Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 23 on 14/10/2005.

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Holding sway around the Tay (Menzies)

In the latest in our series on clans, James I Robertson looks at the Menzies

Land was at the foundation of the wealth and power of the clans of Scotland. But Highland land today and for many years past has yielded precious little.

If a clan today has a chief still living in his castle with smiling estates around it, then his forebears must have married money or one of them in all probability traded in opium in the east or in sugar and slaves in the west – possibly both. The chiefs of Clan Menzies had one such stroke of luck in the late 18th century but it was not enough.

The Menzies clan is believed to descend from the Norman family of de Mesnieres, who arrived in England with William the Conqueror. When they came north to Scotland they were granted the lands of Durisdeer in Nithsdale. Robert Menzies served for four years as Lord High Chamberlain of Scotland, commencing on the accession of Alexander III in 1249.

His son, Sir Alexander, was jailed by Edward I in 1296 during the Wars of Independence. He carried on the battle alongside heroes such as William Wallace and Robert the Bruce and, in 1301, received the charter of the lands of Weem in Highland Perthshire which were held by the clan for the next five centuries.

Soon after they obtained most of Rannoch, but these were bad lands infested with bogs, brigands and broken men, a place where the writ of the chief or anyone else held little sway. Rannoch brought Clan Menzies little but trouble.

In some counties, a clan name was never completely dominant, but Menzies proliferated along the beautiful.....

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By James Irvine Robertson

Section : Scottish Clans

Page number : 52