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From: "David Rorer" <>
Subject: Re: [SCOT-DNA] Descent of Scottish Chiefs part 1 of 3
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 15:57:18 -0500
References: <A8496C8404C5B14781C070126678F7E937E7E8@fpserver.llcpa.com>


----- Original Message -----
From: "Mac Leask" <>
To: <>
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 3:31 PM
Subject: RE: [SCOT-DNA] Descent of Scottish Chiefs


> Do you know which of the Clans are of Danish or Anglo-Saxon origin?
>

Before responding to this question I think it necessary to establish exactly
what is meant by the "origin" of a clan. It is in fact, for reasons which
will be made clear below, the origin of the chiefly family and those who
have a blood connection to this family.

The following is taken from "Highland Warrior, Alasdair Maccolla and the
Civil Wars" by David Stevenson, professor emeritus of Scottish History at
the University of St Andrews.
The book was published in 2003 by John Donald, an imprint of Birlinn
Limited, West Nesington House, 10 Newington Road, Edinburgh.
www.birlinn.co.uk

Because of the length of the quote it will be in two parts, with part three
being a summary of the salient points. The quote is presented without
editing.

Begin quote on page 8

..The clans of late medieval and early modern Scotland had their origins in
the fourteenth century or later. They were not, as is sometimes still
assumed, survivals of primitive tribes with an existence stretching hack to
distant antiquity. Nearly all chiefs claimed such distant roots, and
sometimes there was truth in the claims in a strictly genealogical sense;
the chiefs could trace as their ancestors great leaders of earlier ages. But
these ancestors had not been chiefs' of 'clans' such as existed from the
fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

The clans arose to fill a power vacuum. At the end of the thirteenth century
the Lowlands and parts of the Highlands had a political and social system in
common. The Western Isles (only ceded to Scotland by Norway in 1266) and
most of the Western Highlands, still had not been feudalized; but it seemed
that these areas would gradually be integrated more closely with the rest of
the country (though without abandoning their cultures, their language, or
many features of their social system). Local landholders would in time add
(under royal pressure) to their existing acceptance of dependence on the
monarchy a feudal definition of their rights to their lands and their
obligations to the crown. The basic idea underlying feudalism was that all
land belonged ultimately to the king. He made grants of land to his leading
subjects, but they did not own such land outright; they held it from the
king in return for payments and services (especially military service), and
they were his vassals, owing loyalty and obedience to him. Those who held
land directly from the king, the tenants 'in-chief, would in turn grant or
let it (or most of it) out to lesser men, who became their vassals, and so
on down the scale until the small tenants who actually farmed the land were
reached. Social status and political power alike were based on relationship
to land. The king's authority was largely dependent on his claim to the
ultimate ownership of all land, and the most powerful men in the kingdom
were almost invariably (except for clerics) tenants in chief. Such men built
up their power through the obedience and service due to them from their own
vassals, and through the wealth accumulated from the rents and dues paid to
them by such lesser men, and by tenant farmers to whom the tenants in chief
would rent some land directly. Thus was created the feudal pyramid' a
(theoretically) neat, orderly hierarchy of landholders spreading downwards
and outwards from the king at the top to the actual cultivators of the soil
at the bottom.

Needless to say, the reality was not as simple as the theory. Feudalism was
constantly evolving and changing. Pre-feudal survivals and local practices
often complicated the picture. And, above all, kinship ties based on blood
relationship were strong. In one sense in deed kinship quickly came to be an
essential element in feudalism, in that feudally held land came to descend
from father to son; but in addition to this, men naturally tended to favor
their own relations in granting land and making political alliances, One of
the best ways of extending one's power and influence was to arrange
beneficial marriages for oneself and one's kin. Such a feudal system
modified by kinship prevailed in most of Scotland, and seemed destined to be
extended to the remoter Highland areas.

In the fourteenth century, however, the power of the monarchy declined. Weak
kings were followed by a disastrous succession of child rulers. Between 1390
and 1625 no monarch of Scotland had reached adulthood on ascending the
throne. During extended royal minorities the power of central government
tended to decay as factions competed viciously to rule in name of the infant
monarch, often granting out power previously exercised by the king to great
men in order to win their support. The work done by even the most competent
rulers in restoring royal power seldom survived the subsequent royal
minority, Moreover, the resources of the crown often had to be concentrated
on fighting the long wars with England rather than on asserting royal
authority throughout the country.

As the power of the monarchy decayed, so men had to fend for themselves
especially in areas like the Highlands and Isles, relatively remote from the
centre of government. Landholders had to protect themselves without
reference to their ultimate feudal superior, the king, for he could no
longer offer them effective protection or justice. In such circumstances the
landholders who survived and prospered were those who acted aggressively,
extending their power at the expense of neighbors, striving to increase the
number of followers who, willingly or unwillingly, would obey and serve
them. Such activities could be indulged in with little fear of retribution
from central government. There were many ways in which ruthless men could
thus aggrandize themselves, but only three basic ways in which they sought
to legitimize their actions. Feudal authority could be extended by forcing
lesser neighbors who held land directly from the king to agree to hold it in
future as their vassals and charters obtained from the crown sanctioning
this. Or they could claim authority as head of kin groups or families...
insisting that seniority gave them power over all their relatives. Finally,
extension of power could be given the legitimacy of written agreement
through banding or bonding. Such bonds could be between equals, binding
themselves together in friendship or to act as allies; or between a great
man and a lesser one, the latter by a bond of 'manrent' obliging himself and
his followers to obey the former in return for protection. Feudalism;
kinship; bonding, these became the basic social ties throughout Scotland,
Highland as well as Lowland.

Where do 'clans' fit into this picture? As royal authority declines one
begins to hear of 'clans' in the Highlands and commentators begin to divide
the inhabitants of Scotland into two types. Lowlanders, speaking the Scots
variant of the English tongue and relatively 'civilized' and law-abiding;
and Highlanders, speaking Gaelic, warlike and unruly barbaric compared to
Lowlanders, organized into 'clans'.

'Clan' means literally children or offspring, and the clans were the social
and political groups which emerged in the Highlands in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries in response to the lack of effective royal authority. As
the name suggests, the idea of kinship, of authority based on the headship
of a kin, was the dominant feature of the clan in theory. But in practice
the origins and structures of clans varied greatly. In the west the chiefs
of clans generally traced their ancestry back to great men. Celtic or Norse,
of earlier ages; their families had accepted the authority of the feudal
monarchy but now, as royal power decayed, they revived and emphasized older
claims to pre-eminence. in the east many clans were almost entirely feudal
in origin; the Gaelic speaking chiefs who emerged were the descendants of
French speaking Anglo-Normans whose first claim to authority in the area
they dominated was the grant of land to them by feudal charter, but who as
generations passed had 'gone native', become Gallicized. As this happened
the; tended to buttress the authority they claimed by feudal grant from a
declining monarchy by claiming also a kinship right to the obedience of
their men, thus appealing to an older form of legitimacy and partly adopting
the culture of the local population.


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