Clan Rose

Clan Rose is Norman in origin — the name comes from Ros, near Caen — and has no connection whatever to the Gaelic Clan Ross, despite the similar spelling. The family came north to the Moray Firth in the middle of the thirteenth century. Its founding is unusually well documented for a Scottish clan: Hugh Rose of Geddes married Marie de Bosco, daughter of Andrew de Bosco and Elizabeth de Bisset, and acquired the lands of Kilravock, the barony being created in 1293 by King John Balliol. He is reckoned the 1st of Kilravock, and the Roses held Invernairn Castle for Robert the Bruce in 1306.

The keep of Kilravock Castle that still stands was built about 1460 by the 7th Baron under a licence to build granted by the Lord of the Isles. Mary, Queen of Scots stayed there in 1562 as the guest of Hugh Rose, 10th of Kilravock, the “Black Baron”, who later hosted her son James VI. The 13th Baron led the clan against Montrose at Auldearn in 1645, and the family was consistently pro-Government thereafter: Arthur Rose was killed retaking Inverness from the Jacobites in 1715. Kilravock has the distinction of having hosted Prince Charles Edward Stuart four days before Culloden and the Duke of Cumberland shortly after it, and Robert Burns visited in September 1787. The chiefly line has never been dormant; David Hugh Heriot Baird Rose was recognised as 26th Baron of Kilravock and chief in June 2013.

The Rose tartan

Two Rose setts are separately recorded, and the older one is not the one most people buy. Rose Hunting, the green sett, carries a recorded design date of 1831 and is the senior of the two on record; it is also worn by the Royal Tank Regiment. The familiar red sett, Rose Red, carries a date of 1842 and appears as Plate 63 in the Vestiarium Scoticum, the Sobieski Stuart brothers’ book of that year. A Rose White Dress sett is recorded with a date of 1950, designed for ladies’ dance costume.

A note on honesty: the Vestiarium Scoticum is a proven forgery. Chemical testing in 1895 showed the supposedly fifteenth-century manuscript behind it had been artificially aged. Many of its patterns nonetheless became the accepted clan tartans, Rose Red among them, so it should not be described as ancient or as worn by the clan before the nineteenth century. Rose Modern, Ancient, Weathered and Muted are dye-shade treatments of these same setts, not separate tartans. The sett registered as Rose of Kilravock is a personal tartan rather than the clan tartan.

Clan facts

References

1. Rose tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. Our Clan Tartans — Clan Rose International
3. Rose — Council of Scottish Clans and Associations