Clan Baillie
Baillie is an office-name, from the bailie or bailiff who administered a barony. The earliest record all our sources agree on is William de Bailli of Hoperig, sitting as a juror at a Lothian inquest in 1311 or 1312, though we have not been able to tie that to a named register entry. The old story that the Baillies are Balliols who quietly changed the name after Robert I’s reign is tradition; the standard reference works note that it has no evidence behind it.
From Hoprig and Penston in East Lothian the family moved to Lamington in Lanarkshire, knighted by David II in 1357 and granted the barony by royal charter in 1368. In 1452 Alexander Baillie was granted Dunain and Dochfour near Inverness and made constable of Inverness Castle. Cuthbert Baillie was Lord High Treasurer under James IV in 1512; William Baillie of Lamington was Master of the Wardrobe to Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1542, and fought for her at Langside in 1568, losing the estates for it. General William Baillie commanded for the Covenanters and was beaten by Montrose at both Alford and Kilsyth in 1645. Robert Baillie of Jerviswood was hanged for high treason on 24 December 1684, and the Baillie estates were restored in 1688.
The Baillie tartan
The Scottish Register of Tartans holds five Baillie entries, and reading them properly matters, because there is no plain “Baillie” sett in the Clan or Family category at all. What the trade sells as Baillie Modern is in fact Baillie of Polkemmet (reference 165), designed by A. W. Geddes of William Anderson, Edinburgh, in 1937. It is the MacKenzie tartan with three fine white lines on the green in place of MacKenzie’s single stripe — a MacKenzie derivative, not an old Baillie pattern. Baillie of Polkemmet Red (166) is the same Geddes design recoloured. Baillie Dress (164) is a modern dress version by D. C. Dalgliesh.
Two older entries sit alongside them. Baillie (Fencibles), reference 163, is a Wilsons of Bannockburn military pattern for a regiment, and should not be bought as a clan tartan. Baillie (Highland Society), reference 162, carries a name implying the Highland Society of London collection, but the register gives no date and we could not confirm the certification. The earliest Baillie cloth the literature records is a Wilsons of Bannockburn sett from their 1819 key pattern book, described as MacLeod of Skye with a black guard added to the red, with a possible mention in an 1800 stock list.
A note on honesty: Baillie Ancient, Baillie Muted and Baillie Weathered are colourways of the Polkemmet sett, not separate tartans. No Baillie sett predates the commercial era — the earliest is around 1800 to 1819, and the pattern most people now wear dates from 1937. Baillie does not appear in the Vestiarium Scoticum, so at least it carries none of that forgery’s baggage.
Clan facts
| Chief | None currently recognised by the Lord Lyon; Baillie is an armigerous clan. The historic chiefly designation was Baillie of Lamington, but we could not establish when that line failed or who the senior surviving line is, and we have found no dated Lyon act on the question. We will not supply a year we cannot source. |
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| Motto | Quid clarius astris — “What is brighter than the stars?” |
| Plant badge | Not recorded. Baillie does not appear in the standard lists of clan plant badges, and anything circulating in the kilt trade for this field is unsourced. |
| Lands | Hoprig and Penston, East Lothian; the barony of Lamington, Lanarkshire; Polkemmet, West Lothian; Dunain and Dochfour, Inverness-shire. No current clan seat is recorded. |