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The Clan Rose,
descended from Hugh Rose of Geddes, came over from Ireland in the early 12th century. They were,
before the forfeiture of the last Lord of the Isles, vassals of the old Earls of Ross.
They are quite separate in origin from Clan Ross. Mr Hugh Rose, the geologist of the
Kilravock Family, believed them to be English in origin because of their coat of arms
which contains three bouggets (buckets) which was similar to the English family of Roos
but this similarity was also carried by other families. The family of Rose of Kilravock
(pronounced Ross of Kilraik) appear to have settled in Nairn, in the North of Scotland, in
the reign of David the First, around the year 1219 when Hugh Rose of Geddes was witness to
the foundation of the Priory of Beauly. The name Rose of Geddes changed to Rose of
Kilravock when Hugh Rose of Geddes' son, of the same name, acquired the lands of Kilravock
through marriage, Kilravock becoming the chief title of the family. The Roses enjoyed the
friendship of the MacKintoshes from a very early date, and by an act of council dated 28th
July 1643, 'The broken men of the name of Rose were bound upon MacKintosh who each ordained
to be accountable for them'. The French Connection with the Rose of Kilravock family is
with J.A. Rose who was an extraordinary player in the French Revolution. He was born in
Scotland in 1757 and went to Paris in his early years. He became an Usher of the National
Assembly but raised himself above that position to become closely related to distinguished
figures of that eventful epoch. He was able to inform the unfortunate Louis the Sixteenth
of his imminent demise and did likewise for Marie Antoinette. Therefore he was thought of
as playing a better role than that of the fictional Scarlet Pimpernel. Other septs
associated with Clan Rose are Barron, Geddes, Baron, Ross.
Another Account of the Clan
BADGE: Ros-mhairi fiadhaich (Andromeda
media) wild rosemary.
 As
with many other clans of the north, the origin of the Roses of Kilravock
has been the subject of considerable debate. It has been urged that the
name is derived from the Gaelic" Ros," a promontory, in the same
way as that of the Rosses farther north; but in Douglas’s Baronage the
similarity of the coat armour of the chiefs to that of the Rooses or Roses
of Normandy and England is taken as evidence that the race was of Saxon
origin, and in his account of the house in Sketches of Early Scottish
History, Mr. Cosmo Innes, who was closely connected with the family,
and had made an exhaustive study of its charters and other documents,
supports the Norman source. Innes declares the history of the house
written in 1683-4 by Mr. Hew Rose, parson of Nairn, to be a careful and
generally very correct statement of the pedigree of the family.
The original patrimony of
the Roses appears to have been the lands of Geddes in the county of
Inverness. In the days of Alexander II., as early as 1219, Hugh Rose of
Geddes appears as a witness to the founding of the Priory of Beaulieu, now
Beauly. The founders of that priory were the Byssets, at that time one of
the great houses of the north, the downfall of whose family forms one of
the strangest stories of Alexander’s reign. The incident is detailed in
Wyntoun’s Chronicle. In 1242, after a great tournament at
Haddington, Patrick, the young Earl of Atholl, was treacherously murdered
and "burnt to coals" in his lodging at the west end of that
town. Suspicion fell upon the Byssets, who were at bitter feud with the
house of Atholl. Sir William Bysset had just entertained the King and
Queen at his castle of Aboyne, and on the night of the murder had sat late
at supper with the Queen in Forfar. In vain the Queen offered to swear his
innocence. In vain Bysset himself had the murderers cursed "Wyth buk
and bell," and offered to prove his innocence by the ordeal of
battle. All men believed him guilty. The Byssets saw their lands harried
utterly of goods and cattle, and before the fury of the powerful kinsmen
of Atholl, they were finally banished the Kingdom. Sir John de Bysset,
however, had left three daughters, the eldest of whom inherited the lands
of Lovat and Beaufort, and became ancestress of the Frasers, while the
youngest inherited Redcastle in the Black Isle and Kilravock on the River
Nairn, and married Sir Andrew de Bosco. Mary, one of the daughters of this
latter union, married Hugh Rose of Geddes, and brought him the lands of
Kilravock and of Culcowie in the Black Isle as her marriage portion. This
was at the latter end of the reign of Alexander III., and from that day to
this the Roses have been lairds of Kilravock in unbroken succession.
