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Clan Grant

STAND FAST


Clan Grant are a Highland clan, and one that can trace their heritage as far back as the 9th century with Kenneth MacAlpine, King of Scotland. The Grants had considerable influence over the north-east of Scotland and were strong supporters of William Wallace.

The Grants were one of the few Highland clans to be relatively unaffected by the Highland Clearances. Clan chief "Good Sir James" Grant built the town of Grantown-on-Spey to support his clansmen and prevent them from having to emigrate abroad.

The Grant clan motto is "Stand fast" and the clan crest is a mountain in flames.

Scottish History

of Clan Grant


The lawless North

Norman in origin and were in Nottingham in the early 13th century. The first recorded Grant in the north was Sir Lawrence le Grant, Sheriff of Inverness in 1260 whose son John was captured by the English during the Wars of Independence.

In 1434 Duncan le Grant is mentioned as the son of an heiress, Matilda, and in 1453 he is called Laird of Freuchie in Strathspey which remained the chief’s title until 1693.

The Grants were one of the many Norman families who took advantage of the introduction of feudalism into Scotland by acquiring office and land in the north but many romantic myths later grew up to obscure these origins.

According to one, recorded in a manuscript history of the clan written in the 18th century, the Grants were descendants of the Norse god Odin, no less, and were given their name for their grand feats of valour; the alternative Gaelic myth being that they were descended from the first King of Scotland, Kenneth McAlpine, by the same line that produced the MacGregors and this supposed kinship with the clan whose very name was proscribed caused the Grants much trouble later on.

The Gaelic explanation of the name is not so flattering. It was supposed to come from the old word ‘ganter’ or ugly and to have been given to the first Grants because of the size of their noses.

The early Grants must have been strong warriors for in the lawless north you had to be strong to survive.

Their first famous fighter was Robert Grant who defeated an English Champion at a jousting tournament while on an embassy to the south in 1580.

The third Laird of Freuchie, James of Forres, was another great man of arms and, despite being made responsible for policing Strathspey in 1535, was infamous for raiding and plundering. This chief figures in a story of orphans eating at a trough. These were the children of a Deeside clan wiped out by the Grants and their allies, the Gordons. James refused to have anything to do with them so the Gordon chief, the Earl of Huntly, took them all under his care and fed them each day at his trough. But when James, on a visit to Huntly’s Castle, one day saw the children huddled and kneeling at the trough, he was conscience stricken and took them home with him to be raised as Grant descendants and they consequently became known as ‘the race of the trough’.

Gradually the family took on the role of a traditional Gaelic ruling line while those who lived on the clan lands adopted the Grant name to seal their allegiance. This process was at its height in the 16th century when most of the cadet branches of the clan were formed.

The stories of the origins of Big John Grant and his Glen Moriston holdings are amusing. His father was a jolly fellow known as the Red Bard and he was fond of other things besides singing if the numbers of his offspring are anything to go by. We are told that he fathered Big John whose mother was the daughter of the Laird of Kincardine whom he met one night at a hunt ball. The next morning a great blaze of fire appeared in the sky foretelling the prodigious strength of the newly conceived child and, sure enough, in later life he achieved fame by defeating a fierce English champion before the king at Edinburgh. When told to name his reward he asked for what he could carry out of the castle and astonished the country by going down to the dungeons to bring out his father who was serving time for singing too late at night. Big John then found the Laird of MacIntosh in the same cell as his father and just brought him out as well, receiving the lands of Glen Moriston as his reward.

By this time the clan and its chief were powerful enough to begin to play a part in national politics. Their traditional allies remained the Gordons led by the Earl of Huntly. John Grant, fourth laird of Freuchie, was in Huntly’s train at Holyrood Palace in March, 1566, on the night Rizzio was murdered and was said to have been foremost in urging Mary, Queen of Scots to avenge her secretary’s death by putting the conspirators to the sword.

More cautious councils prevailed, however, and the Grants played little part in the civil conflicts which followed, making their peace with Regent Moray soon after the Queen’s party was defeated.

Towards the end of the century, the Grants began to quarrel with the Gordons over religion, the former being Protestant, the latter remaining Catholic and prepared to conspire with the King of Spain to restore the old faith.

In 1586 the Earl of Huntly allied himself with the MacDonalds and Camerons who had a long history of plundering the Grant lands. The Grants retaliated by bringing in the MacGregors but came off worst in a clash at Ballindalloch.

After this the feuds became national and the Grants fought against Huntly at the braes of Glenlivet in 1694. Though Huntly won this battle he was forced to submit the next year when the King himself rode against him and from then on the Grants were free of Gordon power.

In the 17th and 18th centuries the Grants were mostly Covenanters or Whigs and tended to favour whichever side held control rather than back one faction, win or lose.

Their main concern was always to get the help of the central authorities against the marauding MacDonalds and Camerons.

Outlaws

At the beginning of the 17th century, though, the Grants were usually in hot water with the Crown because of their association with the MacGregors.

The problem was that the King had made the chiefs responsible for all misdemeanours committed on their territories and the ordinary clansmen were constantly sheltering the outlaws because of the alleged kinships between the two clans.

