Clan Ruthven
Between 1188 and 1199, Swein, son of Thor and of Norse origin, is recorded granting lands including Tibbermore to the monks of Scone. His grandson, Sir Walter Ruthven, was the first of the family to adopt the surname. The family’s lands were in Perthshire, their seat Ruthven Castle, with Dirleton Castle in East Lothian and the barony of Ruthven in Angus. William Ruthven, 4th Lord Ruthven, was created Earl of Gowrie by James VI on 23 August 1581. His seizure of the king at Ruthven Castle in 1582, the Raid of Ruthven, was followed by his execution for high treason on 28 May 1584 and the forfeiture of his peerages, though the estates were restored to his son in 1586.
On 5 August 1600 John Ruthven, 3rd Earl of Gowrie, and his brother Alexander died in a confrontation with the king’s party at their town house in Perth. This is the Gowrie Conspiracy, in which the brothers are said to have lured James VI from Falkland Palace intending to murder him; it should be read as a disputed episode rather than a settled plot, since the only surviving account is the Crown’s and the circumstances are far from clear. What followed is unambiguous and extraordinary. In December 1600 the Parliament of Scotland abolished the surname itself, enacting that it “shall now and in all time coming be extinguished and abolished for ever”; bearers had to renounce it and adopt an honest and undisgraced alternative for legal and public use, the lands were confiscated, and Ruthven Castle was renamed Huntingtower. In 1641 the Ruthvens of Balindean petitioned Parliament and were permitted to assume the surname of Ruthven again, the record noting that they were restored and rehabilitated. A separate peerage, Lord Ruthven of Freeland, was created in 1651, and the two events are commonly conflated: 1641 is the restoration of the name, 1651 a new peerage. The Earldom of Gowrie was recreated in January 1945 for Alexander Hore-Ruthven, one source giving 1944. The present chief is Brer Hore-Ruthven, 3rd Earl of Gowrie, who succeeded on 24 September 2021 and is Chief of the Name and Arms of Ruthven.
The Ruthven tartan
There is exactly one registered Ruthven sett: Ruthven (V.S.), reference 3622, Clan/Family, with a design date of 1 January 1842. That “(V.S.)” is the register’s own marker for a Vestiarium Scoticum pattern, and Ruthven is Plate 40 of the Vestiarium, in its Lowland and Border section. Three cloth recordings of the design exist, differing in transcription and weaving rather than in the design itself. There is no Ruthven hunting tartan and no Ruthven dress tartan on the register.
A note on honesty: the Ruthven tartan has no pedigree earlier than 1842, and its single source is the Vestiarium Scoticum, published that year by the brothers who styled themselves Sobieski Stuart and claimed descent from Charles Edward Stuart. They were denounced as impostors soon afterwards; the manuscript they claimed as their source was never independently examined, and a chemical examination of the 1721 copy found that it bore evidence of having been treated with chemical agents in order to give the writing a more aged appearance, the examiner concluding that it cannot be depended upon as an ancient document. So there is one Ruthven threadcount, not several: anything sold as Ruthven Modern, Ancient, Weathered or Muted is a colourway of that 1842 sett. No Ruthven sett predates the commercial era, and in this case the history makes the point for itself — the surname was legally abolished from 1600 to 1641, so a sixteenth-century Ruthven tartan is not a possibility.
Clan facts
| Chief | Brer Hore-Ruthven, 3rd Earl of Gowrie, Chief of the Name and Arms of Ruthven, who succeeded on 24 September 2021. Lists still naming the 2nd Earl are out of date; he died in 2021. We found no specific Lord Lyon decision formally restoring the chiefship — the line was rehabilitated in stages, the name in 1641, the Freeland peerage in 1651 and the earldom in 1945 |
|---|---|
| Motto | Deid Schaw — Older Scots. The literal translation is not recorded in any source we could verify; the common rendering “deeds show” is plausible Scots but conventional rather than confirmed, so we give the motto as it stands |
| Plant badge | Not recorded. It is absent from the standard references and we have not supplied one |
| Lands | Perthshire — Huntingtower Castle, formerly Ruthven Castle, renamed after the forfeiture of 1600; also Dirleton Castle in East Lothian and the barony of Ruthven in Angus |