According to legend, the
first of the Rutherfords was a peasant who guided the Scottish King
Ruther across the Tweed just behind the present Rutherford Lodge, where
their Chief still lives, and was given the adjoining land for this
valuable service. It seems a pity to spoil a good story, but Scottish
History knows of no "King Ruther". The ford, however, is
genuine enough, and the peasant could well have taken Malcolm Canmore’s
great-grandfather across it on his way to Carham, the victory that gave
Scotland her present size and shape. It would have cost Malcolm II
nothing to give him the land as his well-earned reward, especially as it
still belonged to Ethelred the Redeless (or Unready) and the name itself
could simply mean "cattle ford" or the somewhat redundant
"river ford" (one does not normally ford anything else!). If
so the Rutherfords are the second oldest landed family in the Borders
after the Swintons, and like them of Anglo-Saxon origin.
However, the first
actually known to History is Robert de Rodysforde, who witnessed a
charter of St. David I in 1140, and the record is only continuous (to
the extent of something being down on parchment or paper for every
generation of the family) from the time of Hugo de Rutherford, again
mentioned as a witness to a land grant about 1215. His grandson, Sir
Nichol de Rutherford, signed the Ragman Roll like nearly all Scottish
lairds except Wallace himself, but later joined Wallace, to whose wife
he was related, and assisted him in the Battle of Biggar and the capture
of Sanquhar Castle. Sir Robert de Rutherford, his son, was a friend of
Robert the Bruce and of the "Good Sir James Douglas", and fell
with Sir James in Spain, guarding the Bruce’s heart (which was later
brought back to Melrose Abbey, where it remains hidden).
Sir Robert’s grandson,
Sir Richard Rutherford, was an ambassador to the English Court in 1398
and Warden of the Marches (together with his sons) two years later.
Another of the same generation was Robert Rutherford of Chatto, also
known as "Robin of the Tod’s Tail" from his unconventional
battle standard at Otterburn in 1388. He had conveniently killed a fox
just before the battle and finding nothing more suitable to use as a
rallying point for his men, he tied its brush to a lance. It was
distinctive enough, and it worked: he survived and found himself on the
winning side.
Philip Rutherford, near
the end of the 15th century, was the first Rutherford heir in 300 years,
and perhaps longer, to die before his father; his eldest son Richard was
the first head of the family to die without issue, and the present head
of the family is descended from Philip’s younger brother Thomas.
The Rutherfords of
Hunthill are descended from John Rutherford of Chatto, a younger son of
Sir Richard. One of his sixth-generation descendants was Andrew, later
Lord Rutherford and Earl of Teviot, who served in the French army in the
first decades of Louis XIV’s long reign. He came to England with
Charles II, who gave him a peerage, and brought with him his regiment,
who became the 1st Royal Scots. Subsequently he was made Earl of Teviot
as a reward for helping to negotiate the sale of Dunkirk (taken by
Cromwell a few years earlier) to Louis: this gave Charles II a useful
lump sum for which he did not have to answer to Parliament. Lord Teviot
was appointed Governor of Tangier (which had become an English
possession as part of Catherine of Braganza’s dowry) but was killed
there by the Moors in a skirmish. Tangier was later abandoned as too
expensive to defend and supply —a grave strategic error as it could
have been used to keep the Barbary pirates bottled up in the
Mediterranean and, together with Gibraltar (seized from Spain 20 years
after Tangier was given up to the Moors), it would have given England
complete control of the Straits.
The Hunthill branch of
the family also included Major Andrew Rutherford, who fought with
Claverhouse at Killiecrankie and later emigrated to France like many
adherents of James VII and II (and the King himself). With the Scottish
company he commanded, he served with distinction in the French army,
notably at the capture of Rosas on the Costa Brava and in the defence of
Alsace (conquered a few years earlier by Louis XIV and Turenne) against
a German counter-attack. Major Rutherford and his men, wading
breast-deep through the icy Rhine in December, recaptured a small island
to which the Germans had already built a pontoon bridge, then held it
against heavy odds until reinforcements arrived. Major Rutherford is not
recorded as having been killed in the battle but probably died from
wounds suffered there, as nothing more is heard of him.
