Macnab

The name Macnab derives from the Gaelic ‘Mac an Aba’, ‘child of the abbot’. According to tradition, the progenitor of this great clan was Abaruadh, the Abbot of Glendochart and Strathearn, the younger son of King Kenneth Macalpine. Abaruadh, the Red Abbot, was descended from King Fergus of Dalriada and a nephew of St Fillan, founder of the monastery in Glendochart in the seventh century.

One of the earliest records of the family is to be found in a charter of 1124. Malcolm de Glendochart was one of the Scottish noblemen who submitted to Edward I of England and his name appears on the Ragman Roll of 1296. Angus Macnab was brother-in-law of John Comyn, murdered in 1306 by Robert the Bruce, and he joined with Macdougall of Lorn in campaign against the king which almost led to his capture at Dalrigh in Strathfillan in 1306. When Bruce’s power was consolidated by the victory at Bannockburn in 1314, the Macnab lands were forfeit and their charters destroyed.

The fortunes of the clan were to some degree restored in 1336, when Angus’s grandson, Gilbert, received a charter from David II. When the Lord Lyon considered the succession of the Macnab chiefs in 1954, he ruled that Gilbert should be considered the first undisputed chief (although he was perhaps the twentieth). Gilbert was succeeded in his lands of Bothmachan or Bovain by his son, Sir Alexander, who died around 1407. By this time the Macnab lands included Ardchyle, Invermonichele and Downich. In 1522 the lands of Ewer and Leiragan were granted to Mariat Campbell by her husband, Finlay Macnab, who died at Eilean Ran on 13 April 1525. His second son, John, succeeded to the estates and married Eleyn Stewart. John’s son, Finlay, married twice and had a daughter and two sons by his first marriage and, it is believed, another ten sons by his second. The eldest of the issue of the second marriage, John Roy or Bain, the red or fair, is the ancestor of the present chief. Finlay was a man of peace intent upon protecting his lands and people from being plundered by the foraging royalist forces of Montrose in the mid 1640s. His son, known as ‘Smooth John’, did not follow his father’s peaceful ways, and led the Macnabs to join Montrose and contributed to the royal victory at Kilsyth. He was appointed to garrison Montrose’s own Castle of Kincardine. General Lesley besieged the castle, but the whole garrison broke through the Covenanter lines and fought their way clear. John was, however, captured and taken to Edinburgh where he was sentenced to death. He contrived to escape on the eve of his execution and led three hundred of his clansmen at the Battle of Worcester in 1651.

Robert, the fourteenth chief, was apprenticed to study law under Colin Campbell of Carwhin, and he married the sister of John Campbell, Earl of Breadalbane. This strong Campbell connection constrained him from supporting the Jacobite rising in 1715, although many of his clansmen drew their swords for the ‘Old Pretender’. The fifteenth chief was a Major in the British Army. His brother Archibald was also a serving officer and was taken prisoner by Jacobite forces at the Battle of Prestonpans in 1745.

Francis Macnab succeeded as sixteenth chief, and although within the clan he is renowned as a notable producer and consumer of whisky, he is more generally known as ‘The Macnab’ of Raeburn’s outstanding portrait. He inherited a great burden of debt, and despite considerable personal efforts, he owed over £35,000 when he died in 1816. He had never married, and was succeeded by his nephew, Archibald, who made desperate efforts to extricate the estate from debt. In 1823 a writ of foreclosure was issued, and Archibald was forced to flee to Canada, where he eventually obtained a grant of land in the Ottawa River Valley. Eighty-five settlers came to the estate, which he renamed Macnab. When an official enquiry was threatened into allegations of excessive rents there, he fled to Orkney, then to London, and finally to France, where he died in 1860. Sarah Anne, the eldest of his children, was recognised as the eighteenth chief, but she died unmarried in Italy in 1894.

It was established that the Arthurstone branch of the chiefly family was now entitled to succeed and the de jure chiefship passed to James William Macnab. He served in the East India Company and was succeeded by his eldest son, James Frederick, rector of Bolton Abbey. His only son, James Alexander, succeeded as twenty-first de jure chief. In 1954, he relinquished the chiefship to his uncle, Archibald Corrie Macnab, who had acquired the Killin estate to enable him to become the twenty-second de facto chief. Archibald died in 1970 when the succession reverted to James Charles, the eldest son of James Alexander, who is the present and twenty-third chief.