Clan Lockhart

History

Lockhart traces back to an older surname, Locard, carried by a family with likely Flemish or Norman roots that had put down stakes in Lanarkshire well before the year 1200. Early records spell the name Lokart, Locard or Lokhart, and the family's oldest surviving charter, dated 1323, has Sir Symon Locard and his heirs agreeing to pay rent from the lands of Lee and Cartland in South Lanarkshire. Within a generation the Locards of Lee were substantial landholders in the upper Clyde valley, a position the family has held in one form or another for close to seven hundred years.

The name changed to its modern form in the fourteenth century, and family tradition explains why. After Robert the Bruce died in 1329, Sir James Douglas is said to have set out to carry the king's embalmed heart to the Holy Land, honouring a deathbed wish. Sir Symon Locard, 2nd of Lee, reportedly rode with him and carried the key to the silver casket holding the heart. Douglas was killed fighting in Spain before the party reached Jerusalem, and Locard is said to have brought the heart home for burial at Melrose. A heart enclosed in a fetterlock was worked into the family's arms, the surname shifted to Lockheart and then Lockhart, and the motto Corda Serrata Pando, 'I open locked hearts', was adopted as a pun on the new name.

The same campaign is said to have produced the Lee Penny. Tradition holds that Locard took a Moorish nobleman prisoner, and when the man's mother arrived to settle his ransom, a stone mounted in a coin slipped from her purse. Her eagerness to snatch it back told Locard it must be valuable, so he insisted it be handed over with the rest of the payment. The stone, said to cure certain ailments when dipped in water, stayed with the family and inspired Sir Walter Scott's 1825 novel The Talisman. Like the heart story, this is inherited tradition rather than documented record, but it has shaped the family's identity for centuries.

Beyond Lee, the family later acquired the barony of Carnwath and held land across Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire and Peeblesshire. Lee Castle itself eventually left the family's ownership, though the Lockharts still hold other land nearby and the Carnwath title.

Several Lockharts made their mark well beyond Lanarkshire. Sir George Lockhart of Carnwath rose to become Lord President of the Court of Session in the 1680s before being murdered by a disgruntled litigant in 1689. His son, also George Lockhart of Carnwath, sat in the final Parliament of Scotland, worked secretly for the Jacobite cause after the Union, and left behind the Lockhart Papers, still used by historians of the period. In the nineteenth century, John Gibson Lockhart, who married Sir Walter Scott's daughter, edited the Quarterly Review and wrote the standard biography of his father-in-law.

Lockhart is a Lowland family rather than a historic Highland clan, but it is recognised today by the Lord Lyon, and current sources name Ranald Lockhart of the Lee as chief - styled 27th of the Lee by Burke's Peerage and the Roll of the Baronage of Scotland, though the American Clan Lockhart Society gives 28th. The Clan Lockhart Society and the American Clan Lockhart Society keep the wider family connected worldwide. The American Clan Lockhart Society notes Lockhart has no traditional septs or sub-branches in the usual sense - only historic spellings of the name.