Barclays Bank History Series II

 A Genealogical Study of the Families Who Created the Bank

PART TWO - From Feudalism to Banking 

Continued from Part One 

Remnants of Feudalism

In the previous section, we introduced you to Robert Barclay, known as "The Apologist." In 1676, the same year his "Apology for the True Christian Divinity" was published, Robert traveled with his fellow Quaker, William Penn, to Holland and Germany, seeking help for a colony Penn was setting up in America. 

While Robert was away from the family residence in Ury, his father, Col. David Barclay, had been imprisoned. Colonel David Barclay, as we learned previously, had fought numerous battles as a protector of the English and Scottish King James, designated I and VI in the respective countries, and had a hand in assuring that Queen Elizabeth was placed on the throne.  

Robert Barclay, Apologist

Elizabeth I was a daughter of Henry VIII by one of his wives, and her half-sister Mary was another of Henry's daughter by a different wife. Elizabeth adopted the established Church of England, while Mary, who spent her childhood in exile in France, favored Roman Catholicism. Because Scotland had been closely aligned with Catholic France in the past centuries, decades of wars occurred before the two countries could be fused into what is today called the United Kingdom.

Col. David Barclay decided in 1666 to become neutral in the raging civil wars, reflected by his conversion to the Quaker religion. Robert was also leaning in that direction and was already close to the higher-ups in the movement, such as William Penn. It was his father's imprisonment which motivated him to write the treatise (see above) for which he is noted. 

Robert’s writings were not only effective in helping to free his Quaker friends and family from prison, but he was consequently rewarded in 1679 by being raised to the lowest rung on the ladder of upper class during the last days of Scottish feudalism. The lands Col. David Barclay acquired at Ury received a royal charter as a “free barony.” [Source:  Ancestry.com. North America, Family Histories, 1500- 2000 (database on-line). Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016, p. 72. 

A more well-known example of a free barony is one created for Sir George Carteret, a contemporary of Colonel Barclay, in his family lands in the Channel Islands:

Carteret's Seigneuries

Carteret had defended Elizabeth Castle on his native Isle of Jersey until 1651, making it the last fortress to fly the royal banners during the “interregnum” in which Parliament controlled the government and the king’s sons were in exile. Carteret had also proclaimed Charles II King of England at “old” Jersey’s capital city of St. Helier soon after his father’s execution. [Source:  Joseph R. Klett, “The Founding of New Jersey,” © 2016 Discover NJ History.org.]

Sir George Carteret--grandson of Helier Carteret--was a son of Helier's eldest son, Philippe, who succeeded Helier as Seigneur of St. Ouen and Sark. The Carteret family had established itself centuries earlier on the Island of Sark, in time spreading to Jersey, where Helier's third son, William, became a Jurat of the Royal Court. Sir George's uncle, Amias, founded the line of "de Carterets of Trinity" to become Jurat of the Royal Court of Guernsey, then its Lieutenant Governor and Bailiff. 

The Channel Islands, as remnants of the Duchy of Normandy, are still held directly by the crown on a feudal basis as self-governing possessions of the British Crown with the "seigneurial class" having been paramount in social hierarchy of the islands for many centuries. Seigneurs are commonly referred to by the names of their original fiefs and still participate annually in the Court of Chief Pleas in Guernsey and the Assize d'Heritage in Jersey. Purchasing a Channel Island fief is possible for anyone, regardless of nationality or citizenship, although sales occur infrequently, since fiefs tend to pass down within families. 

Carteret Seigneury

Seigneuries at the Isle of Jersey--St. Ouen in the northwest corner of the island and Trinity Manor, pictured to the right. It's easy to confuse our Barclay family with that of "Lord John Berkeley," who was named as a partner of Carteret in the Carolina colony, and who at one time had an interest in New Jersey. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Carteret was one of the eight original proprietors in 1663 to whom King Charles II granted the area of Carolina in North America. 

