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When Bernard of Clairvaux integrated the Celtic church into the Cistercian order and



When Bernard of Clairvaux integrated the Celtic church into the Cistercian order and

Scotland got its first Templar king, David I (1124-1153)

 

Contents

 

 

Preface page 1

 

CHAPTERS

 

1. The Origins of Scotland 3

 

2. DNA and Population Studies: “But Why Do

You Think They Were Jewish? ” 24

 

3. Genealogies of the First Wave of Jewish

Families, 1100-1350 C.E. 44

 

4. Genealogies of the Second Wave of Jewish

Families, 1350-1700 C.E. 71

 

5. The Early Jews of France, 700-1200 C.E. 79

 

6. When Did Jews Arrive in Scotland? 88

 

7. To Scotland’s Stirling, Ayr, and Glasgow 97

 

8. The Knights Templar, Freemasons

and Cabala in Scotland 131

 

9. The Judaic Colony at Aberdeen 152

 

10. The Religions of Scotland: Did Presbyterianism

Have Crypto-Jewish Origins? 192

 

11. Jews in the National Consciousness of

Scotland: Scott’s Ivanhoe 205

 

Appendix A: Raw Scores for Participants in

Melungeon DNA Surname Project 215

 

 

Contents

 

Appendix B: Naming and Jewish Priest-Kings 218

 

Appendix C: Early Jewish Names in

France and England 220

 

Appendix D: Davidic Jewish Genealogies 229

 

Appendix E: Border Reiver DNA 232

 

Chapter Notes 233

Bibliography 247

Index 253

 

 

Preface

 

All research inquiries worthy of the name are voyages of discovery. Initial ventures

set sail for terra incognito, while those which follow usually must be content to map

more precisely the exact dimensions of the intellectual locale, noting minute details of

mental flora, fauna, minerals and climate. Along these latter explorations exacting meas-

urements are taken, objects and phenomena carefully categorized and labels affixed

according to the earlier theoretical structures already in place. Gradually an imposing

edifice of agreed-upon understanding is constructed; overlaying topographical interpre-

tations become concretized into dogma and no one bothers to re-examine the underly-

ing structure itself.

 

Very commonly, these accreted Received Views are zealously guarded by their cre-

ators, because they serve important social, political and ideological agendas. Such theo-

retical edifices have become naturalized features of the cultural landscape and serve to

support and perpetuate the prevailing world-view. To challenge this knowledge struc-

ture, in whole or in part, is seen as a threat to the larger ideological narrative of “This is

the way the world is” in which it is embedded. Received views, therefore, are defended

vigorously and those challenging them do so with full awareness that they will likely be

attacked by those stakeholders vested in maintaining the status quo.

 

The present work, brazenly titled When Scotland Was Jewish, is a privateering jour-

ney into heavily traveled waters. We propose that much of the traditional historical

account of Scotland rests on fundamental interpretive errors. Further, we believe that

these errors have been perpetuated in order to manufacture and maintain an origin story

for Scotland that affirms its identity as a Celtic, Christian society. While pursuing Scot-

tish nationalism is likely a noble goal, the equation of Scotland with Celtic culture in the

popular (and academic) imagination has obfuscated, indeed buried, a more accurate and

profound understanding of its history.

 

As the title suggests, we believe that much of Scotland’s history and culture from the

1100s forward is Jewish. We believe that much of her population, including several national

heroes, villains, rulers, nobles, traders, merchants, bishops, guild members, burgesses, and

ministers were of Jewish decent. We describe how the ancestors of these persons originated

in France and Spain and then made their way to Scotland’s shores, moors, burgs and cas-

tles from the reign of Malcolm Canmore to the after-throes of the Spanish Inquisition.

 

We anticipate that our claims will be vigorously disputed, especially by those who

hold most dear the notion of Scotland as a Celtic heartland. We expect that anti-Semi-

tes will be incensed that we have dared to co-opt one of the principal archetypes of WASP

iconography and graft it to Judaism. We expect also that Jews and philo-Semites will be

bemused and confused — does this mean that they should stop by to reconnoiter Edin-

burgh on their next trip to Jerusalem? We hope that Muslims will be pleased to learn that

we have also identified remnants of Islamic culture in Scotland.

