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<\/p>\nBack in 1820 or thereabouts there were two wee English brothers, born in Wales,\u00a0by the names of John Hay Allen and Charles Hay Allen who\u00a0moved to Moray, Scotland.\u00a0 After being there a while they changed the spelling of their name to Allan, to make it look more Scottish,\u00a0but then\u00a0shortened it to Hay.\u00a0 These two brothers\u00a0are one of the reasons our tartan industry is here today.<\/p>\n
We first hear about them, presumably after Sir Walter Scott’s big tartan spectacle for King George IV, in 1822.\u00a0 I feel this could possibly be what gave them the \u2018cunning plan\u2019 \ud83d\ude09 \u00a0They started to let it be known, subtly of course, that they were the grandsons of Prince Charles Edward Stewart and that they just happen to have a manuscript from 1571 that showed all of the major clan tartans.\u00a0 The brothers stated that it had been given to Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Scots College of Douay during the \u201845 and handed down to their father.\u00a0 \u00a0Sir Walter Scott and the Royal Society of Scotland, hearing about this, wanted the manuscript to be scrutinised by the register of Scotland but the father of the brothers, who had possession of the manuscript, refused to allow it to be seen at all.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Even without the evidence of the manuscript, all the rumours about it and the ancestry of the brothers were rife.<\/p>\n
In 1842 the brothers\u00a0pop up\u00a0again but now they are\u00a0openly claiming to be the grandsons of Bonnie Prince Charlie\u00a0and were\u00a0going by the names of John Sobieski Stuart and Charles Sobieski Stuart and giving Versailles as their birthplace.\u00a0 The name they were now using, Sobieski, was\u00a0Prince\u00a0Charles mothers family name. \u00a0They claimed that Prince Charles and his wife Princess Louise of Stolberg had had a secret child who was whisked away and brought up by a gentleman called Admiral O\u2019Halleron, although later\u00a0they say it was Admiral Hay or\u00a0Admiral Allen.\u00a0 This could almost be a plot from a Sir Walter Scott novel.\u00a0 Now given that this was at a time when the British government would, to be sure, keeping a close\u00a0eye on the exiled Stuarts, any child, especially a male heir, born would have been explosive for Hanoverian Britain.\u00a0\u00a0 They would give no decent\u00a0explanation as to why a legitimate heir to the throne was kept secret and sent away and then, why, after\u00a0the death of Prince Charles in 1773 everything, including all titles, was left to his illegitimate daughter and not to\u00a0this legitimate son and heir apparently living in Great Britain.<\/p>\n
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Even so these were intelligent, charming, good looking fellows who with their stories of their ancestry and\u00a0with all their fancies they\u00a0could sell stings to midges.\u00a0 There were\u00a0still sentiments of Jacobite loyalty lingering and of course there was\u00a0the popular romantic literature of the day.\u00a0 Due to this and the charm of\u00a0the two\u00a0men the nobility of Scotland were eating\u00a0out of their hands, so much so they would be given\u00a0free range of Highland estates and lodges to be used at their own disposal.<\/p>\n
It was around this time that the subject of the manuscript pops up again, from it the brothers published 2 volumes of work all about Highland dress and tartans and called it the Vestarium Scoticum<\/em>\u00a0and of course everything in the volumes came from the original manuscript, that no one had ever seen.\u00a0\u00a0 The publications contained 49 Highland clan tartans and 29 Lowland tartans complete with coloured plates.\u00a0 Again, Sir Walter Scott and others looked into it and found it \u2018doubtful on its authenticity\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0They could find no proof that Highland dress was ever worn in the south of Scotland at any period of time ,so that 29 tartans out the window.\u00a0\u00a0They also noted the language used was \u2018very imperfectly done\u2019 as certain words would not have been written as such in the 16th century.\u00a0 They also noted that there were inaccuracies in the colouring of some of the tartans shown on the plates.\u00a0 Of the 49 Highland tartans in the Vestarium Scoticum<\/em> only 6 are said to be correct.\u00a0 Several are right in design but the colours are wrong, showing evidence of patterns being done in artificial light i.e. green as blue and vice versa.\u00a0 We also find that some of the tartans have also been carelessly done, as if the patterns are from memory, but whose?\u00a0 The most obvious \u2018fakes\u2019 come from the mind of John Sobieski Stuart himself.\u00a0 They have the same simple box designs but by using different colours he changes the tartan.\u00a0 However, as I\u2019ve mentioned before they were very popular gents who also enjoyed wearing extravagant Highland dress and were quite the dandies about town, this was presumably to help their cause, or marketing as we would call it today.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s no wonder that most people would have wanted to believe it.<\/p>\n There is no doubt there could have been some clan tartans out there.\u00a0\u00a0 There could\u2019ve been some commissioned from chieftains to be woven and the thread counts kept within the family, although it is highly unlikely these were saved from the times before 1746 when the act of proscription was introduced.\u00a0 As anything tartan related found could bring dire consequences to the family involved.\u00a0 In saying that there may have been old family portraits and the tartan taken copied from them, or pieces of cloth found and used.\u00a0\u00a0Then, of course, there was the tartan rush of 1822, when a lot of the tartans that we know today were quickly designed, or the chieftain just picked out a pretty one and called it his own, before this a lot of tartans woven were known as numbers not names.\u00a0 All so they could attend Sir Walter Scott’s extravaganza put on for King George IV.\u00a0\u00a0Even the King had a tartan outfit made.\u00a0\u00a0 Although the kilt was a bitty short for him, I often wonder if the kiltmaker was a Jacobite and was having a wee giggle.<\/p>\n However, even with this tartan revolution taking place it was the brothers who were out there \u2018working it\u2019 and convincing the nobility of the day that they had their own individual tartans and that along with Sir Walter Scott’s magnificent tartan spectacle is what has stood the test of time.\u00a0 We are still using some of the Vestarium Scoticum<\/em> tartans as family tartans today.\u00a0 I\u2019ll not tell you which ones though.<\/p>\n In 1847 the brothers fell from grace after an anonymous\u00a0and\u00a0damming article\u00a0about their claims to be of Royal blood and their publication of the\u00a0Vestarium Scoticum<\/em> in the \u2018Quartley Review\u2019,\u00a0 a popular English journal of the time.\u00a0 Their reputations were well and truly destroyed.\u00a0 In 1848 John did write a reply to the ‘Quartley Review’ however, by then it was too late and the damage had been done.\u00a0 They were coerced to leave Scotland and went to the continent to live with relations.<\/p>\n I\u2019m sure if the brothers could see the Kilt and Tartan industry today it would bring a wee smile to their faces.\u00a0 But don’t be disheartened, whether your tartan is older than 1745 or designed for the Kings visit or if it comes from the Vestarium Scoticum<\/em> it is still a part of Scotland’s history and you should be proud to wear it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in 1820 or thereabouts there were two wee English brothers, born in Wales,\u00a0by the names of John Hay Allen and Charles Hay Allen who\u00a0moved to Moray, Scotland.\u00a0 After being there a while they changed the spelling of their name to Allan, to make it look more Scottish,\u00a0but then\u00a0shortened it to Hay.\u00a0 These two brothers\u00a0are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":65535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[413,7,437,1629],"tags":[358,430,88,374,1630,541],"class_list":["post-63592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kilts","category-scottish-history","category-sir-walter-scott","category-tartan","tag-kilts","tag-scotland","tag-scottish-history-2","tag-sir-walter-scott","tag-sobieski-stuarts","tag-tartan"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/project1-m9gb2xku8.live-website.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/sobieski2.jpg\")
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