Clan Fraser: History, Castles, Motto & Tartan

The Frasers are one of the great names of the Scottish Highlands, and their story spans two countries, two great family branches, and nearly nine centuries. From their arrival in Scotland as a Norman family in the 12th century to the execution of the last peer beheaded in Britain, this is a clan whose history is laced with political cunning, military disaster, and extraordinary resilience.

We tell it a little differently here. As well as the history, you'll find landscape photography from across Fraser territory woven through the story, because these places are as much a part of the clan's legacy as the people who lived in them. By the end, we hope your imagination has a few more images to draw on when you think about where your ancestors came from.

Where did Clan Fraser originate?

The Frasers came from France. Their name in its earliest forms, Fresel and Friselle, points to Norman French origins, and the family is thought to have arrived in Scotland during the reign of David I in the early 12th century, part of the great influx of Norman settlers who reshaped the Scottish lowlands.

Their first Scottish lands were in East Lothian, where a Simon Fraser held the estate of Keith and gave its church to the Abbey of Kelso around 1160. From there, within a few generations, the family had spread to Tweeddale on the Borders, where they held Oliver Castle and the lands around Neidpath, an impressive keep above the River Tweed near Peebles.

The Frasers did not stay in the south. Through a series of advantageous marriages, the family spread northward into Aberdeenshire and eventually into Inverness-shire, splitting into two great branches that would define the clan's history. But before that division, the Frasers' early Borders chapter produced one of Scotland's most remarkable military figures.

Sir Simon Fraser and the Wars of Independence

William Fraser, Bishop of St Andrews, was one of the Guardians of the kingdom after Alexander III died in 1286, leaving Scotland without a clear heir. It was Bishop Fraser who made the fateful decision to invite Edward I of England to arbitrate the succession, a choice that led directly to the Wars of Independence.

A generation later, Sir Simon Fraser of Tweeddale became one of the most determined fighters in that struggle. A companion of William Wallace, Simon Fraser led the Scottish side at the Battle of Roslin in 1302 and defeated three English divisions in a single day, one of the most remarkable single-day military achievements of the war. He was captured by the English in 1306 and executed in London, hanged, drawn, and quartered, the standard fate for those who challenged English rule.

While the Borders Frasers were fighting for Scottish independence, another branch was laying the foundations of what would become the clan's Highland power base. Alexander Fraser of Cowie, who served as Chamberlain to Robert the Bruce, married the king's sister Mary. He was killed at the Battle of Dupplin Moor in 1332. But the family connection to Bruce had already opened the door northward. Through marriage to the daughter of the Earl of Ross in 1375, the Frasers acquired Philorth in Buchan, which became the chief seat of the northeastern branch.

The Frasers of Lovat

The Frasers' power in the Highlands began with a marriage. The Bisset family had held lands around Beauly in Inverness-shire, but after the Bissets were disgraced and their estates forfeited, a Fraser married into the inheritance and the family took root in the Great Glen. The exact date is uncertain, but by 1367 Hugh Fraser was already styling himself "dominus de Loveth et portionarius de Ard": lord of Lovat and portioner of the Aird. Within a few generations, the Lovat chiefs had acquired the Gaelic patronymic MacShimidh ("Son of Simon"), a name that would follow the chiefly line for centuries.

Around 1422, the Frasers expanded their lands to Stratherrick by Loch Ness and part of Glenelg. Hugh Fraser was raised to the peerage as Lord Lovat between 1456 and 1464, and by 1511 the chiefs had established their seat at Beaufort Castle, south-west of Beauly. What stands today is a 19th-century mansion. The earlier castles on this site were destroyed, first in the 13th century and again after Culloden, but the Frasers chose the same spot each time, and it is easy to see why: the position commands the surrounding countryside.

The Battle of the Shirts, 1544

The Lovat Frasers had their share of clan feuds, but one stands out for its sheer violence. In 1544, the chiefship of the MacDonalds of Clanranald was in dispute, and Lord Lovat was uncle to one of the claimants, Ranald Gallda ("the Stranger"). Lovat raised over four hundred of his best men and, together with the Earl of Huntly, marched to Moidart to press Ranald's claim. After taking Castle Tioram, Huntly decided to split his force from the Frasers for the return journey, a division that proved fatal.

The MacDonalds had been stalking the combined force but held back while they were outnumbered. Once Huntly's men were gone, they moved quickly. They fell on the Frasers on a stretch of wild marshland north of Loch Lochy. The heat of the day was so fierce that the Highlanders stripped off their heavy plaids to fight in their linen shirts, giving the battle its name: Blar na Leine, the "Field of Shirts." Lord Lovat could have tried to retreat, but instead he led his men forward into a pitched fight. He and his eldest son were killed, along with hundreds of his clansmen. They were buried at Beauly Priory.

