Clan Sinclair

The Sinclairs descend from a Norman family taking its name from Saint-Clair, members of which came to England with William the Conqueror and appear in Scotland from the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Their first Scottish base was Roslin in Midlothian, and from there the family reached far north.

In 1379 Sir Henry Sinclair was granted the Earldom of Orkney, claimed through his mother’s Norse descent. His descendant William Sinclair founded Rosslyn Chapel in the fifteenth century and was created Earl of Caithness, and Caithness became the clan’s heartland, with Castle Sinclair Girnigoe near Wick as the chiefly seat. William, 2nd Earl of Caithness, was killed with James IV at Flodden in 1513, and John, 3rd Earl, fell at Summerdale in Orkney in 1529.

The Sinclair tartan

The tartan record is nineteenth century. The pattern held by the Register under its “Logan” name was published in James Logan’s The Scottish Gael, and Sinclair Hunting (VS) is credited by the Scottish Register of Tartans to the Sobieski Stewarts, that is to the Vestiarium Scoticum of 1842, where the entry stands at plate 45 as “Seyntcler”. The Register’s main Sinclair entry carries the designer “unknown” with no date recorded.

In practice the red Sinclair is the dress pattern and the darker green-ground sett the hunting alternative.

A note on honesty: the Henry Sinclair voyage stories and the Templar and Grail legends attached to Rosslyn Chapel are folklore, not history, and a retail claim that the Sinclair thread count was taken from a portrait of the 13th Earl of Caithness could not be corroborated anywhere.

Clan facts

References

1. Sinclair tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. Sinclair — Council of Scottish Clans & Associations
3. Vestiarium Scoticum