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The Present Wood Chiefly Line
Andrew Wood was born around the middle of the 15th century in Largo, Fife. Records indicate that he was the eldest son, by Helen Arnot, of William Wood who was a scion of several related Wood families which had a long history of service to the Scottish Crown and of owning lands throughout Aberdeenshire, Angus, Kincardineshire, Banffshire and elsewhere. The chiefship appears to have been handed down through those families since very ancient times before passing to the Woods of Largo. The principal areas still held around the time of King James VI are shown in the authorised map 'Scotland of Old', published by Collins in 1998.
Andrew, too, was a successful merchant, and owner of the carrack, Flower. He became a master of fighting off Dutch, English and Portuguese pirates. His fame reached James III, who commissioned him to captain his ship, the Yellow Caravel. Sailing out of Edinburgh's port of Leith, Andrew triumphed in many major skirmishes with privateers and squadrons sent by the English government, was made Admiral of Scotland and a feudal baron. He received a royal charter to castellate his great house at his barony of Largo, a tower of which still stands. As James IV's chief naval adviser, he supervised from 1505 the development of the king's New Haven of Leith which led to the town's growth as an important shipbuilding centre, where he oversaw the rise of the world's largest ship, the Great Michael - designed as a sort of 'nuclear deterrent' of the era. Sir Andrew Wood died before the 3rd. of November 1517, most likely in 1515. Enjoying the friendship of successive Stewart monarchs, his significance to Scottish history, and that of his descendants, is far greater than is sometimes realised today. Family motto: Tutus in Undis - 'Safe amid the waves'.
Lundin House
The mediaeval mansion where the Admiral will have courted his wife-to-be has long gone, but this Tower, which may have been erected in their lifetime, has survived and can be visited. It is not far from Largo House.
He married Elizabeth Lundie (also Lundin). The Lundies descended from a natural son of King William the Lion, and Elizabeth's mother was a daughter of John, 1st Lord Lindsay of the Byres (from whose descendants the Earl of Crawford derives his title). They had four sons - some authorities say six - and a daughter, each becoming a prominent personage in their own right. His heir, Sir Andrew, recorded as a baron of the Parliament of 1560, was at the bedside of his friend James V when he died. His own heir, Andrew, predeceased him by a few months in 1579, but whose son, another Andrew, was coroner and Sheriff of Fife from 1582, and Comptroller of Scotland from 1581 (under the Duke of Lennox's one-year regency for 15-year-old King James VI) till 1587 (the year the king's mother, Mary, was executed in England by Queen Elizabeth). He accrued heavy debts by diligently settling the bills (amounting to 7,000 pounds Scots - a crippling figure = around £39 million today) of the cash-poor Royal Household - which had also borrowed 25 crowns from him - for which Andrew was reimbursed only in some additional land - and the thanks of a king. (James himself would soon prosper vastly when he succeeded to Queen Elizabeth's Crown in 1603: he set foot again in Scotland but once more, in 1617.) Andrew was listed as a burgess of Dundee in 1589. His cash flow problems would have been compounded by the successive years of adverse weather either side of the Great Freeze of 1607 that badly affected the nation's harvests around that time. (Those harsh conditions also triggered the earliest of a series of substantial population dispersals into England, Ulster and, of course, beyond. By the early 1600s, England was resolutely a Protestant country, so the largely Protestant and amenable Lowland clan families would have been among the first to be eroded by that southward migration and the king's Ulster plantation policy.) Hence by 1610, Andrew Wood had taken steps to secure the wellbeing of his three sons, Andrew, John and William, and three daughters, Lilias, Isabella and Christina, before commencing the painful process of disposing of his estates, which was completed by the six siblings in a charter dated 30 September 1618. The Stewart monarchs having left Scotland for good, Andrew, fiar of Largo, became a burgess of the city of Perth in 1632, dying there in June 1649 leaving no son.*
