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Clan Graham

NE OUBLIE


A traditional Scottish tale claims that it was a Graham who breached the Antonine Wall along Scotland's central belt. While this is disputed, the Grahams can still claim an ancient history, with the clan originating well before the 12th century.

The Grahams played little part in any Anglo-Scottish battles, however James Graham, 3rd Duke of Montrose, was ultimately responsible for the 1782 repealing of the Dress Act, which outlawed the wearing of Highland Dress.

The Graham clan motto is "Ne oublie" (Do not forget) and the clan crest is a falcon preying on a stork.

Scottish History

of Clan Graham


True patriots

The name Graham rings like a clarion trumpet call down through the colourful pageant of Scottish history.

Their courageous allegiance to the royal house of Scotland through thick and thin gave them a reputation for loyalty that has stood the test of time (despite the fact that one of them, Sir Robert Graham, slew James I at the Blackfriars Royal Lodge in Perth in 1437 in the belief that a regal dictatorship was being imposed).

One colourful tradition relates how Greme was a mighty Caledonian warrior who broke the Antonine Wall and helped drive the Romans out of Scotland, the breach in the defences ever after being known as Graeme’s Dyke.

But it is much more likely that the family actually came over with William the Conqueror in the eleventh century and is Anglo-Norman in origin. A Manor of Gregham or Greyhome is recorded in the Conqueror’s Domesday Book.

When King David I came to Scotland to claim his throne, a Graham was among the knights who accompanied him; while Sir William de Graham was present at the building of the Abbey of Holyrood and witnessed its foundation charter.

The Grahams fought staunchly alongside both Wallace and Bruce during the long struggle for Scottish independence and were suitably rewarded, the first lands the family acquired being around Dalkeith in Midlothian.

The Grahams’ acceptance in Celtic Scotland was assured when they married into the princely family of Strathearn; and from Malise of Strathearn they acquired the lands around Auchterarder that were to become their principal seat.

Sir John de Graham was a legendary warrior among Wallace’s followers and was known as ‘Graham with the bright sword’. He fell, fighting to the last, at the battle of Falkirk in 1298 and his gravestone and effigy can still be found in the local kirkyard near the battle site.

The family’s lands and power gradually grew and they acquired an estate at Mugdock, north of Glasgow, where they built an imposing castle in 1370.

Patrick Graham of Kincardine was created a peer in 1451 with the title of Lord Graham; and two generations later they were created Earls of Montrose.

The first Earl fell at the bloodsoaked massacre of Flodden in 1513: but by means of purchase, inheritance and inter-marriage, the Graham lands had become, by the late seventeenth century, among the richest in Scotland.

The mighty Marquis

The most famous clansman was undoubtedly the fifth Earl and first Marquis of Montrose, James Graham.

When the General Assembly met in St. Mungo’s Cathedral in 1638 to depose the Scottish bishops, Montrose, as an elder of the church, was one of its members; and he denounced King Charles I for his arrogant over-stepping of the royal prerogative by forcing a Book of Common Prayer upon and generally anglicising the northern Presbyterians.

Up to that point Montrose, aged 26, had been an average aristocrat of his time: but he now signed the National Covenant (an anti-Royalist petition defending the Church of Scotland and enforcing its independence) and organised a rebel army, leading troops against the Earl of Huntly and beating royalist forces at the Brig o’ Dee.

But Montrose was gradually becoming disillusioned with the civil turmoil engendered by the Covenant. While negotiating with Charles, to whom he still retained an emotional loyalty, he was busy putting forward solutions in Covenanting councils: but gradually his royalist sympathies came to the fore, especially when it was revealed that his arch enemy and champion of the Kirk, Archibald Campbell, Earl of Argyll, was being touted as a future dictator.

Montrose accused Campbell of treason thus upsetting his former Covenanting colleagues. He refused to support the Scottish Parliament’s union with the English Roundheads, effectively set up by the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643, and was imprisoned for five months in Edinburgh Castle.

Although still courted to take command of the Covenanting forces, he had made his mind up and turned down such blandishments. From now on he was to be a King’s man or nothing.

At the age of 32, he joined Charles at Oxford and convinced him of his loyalty, receiving a commission as lieutenant general in Scotland and embarking on the most exciting period of his life.

In August, 1644, he was in the Highlands, raising his army from among a wild rabble who recognised the opportunity of striking a blow against the fiefdom of the wealthy Campbells.

His forces were also boosted by an Ulster contingent led by the fierce warrior Alasdair MacColla, a MacDonald with great strength and military expertise who had a bitter hatred of the Clan Campbell. He commanded 2,000 men, composed of Catholic veterans of Irish wars and Highland refugees. Their specialty was the notorious Highland Charge which involved firing a single volley from their muskets then charging the enemy with wooden shields and flashing broadswords, a ferocious, screaming mass of clansmen with their blood up. This was a decisive tactic which usually led to the Covenanters taking to their heels, many of them being cut down as they fled the wild onslaught.

