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Clan Broun

FLOREAT MAJESTAS


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Scottish History

of Clan Broun


The French connection

Originally a descriptive term for the colour of a person’s hair, complexion, or clothing, Brown is now one of the most common surnames in Scotland, England, and the USA, but there is nothing commonplace about the lives, times, and achievements of those who have borne the name down through the centuries until the present day.

Variations of ‘Brown’ exist in every European language. In France it is le Brun, and in German Brun, or Braun, while other versions are Bron, Browne, Browyn, Brwne, Brune, Brouin, Broune, and Broun.

The name le Brune (‘the Brown’) is found in Cumberland only a few decades after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, at a time when this vast area of the north of England was part of the Scottish kingdom.

This family of le Brune would have been among those Norman warriors, their families, and retainers who settled in England and later in Scotland following the conquest.

The name also appears in Scotland in 1128 when a Sir David le Brun is recorded as witnessing the foundation charter of Holyrood Abbey.

King David I, according to legend, had been hunting in the grounds of what would later become the abbey and palace of Holyrood, in Edinburgh, when he was saved from a charging stag, and founded the Holy Cross (Holyrood) Abbey in thanks for his salvation.

As a witness to the foundation charter, it is probable that Sir David le Brun was one of the knights who had accompanied his monarch on the hunt.

The most common form of the name in Scotland for a number of centuries was ‘Broun’, and the infamous Ragman Roll of 1296 records Brouns from Berwick, Linlithgow, Lanark, and Edinburgh as signatories.

Signed by 1,500 bishops, earls, and burgesses such as the Brouns, the roll was a humiliating treaty of fealty to England’s Edward I, known as the Hammer of the Scots, and is known as the Ragman Roll because of the profusion of ribbons that dangle from the seals of the signatories.

The Brouns, in common with the vast majority of those who swore fealty to Edward, had no option but to do so, but avenged themselves later when they took up the cause of Scotland’s freedom during the bloody Wars of Independence.

The name is also found towards the close of the thirteenth century in Fife, Perth, and the northeast of Scotland, while a family known as the Brouns of Hartrie are known to have settled near Biggar, in Lanarkshire, by the turn of the fifteenth century.

A Clan Broun Society exists today in the USA, and claims a descent from the family of the Brouns of Colstoun, in East Lothian.

Such a family did indeed exist and thrive for centuries in East Lothian and, intriguingly, claimed a descent from the Royal House of France.

This is not as improbable as it may seem, because alliances endured for centuries between Scotland and France, and not only on a political level.

The Auld Alliance also embraced alliances through marriage, and it is possible that a French ‘le Brun’ with close connections to the French monarchy, may have married a daughter of the Scottish aristocracy.

The arms of the Brouns of Colstoun feature the three fleur-de-lys of the French monarchy, while their crest is a lion holding a fleur-de-lys in its paw. Keeping up the tradition of a royal pedigree, their motto is ‘Let Majesty Flourish.’

One colourful tradition of the Brouns of Colstoun concerns a strange fruit known as the Colstoun Pear, which was said to have been imbued with magical properties by the thirteenth century necromancer and wizard Hugo de Gifford of Yester, in the Scottish Borders.

Reputed to ensure prosperity for the family who owned it, the Colstoun Pear became the property of the Brouns of Colstoun in 1543 when George Broun married Jean Hay, a daughter of Lord Yester.

The pear was Jean Hay’s precious dowry, and is said to have retained its ripe freshness right up until the end of the seventeenth century when a pregnant descendant, craving a taste of the out-of-season fruit, treated herself to a bite.

The pear immediately lost its magical properties and became rock hard.

The pregnant lady’s whim, however, does not appear to have adversely affected the subsequent fortunes of the Brouns of Colstoun. In 1686, Patrick Broun of Colstoun is recorded as being created a baronet of Nova Scotia (New Scotland).

This title appears to have been inherited, because James VI had granted the first baronetcies of Nova Scotia in 1624 to Scots of substance who were willing to invest in what was Scotland’s first attempt to establish a colony in North America.

The area for proposed colonisation took in not only present-day Nova Scotia but also New Brunswick and the territory between there and the St. Lawrence River.

