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Clan Lands
The thanedoms of Colpney/Belhelvie in Aberdeenshire; Kincardine Castle and Balbegno Castle on the River Norh Esk in Kincardineshire; Craig Castle in Angus by Montrose; the barony of Largo in Fife; Grange, Orky, Anstruther and Lambieletham in Fife; Bonnytoun Castle (Bonnington) in Angus; (other land holdings in Lothian, Perthshire, Nairnshire and Banffshire).
The fortunes of every clan/family's territories have waxed and waned over time; their extent and influence have fluctuated enormously and continually. The same applies to the clans themselves, and Clan Wood being distinguished by the heraldry of its lawful Chief and recognised by the Sovereign is another part of that enduring process.
Independent researchers in previous centuries to our own evidently saw ancient records in which the heads of Wood families holding lands in Aberdeenshire, Kincardineshire and Angus were described at various times as hereditary Chief of the Name. The earliest mentions of the name in Scottish annals date back to Wilhelmus (Wm.) de Bosco (bosco = a Latinised form for wood), Chancellor to Kings William the Lion and Alexander II who ruled between the years 1165 and 1249 when the influence of powerful Normans in Scotland was at its height. William was associated with Inverness-shire in the Highlands, and it was a *Sir Andrew de Bosco who was laird of Redcastle close by on the Black Isle, whose wife possessed Kilravock on the River Nairn. Their first daughter married Hu go (Hugh) de Ros, who acquired Kilravock Castle through her in 1293 (probably in dowry), and it has been the seat - rebuilt from 1460 - of the Chiefs of Clan Rose ever since. In 1295 a William Wod (Sir Andrew's heir and Hugo's brother-in-law?) was witness to an Inquest at nearby Cawdor into the extent of the Kilravock estates. In later times there lived a significant William de Bosco, Thane of Colpney (aka Overblairton, Belhelvie where Donald Trump has installed his golf course) near Aberdeen, from whose third son, Walter, derived the name Walterson which, we are assured, evolved into the short form'Watson'.
Redcastle, Black Isle
The de Boscos/Woods and their kinsmen, along with their complement of vassals and retainers requisite for such dynasties to exercise their power, appear to have remained settled in the region for several centuries. Then the thanedoms of Fettercairn and Aberluthnot, entailing the sheriffdom and bailliewick of Kincardine, were confirmed by a charter of King James III to Andro Wod of Overblairton, Belhelvie ('our loyal and familiar servitor').The charter indicates that the family had occupied those lands and had served the household of his father, James II, even for 'a long time bypast'. With forenames like William, Ralph, Hugo and Walter, the earliest de Boscos (also referred to in Latin chronicles as de Vosco, de Boreo, Bois, Boys and Bosch) were Norman aristocrats who were close to the sovereign. There exists a 'family tree' that stems from one Guillaume (Wm.) de Boissay, born around 1010 AD in the village of Boissay (= woodland) near Rouen, capital of Normandy, whose named children are subsequently recorded in England, which tells us that the family crossed the Channel following William the Conqueror in or soon after 1066. Just a few generations in time later appears our aforementioned Wilhelmus de Bosco, a favourite of the Scottish Crown. At the close of the twelfth century, a Walter de Bosco held Carruthers, a then populous corner of Annandale of which the Bruces were famously the lords. In 1320, Sir Thomas de Bosco is recorded as Baron of Ogilface near Edinburgh. (Both of these latter estates were ultimately gifted to the Church.) Were those de Boscos the progenitors of our chiefly family? Well, that is one possibility, for royal gratitude and patronage tended to accompany the Woods and their necessary following even from those distant centuries when the modern nation was being founded, and several of them, right down to the Andrew Wood of Largo in James VI's time, were appointed to high offices such as Chancellor and Comptroller of Scotland. Obviously, we have much work to do to locate those original primary source documents. Many, if not most Scottish clans have similar difficulty in identifying their founders with absolute certainty.
(It is worthy of note that a number of members of this Society reside in, or have their origins in the Wood homelands referred to here.)
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The erroneous notion that clans are Highland groups and families are Lowland units is very much a Victorian (19th century) one. In fact, the terms are interchangeable, and many a Lowland laird has held from the Lyon Court the title ‘Chief of the Name and Arms’, together with a Standard and Pinsel (heraldic flags) granted to those with a clan following. This is true of the Woods. (Vide the authoritative treatise written by Sir Crispin Agnew QC, Rothesay Herald of Arms in Ordinary at the Court of the Lord Lyon, reproduced at - http://www.scotarmigers.net/pdfs/info-leaflet-11.pdf .) Another myth - that only Highlanders wore tartan - was perhaps propagated by those Lowlanders wishing to distance themselves from the defeated Jacobite clans, during the dangerous years of retribution following the1746 Battle of Culloden. However, the Scottish Tartans Authority has plenty of evidence to show that it was quite usual for Lowlanders, too, to wear district tartans that later became family-associated, and indeed that the border counties of the south had always been a major centre for weaving tweed and tartan cloth of the finest quality. They still are.
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Before family surnames became commonplace in the 13th/14th century, individuals were often identified with features that described where they lived (e.g., John [of] the ford, hill, brook, heath and so on) or their occupation (John the miller, archer, mason, carpenter, wheelwright, potter etc.), but people so named are today nowhere near as numerous as the Woods. In fact, during the early Middle Ages much of the population lived either in or near woodland, so there was nothing especially distinctive or 'nameworthy' about it; moreover, using their own woodcraft skills was essential to the workaday life of all peasants and farmers. It is often said that the surname Wood derives from Anglo-Saxon 'wudu' meaning a wood or forest. No doubt that is true of the word, but not necessarily of the surname. It seems there are too many of us for that to have been the sole or even primary origin.
