Loading
Loading

Clan Crawford

I WILL GIVE YOU SAFETY BY STRENGTH


The surname Crawford is taken from the barony of the same name in Lanarkshire.

The sister of Sir Reginald Crawford, sheriff of Ayr, married Wallace of Elderslie in the 13th century and was the mother of William Wallace, the Scottish knight and patriot who was immortalised in the film Braveheart. The Crawfords supported Wallace as he opposed English domination during the Scottish Wars of Independence. Sir Thomas Craufurd of Jordanhill became a member of Lord Darnley's household when he married Mary, Queen of Scots.

The Crawford clan motto is "Tutum te robore reddam" (I will give you safety by strength) and the clan crest is a stag's head with a cross crosslet fitchée between the antlers.

Scottish History

of Clan Crawford


In freedom’s cause

One of the great Lowland families, the Crawfords have played a key role at pivotal points in Scotland’s long and colourful story.

In common with many families and clans their origins are shrouded in the mists of obscurity, but a gleam of light is discernible when we learn that, following the Battle of Hastings in 1066, an Anglo-Danish chief known as Thorlongus, or Thor the Tall, found refuge in Berwickshire.

Thorlongus was a descendant of Viking raiders who had settled centuries earlier on the east coast of England, intermarried with the Anglo-Saxons already settled there, and rose to the ranks of the nobility.

Following his invasion of England in 1066 the Norman Conqueror, William, launched a campaign of persecution against nobles such as Thorlongus, and many fled their lands and estates for both sanctuary and a new life in Scotland.

At some stage between 1097 and 1107, Thorlongus was granted lands at Ednam, near Kelso, in the Borders, by King Edgar.

His son, Swane, had a son known as Galfridus Swaneson, who settled in Lanarkshire and was later granted the Barony of Crawford, in Upper Clydesdale, between 1105 and 1110.

It is from the land, or territory, known as Crawford, also spelled Craufurd, that the former Anglo-Danes took the name by which they would gain fame in the succeeding centuries.

There are three possible origins for the name ‘Crawford’. One is that it comes from ‘craw’, or ‘crow’, and ‘ford’, or ‘furd’, meaning a river crossing, while another is that it indicates a cattle crossing.

The more likely explanation is that it stems from ‘cru-furd’, or ‘cru-ford’, with ‘cru’ indicating ‘bloody’, hence ‘bloody ford’ or ‘bloody crossing’ – because it is known that the area was witness to a number of savage battles, particularly between invading Roman legions and local tribes.

The first official reference to the Crawford name in Scottish records occurs in 1127, during the reign of King David I, when the two brothers Sir John and Sir Gregan Crawford are recorded as among the Scottish knights serving the monarch.

It was Sir John, who died in 1140, who gave his name to the Lanarkshire village of Crawfordjohn, while his brother, Gregan, gained eternal fame for his family after saving the life of his king in 1127.

King David, according to legend, had been hunting in the grounds of what would later become the abbey and palace of Holyrood, in Edinburgh, when Sir Gregan Crawford saved him from a charging stag.

A grateful king, the legend runs, rewarded his loyal knight by granting him lands in Ayrshire, and later founded the Holy Cross (Holyrood) Abbey in thanks for his salvation.

The incident is commemorated in the Crawford crest of a stag with a cross between its antlers, and the family motto of ‘I will give you safety by strength.’

The Crawford power and influence increased dramatically in 1196 when William the Lyon appointed Sir Reginald Crawford of Crawfordjohn to the powerful post of hereditary Sheriff of Ayr, on Scotland’s west coast.

Just over 300 years later, in 1499, the family had established the three main branches that are recognised today. These are the Crawfords of Auchinames, in Renfrewshire, the Craufurds of Craufurdland, near Kilmarnock, in Ayrshire, and the Crawfords of Kilbirnie, also in Ayrshire.