Nearly forty Scottish magnates, including a Broun, were granted allotments of territory and, although not physically required to take up possession of their distant new lands, a special ceremony was enacted on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh where a small area was designated ‘Nova Scotia’ to allow them to formally take ‘possession’ of their land and be duly honoured with their baronetcy.

Nova Scotia, in effect, had been ‘incorporated’ into the Scottish kingdom, while the scheme marked the introduction of the honour of baronet to Scotland.

A combination of factors, including the terms of a peace treaty between England and France, led to the colony finally being abandoned in 1632.

The right to the baronetcy was retained, however, along with the provision that the title would pass to male heirs.

Their spirit of commercial enterprise was not dampened by the failure of the colonisation project, and branches of the Brouns of Colstoun subsequently settled as successful merchants in Elsinore, in Denmark, where the name is still to be found.

Kinsmen of the clansmen

The Brouns, or Browns, are also heir to colourful traditions with roots in the mists and mountains of the Highlands and Islands.

The name has it equivalent in the Gaelic ‘donn’, or ‘duinne’, while a common form is Mac-Mhaoil-Dhuinn, or Mac-Ghille-Dhuinn, meaning ‘son of the brown devotee, servant, or lad.’

Other forms of the name include McIlduin and McIldyn.

A common misconception, however, is that the Gaelic Mac a’ bhriuthainn (‘son of the brehon’) can be anglicised as ‘brown’. The name actually stems from Britheamh, which was the honoured title given to the hereditary judges, or lawgivers, of the Western Isles.

There are Browns on both the west coast islands of Islay and Tiree, where they are known as ‘Brunaich’, but they are believed to be of Lowland origin.

A much stronger link between the Browns and Gaeldom can be traced to the proud clans of both MacMillan and Lamont.

This link is so strong that Browns who can trace an origin back to the territorial lands of either of these clans are entitled to be regarded as belonging to a sept, or branch, of the clan.

The MacMillans at various times held lands in Carradale, Knapdale, Loch Tayside, Lochaber, Glenurquhart, the Outer Hebrides, and Galloway, and it was the son of a MacMillan of Carradale who is thought to have been the progenitor of the ‘MacMillan Browns.’

The colourful legend is that MacMillan of Carradale had three sons who, along with their father and their clansmen, set off in hot pursuit of a band of Atholmen who had raided their lands and driven off their cattle.

A fierce battle ensued after they met up with the raiders, but the MacMillans emerged victorious and retrieved their precious cattle.

The younger son, however, pursued the Atholmen off the field of battle and returned to Carradale Glen a few days later bearing a great number of heads of those he had single-handedly slain.

His proud father is said to have cried out: ‘My little hero, my brown-haired lad! You’re the champion yourself, to master them!”

The descendants of the heroic young son subsequently took the name of Brown and were known as the Mac ‘illemhaoil-dhuins, ‘the brown-haired MacMillans.’

The power of the MacMillans appears to have gone into decline from about the early seventeenth century, and it is believed many of the ‘MacMillan Browns’ settled in the Cowal peninsula, where a branch of MacMillans had already settled, and entered into kinship with the Lamont Clan.

The Lamonts had been in the Cowal area of Argyll since at least the early thirteenth century, but the fate of the clan and their kinsmen such as the Browns was sealed in 1646 when they clashed with the powerful Clan Campbell.

A force of Campbells led by Sir Colin Campbell of Ardkinglas besieged the Lamont’s Toward Castle and, outnumbered and all but overwhelmed, Sir James Lamont had no option but to surrender in return for the safe passage of his family, clansmen, and kinsmen.

Sir Colin Campbell promptly reneged on the deal, however, and cast Sir James into Dunstaffnage Castle, where he was kept in dark and damp confinement for five years, not even allowed a change of clothing.

A more terrible fate awaited his clansmen and kinsmen, who were also thrown into confinement for about a week and a number of the women raped and killed.

The surviving prisoners were then marched to Dunoon and, adding sacrilege to the crimes already committed, were taken into a churchyard where about 100 of them were either shot, stabbed, or had their throats cut.

Nearly 40 of the leading clansmen were hanged from the same tree, cut down while still alive, thrown into hastily dug pits, covered with earth, and left to suffocate to death.

Some Lamonts and their Brown kinsfolk managed to not only survive the butchery, however, but were able to thrive through the succeeding centuries.

