Clan Irvine

History

The Irvines belong to two places, and the sources keep them apart. One is the Dumfriesshire borderland, where, according to Electric Scotland, a branch of the family moved to the River Esk and one member gained the lands of Bonshaw by marriage. The other is Deeside in Aberdeenshire, home of the Irvines of Drum. Electric Scotland gives two possible origins for the name, one of them Irvine in Ayrshire. The earliest forms of the name are many, and the older stories tying it to Celtic royalty are tradition rather than record.

The Drum line begins with William de Irwyne. He was a son of the Bonshaw family, most likely a younger one, though Electric Scotland also notes a view that he was the eldest, and it names him as Bruce's armour-bearer. One page calls him Clerk of the Register. Bruce is said to have rewarded him with the forest of Drum. Sources differ on the date: 1323 on one Electric Scotland page, 1324 on another, and VisitScotland says 1323. The Irvines held Drum for some six and a half centuries.

Electric Scotland describes the family arms as three bunches of holly leaves, supported by two savages, with the motto "Sub sole sub umbra virens", meaning flourishing in sun and in shade. We have not found a modern crest badge described in the sources we checked, so we do not give one here.

Sir Alexander Irvine of Drum fell at Harlaw in 1411, where the Lowland army met Donald of the Isles. A long feud with the Keiths, centred on the parish of Drumoak, also belongs to this period. VisitScotland says the Irvine chief and the Earl of Kintore, chief of Clan Keith, made a peace treaty in 2002, ending a quarrel of some six hundred years.

In the seventeenth century the Irvines were royalists in a Covenanting district. Electric Scotland records that Alexander Irvine of Drum and his brother Robert, who had backed Charles, were excommunicated on 14 April 1644. They were seized when they put ashore at Wick and were then escorted to Edinburgh. The same account notes that the Covenanters' defeat at Kilsyth in 1645 led to the release of the prisoners. VisitScotland adds that the family later took part in the Jacobite risings, naming Sheriffmuir in 1715 and Culloden.

The Scottish Banner reports that Henry Quentin Forbes-Irvine agreed in 1964 that the castle and about 411 acres would pass to the National Trust for Scotland. The Trust took entry on 28 May 1976, and Drum Castle is now in its care. The Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs lists a chief of the name, styled Irvine of Drum. Irving is a related spelling, but we have not confirmed how the Bonshaw line stands today, so we say no more about it here.