Our clan traces its ancestry back to
the medieval Clan Ewen of Otter. As descendants of the
eleventh-century prince Anrothan O'Neill, Clan Ewing is
kin with MacLachlans, Lamonts, MacQueens and MacSweens.
However, unlike these kindred clans, the Ewings opposed
the Jacobites.
Recent re-examination of an early
clan genealogy (MS1467) has identified the original Ewen
from whom we take our name as Ewen mac Duncan, a
thirteenth century Argyll baron who was probably the
grandson of Farquhar mac Dunsleve (another of Farquhar's
grandsons, Lauman mac Malcolm, was ancestor of Clan
Lamont). Ewen's descendants owned lands on Cowal between
Otter Ferry and Kilfinan, but the barony of Otter passed
to the Campbells in the fifteenth century, and many of the
clan moved to the area of Loch Lomond and the Lennox 'under
a chieftain of their own'.
In 1566, William Ewin was summoned to
attend the court of Mary Queen of Scots, and a coat of
arms was recorded in the same year for the Ewing name.
Unusually, the arms of William Ewing are 'ensigned' with
the Red Ensign of Scotland. Some accounts claim that
William Ewing carried a standard for the queen at the
Battle of Langside in 1568, and it seems certain that this
would have been the Red Ensign of Scotland. At this
period, Scotland was deeply divided and there might have
been a real need for a flag which was clearly distinctive
of the queen's supporters. According to a separate
tradition we took the field at Langside under a new clan
banner, which would reflect the recent grant of arms to
the chief.
Throughout the seventeenth century,
Ewings seem to have sided with Clan Campbell. During the
Civil War, Patrick Ewing came to local prominence in
Dumbarton with the defeat of the Engagers' Party in 1648;
after the Restoration, he was fined £600 by King Charles
II. In 1685, Clan Ewing supported the Campbells in the
doomed Argyll Rebellion against King James VII, and Ewing
estates at Bernice in Cowal were forfeited as a result.
As with other Williamite and
anti-Jacobite clans, the traditional clan structure became
less prominent through the eighteenth century, and the
original chiefly line of the clan came to an end with the
last Ewings of Craigtoun. However the clan lives on, not
only in memory and tradition, but more importantly in the
descendants of the Ewings of old.
Today, many Ewings still live in the
old Ewing heartlands of Argyll and the Lennox in
south-west Scotland, and there are also Ewings across the
globe living in lands of which our ancestors scarcely
dreamed. But wherever we live today, we're all part of the
same Ewing family or clan.
