Heraldry, Tartan, and Clan
- including "The Search for the Chief"

What is my Clan?

One of the most frequently asked questions by people of Scots descent who now live abroad, is "What is my Clan?"

This is not easy to answer as the Dempsters lived in areas of Scotland where true "clans" did not really exist. The Auchterless branch of the family was closely associated with the Lindsays for part of the 15^th century. In the 16^th century is was more closely associated with the Stewarts and Douglases, before moving into the orbit of the Gordons after the Reformation. However, the family fell out with the Lindsays, were dropped by the Douglases and only really came into the Gordon orbit when their own power was on the wane.

If you go back far enough, the family is supposed to be part of the greater Clan Duff, but there are no real historic links between the Dempsters and the families that today are considered part of Clan Duff.

The plain answer is that the Dempsters are a mainly lowland family, and no amount of wishful thinking will turn them into a highland clan.

Dempster Tartan

The Dempster tartan is illustrated (rather poorly I'm afraid) at the top of each page of this site. It is of recent creation, having been registered with the Scottish Tartan Society by John Preston Dempster of New Zealand in 1995 (Ref 2219). The sett of the tartan is

with the half counts at the pivots in bold. It can be obtained from D.C. Dalgleish of Galashiels. John has very kindly supplied a picture of the tartan in its real woven colours.

Previous to the registration of this tartan, many members of the Aberdeenshire branch of the family wore the Huntly tartan, and this allegiance is reflected in the Dempster tartan, which is a simplified version of the very complicated and very ancient Huntly sett. The colours of the tartan are based on those of the Banff & Buchan district tartan and reflect the recent liking for blue tartans by the Scottish Tartan Society.

The tartan has a semi-official status, having been registered with the STS, but not being approved by the Dempster chief, since currently there isn't one.

Who is the Chief?

While the Dempsters cannot be classified as a highland clan, what they did have was a recognised chief. In the early period the chiefs of the family were the Dempsters of Careston in Angus, and the chiefly dignity passed to the Dempsters of Auchterless in Aberdeenshire in the middle of the 16^th century. In 1592 Thomas Dempster of Auchterless entailed the chiefdom and since the death of his son Robert about 1642, the identity of the heir has been in some doubt - though the Pitliver branch made some attempt to claim it in the 1670s.

The destination of the chiefship appears to be controlled by the entail enacted by Thomas Dempster of Auchterless in 1592. An entail is a legal document which controls the inheritance of a thing, usually an estate or a title. The entail which Thomas Dempster enacted in 1592 may have been to cut out his eldest son, James, with whom he is said to have been at odds, but it may also have been part of the long and complicated series of attempts by Thomas to escape his many creditors.

The entail of 1592 cuts out James in favour of his brothers and a series of more distant members of the family and their male heirs bearing the surname and arms of Dempster. The list is as follows

Interestingly enough, as well as cutting out his eldest son, James, the entail also makes no mention of (and thus cuts out) Thomas' youngest brother, John, whose family later possessed Balbougie and Pitliver in Fife.

The chief is thus the senior male heir of the above list. Only once it has been shown that no such heir exists can the chiefship open up to the descendants of James or John or to any other member of the family. The status of the lines mentioned in the entail is as follows.

Robert Dempster of Cushnie married Jean Ogilvie but there is no trace of any children by this marriage. Possible Descendants

Thomas Dempster, Professor of Humanities at Bologna, married an Englishwoman whom he calls (in Latin) Susanna Valeria. They had no issue, and Thomas died in 1625. No Living Descendants

George Dempster of Ordley Thomas' brother seems to disappear without trace. Possible Descendants

John Dempster of Inglismaldie & Knockleith had several sons. The eldest, John, was murdered in 1614 by his cousins of the direct Auchterless line. His younger brother, James, may have had issue, but generally disappears from sight. A third brother, Thomas became a merchant in Danzig. Possible Descendants

Archibald Dempster of Hassiewells had a son William, whom it is believed was a pirate operating out of the Shetlands. There certainly was a William Dempster in the area at the right time, and his will of 1648 lists several descendants. The difficulty is in finding direct proof of the pirate story and showing that William Dempster, younger of Hassiewells, who was active in Aberdeenshire in the 1590s is the same man as William Dempster who died in the Shetlands some time before 1648. The dates are plausible, but so far there is no direct evidence to say they were the same man. Probable Descendants

Charles Dempster of Balrownie certainly left descendants for two generations. His son a second Charles succeeded him in 1585 or 1586, and his son John Dempster of Balrownie succeeded about 1630. Also a part of the Balrownie line is John Dempster, who is recorded in Thomas Dempster's Historia Ecclesiae Gentis Scotorum as being a Professor in Paris and Venice who died in 1571. Thomas Dempster's work is not normally considered to be accurate, but it is unlikely that he would have been able to get away with an inaccuracy involving such a recent period. There is also the possibility that the Dunnichen and Skibo branches of the family may have descended from Balrownie, but there are many other Dempster families in the Brechin area which could have been the ancestors of the founder of the Dunnichen line, George Dempster, a Brechin glover. Probable Descendants

Dempster Heraldry

Dempster heraldry is fascinating, but it is also rather thin on the ground. In the first 300 years of the Lyon Register, there have only been 5 matriculations of arms associated with members of the family. Two of these occur in the first volume (1672-1677) and the other three are for 19^th and 20^th century descendants who are proving their right to the Dempster arms recorded in the 1670s.