Those Browns of today who can trace a descent to either the MacMillans or the Lamonts are entitled to adopt the particular clan’s crest and motto.

The MacMillan crest features two hands grasping a sword, while the Lamont crest is an upright right hand, palm facing outwards.

The MacMillan motto is ‘I learn to succour the distressed’, and the Lamont motto, ‘Neither spare nor disgrace.’

Brown was also the name adopted by many dispossessed Highland clansmen following the abortive Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, when not only many aspects of an ancient way of life such as the wearing of tartan, the carrying of weapons, and the playing of bagpipes were banned, but the clan name itself was also proscribed.

Outlawed as robbers, the MacGregors are an example of a clan forced on some occasions for the sake of survival to adopt a less controversial or ‘neutral’ surname, such as Brown, Gray, White, or Smith.

This is understood to have been the case with a humble family of Browns who farmed at Crathie, in Aberdeenshire, and one of whose descendants was to gain fame as Queen Victoria’s faithful ghillie, or servant, John Brown.

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Family History Mini Book


We hope you enjoyed reading this excerpt from this mini book on the Scottish history of the Broun family.

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English History

of Clan Broun


Battle honours

Originally a descriptive term for the colour of a person’s hair, complexion, or clothing, Brown is now one of the most common surnames in England, but there is nothing commonplace about the lives, times and achievements of those who have borne the name down through the centuries until the present day.

Variations of ‘Brown’ exist in every European language. In France it is le Brun, and in Germany Brun, or Braun, while other versions are Bron, Browne, Browyn, Brwne, Brune, Brouin, Broune, and Broun.

The name le Brune – ‘the Brown’ – was first found in present-day Northumberland, only a few decades after the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, at a time when much of this vast area of the north of England was part of the Scottish kingdom.

A family of le Brune, or Brown, are thought to have been among those Norman warriors, their families and retainers who settled in England and later in Scotland following the conquest – and the surname subsequently grew in popularity.

By the very nature of their geographical location in the north of England, many bearers of the name would have become victims of the interminable and bloody warfare that raged for centuries between the two nations – in common with their namesakes across the border.

In later centuries and on much different fields of battle, many of the name have gained distinction on the field of battle – with two being recipients of the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest award for valour in the face of enemy action for British and Commonwealth forces.

Born in 1898 in Gananoque, Ontario, Harry W. Brown was a Canadian recipient of the honour during the carnage of the First World War.

He had been serving on the Western Front with the 10th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force when, during the battle of Hill 70 in August of 1917, he braved heavy enemy fire to take an important message back from the front line to his support lines – thereby saving the lives of a number of his comrades.

Wounded in the action, he died the following day, while his VC is now on display at the Canadian War Museum, Ottawa.

Walter Brown, born in 1885 in New Norfolk, Tasmania, was an Australian recipient of the VC during the First World War.

It was while serving in the infantry with the Australian Army’s 20th Battalion that, in July of 1918 at Villers-Bretonneux, he single-handedly destroyed a German machine-gun post and took a number of prisoners.

Returning to civilian life at the end of the conflict, on the outbreak of the Second World War and aged 54, he lied about not only his age but also his background in order to re-enlist in the army.

It was while serving with the Royal Australian Artillery that he was killed in action in Singapore in February of 1942 following the Japanese attack on Malaya; his VC is now on display at the Australian War Museum, Canberra.

In the skies above the Western Front during the First World War, Captain Arthur Roy Brown was the Canadian flying ace officially credited by the RAF with having shot down the famous German ace Manfred von Richthofen, more colourfully known as the Red Baron.

Born in 1893 and enlisting with the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) – later known as the Royal Air Force (RAF) following the amalgamation in April of 1918 of the RFC and the Royal Naval Air Squadron (RNAS) – his first ‘kill’ came in July of 1917 when he shot down a German Albatross D. III.

Three unconfirmed and two unconfirmed kills followed, but it was on April 21, 1918, that he was engaged in the aerial action for which he became particularly famous.

This was when, involved with other pilots of his squadron in a fast and furious dogfight with fighters of Jagdstaffel II, led by the Red Baron, he apparently shot him down.

