Clan Douglas
One of the most powerful houses in medieval Scotland.
- Origin
- Glasgow & Strathclyde, Scotland
- Motto
- Jamais arrière
- Famous bearer
- 'Good Sir James' Douglas
- Register
- Scottish clan
Ranked of all time
The 10 Most Powerful Scottish Clans of All Time
The seat of Clan Douglas
Seat vacantChief
No one leads the Clan Douglas community yet. When the movement opens, you can stand for its leadership, or help elect whoever does.
Current mission
No shared goal set yet. Once Clan Douglas has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.
The Douglas clan is being rebuilt. Join the waiting list for the movement today, and you help decide who leads it and what it does.
Help rebuild the Douglas clan →Motto
Jamais arrière
“Never behind”
What does the Douglas name mean?
From Gaelic 'dubh ghlais', 'black water'. The first documented Douglas appears in 12th-century Morayshire.
The history of Clan Douglas
The first documented Douglas was William de Douglas in 12th-century Morayshire, though the name itself appears to derive from the Gaelic 'dubh ghlais', 'black water'.
In 1330 'Good Sir James Douglas' was killed in Spain attempting to carry Robert the Bruce's heart on crusade to the Holy Land. The earldom of Douglas was created in the 14th century, and from the first earl's son descended the Earls of Angus and the Queensberry branch.
James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, succeeded to the title in 1553. Prominent in the assassination of Rizzio and a leader against Mary Queen of Scots, he was elected Regent of Scotland in 1572 and beheaded in 1581 for his alleged part in the Darnley conspiracy.
Champions of the Douglas name
The bearers whose lives are inseparable from this surname. Each has their own page, biography, achievements, geography, connection to the family.
Castles the Douglas held
Strongholds this name held for a decade or more, look one up, or rebuild it to explore.
- Bothwell Castle
Black Douglas stronghold, 1362–1455.
- Tantallon Castle
Fortress of the Red Douglases, Earls of Angus, c.1350–1651.
- Hermitage Castle
Held by the Douglases, 1371–1492.
- Loch Leven Castle
Granted to William Douglas, 1st Earl of Douglas, in the latter part of the 14th century; held by the Douglases for the next 300 years.
- Dalkeith Palace
Passed to the Douglases by marriage in 1341–42; seat of the Earls of Morton.
- Neidpath Castle
Held by the Douglases from 1686, bought by William Douglas, 1st Duke of Queensberry, then held by his son's line, the Earls of March.
- Broughty Castle
George Douglas, 4th Earl of Angus, was licensed to fortify the site in 1454; his son was coerced into ceding it to the crown.
- Crawford Castle
Held by the Douglas Earls of Angus 1488–1528, and again after 1542.
- Aberdour Castle
Held by the Douglases from Sir William Douglas of Liddesdale; the Douglas Earls of Morton kept Aberdour as a second home until 1642.
- Darnaway Castle
Held by the Douglas Earls of Moray until the forfeiture of 1455.
- Balvenie Castle
Held by the Black Douglases from the 14th century, most likely from the 1362 marriage of Joanna Murray to Archibald 'the Grim', until the king divided their estates after 1443.
- Rydboholm Castle
Passed by marriage to the late Count Gustaf Douglas and his wife Elisabeth von Essen.
- Greenan Castle
Granted to William Douglas, son of Archibald, Earl of Angus, by James IV in 1493.
- Hawthornden Castle
Held by the Douglases from the 14th century; John Douglas sold Hawthornden timber to James V in 1540.
- Claypotts Castle
Property of the Duke of Douglas; after his death in 1761, an eight-year legal battle ended with the courts ruling Archibald Douglas heir.
- Langenstein Castle
Owned by the Douglases, descendants of the Swedish count Ludvig Douglas; Count Leopold Douglas of the Swedish-German branch lives there today.
- Dudhope Castle
The last family of occupants of the castle, until about 1790.
- Drochil Castle
Begun by James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton, in 1578; bought in 1686 by William Douglas, 1st Duke of Queensberry, and still owned by his descendant the Duke of Buccleuch.
- Old Tulliallan Castle
Owned by William Douglas, 1st Earl of Douglas; Archibald Douglas, 4th Earl, gifted the estate to the Edmistons in 1402.
- Morton Castle
Granted by James II to James Douglas of Dalkeith, later Earl of Morton, in the mid-15th century; sold in 1608 to William Douglas of Coshogle and in 1618 to William Douglas of Drumlanrig, later first Earl of Queensberry.
