Clan Macpherson

History

Clan tradition traces the Macphersons to Muireach, said to have been parson of Kingussie in Badenoch — the likely source of the name Mac a' Phearsain, 'son of the parson'. As with many clan founding stories, the detail of this account rests on tradition rather than documentary proof, though the clan's long association with Badenoch is well established.

The Macphersons were, for centuries, one of the constituent families of Clan Chattan, the confederation of Highland kindreds led by the Mackintosh chiefs. Clan tradition connects the Macphersons to the judicial combat fought on the North Inch of Perth in 1396, before King Robert III, in which thirty picked men a side fought to settle a dispute; and to the Battle of Invernahavon against a Cameron raiding party, where a row between the Macphersons and the Davidsons over which had the right to fight on the flank of honour is said to have nearly cost Clan Chattan the battle, before the Macphersons rejoined the fight and helped win it. The precise dating of these episodes varies between accounts, and some detail should be read as tradition rather than settled record.

The clan's best-documented chapter is the 1745 Jacobite rising. Ewen Macpherson of Cluny, the chief, first accepted a government commission but changed sides before the Battle of Prestonpans and raised several hundred of his clansmen for the Jacobite cause; his men fought at Falkirk but arrived too late for Culloden in April 1746. After the rising's defeat, Cluny evaded capture for close to nine years despite a substantial bounty on his head, hiding out in the hills around Ben Alder — the site traditionally known as Cluny's Cage — and sheltering Prince Charles Edward Stuart there for a fortnight before the Prince's final escape to France. Cluny himself escaped to France in 1755 and died there in 1764.

In 1943 the contents of Cluny Castle went under the hammer. Macphersons from around the world clubbed together to buy key pieces back for the clan, and those pieces gave the new Clan Macpherson Museum its start when it opened in Newtonmore in 1952 — the first museum any Scottish clan had built for itself. The Clan Macpherson Association, formed earlier in the twentieth century, still holds an annual gathering in Badenoch each August, timed to the Newtonmore Highland Games.

The chiefship has continued in the direct line at Cluny. Sir William Macpherson of Cluny and Blairgowrie, a senior judge as well as clan chief, died in 2021 and was succeeded by his son, James Brodie Macpherson of Cluny, as 28th chief.