven and Ardnamurchan. Old tradition has it that the MacInnes were promised favour by the Lord of the Isles.

A later chief of the Clan MacInnes was appointed Constable of the Castle of Kinlochaline and was still held by a MacInnes when it was burnt by Coll Kitto in 1648. The clan suffered severly early in the 13th century during the conquest of Argyll by Alexander II and at about this time the clan moved under the protection of the Campbells.

They supported the Covenantors against Charles I and later supported the Hanoverians against the Jacobites under the Campbells, although there also seems to have been a MacInnes appointed as Hereditary Bowmen to the chiefs of clan MacKinnon. Another group of MacInnes were also to be found as followers of the Stewarts of Ardshiel and as such supported the Jacobite struggle.

It was General John MacInnes, who, as an officer of the East India Company, made the original journey from Scotland to seek his fortune in the East. He retired to live in London after a successful military career, and his son, Miles MacInnes settled in Cumberland when he inherited an estate on the Scottish border near the city of Carlisle.

Of those MacInnes who emigrated, Donald MacInnes became a merchant and later Senator in Canada. Rennie MacInnes, grandson of General John MacInnes, became the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem in 1914 and returned to his home in Cumberland in England (near the Scottish border) when incapacitated by ill health. His son, Campbell MacInnes, later became the first and last Anglican Archbishop of Jerusalem, when the diocese was extended to include all the spheres of British influence in the Middle East at the time, from Egypt and the Sudan, to Palestine, Jordan and Persia. He too retired to England as Master of St Nicholas' Hospice and Suffragan Bishop of Salisbury.