Murray

The Murrays descend from Freskin, a twelfth-century Flemish knight granted lands in Moray and West Lothian by David I. His descendants took the surname de Moravia, meaning of Moray, which became Murray. The senior branch built Bothwell Castle into one of Scotland's greatest strongholds.

Andrew Moray led the rising of 1297 with William Wallace and was mortally wounded after victory at Stirling Bridge. His posthumous son Sir Andrew Murray (1298-1338) inherited Bothwell, married Robert the Bruce's sister Christina and twice served as Guardian of Scotland during the Second War of Independence, fighting Edward Balliol and the English.

In 1360 Bothwell passed to the Douglases. The chiefship later moved to the Murrays of Tullibardine, who became Earls of Atholl in 1626 and Duke of Atholl in 1703. The family largely backed the Stuart cause in the eighteenth-century Jacobite risings.