No house in Scotland seems
to have kept more carefully its charters and family papers from the
earliest times, and from these Cosmo Innes derived many interesting facts
for his sketch of the intimate customs and history of this old Scottish
family.
From a very early time,
even before there is evidence of their lands having been erected into a
feudal barony, the Roses were known as Barons of Kilravock. They were
never a leading family in the country. The heads of the house preferred to
lead a quiet life, and though by marriage and otherwise they acquired and
held for many generations considerable territories in Ross-shire and in
the valleys of the Nairn and the Findhorn, we find them emerging only
occasionally into the limelight of history. For the most part the Roses
intermarried with substantial families of their own rank. William, son of
the first Rose of Kilravock, married Morella or Muriel, daughter of
Alexander de Doun, and Andrew, his second son, became ancestor of the
Roses of Auchlossan in Mar. William’s grandson, Hugh, again, married
Janet, daughter of Sir Robert Chisholm, Constable of Urquhart Castle, who
brought her husband large possessions in Strathnairn. This chief’s
grandson, John, also, who succeeded in 1431, married Isabella, daughter of
Cheyne, laird of Esslemont in Aberdeenshire, and further secured his
position by procuring from the King a feudal charter de novo of all
his lands. It was John’s son Hugh who built the existing old tower of
Kilravock in 1460, and his energy, or his need for protection, is shown by
the fact, recorded as marvellous, that he finished it within a year.
The family at this time was
at serious variance with one of its most powerful neighbours, the Thane of
Cawdor. This Thane’s father, six years earlier, had built the present
keep of Cawdor Castle, and Thane William himself had made one of the best
matches of his time by marrying a daughter of Alexander Sutherland of
Dunbeath, whose wife was a daughter of one of the Lords of the Isles.
Thane William was an ambitious man. He had his estates changed into a
Crown holding by resigning them into the hands of the King and procuring a
new charter, and, to make sure of the permanence of his family, he set
aside with a pension his eldest son, William, who had some personal
defect, and settled the whole thanedom and heritage of the family on his
second son, John, whom, to close the feud between the families, he married
to Isabella, daughter of Rose of Kilravock. The marriage, however, was not
happy, and out of it arose one of the most curious romances of the north.
The young Thane John did
not long survive his marriage; he died in 1498, leaving as sole heiress to
the Cawdor estates an infant daughter, Muriel. The old Thane, William, and
his four sons were naturally furious. They did their best to have Muriel
declared illegitimate; but their efforts were useless. By reason of the
new charter the child was a ward of the Crown, and the Earl of Argyll, who
was then Justiciar of Scotland, procured her wardship and marriage from
James IV. The Roses were no doubt glad to have the keeping of the child
entrusted to so powerful a guardian, but old Lady Kilravock was evidently
not without her doubts as to the good faith of Muriel’s new protector.
When the Earl’s emissary, Campbell of Inverliver, arrived at Kilravock
to convey the child south to Loch Awe, the old lady is said to have thrust
the key of her coffer into the fire, and branded Muriel with it on the
thigh.
Inverliver bad not gone far
on his way to the south when he was overtaken by the child’s four uncles
and their following. With shrewd ability he devised a stratagem. Sending
Muriel off hotfoot through the hills under a small guard, he dressed a
stook of corn in her clothes, placed it where it could be seen by the
enemy, and proceeded to give battle with the greater part of his force.