 

Our research proposals, as unlikely as they may seem, are founded upon documen-

tation available to scholars for centuries— census records, archeological artifacts, castle

carvings, cemetery inscriptions, religious seals, coinage, burgess and guild member rolls,

noble genealogies, family crests, geographic place names and oil portraits. Indeed, the

blatancy and bulk of the evidence was so overwhelming that we were amazed no one had

presented the thesis before we did.

 

How — or perhaps why — were surnames such as Izatt, Hyatt, Abell, Oliphant,

Elphinstone, Isaac, Sharon, Lyon, Mamluke and Yuell not recognized as Judaic and Islamic

by prior investigators? How could the presence of the Tetragrammaton — emblazoned

on the title page of a Glasgow psalter dating from 1623 — be overlooked for almost 400

years? Why did no one question the presence of Islamic crescents and stars engraved

throughout Fyvie Castle? Why was the presence of Stars of David on Scottish coins dat-

ing from the 1200s not commented upon previously? Did the fact that the Marquis of

Argylle’s castle is located in the village of Succoth (a major Jewish holiday) not seem odd

to prior historians? Were not other onlookers puzzled by the dark, Semitic and Mediter-

ranean appearances of the royal Stewart family — especially the Earl of Moray, James Stew-

art — or of John Knox, Archibald Campbell or Allen Ramsey as their portraits hung in

the National Portrait Gallery of Scotland? Put bluntly, why were these marked inconsis-

tencies with a presumed Celtic past not interrogated forcefully, or indeed at all?

 

Despite our drawing attention to these uncomfortable pieces of the historical record,

however, we knew that advocates of the traditional story of Scotland would remain uncon-

vinced. Thus, we also made use of an evidentiary source not available to prior scholars:

DNA testing. Beginning in 1998 commercial testing of paternal and maternal DNA hap-

lotypes became publicly available. In 2000, we availed ourselves of this new technology

and began examining the lineages of some of the major “clans” in Scotland which we

believed, based on historical evidence, were of Jewish descent. As is discussed in detail

in the present work, all of the lines we examined do show evidence of Mediterranean

origins and do have matches to present-day practicing Jews. Further, independent DNA

testing conducted by other researchers on Scottish populations has confirmed the pres-

ence of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern genes in Scotland’s population.

 

It is our great hope that readers will embark on this journey with an open mind and

a willingness to entertain the possibility that Scotland’s origins may indeed require revi-

sion. We believe that you will find, as we did, that there is ample evidence of a strong

Jewish presence in Scotland and that you will never again view Scotland — her people or

her history — as you once did.

 

 

Chapter 1

 

The Origins of Scotland

 

Scotland today is a country smaller than the state of South Carolina, with about 5

million inhabitants, two-thirds of whom live in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen,

Inverness and Stirling, its Six Cities. Half the size of England, it has a higher standard of

literacy and education, and as many'urban centers and universities, as its southern neigh-

bor. Scotland is located on the same northern latitude as Labrador, Norway and Mos-

cow; the average summer temperature registers a brisk 57 degrees. It has been said, “There

are two seasons in Scotland, June and winter.”

 

Although Scotland is home to one of the oldest continuous kingdoms and parlia-

ments in existence, its political standing as a part of the United Kingdom remains ambigu-

ous. “The sense of national identity seems to have emerged much earlier here than

elsewhere in Europe, ” according to a leading authority (Cunliffe 2001, p. 546). The

national tourism board captures this distinction very delicately when it says that Scot-

land’s civic culture and nationhood are “not readily defined, but readily identifiable. So

the question arises of why the influence of this rather small, inclement and remote nation

should loom so large.

 

Significantly, the pursuit of its native history was long prohibited in Scotland. Elit-

ist English authorities excluded Scottish history from the national curriculum as a mat-

ter of educational policy. In 1949, Lord Cooper complained to the Scottish Historical

Society that it was possible for a Scottish student to take a degree in history without any

knowledge of Scottish history. “There was a subject called British History, ” he said, “which

proved on examination to be English history with occasional side glances at Scotland

through English spectacles whenever Scotland crossed England’s path” (L. Kennedy 1995,

pp. 7-8). 1

 

If the modern history of Scotland is unsettled, there is even less agreement about

the medieval period that preceded it. As one American historian comments, “Scottish

history suffers from a profusion of very general surveys, a multitude of specialized stud-

ies and monographs, and not enough good books in between” (Herman 2001, p. 431).

