Clan Ross

History

The clan takes its name from the old province of Ross in the northern Highlands. The word is usually explained as a Celtic term for a promontory, describing the land between the Cromarty and Dornoch firths. In Gaelic the clan is Clann Anndrais, the children of Andrew. Older writers connect this with a follower of St Andrew and with a family called O'Beolan. The evidence for those early generations is thin.

Firmer ground begins with Fearchar mac an t-Sagairt, the 'son of the priest'. He helped Alexander II put down a rising in the north and was knighted for it. By 1234 he was recognised as Earl of Ross. His successors were among the great lords of the north. Men of Ross are said to have fought at Largs in 1263 and at Dunbar in 1296. An Earl of Ross was at Bannockburn in 1314 and put his seal to the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320. Earl Hugh, a brother-in-law of Robert the Bruce, was killed at Halidon Hill in 1333.

The last earl of the old line, William, died in 1372 without a son. The earldom passed through the female line and out of the family, and rival claims to it later led to the battle of Harlaw in 1411. The chiefship took a different path. It went to William's brother, Hugh Ross of Rarichies, who received a charter for the lands of Balnagown in 1374. His descendants led the clan from Balnagown for some three centuries.

Those centuries were not quiet. In the 1480s a feud with the Mackays brought a Ross victory at Tarbat and then a heavy defeat at Aldy Charrish, where the chief and many of his men were killed. Accounts differ on whether that battle was fought in 1486 or 1487. In 1651 David Ross, twelfth of Balnagown, led clansmen in the royalist army at Worcester. He was captured there and held in the Tower of London.

By the early eighteenth century Balnagown was deep in debt. In 1711 the estate went to General Charles Ross, of the unrelated Lowland family of Ross of Hawkhead in Renfrewshire. The chiefship did not go with it. It passed instead to the Rosses of Pitcalnie as heirs of the old line. A Miss Ross of Pitcalnie matriculated the chiefly arms in 1903. In 1968 the chiefship passed to David Ross of Ross and Balnagowan of the Shandwick branch.

He held the chiefship for more than fifty years and died in 2024. A successor from his family is now named as chief by at least one Clan Ross association. We have not been able to confirm the Lord Lyon's recognition from an official source. When we last checked, the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs listed the Ross chiefship as 'under consideration'. We will update this page when the position is clear.