The Secrets of Rosslyn by Roddy Martine

Author:Roddy Martine [Martine, Roddy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780857904843
Publisher: Birlinn

Whether young John St Clair’s analysis, written as he fled abroad to escape the wrath of King George I two and a half centuries later, rings true or not, his ancestor Prince William and his family were not exactly paupered by the hand-over, which occurred when Prince William was well into his sixties. By the time of his death in 1484, he had already divided his lands and titles among his three eldest sons, but without the Norse earldom of Orkney, now among the titular possessions of the ruling house of Scotland, none of them were eligible to inherit the title of prince. Perhaps this was at the root of Prince William’s quarrel with his eldest son, William the Waster?

Despite this, the power base of his descendants in the East Neuk of Fife was to survive for a further 400 years. Travel through Kirkcaldy today and there is a Rosslyn Street, a Loughborough Road, after the family’s late-16th-century courtesy title, and a Caithness Street. Indeed, the family held Ravenscraig until 1898, when the gambling debts of the immensely likeable, but financially irresponsible, 5th earl of Rosslyn finally caught up with him. Ravenscraig Castle, Dysart House, and 3,000 acres in Fife were sold to Sir Michael Nairn, founder of the linoleum manufacturing industry which made the town of Kirkcaldy rich during the Victorian era. Time moves on and the popularity of linoleum went into decline when vinyl was introduced during the 1920s. Ravenscraig Castle was taken into State care in 1955, and is today managed by Historic Scotland. Nevertheless, the Fife connection of the St Clair descendants continues.

In 1715, John, the aforementioned Master of St Clair, was attainted for his support of the de jure King James VIII, the ‘Old Pretender’, and for having taken part in the first Jacobite Uprising. He was later pardoned and restored to his lands, but for no apparent reason appears not to have been reinstated in his title of Lord St Clair. Notwithstanding, the ongoing entitlement, although not taken up until recently, duly passed on his death to his younger brother, General James St Clair, who, during the same uprising, had served in Flanders as British Army Quartermaster General. In 1735, General James acquired the lands of Rosslyn from his kinsman, Sir William St Clair who, having no male heir, was last in the direct St Clair male line of Rosslyn.

Genealogy is all too fascinating a game of snakes and ladders. The St Clair entitlement thereafter was handed on to Henry, another brother, then through four generations of women, starting with their sister Grizel and passing to her daughter, Margaret Patterson of Prestonhall. In 1744, Margaret married John Thomson of Charleton in Fife, and the barony of St Clair line was carried through their daughter, another Grizel, who married Colonel John Anstruther. In 1911 their descendant, Grizel St Clair Anstruther, married Baron Knut Bonde of the Swedish Diplomatic Service, and it is their grandson Baron Knut Harald Jons St Clair Bonde of Charleton in Fife, who is today recognised as heir apparent to the lordship of St Clair.

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