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 WITH FORTITUDE Clan Crest © Art Pewter Silver Ltd, East Kilbride, Scotland |
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This Celtic name stems from the Gaelic, ‘son of Grace’. The Macrae Clan is recorded as having settled at Clunes, near Beauly, in the 12th and 13th centuries, prior to moving to Kintail, in Wester Ross some time in the 14th century. The Macraes were staunch allies of the Mackenzie Clan. Duncan Macrae was constable of the Mackenzie stronghold of Eilean Donan Castle and acquired for himself the lands of Inverinate. The Macraes were so fierce in adherence to their Mackenzie overlord that they became known as ‘Mackenzie’s shirt of mail’. In 1539 the MacDonalds, under Donald Grumach, 4th Lord of Sleat, besieged Eilean Donan Castle as part of their attempt to revive the shattered Lordship of the Isles.Macrae is credited with slaying the Macdonald chief with an arrow, bringing the siege to an end. The Macraes were invested with the hereditary constableship of Eilean Donan Castle and also created chamberlains of Kintail. During the turbulent years of the civil wars in the early 17th century, the Macraes played a full part in the conflict and in 1715 were conspicuous for their bravery at Sherrifmuir, fighting for the Jacobite cause. Although they did not take part in the 1745 rising as a clan, many individual clansmen flocked to join Prince Charles Edward Stuart.Lieutenant Colonel John MacRae, born in 1861, served in the Black Watch, and was both deputy keeper of the palace of Holyroodhouse and a member of the Royal Company of Archers (the bodyguard of the monarch in Scotland). Colonel, Sir Colin Macrae of Feoirlinn served with distinction throughout the Boer War and was not only a member of the Royal Company of Archers, but also a lieutenant in the monarch’s English bodyguard, the Yeomen of the Guard. After all their war like beginnings, however, the ‘sons of grace’ lived up to their name by producing a line of clerics and scholars, bards and preachers, to whom Gaelic culture owes an incalculable debt. The splendid castle at Eilean Donan was restored in the 1930s by a Macrae descendent and is now perhaps the most photographed fortress in the highlands. |