The following year Carteret also received property rights to half of New Jersey, which he named for his birthplace, Jersey in the Channel Isles. Friction arose in the new colony when Swedes and Dutch settlers there made prior claims to part of the land claimed for their respective Crowns. Carteret's co-owner, John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton, sold out to a Quaker group controlled by William Penn and his Barclay family associates in 1674. These new owners joined with Carteret in dividing New Jersey into two halves in 1676, a century before the American Revolution would begin. 

American Colony--East Jersey

The Quakers took the West half, and Carteret kept  East Jersey, but not long after the division, he died, and his heirs sold East Jersey it to William Penn and his associates, the Barclays being the largest investors. 

Col. David Barclay after his marriage to the White Rose of Scotland, also was favored by King Charles II and his brother James (then the Duke of York), close relatives of Katherine Gordon. But it was his connection to William Penn and his fellow Quakers which caused  David and his son Robert to be successively elected Governor of  East Jersey, albeit an election ratified by King Charles II. We have no evidence either of the two Barclay governors visited America. What we do know is that David's youngest son, David, Jr. made two successful trips to New Jersey. On his third return, in 1684, he was unfortunately lost at sea. Following his death, an older sibling, John, moved to America and lived out his remaining life at Perth Amboy, New Jersey.  [Source: Joseph R. Klett, “The Founding of New Jersey,” © 2016 Discover NJ History.org.] 

Referring back to Part One, the chart titled Pedigree I leads us to the end of the line of the Barclay family through which the title of Laird of Ury passed--five generations in all to rely on the feudal land system that had mostly been displaced over time by a merchant class that challenged the importance of royal patronage.

Robert Barclay, the Quaker Apologist, close friend of William Penn, lived only four years after his father's death. He and his siblings remained in that part of Scotland between Aberdeen and Dundee for the remainder of their lives, where his eldest surviving son, Robert of Ury, continued the tradition of passing the title Laird of Ury to each successive generation of eldest sons named Robert. 

  

Barclay and Freame

The next branch of the Barclay family begins with the second son of  Robert the Apologist. David, named for his grandfather. Born in 1682, this David Barclay gradually established a new branch of the family, which began when he left Scotland for London to apprentice himself to a linen draper in Cheapside, an area in north London composed mostly of Quakers. 

Over time, the firm became increasingly focused on supplying German, Scottish and Irish linen products to the colonies in America, and when David retired in 1767, his firm was one of the largest in the north American trade, owning ships, and trading to New York, Pennsylvania, the Chesapeake, and the West Indies," according to an excellent website by Nicholas Kingsley.

David's first marriage to Anne Taylor, who died in 1720, left him with two young sons and several daughters to raise. He was at that time a member of  a large group of Quakers which since 1666 had been meeting at Devonshire House (formerly the London home of the Cavendish family). A prior headquarters at the Bull and Mouth Inn had been destroyed in the Fire of London. The Bull and Mouth would be rebuilt, and we find it mentioned later in the family genealogy as a site for family weddings or funerals.

From "A Handbook of London Bankers: With Some Account of Their Predecessors the Early Goldsmiths...," by Frederick George Hilton

 

At Devonshire House, David met his second wife, then the 21-year-old Priscilla, whose father was a fellow Quaker named John Freame, They married in 1723, and their first child was born in March 1727 at Cheapside. Priscilla was barely older than the six children (born between 1708-18) during David's first marriage, to whom she became stepmother.

Barclay the "Pedestrian"

David's eldest son James (born to Anne Taylor Barclay) married Sarah Freame, a younger sister of his stepmother, and worked at the bank until his death in 1766. His daughter Anne Barclay was married in 1756 to James Allardyce of Scotland and had one daughter, Sarah Anne, born shortly before Anne's death. Sarah grew up to marry Robert Barclay of Ury, known as "the Pedestrian," because of his penchant for doing long walks. 

In the meantime, James’ brother, Alexander Barclay (1711-71), quickly ran through his modest inheritance from his mother. Since David had prospered to the point he was estimated to be worth £100,000 at his death, he was able to secure for Alexander an appointment as Comptroller of Customs in Philadelphia, a post which became very useful to David's export business. Alexander married in Philadelphia, had a son named Robert born there in 1751. 