One common error made by people when they first look at heraldry is that it belongs to the whole family. In Scotland it does not. A Scots coat of arms is treated like an object in that only one person owns it at any one time.

Generally, the current legal owner of a coat of arms is the senior direct heir of the person to whom it was first granted. This general rule can be altered in various ways, and the line of heirs to whom the coat of arms is to descend is often specified when the coat of arms is granted. Junior heirs, by which I mean younger sons and daughters, have the right to apply for "differenced" arms, which are the original arms made slightly different. This is to show that they are members of the family, but they are not the direct heirs. These days, Scottish differencing is done by means of coloured borders. In the past it was much more haphazard.

In Scotland today, only the current heir to a coat of arms may use it legally. People who do are not heirs to a coat of arms may apply for a grant of new arms or, if they can prove descent from someone who legally used arms, may apply to matriculate "differenced" arms. Those who do not wish to go down either of these routes, both of which are costly (about £600 for a matriculation, more than £1,000 for a new grant). May only wear the chief's crest as a badge within a belt and buckle. This is done as a sign of membership of the family, in the same way that regimental badges denote membership of a particular military unit. The Dempster crest badge is illustrated below.

As far as coats of arms are concerned, those shown below are the only ones I know of so far. As with the crest badge, they have been rather inexpertly drawn by me. All offers to illustrate them more adequately will be welcome.

The earliest example of Dempster heraldry that I know of is on a seal of John Dempster of Careston which dates from 1509. The blazon (heraldic description) of it is: A lion rampant debruised by a ribbon. Seals were not shown in colour, but if the colours used in later heraldry by the Dempsters are applied, then the arms are identical to those of the family of Abernethy, a very senior branch of the Clan Duff

The next example, which can be accurately dated, is a seal of William Dempster of Careston which dates from 1561. It again shows a lion rampant, but it has now lost the ribbon, which means that if the standard colours were applied, then it would be the chiefly arms of Clan Duff! It has to be remembered, though, that the description of these seals comes from an examination of them when they were almost 400 years old, so it's best to think of them as indicative rather than as proof of any claim to position in Clan Duff.

The next coat of arms may not even be a Dempster one, but there is every possibility that it is. It is on a monument built into the wall of the ruins of Old St Congan's church in Turriff, Aberdeenshire. Turriff is the nearest town to the Dempster properties at Auchterless, and part of the old family lands can be seen from the church. The monument is completely illegible due to the action of weather and ivy on the soft sandstone and was unreadable even 100 years ago. The arms on it are the impaled arms of a husband and wife, and compare in the style of shield and carving with the nearby arms of Lady Brux which date from 1556. The blazon of the arms are "A lion rampant impaling three garbs" and I believe that they are probably the arms of John Dempster of Auchterless and his second wife, Lady Margaret Stewart, daughter of the Earl of Buchan.

The first datable arms of the Auchterless branch appear in 1578 with a seal of James Dempster of Auchterless. These are quarterly and shows the usual lion rampant in the first and fourth quarters combined with a coat of arms consisting of a sword in pale, point downwards surmounted by a fess in the second and third quarters. The identification of these other arms is a bit of a problem. The famous Scottish heraldist, Alexander Nisbet assumed, like many commentators that they were the arms of the Dempsters and gives a long and rather forced account of their origins as an heraldic pun. This pun is based on the fact that the office of Dempster is a legal office and makes play on the fess being a bar. Other commentators have also assumed that the quartering with the sword and fess is for Dempster and that the lion rampant was a quartering of Abernethy. Both of these seem unlikely, since the lion rampant was used by the Careston family by itself, suggesting that it is the arms of Dempster, and the sword and fess quartering was used by the Auchterless branch before it was the chiefly line.

My own view is that the sword and fess quartering is the arms of the family of de Auchterless of Auchterless. This family was prominent at the time of King William the Lion (1165-1214) but then disappears. The Dempsters appear to have inherited their portion of Auchterless through an heiress, as the old de Auchterless barony was (and is) split into three parts Auchterless-Dempster, Auchterless-Meldrum and Auchterless-Allardyce, each part having the name of the family which inherited it tacked on.

The arms resemble those attributed by Nisbet to another local family, the de Aberchirders. Modern heraldry assigns arms showing three boars heads to this family, but Nisbet, writing in the early 1700s and quoting Pont's manuscript, attributes to the Aberchirders the arms "azure three swords in fess paleways point upwards argent hilted and pomelled or surmounted of a bend gules". When the way in which very early coats of arms were differenced is taken into account, these attributed arms strike me as having enough similarities for there to have been some sort of connection.

The next datable set of Auchterless arms are those of Thomas, shown on a seal of 1592. These are practically identical to those of his father, James, except that the sword is on top of the fess rather than the other way round.

