Clan Stewart
also Stuart
From High Stewards to the throne, the royal name of Scotland.
- Origin
- Perthshire, Scotland
- Motto
- Virescit vulnere virtus
- Famous bearer
- Robert II
- Register
- Scottish clan
Ranked of all time
The 10 Most Powerful Scottish Clans of All Time
Ranked of all time
The 15 Most Powerful English Houses of All Time
The seat of Clan Stewart
Seat vacantChief
No one leads the Clan Stewart 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 Stewart has leadership, it sets the public focus: a restoration, a gathering, a real-world project that helps its own.
The Stewart 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 Stewart clan →Motto
Virescit vulnere virtus
“Courage grows strong at a wound”
What does the Stewart name mean?
From the office of 'High Steward' of Scotland, held hereditarily by the family from the 12th century until they themselves became kings.
The history of Clan Stewart
The Stewarts take their surname from the hereditary office of High Steward of Scotland, held by the family from the 12th century. Walter, the 6th High Steward, married Marjorie Bruce, daughter of Robert the Bruce, and their son became Robert II in 1371, founding the royal House of Stewart.
The Stewart kings ruled Scotland for over three centuries, and after 1603 the united crowns of Scotland and England, until the deposition of James VII and II in 1689. The exiled line continued through James Francis Edward (the 'Old Pretender') and Charles Edward Stuart ('Bonnie Prince Charlie') to the death of Henry, Cardinal York, in 1807.
Beyond the royal line, branches such as the Stewarts of Atholl, Appin and Bute remain among the most numerous and widespread clans in Scotland.
Champions of the Stewart name
The bearers whose lives are inseparable from this surname. Each has its own page — biography, achievements, geography, connection to the family.
- Mary, Queen of Scots
The infant Queen of Scots who became Queen of France at sixteen, returned to rule her own realm at eighteen, and through her grandson James the Sixth and First united the crowns of Scotland and England.
- Bonnie Prince Charlie
The Stuart prince who landed in Moidart in July 1745 with seven men and within ten weeks had taken Edinburgh, beaten a government army at Prestonpans, and marched a Highland army to within a hundred and twenty-seven miles of London.
- Sir Jackie Stewart
The Milton-born Dumbartonshire racing driver whose three Formula One World Drivers' Championships in 1969, 1971 and 1973 and twenty-seven Grand Prix wins made him the dominant single F1 driver of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and whose post-career safety campaigning transformed Formula One from the most dangerous professional sport in the world to a fraction of that risk.
Step Into History
Walk the streets and seats the Stewart name knew — a photoreal walk through time, on foot.
Notable bearers of the Stewart name
- Robert II
- Mary, Queen of Scots
- Bonnie Prince Charlie
Stories of Clan Stewart
The Young Pretender
1745–1746Charles Edward Stuart was born in Rome in 1720, grandson of the deposed James VII and II, and grew up at the exiled court of his father in the Palazzo Muti. He landed at Eriskay on 23 July 1745 with seven companions and a hundred broadswords, and within five months had taken Edinburgh and pushed an army deep into England. By 4 December 1745 his men were at Derby, one hundred and twenty-four miles from a London in panic. The council of war the next morning was the highest point of the rising and the moment it was lost. Charles wanted to march on. His commanders did not. The retreat began the next day.
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Mary at Fotheringhay
1587On the morning of the eighth of February 1587, in the great hall of Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire, Mary, Queen of Scots, formerly Queen of France, claimant to the throne of England by descent from Henry VII, twice married, twice widowed, mother of James VI of Scotland (the future James I of England), in her forty-fourth year, in the nineteenth year of imprisonment in England, was beheaded by Bull, the executioner, on a black-draped scaffold raised in the hall, in the presence of three earls, the sheriff of Northamptonshire, and a small party of her own household. She had been condemned at the Star Chamber in October 1586 for involvement in the Babington Plot to assassinate Elizabeth and place herself on the English throne. Elizabeth had signed the warrant on the first of February 1587 and tried, in the days afterward, to disavow having intended its execution. The execution went forward on the morning of the eighth, the warrant carried by Robert Beale, by the Privy Council's authority. The first stroke of the axe failed to sever the neck. The second sufficed. The third was needed to sever the last sinew. As the head was lifted, the wig that Mary had been wearing came off in Bull's hand, revealing the queen's grey hair. Beneath the skirts of the gown her terrier, by the tradition of the eyewitnesses, was found alive and would not leave her body, and had to be carried out by force.
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