Although Alexander remained in Philadelphia until his untimely death in 1771, Robert returned to London to join his grandfather and uncle James in the business, which was expanding, particularly in the area of England where textiles were woven, mostly Norfolk.

After David's second marriage, he continued focusing on the textile trade, but also joined his new father-in-law, John Freame, in some other enterprises. Freame had a grocery and goldsmith business on Lombard Street called Freame & Gould. In 1728, Freame's son Joshua replaced Thomas Gould. After John Freame's death in 1745, Joshua moved into a new building at 54 Lombard Street with a new partner, David Barclay. The business was identified by the "Sign of the Black Spread Eagle." In time, Barclays would adopt this sign as their own logo. 

An excellent website called "Landed families of Britain and Ireland" tells us the Barclays 

"first gave up their commission merchant business, and then gradually wound down their linen export business (which finally ceased trading in 1783). In 1773 Robert went back to America for a couple of years to tidy up his father's affairs, and in 1776 David became a partner in the Freame bank, the oldest-established Quaker bank in London."

So it seems the year 1776 was significant in more ways than one. Partnerships were formed between Freame and Barclay family members, each with a new firm name that sometimes included other partners as well. Each one adopted as an official logo a variation of the sign that hung outside the original Freame business. [See Margaret Ackrill and Leslie Hannah, Barclays: The Business of Banking 1690–1996, the copyright of which is owned by the bank itself.]

Click to enlarge. Credit to Margaret Ackrill and Leslie Hannah ©Barclays Bank PLC 2001

The Quaker Factor

John Freame's influence in the Quaker community had been profound. "The Friends deposited their ‘national stock’ (that is, their central funds, amounting to £1100 in 1695) in his bank from an early stage, and he knew the Quaker luminaries of the day intimately. He was frequently called upon to arbitrate in Quaker business (as well as religious) matters and served as clerk to the Friends' supreme body, the yearly meeting, in 1711." [Source: Ackrill and Hannah].

 

Although Quakers were noted for their moderation, they sometimes hid behind that placid veneer a more avaricious inclination. Take the South Sea Bubble for example. The same authors revealed a side of John Freame he had tried to hide for the last years of his life:

John Freame spent more time on Quaker affairs after his son entered the bank. He also reconstructed the London Lead Company (of which he became governor), following revelations in the later 1720s of misuse of its funds by Quaker fraudsters in the South Sea Bubble affair. He died in 1745, his wife having predeceased him in 1727; his funeral at Winchmore Hill, in the burial-ground of the Quaker meeting-house near his country home, Bush Hill, north of London, was the Friends' equivalent of a Westminster Abbey interment. ["Quaker Bankers in Britain".]

Click to enlarge

An American Quaker historical site reported that David Barclay, was in the early 1700s an investor in the Pennsylvania Land Company, which in a roundabout way was involved in a slave-smuggling enterprise that began when a man named Hoskins, Barclay's fellow investor in Pennsylvania lands, took the company’s capital and invested it in the South Sea Company. The South Sea Company (SSC), another joint-stock company, was a forerunner to today's corporate shells. Part of its business was to acquire enslaved Africans to be used by investors in land in South America. During its heyday,  SSC transported "just over 34,000 enslaved people across the Atlantic, with a mortality rate of 11%." 

While James Barclay's father, David Barclay had only invested in Pennsylvania lands, his father-in-law John Freame had made an investment in the South Sea Company itself. Quakers, however, were not the only investors in he South Sea Company. Both Kings George I and George II were governors of SSC and were heavily invested in the South Sea Company, according to David Conn's 2023 article in the Guardian. The “South Sea bubble” looked then like what we call today a massive Ponzi scheme, based on a contract to supply 4,800 adult, healthy males to Latin America annually. It would be more than a hundred years later before the trade in African slaves would be abolished in England, even longer in America.

Hoare to Lloyds Bank

One of the first Quakers to form a society to stop the human trafficking in African slaves was Samuel Hoare, Jr. (1751-1825), who also has a prominent role in the Barclay genealogy. As a teenager, Samuel became an apprentice to Henry Gurney, a woollen manufacturer in Norwich, where he met and married Sarah Gurney and a few years later would be notable as a partner in Barnett, Hoare & Co., a bank which traded under the sign of the black horse. 