This appraisal applies with particular aptness to the early period of Scottish history, where

both specialists and generalists find it difficult to come to terms with the emergence of

 

 

Modern Scotland and its major cities. Map by Donald N. Yates.

 

Scotland against the backdrop of European history. The Stewart dynasty remains partic-

ularly mystifying. Until the appearance of an “official” genealogical compilation in the

1990s (and some would say even after it), the origins of the Scottish royal family were

simply not known.

 

 

1. The Origins of Scotland

 

The authors of an Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Scotland (1911 edition) sug-

gest that the historical causes which kept England and Scotland separate for 700 years

were mainly racial, though they then somewhat contradictorily go on to state that from

a very early period, the majority of the people of Scotland were, if not purely English by

blood, anglicized in language and, to a great extent, in institutions.” More riddles occur

as we delve into Scotland’s earlier periods of development:

 

In A.D. 78-82 Agricola, carrying the Eagles of Rome beyond the line of the historical border,

encountered tribes and confederations of tribes which, probably [emphasis added], spoke...

varieties of the Celtic language. That the language had been imposed, in a remote age, by

Celtic-speaking invaders, on a prior non-Celtic speaking population, is probable enough,

but is not demonstrated. There exist in Scotland a few inscriptions on stones, in Ogam,

which yield no sense in any known Indo-European language. There are also traces of the per-

sistence of descent in the female line, especially in the case of the Pictish royal family, but

such survivals of savage institutions, or such a modification of male descent for the purpose

of ensuring the purity of the royal blood, yield no firm ground for a decision as to whether

the Piets were Aryans or non- Aryans.

 

The authors conclude that it is “unnecessary here to discuss the Pictish problem, ” about

which, as we shall see, no satisfactory solution has gained acceptance even to this

day. 2

 

Curiously, we also are informed that European scholarship, centered around the

revival of letters in the reign of Charlemagne (768-814), was, in large part, inspired by

an international elite of Irish and Scottish scholars (Moss 1998, pp. 249-50, 288; Laist-

ner 1957). It was Irish and Scottish monks who rescued the flame of civilization from the

collapse of Rome and carried arts and sciences to the Continent during the Dark Ages.

The Celtic Church was responsible for founding Luxeuil, Fontenelle and Corbey in France;

Bobbio and Susa in Italy; St. Gall, Fulda, Salzburg and Wurzburg in Germany, and most

of the other seats of learning that, in turn, generated the efflorescence of culture of the

Carolingian age and, later, the twelfth-century renaissance, with its “discovery of the

individual” (Southern 1961; Haskins 1957). The Scottish mathematician Michael Scot (?

1175-1234) was regarded as the most brilliant mind of his era. He studied philosophy

and science at Oxford, Paris, Bologna and Rome, acquired knowledge of Arabic in Spain

and Italy, and produced a fresh translation and commentary on the philosophy of Aris-

totle, as well as influential works on science and medicine ( J. W. Brown 1897). His coun-

tryman John Duns Scotus, who died in 1308, was the founder and leader of the famous

Scotist School (T. Williams 2003). Who were these Scottish culture-bearers?

 

Into this scholarly and historical breach arrive two researchers with purportedly

Scottish ancestry and a thesis that seems, on the face of it, absurd: Scotland was Jewish.

This assertion not only flies in the face of “received history (what little of it there is),

but also assaults two longstanding cultural stereotypes of what Scots are like and what

Jews are like. In the popular imagination, Scots are large, red- or blond-haired persons

of fierce demeanor, who wear plaid wool kilts, brandish swords and war axes, drink

copious amounts of ale and whiskey, and eagerly seek out forums in which to exhibit

their prowess as warriors. They are unschooled, wild marauders, loyal to clan, kith, and

kin.

