Clan Bell
The Bells were a Border riding family of Dumfriesshire, concentrated in Annandale and the parish of Middlebie. The earliest firm record is a charter of 6 March 1426 by which James I confirmed to William Bell the lands of Kirkconnel on the Kirtle Water, cited to the Register of the Great Seal, 1424–1513, no. 85. A second account has Archibald, Earl of Douglas granting those lands to William Bell of Kirkconnell in 1424. The two can be reconciled as a Douglas grant later confirmed by the Crown, but the sources as written disagree and both dates are given here. Earlier claims — a Norman follower of David I, an arrival with Robert de Brus, a Gilbert Le Fitzbel holding land in Dumfries in the thirteenth century — are narrative without cited record.
Thomas Bell of Kirkconnell joined William, eighth Earl of Douglas in plotting rebellion against James II in 1451, and after the Douglas defeat at Arkinholm in 1455 the Bells lost Kirkconnel to the Maxwells, though other branches kept their land. A muster roll for the siege of Stirling in 1585 lists forty Dumfriesshire Bells, among them William Bell called Redcloak. An Act of the eleventh Parliament of James VI, dated 29 July 1587, names the Bells among the unruly Border clans, and thirty-seven hostages were taken from those clans in 1596. Middlebie is recorded as a Bell holding by 1609. Bells settled in Ulster after 1610, and many families crossed from there to North America in the early eighteenth century.
The Bell tartan
Bell tartans are recent. The pattern recorded simply as Bell was designed in 1984 for Colonel William H. Bell, then president of the Bell Family Association, to commemorate a Border riding family that had never had a tartan. A second and distinctly different threadcount is recorded as Bell of the Borders, ref 243, which Clan Bell North America says was listed in the same year, 1984.
Beyond those two, the picture is murkier than retailers suggest. A chief’s tartan, a Bell South and a Blackethouse pattern are all referred to in clan material without reference numbers or threadcounts, and the use of Blackethouse is said to be reserved to the chief — of whom there is currently none. Claims of eleven Bell tartans, and presentations that file MacMillan cloth under the Bell name, come from commercial sources and are not supported by the Register.
A note on honesty: nothing documented here is older than 1984. There is no ancestral Bell sett, and no Bell pattern appears in Wilsons of Bannockburn’s pattern books or in the Vestiarium Scoticum. Bell Modern, Ancient and Weathered are colourways, not separate tartans. Whether Bell and Bell of the Borders are two registrations or one registration plus a separate sett is not something we can settle from the published records, and we would rather say so than guess.
Clan facts
| Chief | No chief — an armigerous Border family. The chiefship is held to have become dormant after the death of William Bell of Blackethouse, called Redcloak, in 1627 or 1628. The Lord Lyon’s letter of 6 May 1985 acknowledged the clan and its right to organise; that is not recognition of a chief. Douglas Bell, C.B.E., was identified as the ranking Bell in 1988 and died in February 1993; the search for a qualified candidate continues. |
|---|---|
| Motto | “I beir the bel” — Scots for “I bear the bell”, the old idiom for carrying off the prize |
| Plant badge | Not recorded. No plant badge for Bell is given by the clan associations or by any heraldic authority we could consult. |
| Lands | Kirkconnel on the Kirtle Water, granted or confirmed 1424–26 and lost in 1455, now Maxwell land renamed Springkell. The seat is given as Blackethouse in Pennersax parish by Clan Bell North America and as Middlebie elsewhere; the two attributions conflict. |