Clan Urquhart

Urquhart is a name that is derived from the place name, Airchart.[3] Airchart is first recorded in the early life of Saint Columba, the great Celtic saint.[3] In modern times there are two parishes in Scotland named Urquhart, one in Elgin and one on the Black Isle.[3] The meaning of the word Urquhart itself has been given various Scottish Gaelic translations including woodside, by a rowan wood, or fort on a knoll.[3] There is also Urquhart Castle on the banks of Loch Ness.[3] One legend associated with Urquhart Castle involves Conachar of the royal house of Ulster, who is said to have come to Scotland to fight for Malcolm III of Scotland.[3] Conachar was rewarded with the castle.[3] The legend is also that Conachar was on the point of being mauled to death by a wild boar when his dog attacked the beast and although the dog died it saved his master.[3] This is one explanation for the boar's head and hounds on the Urquhart chief's coat of arms.[3]

William de Urchard is said to have defended the Moote of Cromarty in the time of William Wallace against supporters of the English Crown.[3] From the reign of David II of Scotland the Urquhart chiefs were hereditary sheriffs of Cromarty.[3]

Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty is said to have sired twenty-five sons in the early sixteenth century.[3] However seven of these sons were killed at the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh in 1547.[3] Another Thomas Urquhart was born on the day of the Battle of Pinkie Cleugh and was knighted by James VI of Scotland.[3]

Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, Knight, 12th Chief of Clan Urquhart, Baron and hereditary Sheriff of the District of Cromarty, from a 1641 engraving by George Glover

A Victorian era, romanticised depiction of a member of the clan by R. R. McIan, from The Clans of the Scottish Highlands, published in 1845.

Thomas Urquhart's son, Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty was a student at King's College, Aberdeen at the age of just eleven.[3] He was knighted by Charles I of England in 1641.[3] After the Civil War he traveled to the Continent and studied work by the French poet François Rabelais.[3] Thomas Urquhart's translation of Rabelais's work is considered a masterpiece.[3] Thomas rejoined the royalist army and fought at the Battle of Worcester in 1651, where he was taken prisoner and imprisoned in the Tower of London.[3] While in prison he published his family tree which shows the origins of the Urquhart family back to Adam and Eve.[3] When he was released he returned to the Continent where he is said to have died from laughter while celebrating the Restoration (1660).[3]

Captain John Urquhart of Craigston (b.1696) was a man of great wealth but the origins of his fortune are shrouded in mystery.[3] He was called the pirate by his family.[3] He was recruited by the Spanish Navy and this is probably where he amassed his fortune, from the prize money that was paid for captured enemy vessels.[3] He was nearly killed during the Jacobite rising of 1715 at the Battle of Sheriffmuir, fighting on the side of the Jacobites.[3] The Urquhart of Craigston family became of such social eminence that they were able to get the great Henry Raeburn to paint their family portraits.[3] Craigston Castle is still in the family's hands.[3]

Colonel James Urquhart also supported the Jacobite cause and was severely wounded at the Battle of Sheriffmuir.[3] He was the principal Jacobite agent in Scotland until he died in 1741.[3] The chiefship of the clan then passed to his cousin, William Urquhart of Meldrum, who was a cautious Jacobite and avoided the disaster at the Battle of Culloden.[3] His cousin, Adam Urquhart was a member of Charles Edward Stuart's court-in-exile in Rome.[3]

The last of the chiefly line was Major Beauchamp Urquhart who was killed in 1898 at the Battle of Atbara in Sudan.[3] In 1959 Wilkins Fisk Urquhart, a descendant of a branch of the clan known as the Urquharts of Braelangswell, who had emigrated to America in the 18th century, established his right to be chief of the Clan Urquhart.[3] He was succeeded by his son, the historian Kenneth Trist Urquhart.[4] The chief's title is Urquhart of Urquhart.[3]