Clan Livingstone
Two unrelated families share this surname, and conflating them is the commonest error in Livingstone copy. The Lowland Livingstons of Callendar take their name from the place Livingston in West Lothian, itself named after a man called Leving who appears in the twelfth-century charters of David I; theirs is an Anglo-Norman or Flemish line. The Earldom of Linlithgow was created for them in 1600 and merged with the junior Earldom of Callendar in 1695, and both were forfeited when the 5th Earl was attainted in 1716 for his part in the rising of 1715. Callendar House in Falkirk is now a museum. The chiefship, however, belongs to the other family altogether: the Highland Clan MacLea, in Gaelic Mac an Léigh, “son of the physician”, also Mac Duinnshleibhe, of Bachuil on the Isle of Lismore in Argyll.
The MacLeas were hereditary custodians of the pastoral staff of St Moluag, who crossed to Lismore in 562 and died on 25 June 592, and almoners to Lismore Cathedral. Their documentary anchor is a Latin charter of 1544, still held by the family, confirming their immemorial possession of their lands and of the Bachuil Mór, the great staff, and naming Iain McMolmore Vic Kevir as being “with keeping of the great staff of the blessed Moloc”. The scholarly theory traces the line to Ruaidhrí Mac Duinnsléibhe, last king of Ulidia, who died at the end of the twelfth century; that is a theory, not a charter fact. The MacLeas adopted the name Livingstone between roughly 1650 and 1750, for reasons that are undocumented — so the shared surname is a seventeenth-century adoption rather than common descent. On 21 December 1950 the Lord Lyon ruled, on the petition of Livingstone of Bachuil, that he was the Coarb of St Moluag and a baron in the Baronage of Argyll and the Isles, finding that the Coarbs had existed for centuries without acknowledging any secular authority, comparable to the old French barons by the Grace of God; the barony is therefore allodial rather than feudal, and it is possession of the staff, not ownership of land, that identifies the legitimate baron. One source dates that ruling to 1951. William Jervis Alastair Livingstone of Bachuil became the first formally recognised clan chief in 2003, and the present chief succeeded his father in February 2008.
The Livingstone tartan
The claim that the Livingstone tartan comes from the Vestiarium Scoticum is false, and since it is widely repeated it is worth saying so directly. Livingston is not among the Vestiarium’s seventy-five tartans, and no Livingstone entry on the register carries the “(V.S.)” marker the register uses for Vestiarium setts. The main clan sett is dated 1906 and described as the Highland Livingston clan sett from Lismore and western Argyll, with a noted resemblance to MacDonell of Keppoch. Livingston (reference 2130) and Livingstone (references 2134 and 2135) are recordings of that one design. Two further setts are genuinely distinct: Livingstone MacLay MacLeay (reference 2137), a red ground with light blue and yellow, earliest record 1934, with pattern records associated with William Andersons of Edinburgh and with Wilsons of Bannockburn held at the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland; and Livingstone Dress (reference 2136), recorded 1 January 2002, designer not specified.
A note on honesty: a register search throws up fourteen rows, which overstates matters considerably. There are three distinct clan threadcounts, not five or more, and Livingstone Modern, Ancient, Weathered and Muted are colourways of the 1906 sett. No Livingstone sett predates the commercial era, and the Wilsons association attached to the MacLay MacLeay pattern is a note on a pattern record’s provenance rather than proof of an eighteenth-century Wilsons Livingstone sett. Several entries that come up in a search are not clan tartans at all: the Australian Livingstone tartans of 2009 and 2012, a personal Livingston tartan of 1996, and four tartans belonging to Livingston Football Club, a West Lothian club with no connection to the clan. And although the Livingstones are associated with the Buchanans, MacDougalls and Stewarts of Appin, their sett does not resemble those clans’ tartans, so there is no case for wearing one in place of another. The clan has its own cloth and does not need to borrow.
Clan facts
| Chief | The Much Hon. Niall Livingstone of Bachuil, Baron of Bachuil “by the Grace of God”, Coarb of St Moluag and Abbot of Lismore, Head of Clan Livingstone, who succeeded his father in February 2008 |
|---|---|
| Motto | Cnoc Aingeil — Gaelic, “hill of fire”, properly a slogan or war-cry, being a place. A second motto is also given: Nì mi e ma’s urrain dhomh, “I shall do it if I can” |
| Plant badge | Grass of Parnassus |
| Lands | Bachuil, Isle of Lismore, Argyll. The Lowland Livingstons’ seat was Callendar House, Falkirk, now a museum — a different family |