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Clan Chisholm

FEROS FERIO


Clan Chisholm have been present in the Borders as early as the reign of Alexander III. The name comes from from the Norman 'chese', 'to choose' and the Saxon 'holm', meaning 'meadow'. The earliest recorded member of the family is one John de Chesehelme, appearing in records from 1254. The boar's head depicted in the Chisholm clan crest is said to represent a wild boar that attacked the king of Scotland, whose life was saved by two Chisholm brothers.

The clan were staunchly Catholic during the Reformation, and supported the Jacobite cause. After the Battle of Culloden in 1745, three of the men who aided Bonnie Prince Charlie's escape to the continent were Chisholms. One of them, Hugh Chisholm, shook hands with the prince and vowed to never shake the hand of another man for the rest of his life - a vow which he is said to have kept.

The Chisholms were famous for their skill in cattle raiding - in 1498 Wiland Chisholm of Comar was part of a group that carried off 56 oxen, 60 cows, 15 horses 300 sheep and 80 pigs belonging to Clan Rose.

The Chisholm clan motto is Feros Ferio (I am Fierce with the Fierce) and the clan crest is a hand holding a boars head atop a dagger.

Scottish History

of Clan Chisholm


The journey north

In 1066, it is said, the forebear of all the Chisholms landed near Hastings with William the Bastard of Normandy on his mission to conquer England. Nearly a millennium later, his descendants would gather from continents as yet undiscovered to celebrate their kinship on wind-swept hillsides from which their more immediate forebears had been treacherously ejected by the clan’s own chief.

What William’s companion called himself is not known, but it is likely that his family was granted lands in the Borders during the twelfth century and their name first appears in documents from a hundred years later. Alexander de Chesholme witnessed a charter in 1248, while John de Chesehelme is mentioned in a Bull of Pope Alexander IV dated 1254.

The Barony of Chieseholme lay in the parish of Roberton, Roxburghshire, and it is believed that the word Chisholm meant, in the ancient Beornician language, the ‘waterside meadow good for producing cheese’. This pastoral connection is in contrast to the boar’s head which has been borne proudly at the centre of the clan’s coat of arms since at least 1292 – an association with ferocity which was to be proved appropriate in succeeding centuries.

John de Cheshelme’s grandson, Sir John de Chisholme of Berwick, fought at Bannockburn in 1314, on the side of Robert the Bruce. However, the drama of the Chisholm story unfolded not in the Borders, where the family continued for many years, but in the Highlands, where it flourished.

The northern connection began in 1359 when Robert Chisholm became Royal Constable of Castle Urquhart in succession to his mother’s father, Sir Robert Lauder of the Bass. Situated on Loch Ness, Urquhart held the strategic key to the Great Glen, that fissure which divides Scotland from Fort William in the west to Inverness in the north east. Robert’s authority was subsequently increased when he became Sheriff of Inverness and Justiciar of the North, while his inheritance included lands in Moray, near Elgin and Nairn.

The Chisholm line continued in its original homelands through Robert’s youngest son, some of whose descendants also founded the Perthshire branch of the family in Cromlix. But the northern estates increased greatly when Robert’s eldest son Alexander married Margaret, daughter of Wiland of the Aird, and thus became the owner of estates in five counties as well as proprietor of his bride’s home, Erchless Castle. Clan Chisholm had been founded.

Land of their fathers

The Erchless Castle which can now be seen in Strathglass, about ten miles west of Beauly, was built between 1594 and 1623, when the chief was John Chisholm, Commissioner of the Peace for Inverness-shire. Nigel Tranter described it as a “handsome tower-house” - a tall, L-shaped four-storey building with turrets, crowstepped gables, harled and whitewashed walls pierc-ed by gunloops and shot-holes.

A Miss Sinclair, writing in the 1800s, said of it: “This place is beauty personified, and you would fall in love with it at first sight. The castle is a venerable white-washed old tower, so entirely surrounded by a wreath of hills that the glen seems scooped out on purpose to hold the house and park.”

By 2003, it had become possible for anyone with enough money to enjoy Erchless, for the three-storey nineteenth century north wing of the castle could be rented for between £2,000 and £3,000 per week.

But that is to anticipate a long story. As the Chisholm family settled in the north it acquired Strathglass and Ard, and later came into the estate of Comar, which made them proprietors of a large part of Ross-shire.

Boundaries were fluid in those days, however. On one occasion, Chisholm tenants and those of the Earl of Seaforth in Kintail were in disagreement over the hilly border between their Chiefs’ estates. The Chiefs themselves, who were related and on friendly terms, decided on what seemed a peaceful solution to the dispute. An old dairymaid from Kintail walked out from Caisteal Donnan on the Seaforth side, while a Strathglass maid set off from Beinnvean representing the Chisholms. The point where they met was to be recognised as the boundary line.

Unfortunately, when the two confronted each other west of Glen Affric on a hillock between Loch-a-bheallaich and Altbeatha, tempers frayed.

“You have come too far towards Kintail and I will go still further towards Strathglass,” the Seaforth dairymaid is reported to have said. The Chisholm maid retorted that if she dared to go a step further it would be the worse for her.

The Seaforth woman stubbornly ignored her and walked ahead, whereupon, according to an old account, “her adversary dealt her a fatal blow with her staff. Thrusting the staff in the ground near the lifeless body, the maid from Strathglass marched in triumph back to Comar.”

In keeping with the robust attitudes of the period, all present agreed that the matter had been settled in a satisfactory fashion and the place where the confrontation occurred became known as Cnoc-a-Chuaille or the ‘Hillock of the Bludgeon’.

Read more

Family History Mini Book


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

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112 Clan Chisholm

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The Crests

of Clan Chisholm

Clan Chisholm
Clan Chisholm (of that Ilk)
Clan Chisholm
Clan Chisholm

69 Clan Chisholm

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Divisions

of Chisholm

Chisholm of Strathglass
Fenton

Spellings

of Chisholm

Cheseholme
Chisholme
Chesolme
Cheishame
Chesom
Cheisholme
Chesome
Chesehelme
Chessam
Cheseim
Chessame
Cheshelme
Chesseholme
Chesholme
Chesim
Cheishelm
Chism
Cheseholm
Chisolm
Chesholm
Chesolm
Chesame
Cheshelm
Cheshom
Chisolme
Chisomme
Chissem
Chissim
Chissolme
Sheshelm
Schisolme
Schisholme
Schishome
Shisholme
Schisome

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