Clan Keith

History

Clan Keith takes its name from the East Lothian barony of Keith, which passed to a Norman newcomer named Hervey when he married into the family already holding it; King David I confirmed the lands to him by charter in the mid-twelfth century, and the clan has long counted this Hervey de Keith as its founding ancestor. His descendants inherited far more than land: as hereditary marischals to the Scottish crown from the fourteenth century onward, they carried joint responsibility for the king's personal safety at each sitting of parliament and for guarding the royal regalia in trust.

Keith fortunes shifted towards the north-east during the Wars of Independence. Sir Robert Keith commanded the small Scottish cavalry force at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, service rewarded with grants of forfeited Comyn land in the north-east of Scotland. A few decades later, marriage to an heiress of the Cheyne family brought the Keiths the lordships of Inverugie in Aberdeenshire and Ackergill in Caithness, stretching their landholdings from the Mearns coast to the far north.

The family's standing peaked in 1458, when James II created William Keith the first Earl Marischal, fixing Dunnottar Castle, on its clifftop above Stonehaven, as the clan's principal seat. Later Earls Marischal used their wealth to shape Aberdeen's civic and intellectual life: George Keith, the fifth Earl, founded Marischal College in the city in 1593, a Protestant foundation that later merged with King's College to form the University of Aberdeen.

Dunnottar's best-known moment came during the Cromwellian wars. Besieged through the winter of 1651 into 1652, the castle's small garrison managed to smuggle the Honours of Scotland, the crown, sceptre and sword of state, out of the fortress before it fell, and the regalia were kept hidden nearby until they could safely be restored after the Restoration. Sir John Keith, who helped secure their safety, was later created Earl of Kintore and settled at what became Keith Hall, near Inverurie, founding the branch of the family that would eventually carry the clan's chiefship.

It was the Jacobite cause that brought the senior line down. George Keith, tenth and last of the Earls Marischal, threw his support behind the 1715 rising and its renewed attempt in 1719, as did his brother James, who would go on to a distinguished career as a field marshal in the Prussian army. Their gamble cost the family everything: in 1716 the Crown stripped George of the earldom and confiscated the Dunnottar estates, bringing four hundred years of Keith ownership of the castle to a close and extinguishing a title that has never since been restored.

With the senior title gone, the clan's chiefship in time came to rest with the Kintore branch descended from Sir John Keith. Among the clan's older rivalries was a long-running hostility toward the neighbouring Irvines of Drum, traced back to an armed clash in 1402; that quarrel was finally put to rest in 2002, when the Earl of Kintore and the chief of Clan Irvine met on a span over the River Dee and put their names to a peace agreement. Today the Earl of Kintore, based at Keith Hall, is recognised as Chief of Clan Keith, and clan societies in Scotland and overseas continue to mark the family's history.