Clan Scrymgeour

History

Scrymgeour is an occupational name. Sources agree it comes from an old word for a swordsman or fencer, and one history on Electric Scotland reads it as a skirmisher. Fife was the family's first home; the link with Dundee came later. Where they came from before that is less certain. One account traces them to the O'Neills, who were kings in northern Ireland. The herald Sir Iain Moncreiffe pointed instead to the Macduff Earls of Fife, and the Electric Scotland history notes that the Scrymgeour arms look like the Fife lion with its colours reversed.

The family's fame rests on one duty: carrying the king's banner into battle. Alexander Scrymgeour was confirmed in that role in March 1298, by a grant from William Wallace and the Scots parliament that also made him Constable of Dundee and gave him land at Dudhope. That same year he bore the banner at Falkirk, a Scots defeat. Later he threw in his lot with Robert the Bruce. The Gazetteer for Scotland says he was captured at Methven in 1306 and executed at Newcastle, and Scotland.org adds that Edward I ordered it.

Sources differ on who carried the banner at Bannockburn in 1314. Scotland.org names a second Alexander, while Anderson's Scottish Nation appears to credit the same Sir Alexander who fought at Falkirk. According to Anderson, Bruce later gave his son Nicholas a charter that made the standard bearer's office hereditary. Argyll entered the story around 1370, when a Scrymgeour married Agnes, the heiress of Glassary, and her lands came with her. At Flodden in 1513 the banner went into battle once more. John Scrymgeour of Glassary bore it there and was mortally wounded.

The 17th century brought titles, then ruin. In 1604 Sir James Scrymgeour was named a commissioner for a proposed union with England. Charles I created his son John Viscount of Dudhope in 1641. The second viscount fought with the Covenanters and died of wounds after Marston Moor in 1644. His heir took the other side. A royalist, he fought at Worcester in 1651, and in 1660 he became Earl of Dundee. When he died childless in 1668, the Duke of Lauderdale took the estates. Dudhope later went to John Graham of Claverhouse.

The claim to the titles stayed alive through cousins, among them the Scrymgeours of Kirkton and of Birkhill. In the late 18th century the Birkhill line also inherited the Wedderburn estates; Scotland.org gives the year as 1788, Anderson as 1778. When Edward VII was crowned, Henry Scrymgeour Wedderburn bore Scotland's standard. In 1953 his line took its claim to the House of Lords, which recognised the eleventh Earl of Dundee. Scotland.org says he was made Baron Glassary in 1954 and rose to be Deputy Leader of the House of Lords.

Scotland.org names his son, the twelfth Earl, as the present chief. The Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs lists the Earl of Dundee as chief of the name. The family tartan dates from 1971, and the Register says it was shown at a gathering of Scrymgeours at Dudhope Castle soon after.