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Clan MacLellan

THINK ON


Clan MacLellan are a Lowland clan. They take their name from St. Fillan, a missionary of the church of Celtic Christianity.

First appearing in records in 1217, the MacLellans were supporters of William Wallace and fought in the Anglo-Scottish Wars, with Sir William Maclellan of Bombie knighted by King James IV of Scotland. He was killed in the Battle of Flodden in 1513 fighting for the king.

The MacLellan clan motto is "Think On" and the clan crest is a moor's head on a dagger point.

Scottish History

of Clan MacLellan


Destroyers of proud things

Found in Scotland from earliest times, the MacLellan name is derived from the Gaelic Mac Gille Fhaolain, indicating ‘son of the servant of St Fillan’, while ‘fillan’ of ‘faolán’, derives from ‘faol’, denoting ‘wolf’ or ‘little wolf.’

The saint from whom the MacLellan name derives was St Fillan of Munster, a great-grandson of a king of the ancient Irish province of Leinster.

Thought to have arrived in Scotland from Ireland in the early years of the eighth century in the company of close family who included his mother – the Irish princess later revered as St Kentigerna – he became abbot of a monastery at Pittenweem, Fife, and eventually settled at Strathfillan, near Tyndrum in Perthshire.

Credited with powers that included the healing of the sick and also the patron saint of the mentally ill, it was one of his relics, an arm-bone, that was carried at the head of the Scottish army at the battle of Bannockburn in June of 1314.

This was when a 20,000-strong English army under Edward II was defeated by a Scots army less than half this strength.

Ironically, it was through a misguided sense of chivalry that the battle occurred in the first place.

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 impetuous 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 the English king 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 his loyal army and at terrible cost to the English.

Believing that the relic of St Fillan had aided the Scots in their decisive victory, a grateful Bruce founded a priory in the saint’s honour in Strathfillan.

Along with his staff and bell, the relic is now one of the national treasures held by the Museum of Scotland.

The largest concentration of bearers of the name was in Galloway, in the southwest of Scotland, although MacLellans were also to be found from an early period in the Western Isles of Eriskay and South Uist.

Also found in North Uist, their Gaelic name there was Mac Gíllefhialain, while they were also known as Clan Iain Mhoír.

Numbers of MacLellans were also found from early times in the area of Glendochart, Perthshire.

It was here that the Macnabs, whose name means ‘son of the abbot’, were for centuries lay abbots.

As a sept, or sub-branch, of the Macnabs, the MacLellans are entitled to share in their heritage and traditions, including the wearing of the Clan Macnab tartan.

The Macnab motto is ‘Let fear be far from all’, while their rather gruesome crest is described as ‘the head of MacNeish’.

This relates to an infamous incident in 1612 when the sons of the Macnab Chief, known as Smooth John, carried out a daring night-time raid on the MacNeish island stronghold on Loch Earn.

Slaughtering all but one young MacNeish lad, and from whom subsequent MacNeishs would trace their descent, they cut off the head of the Chief and carried the bloody trophy back in triumph to Smooth John.

It is with Galloway that the MacLellans are particularly identified and where they stamped their unique mark on the pages of Scotland’s turbulent history.

In Kirkcudbrightshire, in Galloway, the name survives on the landscape to this day in the form of the village of Balmaclellan, while their historic seat was MacLellan’s Castle, in the town of Kirkcudbright, and also known at various times as Raeberry Castle, or Kirkcudbright Castle.

A rather confusing and inconsistent variety of spellings of the name appear in early sources and, for the sake of narrative flow and unless otherwise specified, the form adopted for the remainder of this account of proud bearers of the name is ‘MacLellan.’

They first appear in the written record in 1217, during the reign of Alexander II, when Duncan MacLellan, designated as Chief of the MacLellans, is mentioned in a Royal Charter.

This was a time, before the MacLellans achieved high honours, that the Chiefs were designated as ‘Lairds of Bombie’, with ‘Bombie’ the name of their main territorial holding in Galloway.

At the forefront of Scotland’s bitter and bloody Wars of Independence, the MacLellans fought at the side of the great freedom fighter William Wallace.

Wallace had 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, who included a contingent of MacLellans under the command of MacLellan of Bombie, 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.

But defeat came at the battle of Falkirk on July 22, 1298, with Wallace forced to flee.

It was MacLellan of Bombie who shortly afterwards accompanied the inspirational freedom fighter when he sailed from Kirkcudbright to France.

This was to petition the French monarch for aid in his struggle against England’s Edward I, better known to posterity as ‘The Hammer of the Scots.’

When not engaged in fighting the English, and in common with their Irish counterparts, many of Scotland’s powerful families were frequently involved in murderous disputes with one another.

In 1450, William Douglas, 8th Earl of Douglas and a close neighbour of the MacLellans of Bombie, sought to enlist the support of Sir Patrick MacLellan of Bombie, Sheriff of Galloway, in a plot to unseat the young James II from the throne.

Loyal to his monarch, MacLellan of Bombie refused, and an outraged Earl of Douglas besieged MacLellan Castle, capturing him and throwing him into the grim confinement of Threave Castle.

Word of this reached the king, and MacLellan’s uncle, Sir Patrick Grey, was despatched to Threave Castle with a royal dispatch demanding his nephew’s immediate release.