Capturing Perth after a furious clash beneath its walls when the Royalist force decimated an army three times its size, Montrose, thus encouraged, recklessly determined to win Scotland for Charles and, at the same time, divert enemy troops from his beleaguered sovereign down south.

Montrose marched to Aberdeen which was quickly taken: but the bold Marquis for once had a moral lapse, allowing his troops to ransack the city in an orgy of rape and pillage (more than a hundred peaceful citizens were brutally murdered).

The Royalist army then headed through Strathbogie to Speyside and turned south through Badenoch to Atholl.

Argyll was now in hot pursuit and the Royalists destroyed anything that might sustain their enemies while the Covenanters cruelly punished anyone remotely suspected of helping the rebels.

Winter bogged down the pursuit and Alasdair suggested a daring march through the mountains to fall on the Argyll heartlands. This was done, bringing carnage to Inveraray at Christmas and Argyll, racing to rescue his homelands, ended up fleeing down Loch Fyne in a galley, leaving his clansmen to their bloody fate.

The jubilant Royalists then withdrew to the north, crossing into Lochaber and marching up the Great Glen where they were caught in a pincer movement between the Earl of Seaforth marching down from Inverness and fresh troops rallied by Argyll coming up from Inverlochy.

But Montrose and Alasdair were not so easily put down and they turned into the hills at the south end of Loch Ness where they doubled back behind the snowy mountains and caught Argyll’s army by surprise in the rear. More than 1,500 Campbell clansmen were slaughtered and the bards of Keppoch celebrated the event for decades afterwards.

Montrose and his army went on to a succession of stunning victories at Auldearn, Alford and Kilsyth.

In a brilliant year he had cleared much of Scotland of the King’s enemies and if the Royalist forces south of the border had been even remotely as competent and ruthless then Charles would not have lost his head and the course of British history would have been changed.

But already national events were working against Montrose. He was unable to recruit the support of the nobility and had antagonised various factions. Meanwhile, Alasdair left his side to continue his own personal vendetta against the Campbells of Argyll; and a lack of an intelligence arm to Montrose’s forces meant that he consistently underestimated his opponents and was in the dark with regards to their actions. At Philiphaugh, outside Selkirk, this was to prove calamitous on 13th September, 1645.

Here Montrose finally came up against a worthy opponent – David Leslie, the best of the Covenanting generals, brilliant and brutal, who was marching north to deal with the upstart at the head of a force of 6,000 men, more than 5,000 of whom were cavalry.

The Royalists moved up the Tweed in the vain hope of raising the Border clans and camped on a strong position in front of a hill surrounded by streams.

At daybreak a dense autumn mist lay over the camp and the sentries could not see the approach of Leslie’s horsemen who had forded the Ettrick during the night, although pickets had vaguely warned of an enemy force in the area.

As the sun broke through the greyness, the Covenanter troopers were ready to charge while the Royalists were still finishing breakfast. Montrose was billeted in a lodging at Selkirk when the alarm was raised; he jumped on a horse and galloped to his camp where he found his men fighting for their lives, though some of their comrades had deserted at the first charge.

Fortunately for the Royalists, they had taken the precaution of building up defensive earthworks and these proved vital in fending off attack after attack which the Covenanters, sensing victory, rained down on them.

Gradually the rebels were beaten back behind dry-stone dykes beside a farm and fought hand-to-hand until more than 400 were cut down.

Montrose rallied a hundred horsemen and led them in a mad charge which was repeated again and again: but each time the Royalists were beaten back by superior forces.

The remainder of Leslie’s cavalry, on the opposite bank of the Ettrick, saw the brave but futile efforts of the Royalists, forded the river and attacked from the flank.

Six hundred Royalists had stood bravely and defiantly against a vastly superior enemy force. Only a handful survived, among them Montrose who was miraculously unhurt and prepared to die in action. But he was talked out of this by his immediate entourage, their argument being that his King would need his services in future.

He rode to Clydesdale then northwards and soon was taking refuge in the Perthshire hills, eventually fleeing abroad.

He later invaded the north of Scotland with a band of mercenaries who were ambushed and decimated, their leader eventually being betrayed in Assynt for a bag of gold.

Dressed immaculately – more like a bridegroom than a convicted criminal, according to one witness – Montrose was hanged then disembowelled at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh, though in 1888 his remains were entombed in a splendid marble memorial in St. Giles Cathedral.

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Family History Mini Book


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122 Clan Graham

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The Crests

of Clan Graham

Clan Graham
Clan Graham
Clan Graham
Clan Graham
Clan Graham
Clan Graham

69 Clan Graham

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Divisions

of Graham

Airth
Allardyce
Blair
Bonar
Graham of Airth
Graham of Menteith
Graham of Montrose
Hadden
Haldane
MacGibbon
MacGilvernock
MacGrime
Menteith
Pye
Pyott
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Spellings

of Graham

Graeme
Grahame
Grahym
Grim
Grymn
Grym
Greym
Grahm
Greyme
Graheme
Grahem
Greme
Grahme
Graiham
Greeme
Gram
Grame
Graem
Grayme
Graym
Grem
Grimm
Grehme
Grime
Gruamach

189 Clan Graham

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