His brother John had three sons, Robert, Andrew and John. In all likelihood, the Rev. Alexander Wood was the eldest son of one of those (probably Robert), but papers showing the precise relationship have gone missing since the Lyon Court verified them in 1775. (Note: John Wood of Orkie who died in 1661 - see the Famous Woods pages - intriguingly made bequests in his will to two Andrew Woods, and one of them described as a kinsman may have been the last-mentioned here of that name, nephew of Andrew, fiar of Largo.) Alexander died in 1688, having had four sons, two of whom died dsp (without issue). His eldest and representer (head) of the family was Robert (named after his grandfather?), who was Under Secretary (of State) for Scotland from 1705-26 (i.e., throughout the traumatic transitional years surrounding the 1707 Act of Union - which created Great Britain - and the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion) under John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar and a succession of other Scots nobles, surviving them all in post. His brother, George, was an admiral (dsp). John, son of their brother William of Glasgow, was Governor in Chief of the Isle of Man 1761-77. John had three daughters, and a natural son, Major General John Wood, two Canadian descendants of whom are members of this Society. His Excellency recorded the undifferenced Arms of Wood of Largo in 1775, when the Court of the Lord Lyon declared him to be Chief of the Name and Arms. His brother, Andrew, was Rector of Darlington and Gateshead and Chaplain to the King (dsp). Their married brother, William, also died without issue.
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So, when John died, the males-preferring chiefly line reverted through his uncle, Mark, youngest son of the Rev. Alexander. Mark was described as a 'merchant of Perth.' He had three daughters and three sons. The eldest, Alexander of Burncroft, Co. Perth, JP, HEICS, Procurator Fiscal of Perthshire, b 1712, d 1778, had five sons by his wife Jane,daughter of Mercer of Perth, all born in Perth and all pursued military careers:
Sir Mark Bt., M.P. of Gatton Park, Surrey, England (Gatton was a 'rotten borough' - googleable) - made a baronet in 1808, he had been a colonel in the Honourable East India Company Service; Admiral Sir James Atholl, KCB (dsp); Lt Gen (Indian Army) Sir George Hay, KCB of Ottershaw Park, Surrey; Andrew, Lt RN (dsp); Thomas, Capt. Madras Eng.
On Sir Mark's death, his son, another Sir Mark - whose home was a royal 'grace-and-favour' residence in Pall Mall, London - succeeded, but died without male issue in 1837, taking the baronetcy with him. The Chiefship of the Name passed to his cousin, George of Potter's Park, Surrey, son of the late Sir George. The Lyon Clerk (and Keeper of the Records to the Lord Lyon King of Arms in Edinburgh) confirms that George recorded the undifferenced (i.e., the original) Arms and Supporters in 1845 as 'Representative of the Ancient Family of Wood of Largo and Chief of the Name'.
His son and heir, Andrew George, was born in July 1854. His first marriage - to Ellen Bolster of 18 Buckingham Palace Road on 18 October 1884 - produced no children. When his father died in 1892, part of the estate Andrew inherited was Hawnby Manor in Yorkshire. In 1896, he bought Whitewell Lodge, near Whitchurch, Shropshire. He sold Hawnby in 1898. He remarried in 1901, his young wife being Leila Carnegie Anstey. He died in July 1916 in Mayfair. Whitewell was sold in 1919.
Leila bore them two daughters: 1902, Ursula Alexandrina Frances Edith and, 1903, Joan Leila. In 1922, Ursula married an army captain - a member of the prominent Wiltshire family of Goddard - and had a son in 1924 (born in India, but sadly he died in 1944), a daughter in 1926 and a son in 1928.
The descendants of Ursula are the senior line today. It is, of course, an ancient and well established Scottish practice that a woman can succeed to the representation of a House in that she does not lose her maiden name on marriage, and there is no reason why her children may not take her maiden name and continue the representation in their line.
Her eldest grandson, Timothy Michael Herbert Fawcett Wood, is the hereditary Chief of Clan Wood.
More details can be seen in the Members' Area.
