Clan Stewart

Secondary sources trace the family to Breton stewards of Dol. Wikipedia says Walter fitz Alan came to Scotland when David I claimed the throne, became High Steward, and received land in Renfrewshire and East Lothian in the twelfth century.

The Clan Stewart Society traces the later branches to Sir John Stewart of Bonkyl, who died in 1298, and to his sons. It names Appin, Atholl, Bute and Galloway as lines descended through them. These accounts rest on a clan society and on Wikipedia, and they have not been checked here against Way and Squire or a printed Stewart history.

Wikipedia says the sixth High Steward, Walter, married Marjory, daughter of Robert the Bruce, and that their son became Robert II in 1371. On that account the House of Stewart held the Scottish crown, and later the English crown, until Queen Anne's death in 1714.

The branches continued separately. The Clan Stewart Society says Lord Garlies became Earl of Galloway in 1623 and that, since the Lennox branch ended, the Earls of Galloway have been regarded as the senior representatives of the High Stewards' line. It says the Earl of Galloway is honorary president of the Stewart Society, founded in 1899. Wikipedia says the Lord Lyon recognises no chief of Clan Stewart itself, and that Stewart of Appin and Stuart of Bute are separate clans with chiefs of their own. The spelling Stuart, which is among the aliases here, is the form associated with the later royal house.

Royal Stewart is the best-known of the Stewart tartans. The Scottish Register of Tartans lists it in its Royal category, with an entry in Wilsons of Bannockburn records of about 1800 under the name Royal Stewart. The register says the origin of the name is unclear and that stories of an eighteenth-century or 1745 origin are unproven and likely a myth. It says George IV wore the tartan on his visit of 1822, that Queen Victoria adopted it for the royal family, and that George V gave up an attempt to restrict it to royal use because it was already a widely worn fashion tartan.

The Stewart Society says James Logan published Royal Stewart in 1831, calls it the personal tartan of the monarch and says all subjects of the Sovereign may appropriately wear it. That is a society's statement of custom, not a legal rule. So Royal Stewart is a royal tartan, available in practice to anyone, and it is not a clan tartan limited to people named Stewart.

Stewart, Dress #1 is a different tartan. The register dates it to about 1850 and says it is based on the sett that the Sobieski Stuarts gave as Royal Stewart in their Vestiarium Scoticum of 1842, with equal yellow and white stripes. The society lists many other Stewart tartans, including Stuart of Bute, Stewart of Appin, Stewart of Atholl and Stewart of Galloway, which are not covered on this site yet.

There is no Stewart surname page on this site yet, so there is nothing to link to. Stewart and Stuart are spellings of one name derived from the hereditary High Stewards, and the clan page explains why the name, the royal house and the Royal Stewart tartan are three separate things. The sources read do not establish a chief of the name or a sourced list of septs, so none is recorded.