Mergers followed, to form Barnetts, Hoares, Hanbury & Lloyd and ultimately in 1884, Lloyds Banking Company took over Barnetts, Hoares, Hanbury & Lloyd in a bid to gain a foothold in London and acquired the black horse sign which continues in use as the Lloyds Bank logo. As banking families tend to marry among themselves, we find several marriages of Barclays not only to Gurneys, but to Hoares and Hanburys as well.

Norfolk's Textile Mills  

In the meantime, Alexander's American-born son, Robert Barclay, arrived in London at the age of 12 and was taken under the wing of his English family of Quakers. His marriage to Rachel Gurney, daughter of a wealthy textile merchant banker, reflected the importance of that industry to Robert's grandfather David and his Freame in-laws. 

Norwich mills

The Gurney family's silk and woollen mills were located in Norwich, a textile center of Norfolk, where “master weavers” owned and managed dozens of woolen looms, some becoming very wealthy “by handling funds and extending credit to their fellow weavers,” and the most successful, like the Gurney and Harvey families, forming what was called “country banks.” [Source: Peter Clark, “Norwich since 1550,” The English Historical Review, Volume CXXI, Issue 491, April 2006, Pages 544–546, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/cel024. 

Grandfather David Barclay (1682-1769), although he had left Scotland during his youth, maintained the feudal connection shared with his relations at Kincardine or Aberdeen, Scotland, through subsequent marriages between his children and cousins. Col. David's daughter Jean, for example, who had married Ewen Cameron of Lochniel, saw her daughter, Una Cameron, become the wife of Robert Barclay, 4th Laird of Ury. Their son Robert inherited the title as 5th Earl of Ury and later married Lucy, the youngest sister of David's sons, James and Alexander, though she died in 1757 when her daughter Lucy was born.  After Robert, the Laird of Ury, married Sarah Allardyce, combining their two last names before his death in 1797, the Barclay estates in Ury had been more or less dissipated from neglect, as the Barclays moved up in Scottish society and left their house behind. The second Lucy Barclay (daughter of Robert Barclay Allardyce and his cousin Lucy) married an associate of Charles Darwin, Samuel John Galton. A Barclay grandson, Sir Francis Galton, developed the concept of eugenics, which some have called "race science." 

When Lucy Galton's half-sister, Margaret Barclay, married another cousin, Hudson Gurney, whose parents, Richard and Agatha Barclay Gurney had married in 1773, there is evidence that the two families may have had a close relationship with each other even before they left the established religion to become Quakers. Richard's uncle Edmund Gurney had been a highly educated Anglican priest before he was found guilty of offensive speeches in a sermon in Great St Mary's, Cambridge in 1609. 

Timothy Bevan

Possibly the most important of his children's marriages was that of David's daughter Elizabeth's wedding to Timothy Bevan in 1735. Timothy Bevan had been born in Swansea in South Wales, but when he was four years old, his father, Sylvanus Bevan, took a risky step by signing on to an eight-year apprenticeship with a London apothecary. By 1715, his internship completed, Sylvanus opened his own pharmacy at Plough Court off Lombard Street, which at his death in 1727 went to his sons, Sylvanus II and Timothy Bevan. The Bevan brothers were engaged in exporting merchandise to the American colonies as early as 1733.

By the time of his death in 1769, David Barclay had become one of the richest merchants in London, possibly due in large part to his connections with other Quaker merchants in the textile trade. Rachel Gurney's family, for example, founded Gurney's Bank of Norwich in 1770, as a result of their huge trade in woolen and silk fabrics in that region. 

During his career, as David Barclay became more and more prosperous, he relocated his residence first from Cheapside to a community north of London called Winchmore Hill, where the Society of Friends had built a meeting house in 1688. It was there he was laid to rest in 1769.

End of Part Two. 

