Clan Kerr

History

The Kerrs were established in Roxburghshire in the Scottish Borders by around the early fourteenth century, with the family recorded in the forest of Jedburgh from as early as the twelfth. Like their Border neighbours, they were reivers as much as landholders, raiding and feuding across the Anglo-Scottish frontier for generations.

By the fifteenth century the Kerrs had split into two branches, Cessford and Ferniehirst. Both wanted the same prize: control of the Border country and the royal post of Warden of the Middle March. Their rivalry ran deep enough that people still describe it as a feud between two houses rather than a squabble within one family. Each line also carried on feuds outside the family. The most notable was with Clan Scott of Buccleuch, which flared at the Battle of Melrose in 1526, when Scott of Buccleuch attacked to free the young King James V from the custody of the Earl of Angus; a Kerr of Cessford chief was killed in the fighting, and the Kerrs took their revenge by killing Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch on Edinburgh's High Street in 1552. The feud was eventually resolved when Sir Thomas Kerr of Ferniehirst married a Scott of Buccleuch's sister around 1569.

The two Kerr branches are said to have reconciled with each other rather later, in 1631, when William Kerr of Ferniehirst married Anne Kerr of Cessford. From there the two lines rose in rank on separate paths: the Ferniehirst family became Earls, then Marquesses, of Lothian, while Cessford's descendants became Earls and later Dukes of Roxburghe, still seated today at Floors Castle in Kelso.

The name has even found its way into the language. Being left-handed is still called 'kerr-handed' or 'corrie-fisted' in parts of Scotland, both terms recorded in the Scots dictionaries. Local tradition links this to Ferniehirst itself, claiming the castle's spiral stair winds the opposite way from usual so that a left-handed swordsman defending it would have the advantage. Historians are wary of that particular story: plenty of other Scottish tower houses have stairs winding the same 'wrong' way with no Kerr connection at all, which makes it look more like an ordinary building habit than proof of a family trait.

The chiefship of Clan Kerr continues today in the Marquess of Lothian, whose family seat remains Ferniehirst Castle outside Jedburgh, with the Roxburghe line at Floors Castle standing as the senior cadet branch descended from the old Cessford house.