The Wood family Mausoleum
(Note the Wood of Largo Arms on the pediment)
* Meanwhile, other families descended from the Admiral still held or acquired estates such as Grange, Lambieletham, Carmurie, Drummels, Anstruther and Orkie, and many people happily with us today can rightfully claim that redoubtable defender of Scotland's seas among their ancestors. Wynd House in Elie (there is a website) is owned by John Walter Wood and has belonged to the Woods of Grange for 400 years.
Last reviewed and updated 12th December, 2011.
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Extracted from the Parliamentary Register, Edinburgh, 22nd August 1584
(The *Comptroller referred to is Andrew Wood of Largo, great-grandson of the Admiral)
Legislation concerning the dissolution of the union of lands annexed to the crown to be set by our sovereign lord in feu ferm
Forasmuch as in ancient times our sovereign lord's most noble progenitors, with consent of the three estates of parliament, have judged it most convenient for good of the realm that every freeholder, spiritual and temporal, should set their lands in feu, and that our said sovereign's predecessors of most noble memory being for the time by setting of their own lands, as well annexed as unannexed, in feu ferm should give example to his freeholders to do the like, and to that effect, in diverse parliaments held in the days of our sovereign lord's progenitors aforesaid, the annexation and union of lands to the crown was dissolved; and now our sovereign lord, following the tread of his said predecessors, for the great desire which his highness has that policy should increase within his realm, has, by the advice of his said three estates in parliament, dissolved and, by the tenor of this act, dissolves the union and annexation of whatsoever lands, lordships, baronies, mills, multures and fishings made to the crown in this present parliament, or any other parliament held in his own time, or in the days of whatsoever his highness's most noble progenitors, to the effect that the same lands, lordships, baronies, mills, multures and fishings, with their pertinents, may be set in feu ferm by his highness, with advice of his *comptroller, present or to come, to whatsoever person or persons his highness pleases. And our said sovereign lord and three estates of this present parliament, by the tenor hereof, declares, decrees and ordains that this present dissolution shall stand and be of full force for his highness's lifetime, so that the lands, lordships and baronies which his highness shall set in feu ferm in his own time shall be sure and viable to the persons, receivers thereof, their heirs and successors forever, and that the annexations of lands, lordships and baronies made in any time preceding (so far as shall concern the lands, lordships and baronies which shall not happen to be set in feu ferm in his highness's own time) shall after his decease return to their own nature after the form of the dissolutions made before the time of his most noble progenitors, providing always that the said infeftments of feu ferm be not made within the just value to the prejudice and hurt of our sovereign lord and his successors, that is to say, within the duty to which the said lands are retoured or may be justly retoured for the new extent, which new extent his highness, with advice aforesaid, declares to be the just value of the said lands for which the same may be set in feu ferm; providing always that this present dissolution shall not be extended to the lands of Ruthven, Erskine and others, the Earl of Angus's lands contained in the king's majesty's signature, but the same shall remain with the king's majesty and his highness's successors to be used, occupied and intromitted with by his majesty's *comptroller present and that shall happen to be for the time, in such sort and in the same manner as the said lands were used by the lords and proprietors thereof before their forfeiture; neither shall it be lawful to any his majesty's subjects to purchase feu, tack or rent of the same of any other colour of right whereby they may pretend to interpose themselves between his majesty's *comptroller and the tenants, labourers of the lands aforesaid, which feus, tacks, rentals or others whatsoever already purchased, contrary to the tenor of this present provision, the king's majesty, with advice of his highness's three estates aforesaid, declares to have been and to be null of the law and likewise in all time coming.
(And that, in a sentence, was that.)
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One of the Admiral's most famous sea battles was in 1490. It began in the Firth of Forth and ended next day off the River Tay, the numerically superior English force having been overwhelmed and their vessels captured. It is said that minstrels celebrated thoughout Europe with the following lay (presumably translated as required).
The Scotsmen fought like lions bold,
And many English slew;
The slaughter that they made that day
The English folk shall rue.
The battle fiercely it was fought
Near the craig of Basse;
When next we fight the English loons,
May nae waur come to pass.
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