Clan Innes

History

The Innes family takes its name from the lands of Innes, a coastal barony in Moray a few miles north-east of Elgin. According to the clan society, the story starts in 1160, with Berowald, a settler from Flanders, and lands in the area that Malcolm IV is said to have confirmed to him. A charter of 1226 from Alexander II, requiring knight service at Elgin, is also reported. The Inneses are best described as a territorial family rather than a Gaelic kindred, and the early generations are known mainly from charters and later family histories, so the detail is thin.

Over the following centuries the family held lands in the parishes around Elgin, Innes and Urquhart, and the name spread across Moray and the north-east. The sept names usually listed with the clan, such as Mavor, Marnoch, Thain and Redford, point to the same part of the country, though a shared surname is not proof of descent.

Sir Robert Innes received a Nova Scotia baronetcy in 1624. He went on to build Innes House a few miles from Elgin, working from designs by William Ayton, and it was completed in 1653 after work that began in 1640. Sir James Innes, the sixth baronet, sold the lands to the Earl of Fife in 1767, ending the family's hold on the house. The Tennant family later acquired it and still own it.

The line of chiefs then took a different road. In 1666 Sir James Innes, the third baronet, married Lady Margaret Ker. When the Ker line died out in 1805, the clan society says, their great-grandson succeeded to the Dukedom of Roxburghe, and the family has used the name Innes-Ker since.

That change of surname is the heart of the clan's present position. The Council of Scottish Clans and Associations lists the Duke of Roxburghe as chief or commander of Innes, and the clan society describes the present Duke as the thirty-first Baron of Innes. We have not found a source confirming that the Lord Lyon recognises a chief of Innes. Whether the chiefship can pass to someone who does not bear the surname Innes is a question for the Lord Lyon and the clan, and we do not try to settle it here.

Today the Innes Clan Society keeps the name alive, and Innes House still stands near Elgin. The wider Innes surname is common across Moray and the north-east, and many people who bear it will have no documented link to the baronial family.