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Clan Forsyth

A REPAIRER OF RUIN


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Scottish History

of Clan Forsyth


For Scotland’s cause

The origin of the name of Forsyth has never been determined with certainty, but at least three possible sources have been identified.

Whatever the origins, however, what is beyond doubt is that bearers of the name have flourished in Scotland since at least the twelfth century.

One tradition holds that the progenitor, or ‘name-father’ of the Forsyths was one of the wild and sea-roving Norsemen, by the name of Forsach, who eventually settled in present-day France, in the region of Aquitane.

One of his descendants, the Viscomte de Fronsoc, is recorded at the court of England’s Henry III between 1236 and 1246.

His family were granted lands in the north of England, and are believed to have later settled in the Scottish Borders.

From here, they gradually spread throughout Scotland, particularly in Lanarkshire, Stirling, and Fife.

A David Forsyth, who was in possession of lands in the Strathaven area of Lanarkshire as early as the mid to late fifteenth century, proudly and adamantly claimed a descent from the Viscomte de Fronsoc, while the family castle at Dykes dominated the local landscape until it was finally demolished in 1828.

One intriguing mystery concerning the name of Forsyth is that early records designate some bearers as ‘de Forsyth’ (‘of Forsyth’), indicating that the name may have its origins as a territorial or ‘location’ name.

A Thomas de Forsith is recorded in Glasgow in the latter decades of the fifteenth century, while a William de Fersith is recorded in Edinburgh in the sixteenth century.

No actual ‘Forsyth’ place name, however, has ever been identified.

Another possible source of the name is from the Scottish Gaelic ‘fear sithe’, meaning ‘man of peace’, while some authorities speculate that rather than indicating ‘man of peace’, the name may indicate ‘place of peace’.

It would be rather ironical if the origin of the name is indeed from ‘man of peace’, or ‘place of peace’, considering the bloody lives and times of generations of Forsyths who distinguished themselves as brave defenders of Scotland’s freedom and independence and doughty defenders of their religious ideals.

A William de Fersith was one of the reluctant signatories in 1296 to a humiliating treaty of fealty to the conquering Edward I of England, who was known as ‘the Hammer of the Scots’.

Signed by 1,500 earls, bishops, and burgesses, the parchment is known as the Ragman Roll because of the ribbons that dangle from the seals of the signatories.

This humiliation was avenged in May of the following year, however, when William Wallace raised the banner of revolt against the English occupation of Scotland.

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.

Despite having a force of only thirty-six cavalry and 8000 foot soldiers, compared to an army under the Earl of Surrey that boasted no less than 200 knights and 10,000 foot soldiers, the Scots held a strategic advantage that they exploited to the full.

Positioning their forces on the heights of the Abbey Craig, on the outskirts of Stirling, and where the imposing Wallace Monument now stands, Wallace and his commanders waited patiently as Surrey’s force slowly made its way across a narrow wooden bridge that spanned the waters of the Forth.

As the bulk of the English army crossed onto the marshy ground at the foot of the Abbey Craig, the piercing blast of a hunting horn signalled a ferocious charge down the hillside of massed ranks of Scottish spearmen.

Trapped on the boggy ground, the English were incapable of putting up any effective resistance.

They were hacked to death in their hundreds, while many others drowned in the fast-flowing waters of the Forth in their heavy armour as they attempted to make their way back across the narrow bridge.

Defeated at the battle of Falkirk on July 22, 1298, after earlier being appointed Guardian of Scotland, Sir William Wallace was eventually betrayed and captured in August of 1305, and, on August 23, he was brutally executed in London on the orders of a vengeful Edward I.

The beacon of freedom was soon re-ignited under the inspired leadership of Robert the Bruce, however, who was enthroned as King of Scots in an ancient ceremony at Scone Abbey in March of the following year.

One of his earliest supporters appears to have been Osbert Forsyth, because it is only a short time after 1306 that Bruce granted him lands at Sauchie, in Stirlingshire.

Forsyth also fought with distinction at the side of the great warrior king at Bannockburn in June of 1314, when a 20,000-strong English army under Edward II was defeated by a Scots army less than half this strength.

By midsummer of 1313 the mighty fortress of Stirling Castle was occupied by an English garrison under the command of Sir Philip Mowbray.

Bruce’s brother, Edward, agreed to a pledge by Mowbray that if the castle was not relieved by battle by midsummer of the following year, then he would surrender.

This made battle inevitable, and by June 23 of 1314 the two armies faced one another at Bannockburn, in sight of the castle.

It was on this day that Bruce slew the English knight Sir Henry de Bohun in single combat, but the battle proper was not fought until the following day, shortly after the rise of the midsummer sun.

The English cavalry launched a desperate but futile charge on the densely packed ranks of Scottish spearmen known as schiltrons, and by the time the sun had sank slowly in the west the English army had been totally routed, with Edward himself only narrowly managing to make his escape from the carnage of the battlefield.

Scotland’s independence had been secured, to the glory of Bruce and loyal supporters such as Osbert Forsyth, who was rewarded in 1320 with confirmation of the grant of his lands.

King and Covenant

The Forsyths were recognised as able administrators in the service of the Crown, with Osbert Forsyth’s son appointed to the trusted powerful post of constable of Stirling Castle in 1368, while during the reign from 1390 to 1406, another Forsyth is recorded as being in receipt of a royal pension.

For several centuries afterwards, Forsyths continued to serve not only successive monarchs, but dominated the local affairs of Stirling and the surrounding area.