Seven of his sons, it is said, fell before he gave way, and even then he
only retired when he felt sure the child was far beyond the reach of
pursuit. When someone afterwards asked whether he thought the prize worth
such sacrifice, and suggested that the heiress might die before reaching
womanhood, he is said to have replied, "Muriel of Cawdor will never
die as long as there’s a red-haired lassie on the shores of Loch
Awe." Muriel, however, survived, and indeed lived to a good old age.
The Earl of Argyll married her when twelve years old to his second son,
Sir John Campbell, and the Earls of Cawdor of the present day are directly
descended from the pair.
Hugh Rose of Kilravock,
grandson of him who built the tower, for some reason now unknown seized
William Galbraith, Abbot of Kinloss, and imprisoned him at Kilravock. For
this he was himself arrested and kept long a prisoner in Dunbarton Castle,
then commanded by Sir George Stirling of Glorat. A deed is extant by
which, while a prisoner, in June, 1536, the laird engaged a burgess of
Paisley as a gardener for Kilravock—"Thom Daueson and ane servand
man with him is comyn man and servand for all his life to the said Huchion."
The next laird was known as
the Black Baron. He lived in the troublous time of the Reformation, and in
his youth he fought and was made prisoner at Pinkiecleugh; yet he managed
to pay his ransom, 100 angels, and to provide portions for his seventeen
sisters and daughters, built the manor place beside his ancient tower, and
reigned as laird of Kilravock for more than fifty years. It was in his
time that Queen Mary paid her visit to Kilravock. The Castle of Inverness,
of which the Earl of Huntly was keeper, had closed its gates against her
and her half-brother, whom she had just made Earl of Moray, and the Queen,
while preparing to storm the stronghold, took up her quarters at Kilravock.
Here possibly it was that she made the famous remark that she
"repented she was not a man, to know what life it was to lie all
night in the fields, or walk the rounds with a Jack and knapscull." A
few days later, overawed by her preparations, the captain of Inverness
Castle surrendered and was hanged, and shortly afterwards the Queen
defeated Huntly himself at Corrichie, and brought the great rebellion in
the north to an end.
The Black Baron of
Kilravock was justice depute of the north under Argyll, sheriff of
Inverness and constable of its castle under Queen Mary, and commissioner
for the Regent Moray. He lived to be summoned to Parliament by James VI.
in 1593.
In the time of the eleventh
and twelfth Barons we have pictures of Kilravock as a happy family house,
where sons and grandsons were educated and brought up in kindly, wise, and
hospitable fashion. The thirteenth baron, who died young in 1649, was well
skilled in music, vocal and instrumental. Hugh, the fourteenth baron,
lived through the trying times of Charles II. and James VII., but, though
sharing his wife’s warm sympathy with the persecuted Covenanters,
managed himself to avoid the persecutions of his time. The fifteenth
baron, again, educated in a licentious age, began life as a supporter of
the divine right of kings, but afterwards admitted the justice and
necessity of the Revolution. He voted against the Act of Union, but
declared openly for the Protestant Succession, and, after the Union, was
appointed one of the Scottish Commissioners to the first Parliament of
Great Britain. On the outbreak of the Earl of Mar’s rebellion in 1715 he
stood firm for King George’s Government, armed two hundred of his clan,
kept the peace in his country side, and maintained Kilravock Castle as a
refuge for persons in dread of harm by the Jacobites. He even planned to
reduce the Jacobite garrison at Inverness, and, along with Forbes of
Culloden and Lord Lovat, blockaded the town. His brother, Arthur Rose, who
had but lately been ransomed from slavery with the pirates of Algiers, and
whose portrait in Turkish dress may still be seen at Kilravock, tried to
seize the garrison. At the head of a small party he made his way to the
Tolbooth, but was betrayed by his guide. As Rose pushed past the door,
sword in hand, the fellow called out "An ehemy! an enemy I" Upon
this the guard rushed forward, shot him through the body, and crushed the
life out of him between the door and the wall. On hearing of his brother’s
end, Kilravock sent a message to the garrison, ordering it to leave the
place, or he would lay the town in ashes, and so assured were the governor
and magistrates that he would keep his word that they evacuated the town
and castle during the night, and he entered and took possession next day.