It was a catastrophic loss, yet it did not break the clan. The Frasers multiplied rapidly in the generations that followed, establishing cadet branches (junior family lines) at Reelig, Inverallochy, Fingask, and many other locations across the Highlands.

What castles belong to Clan Fraser?

Across both branches, the Frasers held at least fifty-one castles and properties across Scotland. That number is remarkable for a clan that started as a single Norman family in East Lothian. Their castles range from Highland strongholds around the Great Glen to grand tower houses in the northeast, each one reflecting a different chapter of the family's expansion.

Castle Fraser, Aberdeenshire

Castle Fraser is one of the grandest castles in the northeast of Scotland. This magnificent Z-plan tower house, six and a half miles south-west of Inverurie, was held by the Frasers from 1454. The family were made Lords Fraser in 1633, and during the religious wars of the 17th century they were Covenanters, supporters of the Presbyterian cause. It cost them dearly: the Marquess of Montrose ravaged their lands during his royalist campaigns in 1644 and 1645. Charles, fourth Lord Fraser, supported the Jacobite cause in 1715 and lost everything for it.

Local tradition gives the castle its share of ghost stories, tales of blood stains in the Green Room that cannot be washed away, and of the apparition of a woman in a black gown. Castle Fraser was given to the National Trust for Scotland in 1976 and is open to the public.

Cairnbulg Castle and Fraserburgh

Further north, in the far northeast corner of Aberdeenshire, the Frasers of Philorth established themselves at Cairnbulg Castle near what is now Fraserburgh. The castle passed to the Frasers through marriage with a daughter of the Earl of Ross in 1375, and it remains an imposing building, a substantial keep with later additions that reflect centuries of occupation. It was one of the principal Philorth strongholds for nearly three centuries.

The Philorth Frasers' most ambitious venture was the founding of Fraserburgh itself. Sir Alexander Fraser of Philorth changed the burgh's name from Faithlie to Fraserburgh and built a harbour to serve the town. The project bankrupted him, but the town survives. At Kinnaird Head, on the seafront, the Frasers built a squat keep in the 15th century. A lighthouse was constructed into the top of the castle in 1787, and the building is now Scotland's Museum of Scottish Lighthouses. Close by stands the Wine Tower, and with it one of Fraserburgh's darker local traditions. The story goes that Sir Alexander Fraser discovered his daughter Isobel had taken a lover, and had the young man imprisoned in the sea cave beneath the tower. A storm came in, the cave flooded, and the man drowned. Isobel, so the tale goes, threw herself from the tower in grief. Whether any of it is true is another matter, but the building and the cave are real enough, and the story has clung to the place for centuries.

The castle was originally known as Philorth Castle, and the two names have been used interchangeably over the centuries. Cairnbulg was sold in 1666 to pay debts, and the laird built a new house about a mile away, also called Philorth House. When that house burned down, the family bought Cairnbulg back in 1934, returning to the original castle after nearly three centuries away. The Philorth Frasers were created Lords Saltoun in 1669, and it is the Lady Saltoun who is now recognised as Chief of the Whole Name and Arms of Fraser.

Other Fraser Castles

Beyond the three major strongholds, the Frasers left their mark across the Highlands in a constellation of smaller castles and tower houses that trace the clan's expansion from Beauly outward. Several of these sit within a few miles of each other around the Beauly Firth, which tells you how densely the Frasers populated this part of Inverness-shire. Moniack Castle and Erchless Castle both survive as tower houses. Erchless sits where Strathfarrar meets Strathglass, controlling the routes into the Ross highlands, and eventually passed by marriage to the Chisholms. Dalcross Castle, closer to Inverness, was a Lovat Fraser building from 1620 that later passed to the Mackintoshes.

Lovat Castle itself, just east of Beauly, had a harder fate than most. It may have been damaged during Cromwell's campaign in the 1650s, and tradition holds that Cumberland's forces levelled what remained after Culloden. Nothing survives above ground. The Frasers had already shifted their seat to Beaufort by then, but the loss of Lovat was part of a wider pattern of destruction that swept through Fraser country in 1746.

Further south, Durris House near Banchory in Aberdeenshire was a Fraser holding from the 13th century. It was torched during Montrose's campaign in 1645, the same year Castle Fraser suffered.

The Old Fox and Culloden

Simon Fraser, eleventh Lord Lovat, known as "the Old Fox," is easily the most colourful figure in Fraser history and one of the most extraordinary characters in 18th-century Scotland. His career began with a kidnapping. When the ninth Lord Lovat died without a male heir, Simon abducted the intended bridegroom of the eldest daughter and forced his own claim to the Lovat title. The details are tangled, but the pattern was set: Simon spent his life manoeuvring between rival factions, switching sides when it suited him, and charming his way out of consequences.