In 1613 James the Sixth wrote to complain about this and hinted ominously that he would take further action if the situation was not amended. The Grant Chieftain must have got the message for he wrote back two months later to tell the King that he was sending up to Edinburgh one Alistair MacAllister MacGregor who was “a notorious and rebellious Highlandman” but James was not satisfied. In 1615 the chief was fined the large sum of 16,000 merks for his unlawful protection of the outlawed MacGregors.

The next Laird of Grant died while being held at Edinburgh for similar offences. The truth of the matter was that James and his successors were more interested in the revenue to be gained by fining the chiefs than in the niceties of whether there were any MacGregors in Strathspey.

Still, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the MacGregors did rely on the Grants for help, especially in the cadet branches. The Grants seem to have been perfectly willing to spread dramatic but incriminating stories about their involvement with the outlaws.

One of these stories involved no less a person than Rob Roy MacGregor himself. He became a close ally of Patrick Grant of Rothiemurchas. This branch of the clan had been founded by the son of the chief who had fought for Queen Mary and had established itself by disposing of the local Shaws. The story goes that after two generations of struggle, Patrick Grant finally won control of the land by killing the Shaw chief and then added insult to injury by resurrecting the dead man every time his clansmen tried to bury him.

Apparently, the corpse would be left each morning at the Shaws’ front door until it finally disintegrated somewhere between the house and the graveyard. For this crime the whole clan MacIntosh swore to be revenged on Patrick Grant and since he was estranged from the Grants of Strathspey his only hope of survival lay in his friendship with Rob Roy.

One evening, though, before he had time to send for the ‘Highland rogue’, the MacIntoshes surrounded his house and began to bay for his blood. As his men were outnumbered three to one, Patrick gave himself up for dead. As he was bemoaning his fate, however, Rob Roy suddenly stepped out before him from the forest. Since he was alone, the Grants seemed little better off; but, taking some pipes into his hand, Rob Roy struck up with the rallying call ‘The MacGregor’s Gathering’ and soon 40 of his clansmen had sprung from their hiding places and the MacIntoshes, knowing their opponents’ reputation in battle, disappeared into the trees as fast as the MacGregors had come out of them.

By the mid-17th century the Grants owned huge estates and were bound to be drawn into the civil and religious conflicts of the period but what enabled them to survive was their refusal to get embroiled in the Jacobite Rebellions which brought so many of the clans to grief.

Ludovic Grant, eighth laird of Freuchie, set the pattern at the Edinburgh Parliament of 1581 when he objected to one of the acts of religious non-conformance which the Duke of York, later James the Seventh, was trying to press on the house. The King noted the protest but said he regarded it as nothing less than treason and took his revenge in 1685 by fining Ludovic for the old offence of harbouring outlaws.

Ludovic became known as ‘the Highland King’ and took his revenge by being one of the first to recognise William of Orange as king when James was overthrown. This led to the most important battle fought on Grant soil at the Haughs of Cromdale.

When the Scottish Parliament recognised William in 1689, Bonnie Dundee led a party of Jacobites out of Edinburgh to raise an army in the Highlands. It was this army which won the battle of Killiecrankie but Dundee died on the field and his army split up into quarrelling factions. One of these reached Strathspey in April, 1690, and camped on the heights of Cromdale opposite Castle Grant to prepare for a march on Aberdeen. What they did not know was that a Government force under Sir Thomas Livingstone was camped only eight miles away on the other side of the castle.

When the Grant garrison spotted the Jacobite fires on the hills, they sent messages to Livingstone who then marched his troops through the night, reaching the castle just before dawn. Grant’s scouts guided them over the Spey and up to the Jacobite camp where they fell on the enemy. The rebels, taken completely by surprise, panicked and fled.

More than 500 were killed and the rest only escaped in the pre-dawn darkness as the moon went down. This defeat shattered the Scottish resistance to William of Orange and although the Grant chieftain was not himself present at the battle he received his reward for the clans’ contribution to the victory three years later when the king gave him the Regality of Grant.

By this charter the chief was confirmed as Master of Strathspey, answerable only to the Crown and Parliament and so to a great extent judge, jury and police force in his own territory.

Even for the 18th century his justice could be harsh. An outlaw, James MacPherson, was hanged by Grant even although he received a warrant on the morning of the execution that a reprieve was on its way from Edinburgh. Grant brought the time of the execution forward but the rider bringing a pardon came flying into the market square just as MacPherson was mounting the scaffold. Grant then took the scroll on which the pardon had been written and put it between the prisoner’s neck and the rope. He later wrote to Edinburgh to say that he had hung both MacPherson and his pardon.

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Family History Mini Book


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116 Clan Grant

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The Crests

of Clan Grant

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Divisions

of Grant

Allan
Allanson
Bisset
Bowie
Grant of Achnarrow
Grant of Edinchat
Grant of Lurg
Grant of Monymusk
Grant of Rothiemurchus
MacAllan
MacIlroy
MacKiarran
Pratt
Suttie
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Spellings

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Grantt
Graunte
Graunt

183 Clan Grant

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