Clan Forbes

History

The Forbes take their name from the lands of Forbes in Aberdeenshire, held by the family, tradition says, since the time of King William the Lion in the twelfth century. The first Forbes to appear in surviving records is Duncan Forbes, who received a grant of land from Alexander III in 1271 or 1272. Clan tradition also holds that an earlier ancestor, Oconachar, cleared bears from the district and claimed it as first occupier. That story cannot be documented and is best treated as legend rather than history.

Forbes fought among the Aberdeenshire lords at the Battle of Harlaw in 1411, a bloody and inconclusive clash with Donald of the Isles still remembered as one of the fiercest battles fought on Scottish soil. Within a generation the family's standing was confirmed at the highest level. Alexander de Forbes was already styled Lord Forbes in a precept of 1442, and the title, created some time between 1429 and 1445, is now the oldest surviving Lordship of Parliament in Scotland. Every holder since has been chief of the clan.

For more than five centuries the chiefs held Druminnor, near Rhynie, as their seat. It was also the setting for one of the bitterest disputes in the Highlands, a long-running feud with Clan Gordon over land and precedence. In 1571 twenty Gordons were killed in Druminnor's great hall, and Forbes suffered a defeat that same year at Tillieangus, where their commander, Black Arthur Forbes, was killed. The two families had already clashed on a larger scale at Corrichie in 1562, during the wider rebellion against Mary, Queen of Scots, in which the Gordons were heavily defeated.

A cadet branch produced one of the family's most consequential figures. Duncan Forbes of Culloden, Lord President of the Court of Session, spent 1745 trying to keep Highland clans out of the Jacobite rising, and his efforts to hold the north for the government are generally judged to have helped the Hanoverian cause the following year. He was a separate figure from the main line of Lords Forbes, though he shared their name and, more distantly, their descent.

Druminnor passed out of the main line's hands in 1770, when the 16th Lord Forbes sold it. The family's seat since has been Castle Forbes, built between 1815 and 1821 above the River Don near Alford. Historic Environment Scotland lists the house as a category B building, and its grounds are included in Scotland's Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes.

The chief today is Malcolm Nigel Forbes, 23rd Lord Forbes. Because his title is the oldest Lordship of Parliament in Scotland, he carries the additional distinction of Premier Lord of Scotland, and his home remains Castle Forbes.