Clan Oliphant
The Oliphants were an Anglo-Norman family established in the English Midlands before they were Scottish. The earliest documented bearer of the name is Roger Olifard, who witnessed a foundation charter to the Cluniac priory of St Andrew’s, Northampton, in a charter dated between 1093 and 1100. Domesday Book records Willelmus Olyfart holding land in Lilleford, Northamptonshire, and the Pipe Roll of 1130 has William Olifard holding five hides in Lilford of the fee of the King of Scotland. The specifically French origin sometimes given is one theory rather than record. David Olifard, godson of David I, saved the king from capture at Winchester in 1141, held Crailing and Smailholm in Roxburghshire and was Justiciar of Lothian; his son Sir Walter, the second Justiciar, married Christian, daughter of Ferchar, Earl of Strathearn, in 1173.
Sir William Oliphant held Stirling Castle as the last stronghold in Scots hands, surrendering after a three-month siege in 1304 and being sent to the Tower. William Oliphant, Lord of Aberdalgie, was a signatory to the Declaration of Arbroath on 6 April 1320, and his seal is still visible on it. Sir Walter Oliphant married Princess Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Robert the Bruce. Laurence Oliphant sat in Parliament as a Lord of Parliament on 14 October 1467, and Sir John Oliphant was killed at the Battle of Arbroath in 1445. The lordship was created more than once and its history is tangled: the first creation went into abeyance in 1631, the second became extinct in 1748 on the death of Francis Oliphant, and a third, established in fact in 1750, fell dormant in 1770. The lordship of Oliphant is dormant still. The chiefship, which is a separate matter, was restored: the Lord Lyon decreed Richard Eric Laurence Oliphant of that Ilk Chief of the Name and Arms of Oliphant on 12 June 2003, with his arms entered in the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland on 1 July 2004. One caution on dates: a widely copied account has the tenth and last Lord Oliphant active in the rising of 1745, escaping to Sweden and France and returning in 1763. That career belongs to Laurence Oliphant of Gask, not to the tenth Lord, who died in 1748.
The Oliphant tartan
The register holds two Oliphant entries, both Clan/Family. Oliphant is credited to “the Sobieski Stewarts”, and the register’s own note places it in the Vestiarium Scoticum No 54 and in W & A K Johnston, 1906. The same note supplies an unusually candid explanation of the gap: with the death of the tenth Lord Oliphant in 1748, it was not known eighty years later who the clan chief was when the Highland Society of London began the naming and registration of clan tartans on 8 April 1815, which may be why Oliphant was overlooked. The tartan was claimed and registered with the Lord Lyon by the chief in 2004. Oliphant Dress (reference 10227, recorded 16 June 2010, designers given as Oliphant/Urquhart) was approved by Chief Richard Oliphant as the official dress tartan, and in the register’s words preserves the main elements of the Oliphant tartan woven in the brightest ancient colours.
A note on honesty: the Oliphant sett’s only early source is the Vestiarium Scoticum of 1842, the work of the brothers who styled themselves Sobieski Stuart and claimed descent from Charles Edward Stuart. They were denounced as impostors, and a chemical examination of their supposed source manuscript found it had been treated to make the writing look older than it was. So the Oliphant tartan is an 1842 attribution, and no Oliphant sett predates the commercial era. The register holds two designs and no more: Modern, Ancient, Weathered and Muted are weavers’ colourways of the same sett, and the dress tartan of 2010 is explicitly a derivative of the Oliphant pattern rather than an independent historic one. The register also notes that the name “Oliphant and Melville” has been used since 1906 but without evidence, so cloth sold under that name should not be taken as documented.
Clan facts
| Chief | Richard Eric Laurence Oliphant of that Ilk, Chief of the Name and Arms of Oliphant, decreed by the Lord Lyon on 12 June 2003. The Lyon Court citation spells the forename “Erick”; the lordship of Oliphant remains dormant |
|---|---|
| Motto | Tout Pourvoir — French, “provide for all”. Our source for this is a single secondary site and we could not corroborate it, so treat it as conventional rather than confirmed |
| Plant badge | Not recorded. The field is empty in the references. Values circulated by retailers carry no citation and we have not imported them |
| Lands | No current seat. Historic: Aberdalgie and Dupplin in Perthshire, Kellie Castle in Fife (held 1360–1613), Hatton Castle built in 1575 by the 4th Lord. Ardblair Castle is the seat of the Oliphant of Gask chieftain, not of the clan |