History of Clan Grant - An Introduction
History of Clan Grant - An Introduction |
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Last Update: 02/12/2002
Health Warning: This site represents some of the findings of a research project which has been properly under way since January 2000. The research continues, so it is important to appreciate that our conclusions are subject to change in the light of fresh evidence as we come across it (a major shift of our view with regard to Heming, the son of Hakon Ericssson occurred in the summer of 2002, for example). So the various papers should be seen as "current position" statements rather than completely definitive.
The problems we are addressing are abstruse, complicated and suffer from the destruction of many documents which might have helped us.
So why has this project been necessary at all?
In 1883, Sir William Fraser published what was to become the "received" history of Clan Grant. This massive three volume work (four if you include the separate assembly of all the graphics otherwise scattered throughout) was the culmination of some 150 years of the gradual decay of the "traditional" story which was previously undoubted within the clan, even if it may have had its doubters elsewhere. The various bases for this revisionism can now be understood fairly clearly and are set out briefly below.
Yet in Fraser's work were "fatal internal errors" which begs a question - did he really believe what he was writing? Fraser's thesis was that the Grants reached Scotland in the 1240s and that their first landholding in Scotland was Stratherrick (along the South East shore of Loch Ness). Despite this he relates to us (Vol I p496), wholly without comment, the circumstances of a social event when Ian Charles, the then Master of Grant, celebrated the reaching of his majority on 7th October 1872 and a huge gathering congratulated him. He was addressed on the clansmen's behalf by General Sir Patrick Grant of Tullochgorm who said: "Master of Grant, never forget that this is the oldest possession of your race. 'Within the bounds of fair Strathspey our ancient clan reside We have been here 800 years, 800 more we'll bide'"
Now it does not take a genius to observe that there are two major problems with this - which bring us to a third:
1. 800 years back from 1872 brings us to 1072 - NOT Fraser's 1244 nor even 1175 (when, returning to Scotland with William the Lion after his internment at Falaise, the Bissets quickly acquired the Aird including the overlordship of Stratherrick).
2. Stratherrick is NOT Strathspey - so much so that the lairds of Grant had disposed of Stratherrick in the 1400s because it was so hard to manage and to defend from a Strathspey base.
3. Why did Fraser - who was so pernickety in so many other cases - not specify his disagreement with the General???
Soon after this 1872 event, the traditional history of the Clan was reinforced by the then Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk (7th Baronet) who caused a copy of the old manuscript history (which he borrowed) to be printed and published privately (hence our shorthand "Monymusk Text" or MT) - the original for which seems to be the one now lodged in Inverness Archives.
The Monymusk Text is garbled in many ways, but a careful study of the text shows that this (updated) text was written between 1705 and 1713 and that the earliest version of it was composed not later than 1620, and clearly relying on some far older documents as well as oral tradition. A supposedly improved version of this story had been made by Rev James Chapman in 1729, the minister at Cromdale (whence our shorthand "Cromdale Text" or CT) the full text of which is reproduced on this site. This history claims that the Chiefs of Grant descend from Hakon the Great, the Protector of Norway (who was killed in 995) through his descendant "Andlaw" who came to Scotland "to make his fortune" and who was a contemporary of Malcolm III Canmore (king 1058-93). Unfortunately the garbling of the details allowed those like Fraser to dismiss this history only too easily.
And so it was that we decided to examine these rival propositions in detail. We have had the benefit of modern scholarship and modern communications and the result is a story both cogent and consistent. Our researches have shown that very many of the details mentioned are correct, even if they have been fairly hopelessly mixed up.
The principal and general conclusion of our researches is that Fraser and the revisionists were wrong in that the Grant Chiefs did indeed have a Norse origin.
But we also needed to understand how, why and when the Revisionism had been introduced etc.:
1. It seems to have started around 1720 when James Stewart the Old Pretender offered the Laird of Grant (Sir John Grant of Pluscarden) a "Lordship of Parliament". A 1745 citation asserting an Irish "origin" (arguably true) then alleges descent from the Earls of Iverk. [In fact the opposite it true - Scottish Grant emigres married into the line of these earls.]
2. Further complications arose from the English Grants who could not trace their ancestry back to Scotland and for whom it was attractive to suppose they arrived with William the Conqueror. It was too easy to claim Hugh de Grendmesnil as an ancestor - without any proof whatsoever and in the face of such facts as there were.
3. Post 1745 it was increasingly politically unacceptable to admit to Stewart connections - yet all the old texts asserted that the male line had failed in the 1300s when Andrew Stewart married the Grant heiress, taking the name Grant - a third reason to downplay the old story.
4. In the later 1700s the French Vicomte de Vaux sought refuge in the UK and claimed Grant ancestry. The then Grant Chief ("The Good" Sir James), himself English educated and married to an Englishwoman, was keen to oblige him. In this context it was only too easy to be non-committal about the origins - and this stage is well illustrated in the Grant entry in the "Baronage of Scotland" (see full text on this site). Vaux accepted the Magregor claim to seniority (see separate page on the Magregors) and the failure to counter this allowed the hybrid seed to propagate.
In these circumstances the waters were sufficiently muddied for Batten, writing about the history of Beauly Priory, to claim that the Grants were Norman vassals of the Bissets and had arrived in Scotland with the return of the Bissets from exile - a claim only too eagerly jumped on by Sir William Fraser (see Peter Grant's examination of all this on this site). Other clans' history has been garbled just as badly, and often one garbling feeds other garbling. So to untangle Grant history, we have had to examine the claims of several other clans.
We have also collated as much as we can of the previous histories of the Grants. Much of all this is freely available on this site, other texts are or will be available as ebooks commercially. Or, of course, given our references, you can try to source them for yourself! We hope it all makes sense, but there must always be other sources which we have not examined and others still to which we have not paid due attention.
We would welcome your input. But bearing in mind that over 10 man-years of research have gone into this already, please be prepared to defend any alternative position very rigorously!
ACG