Clan Stewart

Stewart, in Gaelic Stiùbhart, is a name taken from an office rather than a place. The family were seneschals of Dol in Brittany before Walter fitz Alan came to Scotland about 1136, in the reign of David I. He became the king’s dapifer or steward around 1150 and served David I, Malcolm IV and William I in turn, holding lands in Renfrewshire and East Lothian. He founded the priory that became Paisley Abbey about 1163, retired to Melrose and died in 1177, and was buried at Paisley. The stewardship became hereditary in his descendants, and the office gave the family its surname. The clan lands were Renfrewshire, Teviotdale and Lauderdale, and the chiefly arms carried a pelican in her nest feeding her young.

Walter, 6th High Steward, married Marjorie, daughter of Robert the Bruce. After Edward Bruce was killed at Faughart on 14 October 1318, parliament in December named their son Robert heir presumptive; he came to the throne as Robert II on 22 February 1371, and Stewart and Stuart monarchs held Scotland, and later Britain, until the death of Queen Anne in 1714. The great branches went their own ways. The Stewarts of Appin in Argyll descend from Sir John Stewart of Bonkyll, whose grandson married the heiress of the Lord of Lorn; Sir John Stewart of Lorn was mortally wounded at a wedding party at Dunstaffnage in 1463, and the Battle of Stalc in 1468 settled the family’s hold on Appin. The Appin Regiment came out in the rising of 1745 under Charles Stewart of Ardsheal and lost 92 killed and 65 wounded at Culloden out of roughly 300 men. In 1752 Colin Campbell was shot near Ballachulish, and James Stewart of the Glens was hanged for it by a jury of fifteen of whom eleven were Campbells. The Stewarts of Atholl in Perthshire descend from Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, the Wolf of Badenoch, and built Garth Castle late in the fourteenth century.

The Stewart tartan

There is no single Stewart tartan. A search of the Scottish Register of Tartans for the name returns 73 records, across clan, royal, district, corporate and personal categories. Stewart of Appin alone accounts for seven, including a plain sett, a second version, a dress, a hunting, a hunting dress, a Dress #1 credited to Peter MacArthur Ltd, and one explicitly marked Stewart of Appin (VS) and credited to the Sobieski Stuarts. Stewart of Atholl is likewise credited to the Sobieski Stuarts. Royal Stewart, which this site covers separately, is one sett among all of these and no more ancient than most: its pattern was first published by James Logan in The Scottish Gaël in 1831.

Hunting Stewart has the longest paper trail and the least straightforward one. The Stewart Society records that Wilsons of Bannockburn had it before 1819, in a form noticeably different from the one woven today, and that the Sobieski brothers were experimenting around 1825 with a green pattern they called “Stewart hunting”. Their version enlarged the blue until the sett resembled Black Watch, and that is the version that survived. It has an asymmetric sett, and it is now treated as a general tartan rather than a clan one.

A note on honesty: none of these setts is a medieval royal livery. The oldest firm date for any Stewart pattern is a Wilsons of Bannockburn pattern book before 1819 and a printed book of 1831 — four and a half centuries after Robert II took the throne. Stewart of Atholl and the marked Appin sett come from the Vestiarium Scoticum of 1842, whose source manuscript was never produced for examination and whose supposed 1721 copy was found under chemical testing in 1895 to have been artificially aged. The Register itself notes that Royal Stewart has become a universal tartan that anyone may wear; permission of the sovereign is theoretically required and is not enforced. And Stewart Ancient, Modern and Weathered are not distinct tartans but the same threadcounts woven in lighter or muted dye shades.

Clan facts

References

1. Stewart tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. Hunting Stewart — The Stewart Society
3. Clan Stewart