Barclay Hunting Ancient Tartan

The chiefship of this name fell vacant as recently as November 2023, which makes it one of the few Scottish families whose line of chiefs can be followed to a date within living memory and then stops.

Berkeley, or Berkley

The surname is English and territorial before it is Scottish. It derives from a place called Berkeley or Berkley, and there are two candidates: Berkeley in Gloucestershire, where the Berkeley earls built their castle in 1153, and Berkley in Somerset, which appears in Domesday as Berchelei in 1086. Which of them the Scottish family took its name from has never been established. Nor is the date of arrival agreed. One family tradition has John de Berkeley, son of Roger de Berkeley, coming north in 1069 in the train of Saint Margaret; another puts a John de Berkeley in Scotland in 1124 with Maud, queen of David I. More recent work argues for two separate migrations, one in the early twelfth century and a second around 1220, which would explain why the traditions conflict without either being wholly wrong. The family is Anglo-Norman in origin; the particular route it took is not settled.

Chamberlain to the king, and a prisoner at Methven

The first firm fixture is an office, not a battle: by 1171 Sir Walter de Berkeley was Chamberlain of Scotland, which places the family near the centre of royal administration within a generation or two of its arrival. In the Wars of Independence Sir David Barclay fought for Robert Bruce and was taken at Methven, the disaster of 1306 that scattered the king’s first army. The principal seat became Towie Barclay in Aberdeenshire, and Balvaird Castle was also in family hands. The motto is Aut agere aut mori, either to act or to die, and the crest a hand holding a dagger on a chapeau doubled ermine.

Urie: a soldier, a Quaker, a bank — and Riga

The most consequential branch settled at Urie, near Stonehaven in Kincardineshire, in the seventeenth century. Colonel David Barclay, its first laird, was a professional soldier who served Gustavus Adolphus in Sweden, reached the rank of major and came home when civil war broke out in Britain. After 1660 he was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, and it was in prison that he became a Quaker. His son Robert Barclay, who lived from 1648 to 1690, became the most substantial theological writer the early Quakers produced; his Apology for the True Christian Divinity was published in 1675 and is still in print. The clan’s own account credits Robert’s second son David with founding the London bank that carries the family name.

A quite separate line went east. Peter Barclay, a merchant of the seventeenth century, settled in the Baltic, and from him descended Prince Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly, who lived from 1761 to 1818. He was made Russian Minister of War in 1810, commanded the Russian armies against Napoleon’s invasion in 1812 and again in the War of the Sixth Coalition, and rose to field marshal and princely rank. His portrait hangs in the Hermitage.

Where the sett comes from

The tartan has a shorter and less distinguished pedigree than the family. Barclay appears among the seventy-five plates of the Vestiarium Scoticum, published in 1842 by the brothers who styled themselves John Sobieski Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart and who were in fact the sons of a Royal Navy lieutenant named Allen. Sir Walter Scott had already expressed doubts about them in writing in June 1829; a review of 1847 demolished their claim; and chemical testing in 1895 showed that one of the supporting manuscripts had been treated to appear older than it was. The plates were adopted regardless, and a great part of the Lowland and Border repertoire — Barclay with it — descends from that single book. No earlier cloth under the name is recorded among the specimens the Highland Society of London gathered from chiefs between 1815 and 1822.

Two settings of the Barclay pattern are in general use, a hunting version and a dress version, and they are distinct designs rather than different dye strengths. The words Ancient, Weathered and Muted, by contrast, describe how strongly the yarn has been dyed and are twentieth-century conventions: the ancient palette came first, weathered followed in the late 1940s and muted in the early 1970s. The threading in each case is the same.

A chiefship vacant since 2023

Peter Charles Barclay of Towie Barclay and of that Ilk was recognised chief of the name and died on 2 November 2023. There is at present no successor in the office, so the name stands without a chief while any claim works its way through the Court of the Lord Lyon. That has no practical bearing on wearing the sett. Anyone called Barclay, or descended from a Barclay line, may wear it, and the choice between the hunting and dress versions is a matter of taste and occasion rather than of entitlement.

Sources: Clan Barclay, Wikipedia; Vestiarium Scoticum and Sobieski Stuarts, Wikipedia; Scottish Tartans Authority, The History of Tartan.