Clan Hepburn
Hepburn is a territorial name from Hebburn in Northumberland. The family appears in East Lothian as tenants of the earls of Dunbar, and became lords of Hailes in the reign of David II (1329–1371), after the de Gourlays who had built Hailes Castle lost it in the middle of that century; Sir Adam de Hepburn, who died before 1371, is the first of the line there. The story that a Hepburn won the Lothian lands by saving an Earl of March from a bolting horse is a legend, and almost certainly works backwards from the bridled horse’s head in the family crest. The firmest early document is a Crown charter of the Lordship of Hailes from James II, dated 20 December 1451, to Sir Patrick Hepburn, who was created Lord Hailes in 1453.
Hailes withstood an attack by Henry “Hotspur” Percy in 1400 and fell to Archibald Dunbar in 1443, when its inhabitants were massacred. On 17 October 1488 Patrick Hepburn, 2nd Lord Hailes, was created 1st Earl of Bothwell, having been made Lord High Admiral of Scotland five weeks earlier. The best-known of the line is James Hepburn, 4th Earl, born about 1534, who succeeded in 1556, was created Duke of Orkney on 12 May 1567 and married Mary, Queen of Scots, at Holyrood three days later. After Carberry Hill on 15 June 1567 his titles and estates were forfeited by Act of the Scottish Parliament in December of that year, and he died a prisoner at Dragsholm Castle in Denmark on 14 April 1578. Hailes was slighted in 1548 and finished as a noble residence after a Cromwellian attack in 1650; by 1700 it had passed to the Dalrymples.
The Hepburn tartan
Hepburn has two genuinely distinct registered threadcounts. One is a red-ground sett of 692 threads, dated 1960. The other is a blue-ground sett of 144 threads, recorded as produced in 1968 by Anderson’s of Edinburgh for Captain Charles Hepburn, from an existing design — what that earlier design was is not documented. These two are different tartans, not versions of one another.
A note on honesty: everything beyond those two setts is a matter of scale and dye. The variants offered as Hepburn Ancient, Modern, Weathered or Muted are colourways, not separate tartans. Neither Hepburn sett is old: Hepburn does not appear in the Vestiarium Scoticum, there is no Wilsons of Bannockburn connection, and nothing in the record places a Hepburn tartan before the twentieth century. The family’s history reaches back to the fourteenth century; its tartans do not.
Clan facts
| Chief | None. Hepburn is an armigerous family: it once had a chief recognised as bearing undifferenced arms, but no chief is recognised by the Lord Lyon today and there is no Hepburn on the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs |
|---|---|
| Gaelic patronymic | Not recorded — a Lothian family of Northumbrian origin |
| Motto | “Keep tryst” — keep the appointment, keep faith |
| Plant badge | Not recorded |
| Lands | East Lothian: the barony and lordship of Hailes, with Hailes Castle, now a ruin in state care; also Hermitage Castle in Liddesdale through the Earls of Bothwell |