- Mains Castle
An earlier castle held by the Douglas Earls of Angus from the 14th century until 1530.
- Halton Castle
Owners of Halton; John Douglas rebuilt the house about 1696, and the heiress Anne Douglas carried it to the Blacketts by her 1757 marriage.
- Buittle Castle
Given to Sir James Douglas in 1308 and to Archibald the Grim, 3rd Earl of Douglas, in 1372; held by the Douglases until 1456.
- Sanquhar Castle
Bought in the mid-17th century by Sir William Douglas, 1st Duke of Queensberry, builder of nearby Drumlanrig.
- Auchen Castle
Held by the Douglases of Morton in the 15th century.
- Newark Castle
Principal Selkirk Forest residence of Archibald Douglas, 4th Earl of Douglas, from c.1406 until the fall of the Black Douglases in 1455.
- Douglas Castle
Stronghold and seat of the Douglas, later Douglas-Home, family from before 1288 to the 20th century; forfeited by the senior 'Black' line in 1455, the Lanarkshire lands passing to the 'Red' Douglas Earls of Angus.
- Threave Castle
Built in the 1370s by Archibald the Grim, Lord of Galloway, and a stronghold of the Black Douglas Earls of Douglas until their overthrow by James II in 1455.
- Strathaven Castle
Held by the Earls of Douglas until their suppression by James II in 1455.
- Bonkyll Castle
Held by the Douglas Earls of Angus from 1417 until the late 18th century.
- Bedrule Castle
Passed to the Douglas family on the Comyn forfeiture of 1306.
- Abercorn Castle
Held by Clan Douglas from 1400 until James II captured and destroyed the castle in 1455.
- Ormond Castle
Held by the Douglases from 1362; Earldom of Ormonde created in 1445, forfeited after Arkinholm in 1455, regranted to the Earls of Angus.
- Redhouse Castle
Belonged to the Douglas family, the first Redhouse was probably a pilgrims' hospice, until sold in 1607.
Castles that share the Douglas name
The same name on the map, look one up, see what it looked like in its prime, and recreate it to explore.
All castles in Scotland → · Strongest castles in Scotland → · Castles of Europe
Play As Your Clan
Pick any year from 500 to 1945 and any place on earth, the Douglas country, or a shore no Douglas ever reached. The chronicler sets the scene; the deeds are yours.
Notable bearers of the Douglas name
- 'Good Sir James' Douglas
- James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton
Stories of Clan Douglas
The heart of Bruce
1329–1330In June 1329 Robert the Bruce lay dying at Cardross. He had vowed years earlier to take the cross to the Holy Land, but the Scottish wars had kept him from it; on his deathbed he asked that his heart be cut from his body, embalmed, and carried on crusade in his place. The man who took the charge was Sir James Douglas, his closest companion in arms, called Good Sir James. Douglas wore the heart in a silver casket on a chain at his neck the next year, through France and Spain and into a foreign battle on the Andalusian frontier, where what he did at the head of a Castilian charge became the founding act of the Douglas line.
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The Black Dinner
1440On the twenty-fourth of November 1440, the sixteen-year-old William Douglas, sixth Earl of Douglas, head of the Black Douglas line and the most powerful subject in Scotland, was invited with his younger brother David to dine in the great hall of Edinburgh Castle in the presence of the ten-year-old King James II. The dinner was hosted by William Crichton (the Lord Chancellor) and Sir Alexander Livingston (the Custodian of the Castle and the King's tutor), the two regents who effectively ruled Scotland during the king's minority and who had been alarmed for two years at the rising power of the Douglas earl. By the tradition of the next century, told in the chronicles of John Major and Hector Boece, a black bull's head was brought in on a silver platter as the principal dish, the symbol in fifteenth-century Scotland of imminent execution. The two Douglas brothers were seized at the table, given a hasty trial in the courtyard, and beheaded on the spot. The political effect was immediate: the Black Douglas eclipse, the rise of a new (and deliberately diminished) Douglas line under the eighth Earl. The Black Dinner is the most consistently remembered episode of medieval Scottish political violence, has produced two surviving children's rhymes (one in the eastern Border tradition, one Aberdeenshire), and was deliberately referenced by George R. R. Martin as the structural model for the Red Wedding in A Storm of Swords.
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