Dance Grant's Reel 2645

In a none too peaceable kingdom, the Grants not only survived, by avoiding the dubious advantage of domestic clan warfare and by not taking up regal lost causes, but they actually prospered. Their secret of success was best expressed by Sir James Grant, M.P., who wrote to his son, Ludovic, from London at the time of the Rising of 1745, cautioning him to “stay at home and take care of his country and join no party”. Not that the Grants were “unco’ guild”; they were simply fortunate in that their chiefs were generally endowed with good sense.

The Grant territory covers two distinct areas. The more influential, in that it was the home of the chief, lies between the two Craigellachies, one above Aviemore, the other some thirty miles to the east, and is a broad strath between the Cairngorms to the south and the Monadhliaths to the north, following the River Spey along the Banff-Moray border. The second area lies above Loch Ness where the Grants inhabited two glens. Glen Urquhart, which follows the Enrick River is wild and somewhat bleak in its magnificence, while Glen Moriston is a fertile region, well-farmed and wooded. For a week in July of 1746, after Culloden, Prince Charles Edward took refuge in the Cave of Corriedoe far up the glen under the protection of “The Seven Men of Glen Moriston”, John MacDonald, Alexander, Donald and Hugh Chisholm, Patrick Grant, Alexander MacDonell and Gregor MacGregor.

The beginnings of the Clan Grant are clouded with tradition. One story had it that they came from Anglo-Norman stock, William le Grant having owned property in Nottinghamshire and, through marriage, the land about Stratherrick below Loch Ness. Another holds that they came from the same stock as Kenneth MacAlpin. It is also believed by some that they are descended from the 12th century Gregor More MacGregor, “Gregory the Great”.

It is known that Sir Laurence le Grand was Sheriff of Inverness in 1263 and that his son, John, also sheriff, was captured by the English in 1296 and was later a supporter of William Wallace.

The first recorded chief to whom the Grants trace unbroken ancestry was John or Iain Ruadh who was Sheriff of Inverness in 1434. He married Matilda or Bigla, daughter of Gilbert of Glencharnie, a cadet of the Celtic earldom of Stratherne, and through this alliance the Grants obtained Kinveachy, Glencarnie and Freuchie in Strathspey. Of their two sons, the elder, Sir Duncan Grant of Freuchie, the first to be so designated, continued the main line of the Grants while the younger, Patrick, founded the cadet branch of Tullochgorm.

The Grants were already showing their intra-clan diplomacy, their desire for minimal warfare and their business acumen. Over the years they had remained on good terms with their powerful neighbors, the Earls of Moray and the Earls of Huntly. They purchased land, they inherited land and they were given land, as in 1509 when James IV granted Glen Urquhart to Sir John, 2nd Laird of Freuchie, and Glen Moriston and Corriemony to his sons. His son, James, Seumas nan Creach, was a supporter of Queen Mary and a signator of the bond against England. His successor, John, known as “The Gentle”, though he had actively aided Mary, submitted to Lord James Stewart, Earl of Moray and Regent of Scotland, after the queen had fled Scotland for the sinister haven of England. In 1536 Bellachastle, later known as Castle Grant, was built in Strathspey by the Laird of Freuchie.

The clan was becoming more powerful and was taking an increasingly more active part in the legitimate affairs of their country. The eighth Laird of Freuchie, known by then as the Laird of Grant, Sir Ludovic, sat in the Scots Parliament of 1689 that offered the crown to William and Mary. Sir Ludovic aided the Royalists under General MacKay in the government’s attempts to suppress the Jacobites before the battle of Killiecrankie in 1689, and three hundred Grants fought at the Haughs of Cromdale on 1 May, 1690, when the Jacobites were defeated. The Grants of Glenmoriston, however, took a different view and tehy supported the Jacobite cause from Killiecrankie through Culloden.

For his loyalty and service to the Crown and, perhaps, in view of the clan’s business ability, William III bestowed the Regality of Grant upon Sir Ludovic in 1694. The Grants held the Regality, which was very close to royal jurisdiction in that the chief was responsible for the government of the area through a petty parliament and courts of law, until 1747, when all such Regalities were abolished.

Throughout the period of the Jacobite risings, the Grants, in general, remained steadfast to the Crown and the Whig cause and they remained on their land. However, there were notable, and bitter, exceptions for some of the cadet Grants joined Prince Charles Edward and, after Culloden, others gave asylum to fugitive Jacobites.

In the 18th century the Grants made two interesting marriages that show the awesome complications of tanistry. In 1702, James Grant of Pluscarden, second son of Sir Alexander Grant of Grant, married Anne, heretrix of Sir Humphry Colquhoun of Luss. Through a legal arrangement, James succeeded his father-in-law in 1715 as Sir James Colquhoun of Luss with the stipulation that the estates of Colquhoun of Luss and Grant of Grant never be conjoined. Upon the death of his elder brother, Sir Alexander, in 1719, Sir James Colquhoun of Luss became Sir James Grant of Grant. His second son, Ludovic, then became Sir Ludovic Colquhoun of Luss. When Sir Ludovic’s elder brother, then chief of Clan Grant, died unmarried in 1781, Sir Ludovic became Sir Ludovic Grant of Grant and his younger brother succeeded as Sir James Colquhoun of Luss. One can well imagine the reams of documents that passed over the Lord Lyon’s desk in a period of eighty years.

In 1735, Sir Ludovic married, as his second wife, Lady Margaret Ogilvie, daughter of James, Earl of Findlater and Seafield. The Earldom of Seafield is a Scots peerage, heritable by a woman, while that of Findlater is not, and in 1811 Lady Margaret’s grandson, Sir Lewis Alexander Grant of Grant, succeeded to the Earldom of Seafield. In 1858 John Charles Grant, 7th Earl of Seafield, was created Baron Strathspey in the peerage of Great Britain. Upon the death of James, the 11th Earl of Seafield, his daughter, Lady Nina Ogilvie Grant, succeeded him in the Scots peerage, but the Baronetcy of Strathspey and the chiefship of Clan Grant passed to the Earl of Seafield’s brother. Ian Grant, Viscount Reidhaven, succeeded his mother as thirteenth Earl of Seafield, while his cousin, Sir Patrick Grant of Grant, is thirty-second chief of the Clan Grant and fifth Lord Strathspey.