In 1715, he sided with the Hanoverian government, capturing Inverness Castle for George I. But when Bonnie Prince Charlie raised his standard at Glenfinnan in 1745, Lovat saw an opportunity. He sent his clan to fight for the Jacobite cause while publicly protesting his own loyalty to the Crown. At least one battalion of Frasers fought at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746, where they suffered heavy casualties. The whole of Fraser country was ravaged by the Duke of Cumberland's troops in the brutal aftermath. Charles Fraser, younger of Inverallochy, was summarily executed despite his wounds.

Lovat himself was captured at Loch Morar and taken to London for trial. He was condemned to death. On the day of his execution, the viewing stand holding spectators collapsed, killing several of them. The old man reportedly found this grimly amusing. He was beheaded on Tower Hill on 9 April 1747, the last peer to suffer that fate in Britain. He was around eighty years old.

The Fighting Frasers

What happened next says something important about the clan's character. Lovat's son Simon, who had led the Fraser regiment at Culloden, was captured but pardoned. When the government began raising Highland regiments for the Seven Years War, he seized the chance to rehabilitate the family name. Within weeks he had recruited over a thousand men from across Fraser country, forming the 78th Fraser Highlanders. The regiment sailed for North America, where they fought under General Wolfe at the Battle of Quebec in 1759. It was one of the defining engagements of the war, and the Frasers' conduct there became a point of lasting pride for the clan.

Simon's brother Archibald later raised the Fraser Fencibles during the Napoleonic Wars. The family recovered their property in 1771, and the Lovat title, which had been attainted, was restored to a cousin in 1837 and confirmed by 1857. In the 20th century, Lord Lovat raised the Lovat Scouts for the Boer War, and the Scouts served with distinction through both World Wars. MacShimidh himself became a distinguished commando leader in the Second World War. He led his men ashore at Sword Beach on D-Day, famously accompanied by his personal piper, and earned both the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross.

Your Fraser Connection

You've just read about lords, soldiers and an old fox who talked his way out of almost everything. So where do you fit in? The Fraser name has been spreading since the 12th century, and it travelled by more routes than most people realise. Some Frasers descend from the chiefly lines of Lovat or Philorth, which branched so widely over eight centuries that a direct connection is not the long shot it might seem. Others carry the name because their ancestors lived on Fraser land around Beauly, in Stratherrick, or in the northeast around Fraserburgh, and took the clan name as their own. In the Highlands, the name was the bond. It gathered people in.

The Gaelic patronymic MacShimidh, "Son of Simon," tells the story in miniature. Simon was the name that kept recurring through the chiefly line, and the surnames that grew from it (Sim, Simpson, Syme, MacKimmie) are all branches of the same tree. If your name connects to the Frasers through any of those routes, through geography, through a sept surname, through marriage into the clan, you belonged to the same community that fought at the Battle of the Shirts, that followed the Old Fox to ruin and came back stronger, that stormed the beaches at Normandy. The clan system made no distinction between the Frasers who lived in the castle and the Frasers who worked the land around it. They answered for each other.

The castles and landscapes you've been reading about, Beaufort and Castle Fraser, Cairnbulg and the Great Glen, those belonged to the clan as a whole. That's what carrying the name meant, and it still does.

What is the Fraser clan motto and crest?

The Fraser motto, Je suis prest ("I am ready"), has a directness that suits the clan. No grand promises, no appeal to tradition. Just a statement of readiness. The Fraser of Lovat crest features a buck's head, while the arms bear three strawberry flowers (fraises) in silver on a blue field. The strawberry connection has long been noted. The French word fraisier means "strawberry plant," and this may be the origin of the family name, or the arms may simply be a later play on the name's sound.

Clan Crest Buck's head with Je suis prest

Clan Tartan The Fraser tartan: red, blue, and dark green.

Does Clan Fraser exist today?

The Fraser diaspora is global. Frasers spread across North America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa through military service, emigration during the Clearances, and the natural wanderings of a large and well-connected clan. That pull toward home, toward knowing where the name came from, is not new. Alexander Mackenzie's 1896 History of the Frasers of Lovat drew subscribers from across the globe, people ordering a copy of their family's history to be shipped to the other side of the world.

If you've been reading this as someone with Fraser ancestors, we hope it's helped piece together a bit more of your story. We also hope the photography has given your imagination something to work with, because exploring your roots is better when you can picture the places. The Frasers survived invasion, civil war, execution, and exile, and came back every time. From a Norman family in the Borders to the last beheading on Tower Hill to the beaches of Normandy, their story is one of extraordinary persistence. That's your lineage.