Clan Barclay

History

Barclay is an Anglo-Norman name, a form of Berkeley. The earliest recorded bearer in the west is Richard de Berkeley, lord of Ardrossan, who witnessed the foundation charter of Kilwinning Abbey around 1162. His line and its close relatives ran out in heiresses, so the later Barclays come from a second wave. Roger de Berkeley, a younger son of the Gloucestershire family, came north around 1220. A late 16th-century Aberdeenshire manuscript told a grander tale, bringing a John de Berkeley to Scotland in 1069 with St Margaret. Clan Barclay International says later scholars found that story unsound.

The name spread through the north-east and Fife. Electric Scotland records Barclays at Mathers in Kincardineshire for nearly 300 years, and at Collairnie in Fife for nearly 500. The Towie branch in Aberdeenshire claimed the chiefship. Family tradition has Alexander Berkeley receiving the Tolly estate around 1100, but Electric Scotland says the inscribed dates at the castle conflict and that it is thought to be no earlier than 1593. The Aberdeenshire record agrees that a castle stood there in 1558 and 1587, and that the present one was built in 1593 for Alexander Barclay, chief of the name.

The chiefship was disputed. Clan Barclay International says that in 1582 Patrick Barclay of Towie Barclay merged two sets of arms and pressed his claim to the chiefship using a made-up pedigree. The society still argues that the chiefship properly went with the Towie line. Towie itself left the family in the 18th century. Electric Scotland says Charles Maitland Barclay married the last heiress in 1752, and the estate was later sold. The Aberdeenshire record names the Earl of Findlater as buyer in 1773. It adds that the castle stood derelict until it was bought and restored in 1971-73.

The best-known Barclays of Urie in Kincardineshire were Quakers. Colonel David Barclay bought Urie in 1647 and joined the Friends in 1666. His son Robert wrote the Apology for the True Christian Divinity, published in Latin in 1675 and in English the next year. Urie was made a free barony in 1679. Robert was named governor of East Jersey in 1682, though he never went there. He died at Urie on 3 August 1690. A younger son, David, a London mercer, is named by Electric Scotland as ancestor of the Barclays of Bury Hill in Surrey.

One branch went far from Scotland. Field Marshal Prince Barclay de Tolly, who commanded Russian armies against Napoleon in 1812 and died in 1818, is said by both Electric Scotland and Clan Barclay International to descend from the Towie family.

Peter Charles Barclay of Towie Barclay and of that Ilk succeeded his second cousin as chief in 1967, according to COSCA. He died on 2 November 2023. Clan Barclay International lists him as its late chief and names no successor, and most Barclays now live outside Scotland. So the name is armigerous, with no recognised chief, as far as our sources show.