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BY FIDELITY AND LABOUR
Clan Crest © Art Pewter Silver Ltd,
East Kilbride, Scotland |
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| The forename Arthur may owe its origins to the Greek word “arktouros” meaning keeper of the bears and in the Celtic world it came to mean “strong as a bear”. The name is now known around the world as a result of the legendary King Arthur who may have been a Celtic chieftain around the 6th century. The first reliable record of the name is in Adomnan’s “Life of Columba” which tells of a king of the Scots called Aedan mac Gabhrain named his son Arthur, also in the 6th century.
The clan is certainly regarded as ancient and there is a Gaelic saying “as old as the hills, the MacArthurs and the Devil”. The more established records show that they originated from the district of Lennox, part of the old kingdom of Strathclyde and moved into Argyll. The clan seat was established at Strachur, on Loch Fyne
The clan was at its peak in the 14th century when a MacArthur married the heiress of the progenitor of the Campbell Lords of Loch Awe The MacArthurs fought beside Robert the Bruce for Scotland’s independence and gained mid-Argyll lands from the King’s opposers as a reward and became keepers of Dunstaffnage Castle.
Later the Clanh Ua Duihne carried the nickname Cam beul. So through the MacArthurs came the Campbells. The MacArthurs prospered and spread, growing into two successful houses - the MacArthurs of Loch Awe and the MacArthur Campbells of Strachur. When James I returned from his English imprisonment his wrath fell upon the MacArthurs among others. Through a wave of executions and estate seizures the MacArthurs were stunted and the Campbells became the predominant race north of Glasgow.
In 1567 Duncan MacArthur and his son, of the Loch Awe family, became the victims of their own success when jealousy drove neighbours to drown them in the loch. In the 17th century, one of the MacArthurs of Milton in Dunoon rose to be a baillie in Kintyre and a chamberlain to the Marquess of Montrose in Cowal. Large numbers of MacArthurs fought on both sides during the Jacobite Uprisings in 1715 and 1745. After the ’45, many emigrated to the West Indies and North America.
John MacArthur (1767-1834) came to New South Wales in Australia in 1790. He was one of the earliest sheep farmers there (he successfully crossed Bengal and Irish sheep and later introduced the Merino breed from South Africa). His sons planted the first vineyard in Australia. The last clan chief of the MacArthurs died in India in the 1780s. He had no obvious male heir and so the hereditary chiefdom of the clan seemed to have died with him. But after a long gap, Canadian-born James Edward Moir MacArthur was recognized by the Lord Lyon in August 2002 as the Arthur clan chief.
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