A William Forsyth, whose father was a baillie (civic official) in Edinburgh, in the mid to late fourteenth century, settled further north, at St Andrews, in 1423 – and it was here that he obtained the lucrative barony of Nydie.

Alexander Forsyth, 4th Baron of Nydie, and the sheriff depute of Fife, was among the 5,000 Scots including James IV, an archbishop, two bishops, eleven earls, fifteen barons, and 300 knights who were killed at the disastrous battle of Flodden in September of 1513.

The Scottish monarch had embarked on the venture after Queen Anne of France, under the terms of the Auld Alliance between Scotland and her nation, appealed to him to ‘break a lance’ on her behalf and act as her chosen knight.

Crossing the border into England at the head of a 25,000-strong army that included 7,500 clansmen and their kinsmen, James engaged a 20,000-strong force commanded by the Earl of Surrey.

Despite their numerical superiority and bravery, however, the Scots proved no match for the skilled English artillery and superior military tactics of Surrey.

Descendants of the baron of Nydie who fell at Flodden later acquired lands near the magnificent Falkland Palace, where they served as favoured royal courtiers – and the chief of today’s Clan Forsyth traces his descent from this family.

In 1978 the Lord Lyon King of Arms of Scotland, the recognised expert on matters of genealogy and heraldry, recognised Clan Forsyth, whose crest is a griffin and whose motto is ‘A repairer of ruin’, as one of the oldest in Scotland.

Forsyths have been prominent in the annals of Scotland’s often turbulent religious history, not least a family of Forsyths from Annandale, in Dumfriesshire, who became Covenanting martyrs.

Described as ‘the glorious marriage day of the kingdom with God’, the National Covenant renounced Catholic belief, pledged to uphold the Presbyterian religion, and called for free parliaments and assemblies.

Signed at Edinburgh’s Greyfriars Church on February 28, 1638 by Scotland’s nobles, barons, burgesses and ministers, it was subscribed to the following day by hundreds of ordinary people, while copies were made and dispatched around Scotland and signed by thousands more.

Those who adhered to the Covenant were known as Covenanters, and many of them, hounded by the merciless authorities, literally took to the hills and valleys of Lowland Scotland to worship at what were known as open-air conventicles.

They were brutally suppressed, particularly after they rose in an armed revolt in 1679, achieving victory over government troops at the battle of Drumclog, near the Ayrshire village of Darvel on June 1 of that year.

Defeat followed only a few weeks later, however, at the battle of Bothwell Brig, in Lanarkshire.

Many Covenanters who were taken after battle or captured after being hunted down in the hills and valleys were summarily executed on the spot, while others had to endure harsh imprisonment.

In May of 1685, during the bloody period known as the Killing Time, James Forsyth was among 167 captured Covenanters, including five women, who were incarcerated in the forbidding fortress of Dunnottar Castle, south of Stonehaven, on the Kincardineshire coast.

Thrown into a dark, cramped, and fetid cellar with only two windows, the prisoners slowly succumbed to disease and starvation.

A number were removed to a dungeon beneath the cellar, where conditions were even worse.

This prompted the heartbroken wives of two of the prisoners to complain to the authorities of how ‘…they are not only in a starving condition but must inevitably incur a plague or other fearful diseases.’

No sympathy was forthcoming, however, and matters took a particularly brutal turn when James Forsyth’s pregnant wife made the long journey on foot from Annandale to Dunnottar to visit her husband.

The castle governor promptly threw her into the dungeon, and left her to die in misery.

Tried beyond all endurance, twenty-five desperate prisoners managed to escape through one of the cellar’s tiny windows and attempted a perilous descent down the steep cliffs on which the castle perched.

Two of them fell to their deaths while seven other prisoners died because of their brutal treatment.

A noted family of Forsyths was also settled at Monymusk, in Aberdeenshire, and their most famous son was the Reverend Alexander Forsyth, who was a Presbyterian minister at Belhelvie.

Born in 1769, Forsyth appears to have retained a vestige of the family’s martial tradition in his genes, because when not preaching he was not only a keen game shooter, but immersed himself in the study of firearms.

He literally changed the face of modern warfare in 1807 when he invented the percussion cap, which gradually replaced the inefficient and outmoded flintlock.

The French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was quick to recognise the vital importance of the invention and offered Forsyth what was then the truly staggering sum of £20,000 for its secrets.

The patriotic inventor, however, turned down the offer.

But his patriotism appears to have been misplaced because his own government adopted the invention without his knowledge and only much later granted him a rather meagre pension – the first instalment of which was received on the day he died in 1848!

Aberdeenshire was also the birthplace of Peter Taylor Forsyth, better known as the influential theologian P.T. Forsyth.

Born in 1842, he studied at both the universities of Aberdeen and Gottingen, in Germany, before being ordained into the Congregationalist Church and later receiving the prestigious appointment of principal of Hackney Theological College, in London.

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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 Forsyth family.

You can buy the full book for only
$5.08

108 Clan Forsyth

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The Crests

of Clan Forsyth

Clan Forsyth
Clan Forsyth (of that Ilk)
Clan Forsyth
Clan Forsyth

35 Clan Forsyth

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Spellings

of Forsyth

Faresyth
Fersy
Forsith
Forsitht
Fersith
Forsythe
Fearsithe
Foresyth
Forsithe
Forsycht
Forsytht
Forseyth
Fersyth
MacForsyth