   

Barclays Bank History Series I

A Genealogical Study of the Families Who Created the Bank

PART ONE - The Lairds of Urie

Before the Barclay family founded their eponymous bank, a youthful David Barclay became a mercenary soldier of fortune in Germany, eventually rising to the rank of major under Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, during the Thirty Years War. He returned to Scotland in 1636 to serve in the Covenanting army and was given a horse regiment to command as colonel under General John Middleton. In the summer of 1648 Middleton got entangled with the Duke of Hamilton, whom his men captured and then executed.

Col. David Barclay

 Oliver Cromwell came to Scotland shortly thereafter and made sure that those who had fought against Hamilton, in any manner—including David Barclay, who claimed to be just looking the other way while the Duke was done in—lost their posts. 

Colonel David Barclay licked his wounds, deciding if he couldn't fight Cromwell's new republic one way, he'd defeat it from inside the tent, as the saying goes. He went home to Gordonstoun, where his wife of less than a year, Katherine, awaited him. [Source: Genealogical Account of the Lives of the Barclays of Urie for upwards of 700 Years with Memoirs of Colonel David Barclay and his son Robert Barclay...(London: John Herbert, 1812).

Kate, as I choose to think of her, was not just any wife. Her family tree was impeccable—a father serving on King James VI’s Privy Chamber, a grandfather having been the Earl of Sutherland—both positions coming in quite handy for Col. David Barclay in the days ahead. 

Perhaps the first step in Barclay's new attitude had been after his horse regiment was taken from him, leaving him unable to join up with other Scots like William Keith, the 7th Earl of Mareschal, who objected so violently to the execution of Charles I after his trial for treason early in 1649, that he set out to avenge the murder. The death of  King Charles had thus precipitated a third war between Scotland and England--a war eventually concluded by Oliver Cromwell’s return to Scotland, where he put an end to the uprising. 

 

 

Because Barclay had no regiment with which to fight, he was able to profit personally when William Keith, having taken arms against the English Crown, forfeited the title of Mareschal, more commonly known as the Keeper of the Privy Seal. That seal had for generations been in the hands of members of the Sutherland Clan, which Barclay had recently married into.

[Source:  Sir Robert Gordon, Bart., Genealogical history of the Earldom of Sutherland from its origin to the year 1630. With a continuation to the year 1651 (Edinburgh: University of Guelph Library, 1813). 

 

 Favored by the Stuart Kings 

 

 

 

The Colonel married Katherine Gordon in late 1647. Their marriage effectively united the Barclays into the clans of Gordon, Sutherland and Huntly. Colonel Barclay used these new family connections to get the himself elected as a Member of Parliament, and a few years later re-elected. It was a new era under the Republic ushered in by Oliver Cromwell. 

 

If you recall American History 101, or even earlier stories about Cromwell and the Puritans, the year 1620 sticks out as the year Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in an attempt to escape from religious persecution back home.

“Back home” was where Colonel David Barclay had been watching the Covenanting wars play out in real time.  

Those wars were reaching their end on a late December day in 1647 when Colonel David Barclay married the White Rose of Scotland. 

The chaos of the previous century or more, however, would not be forgotten. The stories were made into legends and symbols, told to represent a family's loyalty, or disloyalty, to the Crown. 

 

 

The White Rose of Scotland 

One writer in New York in 1904, looking back two and a half centuries, wrote of those days:

John Barclay, who settled in East New Jersey in 1684, was the second son of Col. David Barclay of Ury. The father had served with distinction in the Thirty Years War as a follower of Gustavus Adolphus, and had borne arms in the civil wars at home. On December 24th, 1647, he married Lady Katharine Gordon, known as the ''White Rose of Scotland," and about a year later (in 1648) purchased from William, Earl of Mareschal, the estate of Ury in the County of Kincardine, Scotland. In 1679, under charter from the crown, this estate and some neighboring estates which were also owned by Col. David, were united into the "Barony of Ury."  [Source: R. Burnham Moffat, The Barclays of New York: Who They Are, and Who They Are Not, and Some Other Barclays (New York: Robert Grier Cooke, 1904), p. 1.

