Clan Cumming: The Fallen Lords of Badenoch

Overview

Clan Cumming — the Comyns — were once the most powerful family in all of Scotland, greater even than the Bruces. Their motto is a single word: “Courage.” And their fall, when it came, was total — the sharpest reversal of fortune in Scottish history.

How the clan came about

The Comyns were an Anglo-Norman (possibly Flemish) family, their name from a place near Rouen or from Comines by Lille. Robert de Comyn rode with William the Conqueror in 1066; the family came to Scotland in the 12th-century “Davidian Revolution,” where William Comyn was Chancellor under David I around 1136. Marriage to the heiress of the Celtic earldom of Buchan, and the acquisition of the Lordship of Badenoch, carried them to the very top of the realm.

The three great lines

The Comyns spread into three great branches from the same stock:

• The Lords of Badenoch — the senior, chiefly line, ruling a vast Highland lordship from the island castle of Lochindorb. This is the line of the “Red Comyn.”
• The Earls of Buchan — gained by marriage to the native line of that north-eastern earldom; it ended with John, 3rd Earl, beaten at Barra.
• The Menteith & Kilbride line — which held the earldom of Menteith and, by tradition, helped raise Glasgow Cathedral.

The chiefs — the Red and the Black

The Badenoch chiefs are easily muddled, so here is the true line:

• John Comyn I of Badenoch (d. c. 1277) — Justiciar of Galloway. (The byname “Red Comyn” was a title of the head of the family, not one man’s alone.)
• John Comyn II, “the Black” (d. 1302) — one of the six Guardians of Scotland, and the family’s Competitor for the crown in 1291–92; brother-in-law of King John Balliol. (It was he, not his father, who was the Competitor — a point often got wrong.)
• John Comyn III, “the Red” (d. 1306) — Guardian of Scotland, murdered by Robert Bruce at Greyfriars.
• John Comyn IV (d. 1314) — raised in England, killed at Bannockburn fighting for the English, ending the senior male line.

Rise & fall

By the reign of Alexander III the Comyns were arguably the mightiest magnates in Scotland, providing two of the six Guardians in 1286. Then came catastrophe. In 1306 Robert Bruce stabbed John the Red Comyn before the altar of Greyfriars Kirk in Dumfries — a murder in a church that changed Scottish history. Bruce seized the throne, defeated the Comyns at Barra (1308), and laid their lands waste in the brutal Harrying of Buchan. Within a decade the greatest family in Scotland was broken.

Battles — won and lost

The Comyns’ wars are the story of their rise and their ruin — each has its own page:

• Roslin (1303) — vs the English (the Red Comyn, Guardian) — WON
• Greyfriars, Dumfries (1306) — the chief killed by Robert Bruce — LOST
• Barra / Inverurie (1308) — vs Robert Bruce — LOST
• The Harrying of Buchan (1308) — Bruce lays the earldom waste — LOST
• Bannockburn (1314) — the Comyn heir fell on the English side — LOST

What became of the name

After Bannockburn (1314) Bruce outlawed the Comyns and confiscated the Badenoch estates, handing them to the Hays, Keiths and Douglases. But the name survived through a cadet branch: the spelling shifted to Cumming, and the Cummings of Altyre, near Forres in Moray, became the recognised chiefly line. Through marriage to the Gordons of Gordonstoun the family later became Gordon-Cumming, and a baronetcy was created in 1804. A Victorian holder, Sir William Gordon-Cumming, was the central figure in the sensational Royal Baccarat Scandal of 1890–91, which dragged in the Prince of Wales. The chief today is Sir Alexander Gordon-Cumming of Altyre — a living thread back to the fallen lords of Badenoch.

Clan symbols

The Comyn arms are three gold wheat-sheaves (garbs); the crest a lion holding a dagger; the motto “Courage.” The plant badge is usually given today as common sallow, though older tradition punned the name on the cumin plant.

Where they lived & ruled

At their height the Comyn castles ran right across Scotland — famously “from Inverlochy in the west to Slains in the east” — anchored on the lordships of Badenoch, Buchan and Lochaber, with the surviving line later at Altyre by Forres.

Clan & whisky

One Cumming family made whisky history: at Knockando on Speyside, John and Helen Cumming founded Cardhu — Helen flying a red flag to warn of the excisemen — and three generations of Cummings built it into the distillery that became the heart of Johnnie Walker.