The head of the family, by tradition, is recognised as belonging to the Auchinames branch, which traces its descent from the original Crawford sheriffs of Ayr.

The last registered head of the family, however, Hugh Crawford, sold off all his heritable property before his death in Alberta, Canada, in the 1960s.

Although some Crawfords recognise a close family link with the renowned Lindsay clan – through the marriage in the 12th century of a Crawford woman to David Lindsay, ancestor of the Earls of Crawford and Balcarres – the Crawford family is officially recognised as a distinct family, with its own proud heritage and tradition and not, as some argue, a sept, or branch, of the Lindsays.

A more significant marriage made in the 12th century was that of Margaret Crawford, a sister of the then Sheriff of Ayr, to Sir Malcolm Wallace.

This resulted in Margaret Crawford becoming the mother of the great Scottish hero and patriot William Wallace, a connection with which the Crawfords can be justly proud.

Controversy exists to this day over whether Wallace was born on his father’s lands of Elderslie, near Paisley, or if these lands were actually the lands of Ellerslie, near Kilmarnock.

In the wider scheme of the great Wars of Independence, however, the location of Wallace’s birth in about 1272 is unimportant. He raised the banner of revolt against the English occupation of Scotland in May of 1297, after slaying Sir William Heselrig, Sheriff of Lanark, in revenge for the killing of his young wife, Marion.

Proving an expert in the tactics of guerrilla warfare, Wallace and his hardened band of freedom fighters inflicted stunning defeats on the English garrisons.

This culminated in the liberation of practically all of Scotland following the battle of Stirling Bridge, on September 11, 1297.

Defeated at the battle of Falkirk on July 22, 1298, after earlier being appointed Guard-ian of Scotland, Sir William Wallace was eventually betrayed and captured in August of 1305, and, on the black day for Scotland of August 23 of that year, he was brutally executed in London on the orders of a vengeful Edward I of England, better known as The Hammer of the Scots.

Wallace’s Crawford relations also paid dearly for their support of the great patriot.

His uncle, Sir Reginald Crawford, was executed at Carlisle in 1303, while his grandfather on his mother’s side, Sir Hugh Crawford, was treacherously murdered after he and other prominent landholders were lured to Ayr under what they believed was an English guarantee of safe conduct and unceremoniously hanged.

Wallace later gained vengeance for the action by slaughtering the English garrison at Ayr.

A cousin of Wallace, Sir William Crawford of Elcho, accompanied him to the French court in 1299 to seek support for the cause of Scotland’s freedom.

Crawfords also fought for the cause of the great warrior king Robert the Bruce at the battle of Bannockburn, in 1314, and it was as reward for their service that Bruce granted them the lands of Auchinames.

Robert III in 1391 confirmed the lands of Craufurd of Craufurdland, while the Kilbirnie estates were acquired one hundred years later, in 1499.

Commandos and ministers

A strong martial spirit continued to run throughout the succeeding centuries through the bloodstream of the Crawfords, with Sir William Craufurd of Craufurdland, for example, being recognised during the reign of James I as one of the bravest men of his times.

Along with other Scots with a taste for foreign adventure and a good battle, he fought in the service of the French monarch against the English and was wounded in 1423 at the siege of Creyult, in Burgundy.

Two senior members of branches of the Crawford family, John Craufurd of Craufurdland and the Laird of Auchinames, fell with their king, James IV, at the disastrous battle of Flodden on September 9, 1513.

They were among 5,000 Scots, including two bishops, 11 earls, 15 barons, and 300 knights, who were slain by a more tactically astute English force led by Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey.

Nearly 34 years later to the day, on September 10, 1547, the military commander Captain Thomas Crawford of Jordanhill was among the Scots captured and imprisoned for a time in England following defeat at the battle of Pinkie, near Musselburgh.

The battle was fought during the period known as the Rough Wooing, when England’s Henry VIII sought at the point of a sword to persuade the Scots to agree to a proposal for the marriage of the infant Mary, Queen of Scots, to his son, Edward.