 

Excerpted from The White Cockade

Barclay Link to Mary, Queen of Scots 

Scottish romanticism was watered with the blood of both martyrs and saints. Less romantic but more realistic was the fact that the same blood was tainted by being mingled with blood from villains and traitors. Traitors, spies and assassins of every ilk inhabited every square foot of Scottish lands No one knew whom to trust. Perhaps it was for that reason secret societies were born there many generations earlier--Knights Templar, Scottish Rite Masonry, and other similar brotherhoods whose secrets have never been revealed.

Credit to Tudors Dynasty

We looked back at chronicles of the previous century and discovered numerous plots and conspiracies involving the clans in Scotland, just over the reign of Queen Mary. Many histories were recorded, left only to be deciphered.

Take, as an example, what occurred a century before Col. Barclay's marriage. It was in July 1555 that King Charles' predecessor, Mary Queen of Scots, arrived at Inverness. She had "requested" George, Earl of Caithness to meet her there and bring his countrymen to assist her in quelling uprisings. He did not show up. Only Sir John Gordon--great-grandfather of Katherine Gordon--attended the Queen. Mary was enraged, and she had Caithess committed to prison at Inverness, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh successively, until he paid a huge fine for his disloyalty.

Click to enlarge.

Over the next five years or so, Caithness became ever more bold in his disregard of Queen Mary's wishes. Both he and Sir John (Earl of Sutherland) committed almost irrational outrages against each other, not unlike gang warfare in the Hood today. As a result: 

"Earl George [Caithness] was greatly exasperated at the interference of the Earl of Sutherland, and to this incident we trace the foundation of that hatred which the two rival Houses of Caithness and Sutherland bore each other for so long a period." [Source: The Saint-Clairs of the Isles, Being a History of the Sea-Kings of Orkney and Their Scottish Successors of the Surname of Sinclair, Arranged and Annotated by Roland William Saint-Clair.]

 

Such incidents became steeped in pure, unadulterated greed and narcissism, and they escalated into three horrific murders on June 23, 1567 that would come to haunt Col. David Barclay's wife, Katherine Gordon, as her grandfather passed the story down to family members, many years after the fact. Katherine's grandfather was, in fact, Alexander Gordon, the 12th Earl of Sutherland, who lived to tell the tale that became a legend in the Barclay household, perhaps even to this day.

Grandfather Alex was only 15 years old when the incident took place. He had been out hunting at the family's retreat called Helmsdale Castle, while his father, John Gordon, the 11th Earl of Sutherland, and  Alexander's stepmother, Sir John's third wife, Marian Seton, were being entertained and fed at the castle. One historical website tells us:

Helmsdale, since demolished

The castle had its beginnings in the 1460s. It was repaired and enlarged around 1600, but it was in 1567 that the famous tragedy was enacted that is said to have inspired the plot of Shakespeare's "Hamlet". Isobel Sinclair, in a diabolical attempt to divert the line of succession to her own son, arranged to poison her visitors, the 11th Earl of Sutherland and his Countess and their son, while they were taking dinner at the castle. But the plan miscarried and the Earl's son did not drink the poisoned wine, while her own son did, as well as the Earl and Countess. The original castle ... had been the hunting seat of the Sutherland family.

The Good Earl John

I'll leave it to you to decide whether this scenario fits the fictional plot of Hamlet or not. The characters in the real plot were Sutherland, also called Sir John Gordon, "the Good Earl John." Sir John was there with his third wife, whom he had only recently married.

1. Wife No. 1 was Elizabeth Campbell (daughter of Colin Campbell, the 3rd Earl of Argyll and Jean Gordon), about whom one website leads us to the conclusion that the Campbells and Argylls were as equally to be avoided as the Caithness clan, members of which perpetrated the murders at Helmsdale.
2. Wife No. 2 In 1549 Sir John was wed to Lady Helen Stewart, eldest daughter of John Stewart, 3rd Earl of Lennox (1490-1526). Helen was the sister of Matthew Stewart, the father of Henry Darnley. Helen as a young girl had married William (Will) Hay, 6th Earl of Erroll, whose cousin, George Hay, coveted Will's title as Earl of Erroll, taking it for himself soon after Will's death. After five years or so as a widow, Helen married Sir John and in 1552 gave birth to Alexander Gordon.
3. Wife No. 3 was Marion Seton, lady in waiting to Mary of Guise (otherwise known in this essay as the Queen Mum). Marion's father was George Seton, the son of Janet Hepburn, daughter of Patrick Hepburn, 1st Earl of Bothwell. 

