Keith

Keith

Clan Keith of that Ilk in Lothian, Halforest in Aberdeenshire, and Inverugie, Scotland. By tradition, the three palets on the arms are said to derive from an action when a warrior of the Chatti slew the Danish General Camus at the Battle of Barrie in 1010, for which valour Malcolm II dipped three fingers in to the blood of the slain and drew them down the shield of the warrior, thereafter named Marbhachair Chamuis, or ‘Camus Slayer’. The main progenitor of the clan is a Norman knight named Hervey who married the heiress of Marbhachair and received a charter for the lands of Keth from David I in 1150. Hervey’s son was given the hereditary title of Marischal of the King of Scots’ in a charter of 1176. Sir Robert de Keth was granted the forest of Halforest by Robert the Bruce in 1308, where he built a castle, he later was a commander at the Battle of Bannockburn. Sir William the Marischal (1350-1407) gained lands in Buchan, Kincardine and Lothian when he married the heiress of Sir Alexander Fraser, the High Chamberlain. Sir William’s brother John married the Cheyne heiress, gaining the large Inverugie estate and castle. Three of Sir William’s issue married children of Robert II. The Keiths were granted the title of Earl Marischal in 1458. The fourth Earl founded Marischal College in Aberdeen. George, 5th Earl Marischal arranged the marriage between James VI and Anne of Denmark. the seventh earl was captured by Parliament and imprisoned in the Tower of London until the Restoration, when the Charles II appointed him a Privy Councillor and later Lord Privy Seal. The tenth earl supported the Jacobite Rising of 1745 and he and his brother James, forfeited their lands, castles and titles. James was the celebrated Field Marshal Keith, so distinguished in the wars of Frederick the Great, he was awarded the Prussian Order of the Eagle. Keith of Ravelston and Dunnottar was recognised as a representer of the Marischals by the Lord Lyon in 1801.

Arms: Argent, on a chief gules, three palets or.

Crest: A hart’s head erased proper, armed with ten tynes or.

Motto: Veritas vincit

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