An earlier Rutherford of
Hunthill was the "Cock of Hunthill", also an ancestor of
William Gladstone, who played a prominent part in the action at
Redeswire, the last "official" battle between Scots and
English, though there were several later affrays and raids. Nine of his
sons also fought there, among them Richard, the "bauld
Rutherford" who led the Jedburgh men as their Provost and who had a
few years earlier presided over the "debagging" incident
mentioned on p. 23.
Several Rutherfords of
the Hundalee branch (descended from yet another son of Sir Richard) were
provosts of Aberdeen. One of them, Alexander, held this office for
nearly 20 years and was a noted Anglophobe. He made a speach against the
Union of Crowns, first in Scots, which the English nobles could not
understand, then in French, then in Latin, but avoiding speaking any
English, except a few words whenever he ran out of Latin. This made a
great impression on the scholarly King James, who disagreed with him but
gave him a ring from his own finger as a token of appreciation. Provost
Alexander Rutherford also had to put down a "sit-in" by the
boys of Aberdeen Grammar School, who were armed with "hagbuttis,
pistollis, swordis and lang wapynnis", organised as a protest
against the suppression of Christmas celebrations by the Kirk.
An interesting document
from the family history of the Rutherfords is their "peace
treaty" with the Kerrs at Ancrum Spittal in 1560. Written in
medieval Scots and difficult to read, it provides compensation of £500
to be paid by the Kerrs to George Rutherford of Longnewton, whose father
had been killed not long before, and for Robert Kerr of Newhall to
"offer his sword" to George Rutherford (and presumably get it
back) "according to the practice and fashion of the country".
Additionally several Kerr-Rutherford marriages were to be arranged, in
some cases between unspecified young couples, when the girls were 12 and
the boys reached an unspecified age of majority (probably 14 or 15). In
one case the parties were named; Andrew Kerr (Robert’s son) and a
daughter of Philip Rutherford of Edgerston. If Andrew died, his next
available brother was to take his place; if the girl died, "another
gentlewoman of that surname and blood". Some of the signatories
were illiterate, so the notary "led their pens".
Not all the Rutherfords
were soldiers, landowners or provosts: one of them was a naval captain
at Trafalgar and several were professors of theology, medicine or
science, among them Samuel Rutherford, D.D., one of the leading
Covenanters’, Dr. John Rutherford, and his son Daniel. Sir Walter
Scott’s uncle, who discovered nitrogen gas. As a young man in Paris,
Dr. Daniel Rutherford refused to attend a party where Prince Charles
Edward, by then an alcoholic and an overweight shadow of his former
self, was expected to be present; though not a Jacobite, he had too much
respect for the House of Stewart to witness the degradation into which
they had sunk. He died suddenly, while stroking a cat, after attending
his sister, Sir Walter Scott’s mother, who had gone down with
"paralysis"; another sister died two days later and Mrs. Scott
not long after.
If we now live in the
nuclear age, for better or for worse, part of the responsibility must
lie with Lord Rutherford of Nelson (1871-1937), the father of atomic
science. He was born Ernest Rutherford, near the town of Nelson in New
Zealand, from which he took his title, his grandfather having emigrated
from Perth thirty years earlier, and educated at Nelson College and at
Canterbury College, Christchurch, where he graduated with first-class
honours in mathematics and physics. He then came to Trinity College,
Cambridge, and worked under Sir J.J. Thomson (also of Scottish descent,
though born in England), experimenting with electromagnetic waves and
with various kinds of radiation. He was appointed Professor of Physics
at McGill University in Montreal before his 27th birthday, returned to
New Zealand to be married and settled with his wife in Montreal,
continuing his research into radio-activity there and at Manchester
University, where he became Professor of Physics in 1907. While at
Manchester he discovered the division of the atom into a nucleus and
electrons but did not manage to actually split the atom, though he
foresaw that it could be done and would give rise to an entirely new and
terrifying form of energy. He succeeded Thomson as Professor of
Experimental Physics at Cambridge in 1919 (having been knighted a few
years earlier), was elected President of the Royal Society in 1925 and
was created a peer in 1931. |