One year after Will Hay's death, King James V of Scotland, died also, leaving as his only heir the Catholic, Mary Queen of Scots, for whom George Hay (now Earl of Erroll) became, among others, a protector. In fact, George had been among those who signed an agreement to allow Mary's mother (Mary of Guise), widow of King James V, to serve as her Regent until her death in 1560. Also among those protectors was Sir John Gordon, who was actually the man most involved in arranging the marriage between Queen Mary and Henry Darnley, who at that time was the nephew of John's wife (Wife No. 2 above).

King James V

Government and foreign policy were viewed back then like a human chess game, using the royal family as chess pieces, without lives of their own. The Queen Mum (Mary Guise) had been so used herself in 1540 when forced to choose as a husband either James V, King of Scotland, or Francis I, King of France. Whichever man she chose, she would become a queen, although in my view she was merely a pawn.

George, the Earl of Erroll was an avid chess player in this game, watching as Mary's first marriage was arranged by the Queen Mum, resulting in the wedding between her daughter and Francis II--son of Henry II of France and Catherine de' Medici. Francis was 14 when the wedding took place, and he became King of France a year later upon the death of his father. 

Henry Guise with red feather

Francis, too, was placed in a regency--his royal power delegated to Mary's uncles from the noble House of Guise: Francis, Duke of Guise, and Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine. His mother, Catherine de' Medici, agreed to this delegation of power to the Guise family, which took place in the same year that Elizabeth I (House of Tudor) became the Queen of England, crowned on January 15, 1559.

With the marriage of Francis II and Mary Stuart occurring only the previous year, the future of Scotland thus became linked to France. A secret clause provided that Scotland would become part of France if the royal couple did not have children. When young Francis II died childless on 5 December 1560, the Guises left the French court of the new King Charles, and they brought Mary Stuart, Francis II's widow, back to Scotland, an act approved by the Tudor Queen Elizabeth I because Scotland by then had an established Protestant church run by a council of Protestant nobles that Elizabeth supported.

Nevertheless, Scotland continued to be beset by a variety of religious factions still warring with each other and committing treasonous acts, such as abducting Mary and holding her in one castle or another. George Hay, the Earl of Erroll sometimes had a hand in such intrigues, including her imprisonment in April 1567, two months after her second husband, Henry Darnley, was murdered.

Titles, Titles Everywhere...

Henry Darnley

Henry Darnley was the eldest surviving son of Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, by his wife Lady Margaret Douglas. The union of these two children was a chess move designed to give any child Mary might have as a result, a claim to the English throne, based on Darnley's family tree. 

Henry had been born in Leeds, in north Yorkshire shortly after Matthew Stewart, his father--who happened to be Sir John Gordon's brother-in-law at that time--was found guilty of treason. Both of Henry's parents then went into exile from Scotland--with his father being third in line to the Scottish throne. Darnley's mother, the Countess of Lennox, was a niece of the late Henry VIII, and was, therefore, a potential successor to Elizabeth I. [Thank God for Wikipedia.] 

Eventually, King James VI & I of Scotland and England (the same man wearing two crowns) united the senior royal line of Stewart (represented by his mother Mary, Queen of Scots) with the junior branch of Stewart of Darnley, as his father (Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley) was that family's senior representative, being the son and heir apparent of Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox (1516–1571). This king was the baby Mary gave birth to as a result of her short second marriage to Henry Darnley.

Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell

Although the marriage did take place, it was quite brief, ending in February 1567, when Darnley was murdered. There was, nevertheless, good new for his Stewart family, since Mary had managed to get pregnant before Darnley's enemies murdered him. 

The chief suspect in the murder was James Hepburn, a man soon to become Mary's third husband. It appears James Hepburn had previously been married to none other than Jean (a/k/a Jane or Janet) Gordon, who had divorced Hepburn on May 3, 1567, according to Antonia Fraser's magnificent work. He married Mary, Queen of Scots, eight days later. 

