Clan Melville
Melville is a Norman territorial name, from Maleville in the Pays de Caux, brought north by incoming settlers in the twelfth century. The claim that a Guillaume de Malleville fought at Hastings in 1066 is tradition rather than record. The earliest Melville on documentary record is Galfrid de Malveill, sheriff of Edinburgh under Malcolm IV and later Justiciar of Scotland under William the Lion; the family had received lands in Midlothian in David I’s reign, and those lands took their name. Sir John de Melville subscribed the Ragman Roll in 1296.
Under James V, Sir John Melville of Raith was Captain of Dunbar Castle and held lands at Murdocairnie in Fife. Sir Robert Melville, an Extraordinary Lord of Session who had acted as an intermediary during Mary’s imprisonment at Lochleven, was created Lord Melville of Monimail in 1616. George Melville, 4th Lord Melville, returned with William and Mary in 1688 and was created Earl of Melville in 1690; his son David had already succeeded to the earldom of Leven through his mother in 1681, and since 1707 the two earldoms have been united. The barony of Melville itself passed out of the family by 1705. One correction is worth making, because the kilt trade repeats the error constantly: Henry Dundas, created Viscount Melville in 1802, was a Dundas and not a Melville, and that title has nothing to do with this family.
The Melville tartan
Melville has a better-documented tartan than most names of its kind. The Scottish Register of Tartans holds two Melville setts. Melville, reference 2914, is attributed in the register to Wilsons of Bannockburn, and the tartan literature records it in Wilson’s notebook in 1847 — a real weaver, a real book, a real date. The same record notes that it is also known as Oliphant and Melville, so the pattern is historically one design serving two names rather than a tartan exclusive to Melville.
Melville (Two black lines), reference 2915, credited to Lochcarron of Scotland, is a separate sett rather than a shade: the two black lines replace a single one. The register gives it no date. The third register result under the name, a personal tartan registered in 2017 for an individual holding a Scottish feudal barony title that includes the word Melville, is not a clan tartan and should not be sold as one.
A note on honesty: Melville Ancient, Melville Muted and Melville Weathered are colourways of reference 2914, not separate tartans. No Melville sett predates the commercial era; 1847 is as far back as the record goes, and that is further back than most. Melville does not appear in the Vestiarium Scoticum, so the Wilsons line here is independent of that 1842 forgery.
Clan facts
| Chief | Sources conflict and we will not resolve it for them. Some reference works describe Melville as an armigerous clan with no chief; others name the Earl of Leven and Melville as head of the family. The present holder of those peerages is Alexander Ian Leslie-Melville, 15th Earl of Leven and 14th Earl of Melville, who succeeded on 7 April 2012 — but the Melville earldom reached that line through the 1707 union with Leven, which is exactly why chiefship of the name is unsettled. We have found no Lord Lyon recognition and no dormancy declaration either way. |
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| Motto | Denique coelum — “Heaven at last”. Note that at least one well-known retail site gives “Touch not the cat bot a glove” for Melville; that is the Mackintosh and Macpherson motto and is simply wrong. |
| Plant badge | Not recorded. Melville does not appear in the standard lists of clan plant badges. |
| Lands | Melville Castle, Midlothian, the original seat; Melville House, Fife; Raith and Murdocairnie, Fife. The barony of Melville was out of the family by 1705. Glenferness House near Nairn is the present seat of the Earl of Leven and Melville |