Clan Wallace

The name is Anglo-Norman Waleis, meaning Welshman or foreigner, and it may have described a Cumbric speaker of Strathclyde or an incomer from Wales or the Marches. Because it describes a kind of person, not a single place, bearers of the name need not share one ancestor.

Accounts of the chiefly family begin with a Richard. Wikipedia calls him Richard Wallace, a follower of Walter FitzAlan who settled in Ayrshire, and says the Elderslie Wallaces descend from a younger son of his grandson Adam. A British Heritage profile of the present chief gives the name Richard le Waleis and a charter of about 1163, and counts Sir William Wallace as his great-great-great-grandson. The profile gives this as the family's account and does not cite the charter, and the two accounts do not give the same date for Richard.

What the contemporary record gives for Sir William Wallace is thinner than the family accounts. Wikipedia says the first fixed document is his letter to the city of Lübeck of 11 October 1297, which bears his seal naming his father as Alan Wallace. Nothing else confirms which Alan, apart from a possible 1296 Ragman Rolls entry for an Alan Wallace holding from the Crown in Ayrshire. The name Sir Malcolm of Elderslie comes from Blind Harry's poem of the fifteenth century, which is also where the Renfrewshire birthplace comes from, and Wikipedia records that some historians prefer Ellerslie near Kilmarnock, though no Wallace is recorded holding it in the mid-thirteenth century. The documented family holdings, as vassals of the High Steward, were at Riccarton, Tarbolton, Auchincruive and Stenton. In short, the descent from Richard le Waleis rests on a family tradition and on Blind Harry, and a seal naming Alan sits against a poem naming Malcolm.

The family's historic seat is Craigie Castle, near Kilmarnock in Ayrshire. Wikipedia says it was built for the Lindsay family, came to John Wallace of Riccarton through marriage about 1371 because the last Lindsay heir was a daughter, and remained the chief residence until the family moved to Newton Castle in Ayr in 1588. After that the castle fell into ruin. Frances Dunlop of Dunlop, a descendant of the patriot, believed he was born at Craigie, but that is a belief and not a documented fact.

Of Sir William Wallace's own career, the article lists the victory at Stirling Bridge in 1297, defeat at Falkirk in 1298 and execution in London in 1305. Those dates concern him, not a clan structure.

A magazine profile of the present chief says the Wallaces took on Highland dress and the idea of a clan chiefly after George IV's visit to Edinburgh in 1822. That is one writer's statement and was not tested here.

The dates of his end are firmer than his birth. Wikipedia gives his capture at Robroyston, near Glasgow, on 5 August 1305 and his execution at Smithfield in London on 23 August 1305, after a Guardianship held in 1297 and 1298. None of these says anything about a clan structure. The distance between the documented life and the later chiefly family explains why the clan's story depends on a descent claim.

The register lists the Wallace tartan as reference 1208, classed Clan/Family and dated 1800, with no designer recorded. Its note says a threadcount was recorded by William A. Wallace in the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland on 6 December 1951. The pattern is in the register as it stood before 2009, so it keeps its older reference numbers.

No tartan can be tied to Sir William Wallace. The oldest known Scottish tartan fragment, found at Glen Affric, is radiocarbon dated to roughly 1500 to 1655, more than 190 years after he died. A secondary database, Tartan Dictionary, dates its Wallace record 1842 instead of 1800, and the difference is not resolved here. Wikipedia mentions red, green and blue Wallace tartans in modern, ancient and weathered colourings, but those were not checked against the register.

No sept list is recorded for Clan Wallace. Wikipedia reports that the clan has no septs, but that is a secondary summary, and the society page read does not state a sept policy. The Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs says there is no central register of septs and that each chief decides which surnames the clan accepts. Branch names such as Wallace of Craigie describe family lines of the surname, not septs.

The Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs says there are no strict rules on who may wear a tartan and that wearing a clan tartan signals allegiance to the chief. The Clan Wallace Society page read does not state a narrower rule.

The Wallace surname page is at /surnames/wallace/. The link to the clan is rated probable: the clan bears the name and the Standing Council counts holders of the chief's surname as members, but the name is Anglo-Norman Waleis, "Welshman" or "foreigner", a label that could be given to unrelated people in several places. Wikipedia reports that the clan has no septs, so no other surnames are listed here, and a person named Wallace is not shown to descend from the chiefs, from Richard le Waleis or from Sir William Wallace.