Archibald Crawford, a Lord of Session and secretary to Mary’s mother, Queen Mary of Guise, accompanied her body in 1560 from Scotland to Rheims, in France, for burial.

By 1571, Mary, Queen of Scots was being held in confinement in England following her flight there after defeat at the battle of Langside, near Glasgow, three years earlier.

The strategically important bastion of Dumbarton Castle, atop Dumbarton Rock in the Firth of Clyde, however, was still held by her supporters, and it was vital that her enemies seize it in order to prevent a French fleet from reinforcing it from the Irish Sea or disembarking an army on the mainland.

Captain Thomas Crawford of Jordanhill, none the worse from his imprisonment in England following the battle of Pinkie 24 years earlier, was chosen to lead an intrepid band of 150 men for what seemed an almost impossible task.

In the 16th century equivalent of a commando raid, and in the late hours of a misty April night, Crawford and his band assembled at the foot of the towering basaltic rock equipped with ladders with attached iron clamps and lengths of stout rope.

With Crawford leading the way, they began their hair-raising and tortuous ascent of what was considered the most inaccessible section of the rock, the area from which the defenders would least expect an attack.

Spotted by a lone sentry just after clambering over the castle battlements, Crawford and his band swiftly turned and trained the castle’s own cannon onto the rudely awoken garrison.

Crawford’s daring assault had worked, and before the sun had risen he and his men had taken the supposedly impregnable fortress with only four fatalities – all on the side of the defenders.

In addition to his allegiance to his own family of Crawford, Captain Crawford was also a kinsman of the Earl of Lennox, father of Lord Darnley, Mary’s murdered husband, and he is also remembered for the key role he played in what is known as the Casket Letters controversy.

The letters involved alleged correspondence between Mary and Bothwell that implicated her in the conspiracy to murder her husband. Evidence from Crawford apparently vouched for the authenticity of the incriminating letters.

Captain Crawford is buried in Kilbirnie churchyard, in Ayrshire, and his recumbent figure fittingly shows the veteran military commander clad in full armour.

In common with his distinguished relation Captain Thomas Crawford, Lawrence Crawford, born in 1611, was a staunch Presbyterian. It was in defence of the Protestant cause that he fought on the Continent for the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus during the bitter Thirty Years War.

Returning later to fight on the Parliamentary side against Charles I, he was killed in 1645 at the siege of Hereford.

He must have had something of a rather fearless and irascible temperament, for he is known to have frequently quarrelled with the great Lord Protector himself, Oliver Cromwell!

Another staunch defender of the Presbyterian faith was Hugh Crawford, the younger son of the laird of Auchinames, who was appointed the first minister at New Cumnock, in his native Ayrshire, in 1653, during the sorrowful time of bloody struggle between the opposing forces of the Crown and the Presbyterian Covenanters.

Described as having been ‘one of Ayrshire’s band of true covenanting ministers’, Hugh Crawford literally took to the hills to preach at open-air conventicles after being expelled from his parish.

He was banished from Scotland in May of 1683 and found refuge in Ireland, returning to his homeland after the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 when William of Orange was invited to take over the united thrones of Scotland and England.

Read more

Family History Mini Book


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

You can buy the full book for only
$5.08

113 Clan Crawford

Tartan Products

The Crests

of Clan Crawford

Clan Crawford
Clan Crawford
Clan Crawford
Clan Crawford
Clan Crawford (Ayr)

61 Clan Crawford

Crest Products

Historically Related Septs

of Clan Crawford

Spellings

of Crawford

Crauford
Craufurd
Craunford
Crafort
Craweford
Crafoord
Crawfurd
Crawffurd
Crawfaird
Crafford
Crafoard
Craford
Crafuirde
Craufurde
Crafurd
Crouford
Crauffurd
Crawfeurd
Craufoord
Crauforth
Krauford