Knowing what the despatch contained, Douglas refused to open it and, as he entertained Grey with food and drink, secretly ordered MacLellan’s immediate execution.

His corpse was unceremoniously dumped in the castle courtyard and, feigning that if he had known what the royal despatch had contained, he would not have ordered the execution, told the horrified Grey: “Yonder, Sir Patrick, lies your sister’s son.”

Sir Patrick took horse for Edinburgh, chased practically all the way by the Earl’s retainers, and it is said that it was only through his skill as a horseman that he escaped capture and a fate similar to that of his nephew.

MacLellan revenge eventually came when, deploying the mighty cannon famously known today as Mons Meg, capable of firing balls of up to 400 pounds (180kg) in weight, they battered down the imposing Douglas stronghold of Threave Castle in a series of devastating explosions.

This is the origin of one of the MacLellan mottoes of ‘Destroyer of proud things’ and crest of a cannon.

Honours and notoriety

Another MacLellan motto is ‘Think on’, with an accompanying crest of what is described as the head of a Moor impaled on a sword.

For the origin of this we return to the reign from 1437 to 1460 of James II when Sir William MacLellan of Bombie, a son of the murdered Sir Patrick MacLellan, slew a notorious brigand who had for some time been terrorising the Galloway area.

Some accounts describe the outlaw as having been of North African, or ‘Moorish’, blood – hence his name of ‘Black Morrow’, perhaps derived from ‘Blackamoor’.

Alternatively, ‘Black Morrow’ could have been a description of someone who was of particularly dark, or swarthy, appearance and not necessarily ‘Moorish’.

Accounts vary as to why Sir William MacLellan of Bombie determined to put an end once and for all to the infamous career of Black Morrow.

Some sources suggest the incentive was a £50 reward, but the most likely is that the king had promised to restore lands that had previously been lost by the MacLellans.

What is known with certainty is that Sir William stumbled across Black Morrow while he was lying in a drunken stupor – with one rather unlikely version of the tale being that he had got him drunk by replacing the spring water in a well with potent spirits.

Cutting off his head, he gained audience with the king and brandished his bloody trophy on the point of his sword.

When the king proved recalcitrant in restoring the lost MacLellan lands, Sir William, flanked by his armed retainers, is said to have indicated the head and quietly suggested that he ‘Think on this’ – thus explaining the MacLellan motto of ‘Think on.’

His ‘suggestion’, meanwhile, had the desired effect and the MacLellan lands were restored.

One of his descendants, also named Sir William, was one of the estimated 10,000 Scots, who included James IV, an archbishop, two bishops, eleven earls, fifteen barons and 300 knights, killed at the disastrous battle of Flodden in September of 1513.

The Scottish monarch had chivalrously 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.

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

Sir William’s grandson, Sir Thomas MacLellan, served as provost of Kirkcudbright, while his great grandson, Robert MacLellan, brought the family high distinction through his elevation to the peerage as 1st Lord Kirkcudbright.

This honour came despite his notorious reputation as a young man for reckless and frequently violent behaviour.

Known, in the words of an old Scots expression, of having been capable of ‘causing a fight in an empty house’, he was imprisoned for a time for his part in a violent affray in Kirkcudbright’s High Street, while he was also imprisoned for shooting a relative of the town’s eminently respectable Church of Scotland minister.

Perhaps it was because of, rather than despite of, his extremely colourful nature that James VI appointed him as a gentleman to his bedchamber, while James’ successor, Charles I, raised him to the rank of baronet and, in 1633, elevated him to the peerage as 1st Lord Kirkcudbright.

He died in 1641 and was succeeded as Lord Kirkcudbright by his nephew, Thomas MacLellan, 2nd Lord Kirkcudbright, who in turn was succeeded by John MacLellan as 3rd Lord Kirkcudbright.

It was as a result of the MacLellans’ support for the Royalist cause during the Civil War that raged in Scotland between 1638 and 1649 – although others of the name took the opposite side – that the MacLellans incurred vast debts and most of their estates had later to be sold to creditors.

The Civil War had been a bitter struggle between the forces of those Presbyterian Scots who had signed a National Covenant that opposed the divine right of the Stuart monarchy, and Royalists such as MacLellan and James Graham, 1st Marquis of Montrose.

Although Montrose had initially supported the Covenant, his conscience later forced him to switch sides, and the period 1644 to 1645 became known as the Year of Miracles because of his brilliant military successes.

At the battle of Inverlochy, on February 2, 1645, the Earl of Argyll was forced to ignominiously flee in his galley after 1,500 of his Covenanters were wiped out in a surprise attack.

What made this victory all the more notable is that Montrose’s hardy forces had arrived at Inverlochy after an exhausting 36-hour march south through knee-deep snow from the area of the present-day Fort Augustus.

He enjoyed another great victory at Kilsyth on August 15, 1645, but final defeat came at Philiphaugh, near Selkirk, less than a month later.

The title of Lord Kirkcudbright became dormant in 1832 following the death of the 9th Lord Kirkcudbright, and that is why the MacLellans of today are known as an armigerous clan, meaning they have no recognised Chief.

In 1981, however, bearers of the name throughout the world organised themselves as an official Clan MacLellan – and it was as Clan MacLellan that they participated in the colourful and memorable 2009 Clan Gathering in Edinburgh.

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