Many individuals were known for their personal physical or behavioural characteristics. The most frequent surname throughout the United Kingdom is Smith. That derives from 'smitan' the ancient word for 'to smite' (a blacksmith is an iron beater). It is understandable that members of the fierce warrior tribes of those centuries would want to be famous for being smiters, hence the popularity today of the name Smith. Similarly then, Wood as a personal or given name probably came from the Anglo-Saxon Wode or Wod, the Germanic storm god of great antiquity known for his wildness (links with Woden, from whom we get Wednesday). Wod, therefore, generally came to mean 'wild' or 'crazy', signifying one who becomes frenzied or savage in the midst of battle - surely a compliment in an unstable, warlike society, and one to prize as a patronymic. It was how our chiefly family, the Woods of Largo, were still spelling their name well into the 17th. century. Writers as late as Shakespeare used 'wod' in the sense of being wild. Arguably, in a fiercely Christian world, that association with an unmentionable pagan god would not have gone down very well, so it can be imagined how comfortably a collective forgetfulness of the connection might have set in. By the 14th century, there were families surnamed both Wod and Wood resident in the main towns, and supposedly it was when the former had finally become 'modernised' to Wood by the late 17th century that the large numbers of us became evident.
It is believed that most Scottish Woods, including those who had Anglicised their Gaelic name Coil/Coyle, were once called Wod. In the year 2000, Wood was the 61st of Scotland's top surnames.
Furthermore, the Oak tree is closely associated with the storm god whose thunderbolts frequently struck it, but seemed only to imbue the damaged tree with extra vitality for growth. The Oak was therefore held to be sacred - a conduit of virility and power. It features prominently on the escutcheons (shields) of all the Woods' coats of arms, and a Sprig of Oak is the proper plant badge of Clan Wood. (Practically all the clans have a traditional plant badge. The Crest Badge, on the other hand, specifically signifies the wearer's loyalty to the Chief, the Crest of whose amorial bearings it depicts - in our case, the ship under sail, as shown at the top of this page.)
Personal names that became surnames.
What we now think of as given first names mostly had descriptive meanings of their own (e.g., Peter = Rock; Robert = Bright with glory), to which was often added "son of" (or more precisely, the possessive "[hi]s son" - 'his' simply meaning 'belonging to' or 'pertaining to' regardless of gender, number or case) when surnames became necessary in the Middle Ages. So, compare the following few examples: Peter, Peters, Peterson; Adam, Adams, Adamson; John, Johns, Johnson; Stephen, Stevens, Stevenson; Will, Wills, Wilson; Robert, Roberts, Robertson; Wood, Woods, Woodson, and scores of others that readily come to mind.
Before Scotland became the nation we know today, all of the south-eastern region - essentially Lothian - was part of the mighty Anglian kingdom of Northumbria, which stretched from the River Humber (where the port of Hull is located) to the River Forth (where Edinburgh - a Brythonic and English name - stands) and sometimes beyond that. The principal language here has been English ever since. By the late 10th century, Northumbria was so weakened and divided by incessant Viking incursions along its extensive coastline that it began losing territory north of the River Tweed to what would later become Scotland. Among the long-settled families left behind were the Wods who would acquire lands up and down the east side of Scotland, and form confederacies to extend and defend their interests.
(Tellingly, even today in and around the modern county of Yorkshire resides the largest concentration of Wood families in England.)
This story is typical of how a number of Scottish clans melded into being. Some clan families were founded by well-born Norman and Flemish mercenaries in the pay of warlords or the likes of King David I. Could it be that the Wods accepted the protection and leadership of one of those powerful Norman families who subsequently anglicised their name?
It is apt that the Arms escutcheons of the heads of several prominent Wood families in the UK (including the Woods of Bonnytoun) are surmounted by a crest that proudly depicts a naked Savage - the storm god himself? - bearing a club, and the motto, Defend. Even so, the great Admiral described in the next section chose for his personal crest a portrayal of the weapon he mastered in defence of Scotland's coasts and vital maritime communications: a ship under sail.
Admiral Sir Andrew Wood of Largo, Fife, (circa 1455 – 1515) was certainly an offspring of the venerable family referred to at the top of this page. He was famous for inflicting many defeats on foreign pirates and privateers as well as squadrons of ships sent by the English government to harass the Scots. In the true patriarchal tradition, his successors built a hospital and school in Fife for their kinsmen named Wood, and were conspicuous in Scottish history both politically and militarily: they continued to be a significant influence in British politics and were foremost among the thousands of Scots who contributed enormously to the economic and armed expansion of the British Empire well into the 19th century. The main line of Sir Andrew’s descendants is considered by the Court of the Lord Lyon King of Arms to be the chiefly one. The family's record of succession is complete right down to modern times. Our Chief today is Timothy Michael Herbert Fawcett Wood, Representative of the Ancient Family of Wood of Largo and Chief of the Name.
 Lower Largo, on the north bank of the Firth of Forth
Footnote. This old fishing village is also where Alexander Selkirk (properly Selcraig) 1676 -1721, son of a local shoemaker and tanner, was born. His adventures as a castaway on a Pacific island prompted Daniel Defoe's tale of Robinson Crusoe, and were the inspiration for William Cowper's eloquent lines: I am monarch of all I survey, / My right there is none to dispute: / From the centre all round to the sea, / I am lord of the fowl and the brute.
* Sir Andrew de Bosco (Wood) of Redcastle is an ancestor of the Campbells, Earls of Cawdor.
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