But while the RAF officially credited Brown with the death of the Red Baron, it now appears more likely that the German ace, who had been forced to descend to an extremely low altitude as Brown attacked him, was actually shot down from ground level by Australian Army machine-gunners.

Brown later donated the seat of the Fokker triplane the Red Baron had been flying to the Royal Canadian Military Institute.

He died in 1944, while he is portrayed by the actor Don Stroud in the 1971 film Von Richthofen and Brown.

Another noted aviator was Sir Arthur Whitten Brown, born to American parents in 1886 in Glasgow, where his father had been investigating the prospect of setting up a factory in Clydebank.

Following a distinguished flying career during the First World War and also being captured after being shot down, it was in June of 1919 that, as navigator, and with John Alcock as pilot, he made the first successful non-stop transatlantic flight.

This was in a modified Vickers Vimy bomber that flew 1,980 miles (3,168km) from St John’s, Newfoundland, to Clifden, Connemara, in Ireland.

Knighted along with Alcock in recognition of the pioneering feat, he died in 1948.

Loyal service

From servants of royalty to servants of the people, other bearers of the Brown name have made their mark on the historical record.

It was shortly after Queen Victoria and her consort Prince Albert had Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire built as their Scottish retreat, that a colourful and charismatic character known as John Brown came to work there from nearby Crathie as a gamekeeper and general estate worker.

He rapidly gained royal favour, becoming Prince Albert’s personal ghillie and, following the consort’s death in 1861, the personal servant of the Queen herself.

Victoria was bereft over the loss of her beloved Albert, and Brown appears to have provided much needed comfort and solace throughout her long years of mourning.

The blunt speaking farmer’s son, born in Crathie in 1826, was despised by the Queen’s immediate family, royal courtiers and other servants who resented and were jealous of the favours the monarch granted him and the easy informality he was allowed to adopt towards her.

Among the many gifts he received from a grateful Victoria were two medals especially created for him, the Faithful Servant Medal and the Devoted Service Medal, while she also commissioned a portrait of her loyal ghillie.

He died at Windsor Castle in 1883, after contracting a chill that could have been averted had he immediately taken to his sickbed. Brown was buried in his native Crathie.

Victoria was inconsolable with grief at the loss of her loyal retainer and had a life-sized statue of him erected in the grounds of Balmoral.

Following her death in 1901, however, the statue was removed to a less prominent spot, while Edward VII set about destroying all other reminders of Brown that he could find.

Speculation was rife during Brown and Victoria’s lifetimes as to the exact nature of their close relationship, with whispered rumours that it was of a sexual nature.

The speculation continues to the present day, and was recently refuelled with the discovery of diaries that make the startling claim that the Reverend Norman MacLeod, Victoria’s chaplain, had made a deathbed confession that he had reluctantly presided over the secret marriage of the Queen to her humble servant.

Doubt has been cast on the veracity of the account committed to the diaries, however, but doubtless the speculation will continue for many more years to come.

Across thousands of miles of ocean from the farm in Crathie where John Brown was born, another John Brown, born in Torrington, Connecticut, in 1800, is revered as the American abolitionist whose militant opposition to slavery lit the spark of the Civil War that eventually freed the slaves.

He had a number of nicknames, including Oswatomie Brown, Old Man Brown, and Captain Brown, and it was as a military leader that he led a raid on the federal armoury at Harpers Ferry, in present day West Virginia, in 1859.

He was captured and hanged, but his memory survives in the song John Brown’s Body, which became a favourite marching song of the Union troops during the American Civil War of 1861-65.

In contemporary British politics, James Gordon Brown, better known as Gordon Brown, is the British Labour Party politician who served as Prime Minister from 2007 until 2010.

Previous to this, under Prime Minister Tony Blair, he served from 1997 to 2007 as Chancellor of the Exchequer – making him to date the longest serving holder of the office in modern history.

Born in 1951 and the son of a Church of Scotland minister who had a profound influence on his own social and moral outlook, he was raised along with his older brother John and younger brother Andrew in his father’s manse in Kirkcaldy, Fife.

An academic prodigy, he was aged only 16 when accepted to study history at Edinburgh University. He graduated with a first class degree, while he later also gained a PhD in the subject.

Meanwhile, it had been while playing rugby at his local school that he sustained an injury that left him blind in his left eye, while he later successfully underwent surgery to save his right eye.