In 1704 Kilravock’s
following was stated as five hundred men, but in 1725 General Wade
estimated it at no more than three hundred.
In 1734 the sixteenth baron
was returned to Parliament for Ross-shire, and he might have been elected
again, but preferred the pleasures of country life. He built the house of
Coulmonie on the Findhorn, and married Elizabeth Clephane, daughter of a
soldier of fortune, and friend of the Countess of Sutherland. He was
engaged in the quiet life of a country gentleman, hawking and shooting and
fishing, when in 1745 the storm of Jacobite rebellion again swept over the
country. Two days before the battle of Culloden, Prince Charles Edward
rode out from Inverness to bring in his outposts on the Spey, which were
retiring before Cumberland’s army, and he spent an hour or two at
Kilravock Castle. He kissed the children, begged a tune on the violin from
the laird, and walked out with him to see some plantations of trees he was
making. Before leaving he expressed envy of the laird’s peaceful life in
the midst of a country so disturbed by war. Next day the Duke of
Cumberland arrived at the Castle, where it is said he spent the night. His
boots, a pair of huge Wellingtons, are still to be seen there. In course
of talk he remarked to the laird, "You have had my cousin here?"
and on Kilravock hastening to explain that he had had no means of refusing
entertainment, the Duke stopped him with the remark that he had done quite
right. The laird was then Provost of Nairn, and a silver-mounted drinking
cup of cocoanut still preserved at Kilravock bears the inscription,
"This cup belongs to the Provost of Nairn, 1746, the year of our
deliverance. A bumper to the Duke of Cumberland."
For a hundred years the
Sheriffship of Ross had been all but hereditary in the family, and after
the abolition of heritable jurisdictions in 1746, Hugh Rose, the
seventeenth baron, was still appointed sheriff depute by the King. Books
and music, gardening and hospitality, filled up the pleasant life at
Kilravock in this laird’s time. He himself was a good classical scholar,
and was consulted constantly by Professor Moore, of Glasgow, regarding his
great edition of Homer.
It was the daughter and
heiress of this laird who was known in so much of the correspondence of
the north in her time as Mrs. Elizabeth Rose. This lady succeeded her
brother, the eighteenth baron, in 1782, married her cousin, Hugh Rose of
Brea, the heir-male, and lived through a long widowhood till 1815. Lady
Kilravock, as she was called, had a high reputation for taste in music and
literature, and when Robert Burns set out on his Highland tour in the
autumn of 1787, he carried an introduction to her from her cousin, Henry
MacKenzie, the "Man of Feeling." The Poet’s two visits to the
castle within a couple of days of each other are noted in his journal, and
referred to in a letter in the following spring.
Below the crag on which the
castle stands, winds the wild sequestered path known as the Fairy Walk, on
which Burns is said to have rambled with the ladies of the house. The
highly accomplished character of Mrs. Elizabeth Rose is also attested in
the writings of Hugh Miller and other well-known authors.
From first to last, indeed,
the Roses of Kilravock stand distinguished among the chiefs of Highland
clans for their refined and literary taste. Something of the popular
impression of this is to be seen in the well-known ballad of "Sir
James the Rose," which had probably some member of the house for its
subject. Major James Rose, the late laird and head of the house, was
Lord-Lieutenant of Nairnshire from 1889 to 1904. His son, the present
laird, Colonel Hugh Rose, had just retired from active service in the Army
when the Great European War broke out in 1914. He then again offered his
services, and shortly after the beginning of hostilities was appointed
Camp Commandant of one of the divisions of the British Expeditionary Force
in France. Among other distinguished holders of the name in recent times
have been William Stewart Rose, the well-known scholar, poet, and friend
of Sir Walter Scott, and his nephew, Hugh Henry Rose, Lord Strathnairn,
who won his way by distinguished services in India to the position of
Commander-in-Chief in that great dependency.
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