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Carnegies on the Net Clan Carnegie Discussion Area Clan Carnegie Contacts |
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Carnegies on the Net Clan Carnegie Discussion Area Clan Carnegie Contacts |
The name Carnegie appears to have originated in 1358, when Walter de Maule made a grant of the lands and barony of Carnegie to John de Balinhard. Later on, Duthac de Carnegie obtained parts of the Kinnaird in Forfarshire around 1401. Duthac was later killed in 1411 at the battle of Harlaw.
In 1547 Sir Robert of Kinnaird was appointed as one of the judges of the College of Justice. The next year, he was sent to England to negotiate for the release of the Chancellor of Scotland, Earl of Huntly, who had been captured at the battle of Pinkie. He may also have been the first Carnegie to claim that his ancestors were cup bearers to the kings of Scots.
John, Sir Robert's son, extended the family lands and was one of the few who remained loyal to Mary, Queen of Scots. In 1616, his younger brother David was made Lord Carnegie of Kinnaird and later became the Earl of Southesk in June of 1633. The second Earl of Southesk, James, attended on Charles II, the king in exile in 1650. He was later chosen sit on the English Parliament during the Protectorate.
The Carnegies were Jacobites and generally shunned the royal court. James, the fifth Earl followed the 'Old Pretender' in the rising of and because of this, his estates were forfeited to the crown. After his death in 1730, the representation of the family then went to Sir James Carnegie of Pittarrow, a descendant of a younger son of the first Early of Southesk. In 1855 the sixth Baronet, Sir James Carnegie, was able to have the titles of Earl of Southesk and Lord Carnegie of Kinnaird restored. The ninth Earl went back to his family's early ancestry by taking the title 'Baron of Balinhaird' when he was elevated to the peerage of the UK in 1869.
The current chief, the son of the Eleventh Earl and Her Princess Maude (a marriage made for political reasons) inherited the dukedom of Fife when his father died in 1992. He also decreed that his successors would bear the title "Earl of Southesk" in honour of his Carnegie ancestors.
