CLANS, FAMILIES AND SEPTS
I thought it would be pertinent to discuss Clans,
Families and Septs in this issue to explore how the Lyon Court view the
relationships. This article is the copyright of Sir Crispin Agnew of
Lochnaw Bt. and he kindly let us use it on our site. Here it is for you to
read here.
13th August 2001
The difference between clans, families and septs is the
source of many questions as is the question phrased in one way or another,
which asks, "to which clan do I belong". There are many definitions of
clans and families as there are people, but this article will try to
indicate how these matters are viewed in the Lyon Court.
It should first be recognised that a clan or family is
a legally recognised group in Scotland, which has a corporate identity in
the same way that a company, club or partnership has a corporate identity
in law. A clan or family is a ''noble incorporation" because it has an
officially recognised chief or head who being a nobleman of Scotland
confers his noble status on the clan or family, thus making it a legally
and statutorily recognised noble corporation often called "the Honourable
Clan…" A name group, which does not have a chief, has no official position
in the law of Scotland. The chiefs Seal of Arms, incorporated by the Lord
Lyon's letters Patent, is the seal of the corporation, like a company
seal, but only the chief is empowered by law to seal important documents
on behalf of his clan. A clan as a noble incorporation is recognised as
the chief’s heritable property - he owns it in law and is responsible for
its administration and development.
So far the words clan and family have been used
interchangeably in this article and this is the position. There is now a
belief that clans are Highland and families are Lowland but this is really
a development of the Victorian era. In an Act of Parliament of 1597 we
have the description of the "Chiftanis and chieffis of all clannis...duelland
in the hielands or bordouris" thus using the word clan to describe both
Highland and Lowland families. Further, Sir George MacKenzie of Rosehaugh,
the Lord Advocate (Attorney General) writing in 1680 said "By the term
'chief' we call the representative of the family from the word chef or
head and in the Irish (Gaelic) with us the chief of the family is called
the head of the clan''. So it can be seen that all along the words chief
or head and clan or family are interchangeable. It is therefore quite
correct to talk of the MacDonald family or the Stirling clan, although
modern conventions would probably dictate that it was the MacDonald clan
and Stirling family. The Lyon Court usually describes the chief of a clan
or family as either the ''Chief of the Name and Arms" or as "Chief of the
Honourable Clan - -"
Who belongs to what clan is of course, a matter of much
difficulty, particularly today when the concept of clan is worldwide.
Historically, in Scotland a chief was chief of "the cuntrie". He was chief
of his clan territory and the persons who lived therein, although certain
of his immediate family, would owe him allegiance wherever they were
living. The majority of his followers and in particular his battle
relatively to a neighbouring chief, they would switch their allegiance to
the other chief. Thus we find that when Lord Lovat took over a
neighbouring glen to his clan territory for the donation of a boll of meal
to each family, the family was persuaded to change their name to Fraser
and owe him allegiance - to this day they are called the "boll meal
Frasers". Another example is a migration of a family of the Macleans from
the West Coast to near Inverness and on moving to Inverness they changed
their allegiance from the Maclean chief to the chiefs of the Clan Chattan.
Thus the Macleans of Dochgarroch and their descendants and dependants are
properly members of the Clan Chattan and not members of the Clan Maclean
even though they bear a common surname.
A chief was also entitled to add to his clan by the
adoption of families or groups of families to membership of his clan, a
good example being the "boll meal Frasers". Equally, a chief has and had
the power to expel or exclude particular persons from membership of his
clan and this included blood members of his family. It was his legal right
to outlaw certain persons from his clan. This is accepted in the modern
sense to mean that a chief is empowered to accept anyone he wishes to be a
member of his clan or decree that his clan membership shall be limited to
particular groups or names of people. All persons who bear the chief's
surname are deemed to be members of his clan. Equally, it is generally
accepted that someone who determines to offer their allegiance to the
chief shall be recognised as a member of that clan unless the chief has
decreed that he will not accept such a person's allegiance, Thus, if a
person offers his allegiance to a particular chief by joining his clan
society or by wearing his tartan, he can be deemed to have elected to join
that particular clan and should be viewed as a member of that clan unless
the chief particularly states that he or his name group are not to be
allowed to join the clan.
It should also be said that the various Sept lists,
which are published in the various Clans and Tartan books, have no
official authority. They merely represent some person's, (usually in the
Victorian eras) views of which name groups were in a particular clan's
territory. Thus we find members of a clan described, as being persons
owing allegiance to their chief "be pretence of blud or place of thare
duelling". In addition to blood members of the clan, certain families have
a tradition (even if the tradition can with the aid of modern records be
shown to be wrong) descent from a particular clan chief. They are, of
course, still recognised as being members of the clan.
Historically, the concept of "clan territory" also
gives rise to difficulty, particularly as certain names or Septs claim
allegiance to a particular chief, because they come from his territory.
The extent of the territory of any particular chief varied from time to
time depending on the waxing and waning of his power. Thus a particular
name living on the boundaries of a clan's territory would find that while
the chiefs power was on the up they would owe him allegiance but - if his
power declined retrospectively at some arbitrary' date which the compiler
of the list has selected. Often the names are Scotland-wide and so it is
difficult to say that particular name belongs to a particular clan. Often
surnames are shown as potentially being members of a number of clans, and
this is because a number of that name has been found in each different
clan's territory. Generally speaking, if a person has a particular sept
name which can he attributed to a number of clans, either they should
determine from what part of Scotland their family originally came and owe
allegiance to the clan of that area or, alternatively, if they do not know
where they came from, they should perhaps owe allegiance to the clan to
which their family had traditionally owed allegiance. Alternatively, they
may offer their allegiance to any of the particular named clans in the
hope that the chief will accept them as a member of his clan. Equally, as
has already been said, with the variations from time to time of particular
chiefly territories, it can be said that at one particular era some names
were members of or owed allegiance to a particular chief while a century
later their allegiance may well have been owed elsewhere.
In summary, therefore, the right to belong to a clan or
family, which are the same thing, is a matter for the determination of the
chief who is entitled to accept or reject persons who offer him their
allegiance.
© Sir Crispin Agnew of Lochnaw Bt
I hope you will have found the above article useful of
course we have a considerable amount of historical information on Scottish
and Scots-Irish clans and families which you can explore at
http://www.electricscotland.com/webclans/index.html
Most of the information we hold comes from antiquarian
books published around the 1830's but we also get many contributions from
various sources which we've added to our pages. Recently we added "The
Great Historic Families of Scotland" and are currently adding "Historic
Earls and Earldoms of Scotland". We also hold "The Historical Families of
Dumfriesshire and the Border Wars" and many other books which are
available for research. To view all the books we have on the site visit
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/books.htm
Adding to this great fund of knowledge the Family Tree
and Electric Scotland are adding newsletters from various clan societies
which you can see at
http://www.electricscotland.com/familytree/newsletters/index.htm and
we'd certainly encourage more clan societies to get involved. We'd like to
get a text version of their newsletters so that we can index the
information into our site search engine which is really the best way to
search the site for relevant information.
Finally, I'd just like to encourage you to join your
own Clan society as they will record you as a member of the Clan and of
course, if you are doing genealogy research, they will often have
information not available elsewhere. It's also good just to be a member
and contribute a little to help the sense of family that many Clan
societies engender, especially in North America. Where we know of a clan
society we have added a link to it from our Clan pages.