Pitcairn

The lands of Pitcairn lie in the parish of Leslie in Fife, and the family are reputed to be one of the oldest of that ancient kingdom. William de Petkaran was a juror at Dunfermline prior to 1249. Sir Hugh de Abernethy granted to his kinsman, John de Pitcairn, the lands of Innernethie. Piers de Pectarne of Fife appears on the Ragman Roll, swearing fealty to Edward I of England in 1296. Andrew Pitcairn and seven of his sons were killed at Flodden in 1513. Nisbet states that Robert Pitcairn, Commendator of Dunfermline Abbey and Secretary during the regency of Moray, Lennox, Mar and Morton, was ‘a great timeserver, a great enemy to Queen Mary and a very humble servant of the Regents’. He accompanied the Regent Moray to England in 1568 to justify his proceedings against the queen, and was one of the commissioners at York. The Pitcairns were to prosper as Fife lairds but suffered heavily for their support of the Jacobite cause in the Fifteen and Forty-five rebellions. Pitcairn Island (famous as the last refuge of the Bounty mutineers) was discovered in 1767 by Captain Robert Pitcairn. John Pitcairn, a major in the Royal Marines, was in command of the unit which fired the first shots in the American War of Independence. Criminal Trials of Scotland, edited by Robert Pitcairn and published in 1833, provides a wealth of information gleaned from trials between 1487 to 1624, and is still regularly consulted by historians and geneaologists.