Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 36 on 14/12/2007.

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Clan Colquhoun

James Irvine Robertson turns his attention to another of Scotland's families.

Sitting west of Loch Lomond, Scotland’s largest, and many say most beautiful loch, is an interesting egg-shaped piece of land bounded on the west by Gairloch and Loch Long.

Most of this land belongs to the Luss Estate which has been owned by the Colquhouns since 1368, when the heiress to Luss fell for Sir Robert, 5th of the line which, more than a century earlier, had obtained the lands of Colquhoun, a few miles to the south.

Many of the Highland clans had their origin in the Norman and Saxon adventurers who came north under the patronage of David I and obtained great estates, but the Colquhouns – pronounced ‘Ca-hoon’ – actually descend from the ancient rulers of Lennox. They were the hereditary guardians of the Crozier of St Kessog, and may well have descended from the saint himself. Saint Kessog, who came to Scotland from Ireland in the seventh century, had an establishment on Monks Island in Loch Lomond, and was martyred in 560.

The Colquhoun Clan has been blessed with a long line of canny chiefs which, with certain remarkably florid exceptions, has enabled them to keep out of much of the bloody chaos that makes up so large a proportion of Scottish history. The greatest, perhaps, was Sir John Colquhoun, 11th of Luss. He had his lands erected into a free barony by James II in 1457. The Great Chamberlain of Scotland and joint Ambassador to England, he built the castle of Rossdhu, the haunting ruins of which still stand on a headland jutting into Loch Lomond.

But, in 1592.....

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By James Irvine Robertson

Section : Scotland Clans

Page number : 52