Clan Scott

History

The earliest certain Scott is Uchtred 'filius Scoti', son of the Scot, who witnessed charters in the reign of David I, around 1120. Little more is known of him. Later pedigrees join him to the Scotts of Buccleuch. The links in between are not all documented.

Buccleuch itself comes into the story with Sir Richard Scott, around 1300. The family histories say he gained Murthockston by marrying its heiress, kept Ettrick Forest for the crown as its ranger, and made his home at Buccleuch. The same histories put his son, Sir Michael, on the field at Halidon Hill in 1333 and have him die at Durham in 1346. The move that mattered most came in the next century. Half of Branxholme, near Hawick, came to the Scotts in 1420. By 1463 they held it as a free barony, and the yearly rent was a single red rose. Branxholme stayed the family's base after that, and by about 1500 a laird of Buccleuch was reckoned able to raise a thousand mounted men.

Those riders mattered, because this was reiver country and the Scotts were one of its strongest names. They also played for higher stakes. In the summer of 1526 Sir Walter Scott of Branxholme and Buccleuch met the Earl of Angus near Melrose and tried to take the young James V from him by force. The attempt failed. Among the dead was Kerr of Cessford, and the Kerrs did not forget: in 1552 they cut Sir Walter down in Edinburgh's High Street. The exploit the Borders remembered best belongs to a later Walter Scott, known as 'Bold Buccleuch'. In 1596 he got into Carlisle Castle and brought out the captured reiver Kinmont Willie Armstrong. Word of it reached Elizabeth I.

The Union of the Crowns in 1603 ended the old Border life, and the chiefs turned from riders into noblemen. The lordship of Scott of Buccleuch was created in 1606 and the earldom in 1619. The second earl supported the Covenant. He died in 1651, leaving only young daughters. The younger, Anne, was married in 1663 to the Duke of Monmouth, the eldest illegitimate son of Charles II, and the pair were created Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch. Monmouth was beheaded after his rebellion in 1685. Anne held her title in her own right, and it passed to her grandson.

Later marriages brought the Montagu estates in England and, in 1810, the dukedom of Queensberry with Drumlanrig Castle. The family name became Montagu Douglas Scott, and in 1975 the duke was recognised as Chief of the Name and Arms of Scott. Bowhill, near Selkirk, is the Scott house among the family's seats.

The best-known bearer of the name was not a chief. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), poet and novelist, came from the Harden branch and built Abbotsford on the Tweed. He was no believer in a Scott tartan. When one was described to him in 1829, from a manuscript belonging to the Sobieski Stuart brothers, he rejected the idea firmly. It is now the most widely worn Scott sett.