Delve into some Scottish surname secrets, including information about clans, surnames, and their meanings.

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Clan Murray is a Highland Scottish Clan originating in the South Lanarkshire area of Scotland. According to legend the clan descended from a Flemish knight name Freskin de Moravia, who was granted…

Delve into the clash at Culloden as we unravel the Battle of Culloden Clans! The details of this conflict that shaped Scotland's history.

Each year almost 50,000 people from across the world meet in Edinburgh, to celebrate Scottish culture and heritage. At the annual Clan Gathering, thousands line the Royal Mile to watch the Great Clans of Scotland proudly parading through the capital.

Archibald Campbell, 1st Marquess of Argyll, 8th Earl of Argyll, chief of Clan Campbell, (1607 – 27 May 1661) was the de facto head of government in Scotland during most of the conflict known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. He was the most influential figure in the Covenanter movement that fought for the Presbyterian religion and what they saw as Scottish interests during the English Civil War of the 1640s and 1650s. He was eldest son of Archibald Campbell, 7th Earl of Argyll, by his first wife Agnes Douglas daughter of William Douglas, 6th Earl of Morton, and was educated at St Andrews University, where he matriculated on 15 January 1622. He had early in life, as Lord Lorne, been entrusted with the possession of the Argyll estates when his father renounced Protestantism and took arms for Philip III of Spain; and he exercised over his clan an authority almost absolute, disposing of a force of 20,000 retainers, being, according to Baillie, by far the most powerful subject in the kingdom. In January 1644, he accompanied the Scottish army into England as a member of the committee of both kingdoms and in command of a troop of horse, but was soon compelled, in March, to return to suppress royalists in the Scottish Civil War and to defend his own territories. He forced Huntly to retreat in April. In July, he advanced to abet the Irish troops now landed in Argyll, which were fighting in conjunction with Montrose, who had put himself at the head of the royalist forces in Scotland. Neither general succeeded in obtaining an advantage over the other, or even in engaging in battle. Argyll then returned to Edinburgh, threw up his commission, and retired to Inveraray Castle. Montrose unexpectedly followed him in December, compelling him to flee to Roseneath, and devastating his territories. On 2 February 1645, while following Montrose northwards, Argyll was surprised by him at Inverlochy. He witnessed, from his barge on the lake to which he had retired after falling from his horse, a fearful slaughter of his troops, which included 1500 of the Campbells.[1] He arrived at Edinburgh on 12 February and was again present at Montrose's further great victory on 15 August at Kilsyth, whence he escaped to Newcastle. Argyll was at last delivered from his formidable antagonist by Montrose's final defeat at Philiphaugh on 12 September. In 1646, he was sent to negotiate with the king at Newcastle after his surrender to the Scottish army, when he endeavoured to moderate the demands of the parliament and at the same time to persuade the king to accept them. On 7 July 1646, he was appointed a member of the Assembly of Divines. Up to this point, Argyll's statesmanship had been highly successful. The national liberties and religion of Scotland had been defended and guaranteed, and the power of the king in Scotland reduced to a mere shadow. In addition, these privileges had been still further secured by the alliance with the English opposition, and by the subsequent triumph of the parliament and Presbyterianism in the neighboring kingdom. The king himself was a prisoner in their midst. But Argyll's influence could not survive the rupture of the alliance between the two nations on which his whole policy was founded. He opposed in vain the secret treaty concluded between the king and the Scots against the parliament. Hamilton marched into England and was defeated by Cromwell at Preston. Argyll, after a narrow escape from a surprise attack at the Battle of Stirling (1648), joined the Whiggamores, a body of Covenanters at Edinburgh; and, supported by John Campbell, 1st Earl of Loudoun and Alexander Leslie, 1st Earl of Leven, he established a new government, which welcomed Oliver Cromwell on his arrival there on 4 October. This alliance, however, was at once destroyed by the execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649, which excited universal horror in Scotland. In the series of tangled incidents which followed, Argyll lost control of the national policy. He describes himself at this period as "a distracted man...in a distracted time" whose " remedies...had the quite contrary operation." He supported the invitation from the Covenanters to Charles II to land in Scotland, and gazed upon the captured Montrose, bound on a cart to execution at Edinburgh. When Charles II came to Scotland, having signed the Covenant and repudiated Montrose, Argyll remained at the head of the administration. After the defeat of Dunbar, Charles retained his support by the promise of a dukedom and the Garter, and an attempt was made by Argyll to marry the king to his daughter. On 1 January 1651, he placed the crown on Charles's head at Scone. But his power had now passed to the Hamiltonian party. He strongly opposed, but was unable to prevent, the expedition into England. In the subsequent reduction of Scotland, after holding out in Inveraray Castle for nearly a year, he was at last surprised in August 1652 and submitted to the Commonwealth. His ruin was then complete. His policy had failed, his power had vanished. He was hopelessly in debt, and on terms of such violent hostility with his eldest son as to be obliged to demand a garrison in his house for his protection. During his visit to Monck at Dalkeith in 1654 to complain of this, he was subjected to much personal insult from his creditors, and on visiting London in September 1655 to obtain money due to him from the Scottish parliament, he was arrested for debt, though soon liberated. In Richard Cromwell's parliament of 1659 Argyll sat as member for Aberdeenshire. At the Restoration, he presented himself at Whitehall, but was at once arrested by order of Charles and placed in the Tower (1660), being sent to Edinburgh to stand trial for high treason. He was acquitted of complicity in the death of Charles I, and his escape from the whole charge seemed imminent, but the arrival of a packet of letters written by Argyll to Monck showed conclusively his collaboration with Cromwell's government, particularly in the suppression of Glencairn's royalist rising in 1652. He was immediately sentenced to death, his execution by beheading taking place on 27 May 1661, before the death warrant had even been signed by the king. His head was placed on the same spike upon the west end of the Tolbooth as that of Montrose had previously been exposed, and his body was buried at the Holy Loch, where the head was also deposited in 1664. A monument was erected to his memory in St Giles's church in Edinburgh in 1895. While imprisoned in the Tower he wrote Instructions to a Son (1661). Some of his speeches, including the one delivered on the scaffold, were published and are printed in the Harleian Miscellany. He married Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of William Douglas, 7th Earl of Morton, and had two sons and four daughters.

Today, a man's pride in his Scottish heritage is often asserted by wearing a kilt made of his clan tartan—a fabric woven with the specific plaid pattern...

If you’re reading this Culloden Outlander guide, no doubt you want to visit Culloden Moor and the Fraser Clan gravestone that was featured in series 2. Although it’s amazing that the Outlander series has unearthed

Scots emigrated early to America with the British but were forced over by the Scottish Potato Famine of 1844 and the ruthless Highland Clearances, 1763 - 1810, all told. The Battle of Culloden was horrendous in Scotland, but a Battle of Culloden devastated a city in Georgia during the American Civil War as well.