Between these, however, comes a set of arms which were used on a seal by Jasper Dempster, a prominent burgess of Inverness. It has not been possible to connect him into the Auchterless branch of the family at the moment, but his arms are very much like those of that family. Jasper's seal dated 1582 shows the lion rampant in quarters one and four and the sword surmounted by a fess in quarters two and three. This time, however, the sword is shown with its point upwards rather than downwards.

The next piece of Dempster heraldry is the seal of John Dempster of Balrownie. His seal of 1607 shows the usual elements, but is rather unusual in its positioning of them. The lion rampant is in the first and fourth quarters as usual, but it is contourne, i.e. it is facing the other way, and the quarters featuring the sword and fess are (according to W.R. MacDonald's "Scottish Armorial Seals") "turned sideways to fit into the quarter". The arms are differenced by the contourne lion, and the fact that the fess is "turned sideways" a phrase which would require sight of the seal to discover what it means.

The final example of Dempster heraldry for which we have to rely on the evidence of a monochrome image is the coat of arms of Professor Thomas Dempster. The frontispiece of the Historia Ecclesiae Gentis Scotorum which was published posthumously in 1627 shows threecoats of arms - central are those of Count Fabio Douglas Scotti an Italian nobleman of Scots descent to whom the book was dedicated. The arms used by Thaomas and those of the engraver appear in smaller cartouches on the base. Thomas here has used arms which he claims were used originally by William Dempster (his cousin and an academic in Venice). Assuming the usual Dempster tinctures, these can be blazoned Or a lion rampant brandishing a sword Argent hilted and pommelled Or. This - with the lion turned into a demi-lion - was used later as a crest by the Pitliver branch. The use of it by William and Thomas more than fifty years earlier points to its being an earlier symbol in use by the family - remember that Thomas had little contact with his family for the best part of forty years and he may have not had the most accurate recollection of their heraldry.

By the mid seventeenth century the registration of arms had come into being, and two Dempster coats of arms were registered, one by the Pitliver Dempsters, the other by the cadet family which later came into possession of Dunnichen and Skibo.

John Dempster of Pitliver registered arms in the first volume of the Lyon Register about 1673, and claimed as "representer of the familie of Muiresk". The arms which he registered are officially blazoned as "two coats quarterlie first gules a sword in bend Argent hilted and pomellled Or surmounted of a fess of the third, second Or a Lyon rampant gules over all a batton sable, third as the second, the fourth as the first".

This coat of arms is interesting in that it does three things. Firstly, it reverses the positions of the quarters, putting the sword and fess arms in the more important first and fourth position, secondly, the sword is now on a diagonal point upwards and finally, the lion rampant ceases to be that of the Chief of Clan Duff and is differenced by a baton. The baton is an unusual form of differencing which is usually seen as a baton sinister and often is the mark of a bastard. Whether the Dempster baton dexter reflects on some doubt as to the legitimacy of the founder of the family, it certainly proclaims them as a very early cadet of the Clan Duff, possibly of similar vintage as the Abernethys, who sprang off Clan Duff before 1150.

The second registered arms in the first volume of Lyon Register are those of John Dempster, Minister of Monifieth which were recorded about 1678 or 1679. The arms are described as "quarterly first Gules, a Sword in Bend argent hilted and pommelled or surmounted of a fesse as the third; second Or, a Lyon Rampant gules; Over all a batton sable; third as the second the fourth as ye first, all within a bordur parted per pale argent and sable. Crest: a legg bone and branch of Palme disposed Saltyre wayes proper. Motto: Mors Aut Vita Decora".

These arms were later rematriculated by his descendants, George Hawkins-Dempster of Dunnichen in 1855 and Reginald Hall-Dempster of Dunnichen in 1918, but it is interesting to note that the confusion over the arms had started early. Rev. John Dempster's great-grandson, George Dempster of Dunnichen uses the arms recorded by John Dempster of Pitliver on the archery medal he was awarded at St Andrews University in 1750, and the lion rampant has acquired an Abernethy ribbon rather than the Dempster baton, whilst the illustration of the arms used by the Hall-Dempsters of Dunnichen in works such as Burkes Landed Gentry now shows the baton as being sinister (sloping top right to bottom left) rather than normally. This switching round of the baton is not in accordance with the official blazon of arms which would have the baton going from top left to bottom right.

I am grateful to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
for permission to use the illustration of George Dempster's archery medal

 The most recent matriculation of Dempster arms was in 1935 by Evelyn Carmichael of Carmichael, 29th Chief of the Carmichaels, who recorded a quartering of the arms used by Dempster of Pitliver. He was the senior direct descendant of Robert Dempster of Balbougie, Sir John Dempster of Pitliver's eldest brother, whose daughter had married Carmichael of Balmedie. The Dempster quartering can be seen on the top right of the arms combined with Carmichael (top left), Smyth of Aithernie (bottom left), Lindsay (for Lindsay of Edzell - bottom right) and Colquhoun of Luss (centre).

© James Dempster 1997