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.
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| 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.
Favored by the Stuart Kings
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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:
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.
Helmsdale, since demolished
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
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| King James V |
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.
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| Henry Guise with red feather |
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...
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| Henry Darnley |
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.
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| 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.
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| Jean Gordon |
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| 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.
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| Sir Robert Gordon |
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.
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| Barclays Bank on Lombard St., London |
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.