Jean's father, George Gordon, was the 4th Earl of Huntly, and her mother was Margaret Stewart, daughter of King James IV. George, in 1550 had accompanied Mary's mother, the Queen Mum, to France, later joining the Protestant Lords of the Congregation, working toward "a form of co-existence between Catholic and reformed worship," by accepting the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots. But her father then died in 1562. 

Jean Gordon

It was Jean's half-brother, also named George Gordon, the 5th Earl of Huntly who "rescued" their cousin Alexander from the strange union forced on him after his parents were poisoned in 1567 by Isobel Sinclair. She and her fellow conspirators had kidnapped Alexander, forcing him to marry a woman twice his age--Barbara Sinclair, daughter of the 4th Earl of Caithness. 

We know most of the details from a fascinating sttudy written by Margaret H. B. Sanderson, called Mary Stewart's People: Life in Mary Stewart's Scotland. Published by James Thin, an imprint of the Mercat Press in Edinburgh in 1987, Sanderson's book reveals that the poisonings were "part of a conspiracy by the Earl of Caithness' family ... to eliminate the heirs to the earldom of Sutherland." 

Dunrobin Castle

By 1569 Alexander Gordon was at least 18, successor to this title of Earl of Sutherland. Although he sought a divorce from Barbara (some say Beatrix) Sinclair on the grounds he had been a minor of 15 when the forced wedding took place, the divorce was unnecessary when Barbara died before any decree was granted. That left him free to marry Jean Gordon by December 1573.

Alexander and Jean were married and moved to Dunrobin Castle, home of the Sutherland Clan since the 1400s. Upon Alexander's death in 1594, the title passed to Jean's half-brother, George Gordon, by then the First Marquess of Huntly, the same man who had rescued Alexander from the clutches of the Sinclairs at Caithness. 

Sir Robert Gordon

Alexander and Jean became parents of five children, one of whom was known as Sir Robert Gordon, 1st Baronet, born 14 May 1580, died Mar 1654. The feuds of the previous century were still playing out when Sir Robert returned from England and France in 1621 to find lands inherited from his older brother John Gordon in deep debt. Two years later he was given a way out of that debt. His father's old enemy, George Sinclair, 5th Earl of Caithness, was proclaimed a rebel. "Gordon received a commission from the privy council to proceed with fire and sword against him, and took possession of Castle Sinclair, the earl's residence. Having subdued the county of Caithness, he returned with his troops into Sutherland, and soon after went back to the court in England." [Sources set out in Wikipedia].

Robert would continue to advance in this new found wealth resulting from his loyalty to King James I (also known as James VI), the son of the marriage of Mary to Darnley. On 28 May 1625, as a gentleman of the privy chamber to Charles I, he was created premier baronet of Nova Scotia, with remainder to his heir male whatsoever; and he obtained a charter under the great seal granting to him sixteen thousand acres on the coast of Nova Scotia, which were erected into a barony. [Also see Complete Baronetage by George E. Cokayne]

What It All Means 

We have reached the place where we began this tale. Robert's second daughter Katherine, who married David Barclay in 1647. Soon after that fateful event, Barclay became a Member of Parliament. He and his wife left five children, about whom we will learn in Part Two of this series.

As Barclay had already learned over the course of his life by that time, his future in Parliament would be a large factor in keeping his property intact. Politics can be useful, as the Barclays and their extended families would learn often over the coming centuries in banking. 

Barclays Bank on Lombard St., London

It was only after Lady Katherine died in 1663 that David Barclay himself turned to religion, becoming a Quaker in 1666, as did his eldest son Robert Barclay, who had been educated in Paris by a Papist uncle, we've been told. This Robert Barclay returned from France, rejecting Catholicism, and married Christian Mollison, the daughter of an Aberdeen merchant. Like his father, Robert, too, soon became an ardent Quaker. 

Quakerism provided the Barclays with a useful role to play in the new world of business, similar to the role Switzerland would later play. As neutral protestants who refused to take up arms for either of the warring parties, neutrality gave them a foot in each side, even while it made them appear to be discreet and trustworthy--the perfect image for a banker.