His first foray into the political world had been when he served, as a student, as Rector of Edinburgh University.

After a career that included lecturing in politics and working for a time as a television journalist, in 1983 he was elected Labour MP for Dunfermline East and, later, what is now the constituency of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.

It was after the resignation of Tony Blair as Labour leader and Prime Minister in 2007 that Brown was selected to replace him in both posts – holding them until Labour’s defeat at the 2010 General Election.

Married in 2000 to Sarah Macaulay, he is the father of two sons – while the couple’s first child died only a few days after her birth.

Named in 2009 by the Appeal of Conscience Foundation as World Statesman of the Year and in 2012 appointed a United Nations Special Envoy on Global Education, he is also the author of noted works that include his 1986 Maxton: A Biography and his 2010 Beyond the Crash: Overcoming the First Crisis of Globalisation.

After lending his considerable and impassioned political weight for a “No” vote in the referendum for Scottish Independence in September of 2014, he announced three months later his retiral from active Parliamentary politics.

One particularly colourful senior Labour Party politician was George Brown, born in 1914 in Lambeth, near London.

From a working class background, he rose through the ranks of the Labour Party to serve for a time as its deputy leader and, under Prime Minister Harold Wilson, as Foreign Secretary from 1966 to 1968.

Probably through the pressures of the high offices he held, however, he had an unfortunate relationship with alcohol, and was involved in a number of embarrassing drink-fuelled incidents.

Retiring from government in March of 1968, he was later ennobled as Lord George-Brown of Jevington in the County of Sussex; he died in 1985.

Born in 1881 in Torquay, Devon, Alfred Brown was a senior British Liberal Party politician.

Serving during the First World War in the Somerset Light Infantry, he was awarded the Military Cross (MC), and first entered Parliament in 1923.

In the National Government of Labour’s leader Ramsay MacDonald, he served in 1931 as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, while in 1935 he was appointed Minister of Labour.

He was renowned for not only the extremely fast delivery of his speeches in the House of Commons, but also for the loudness of his voice.

So strong was his voice that on one occasion fellow politician Stanley Baldwin was startled to hear it booming out in No. 11 Downing Street. When informed that it was merely Brown ‘speaking to Scotland’, Baldwin famously asked: “Why doesn’t he use the telephone?” he died in 1962.

Browns have also stamped their mark on the historical record through pioneering work in the sciences.

Born Herbert Brovarnik in London in 1912, the son of Ukrainian-Jewish immigrants to Britain and later changing his surname, Herbert Brown was the chemist who, along with his colleague Georg Wittig, won the 1979 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their work on the compounds of boron and hydrogen known as boranes.

Holder of a number of positions that included professor of inorganic chemistry at Purloe University, Indiana, he died in 2004.

Born in Edinburgh in 1838, Alexander Crum Brown was the Scottish organic chemist who discovered the carbon double bond of ethylene – contributing greatly to the development of the modern plastics industry.

Holder of a number of important academic posts including professor of chemistry at Edinburgh University from 1869 to 1908, he died in 1922.

One particularly feisty bearer of the proud name of Brown was the socialite and philanthropist Margaret “Molly” Brown, née Tobin, the survivor of the 1912 sinking of the Titanic who became better known as The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

Born in 1867 in Hannibal, Missouri, she married the wealthy mining engineering entrepreneur James Brown, but the couple separated in 1909 after 23 years of marriage.

As a first class passenger aboard the Titanic on its maiden voyage to New York, after disaster struck she not only helped fellow passengers into lifeboats but also plied an oar herself and insisted that the crewman in charge of her lifeboat – Lifeboat No. 6 – return closer to the stricken vessel to attempt to pick up more survivors.

She died in 1932, while a Broadway musical based on her life and times, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, was produced in 1961 and adapted for a film of the same name in 1964.

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Family History Mini Book


We hope you enjoyed reading this excerpt from this mini book on the English history of the Broun family.

You can buy the full book for only
$5.08

98 Clan Broun

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The Crests

of Clan Broun

Clan Broun
Clan Broun (Colstoun)
Clan Broun (Newhall)
Clan Broun
Clan Broun
Clan Broun
Clan Broun
Clan Broun
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Clan Broun

Mottos

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Historically Related Septs

of Clan Broun