 

Jews, on the other hand, are seen commonly as originating in shtetls in Eastern

 

Europe, timid, bookish, dark-haired, clad in dark apparel, and usually hunkered down

over ancient Hebrew manuscripts. Except for the juxtaposition of, let us say, Eskimos

and Parisians, it is hard to conjure up two more opposite ethnic stereotypes. 3

 

So why are we proposing that many of Scotland’s people were Jewish? For the sim-

ple reason that is true. In the chapters that follow, we present evidence from several

empirical sources— DNA, public records, anthropological observations, architecture,

archeological excavations, family and clan genealogical records, censuses, cemetery

inscriptions, burgess and guild membership rolls, ethnographic reports, and synagogue

membership rolls. These document the seemingly incredible claim that Scotland was, and

remains, a country populated largely by persons of Jewish descent.

 

The evidence presented does not suggest some ancient Jewish visitation based on a

“lost tribes” theory, in other words, that a Jewish tribe dispersed from Judea/Palestine in

antiquity and somehow wandered its way to Scotland, morphing over time into a pop-

ulation of Gaelic warriors. No; our argument is grounded upon documented historical

migrations into Scotland from various European countries, primarily France, the Low

Countries, Hungary, and Germany. These migrants, we propose, were persons of Jewish

ethnicity whose descendants now comprise the majority of the present population of

Scotland. Further, we also argue that the greater part of the estimated 4 million Scots

and Scots-Irish who immigrated to the New World were drawn from this same ethnic

ancestry.

 

The Melungeons

 

Our story begins with an ethnic group to which both authors belong. The Melun-

geons are a people who have been dwelling in the Appalachian Mountains of the south-

eastern United States for between 300 and 500 years. Their origins have been the subject

of intense speculation for at least three centuries (Ball 1984; Bible 1975; Elder 1999; Gal-

legos 1997, 1998; Mira 1998). 4 Typically, they are described as having dark skin, black or

dark-brown straight hair, brown or blue eyes and European features (Ball 1984; Bible

1975). A popular culture book written by a self-identifying Melungeon (N. B. Kennedy

1996) renewed interest in investigation of the group’s origins and stimulated an abun-

dance of scholarly research. A detailed biogenetics study undertaken by the present

authors supported what Kennedy had earlier proposed: The Melungeons were, in large

Hungary.

 

Edgar and his sisters... in 1068 escaped to Scotland where Margaret became the second

wife of Malcolm Canmore. A deeply pious lady, she found Scottish society crude and

uncivilised, and conceived a mission to convert the Scots from their northern barbarism and

Celtic custom.... [Malcolm Canmore] forsook Gaelic for her language, substituted wine for

mead, and welcomed to his court the strangers of her choice. These included a number of

Thus perished the Celtic

And Moors from Spain due to

the Spanish Inquisition. Sig-

nificantly, the bagpipe origi-

nated in ancient Mesopotamia.

 

In this portrait, Allan Ramsay (1686-1758), the poet, is shown and Greece and was popuIar in

to have a Mediterranean complexion. He wears an orange silk

turban and brown Middle-Eastern or Moroccan style coat and Spain and southern France

shirt. Courtesy Scottish National Portrait Gallery.. before it entered or re-entered

 

 

Then to Ireland and Scotland. It is a Middle Eastern and Central Asian musical instrument, not

one indigenous to the British Isles.

 

The CanmoreSy Richard Oram (2002)

 

From Williams’ account, we now turn to a shorter work by Oram (2002), focused on

the Scottish ruling family of primary importance to our thesis. The Canmore Dynasty began

in 1058 with the ascension of Malcolm Canmore to the Scots throne and lasted until the

end of Alexander Ill’s reign in 1286. The connections are depicted in Figure 1 on page 13.

 

Examining the genealogy in Figure 1 provides some indication of just how Euro-

pean and Mediterranean the

Scottish royal family became.

Malcolm and Margaret’s son

Alexander I not only carried a

Greek given name previously

unused by Scotland’s nobility, but

he also married Sybilla, the ille-

gitimate daughter of England’s

King Henry I. Alexander’s

brother, David I, who ruled from

1124 to 1153, married a French

noblewoman, Matilda de St. Liz

(Senlis, a town in Normandy),

granddaughter of William the

Conqueror. This king’s given

Douglas

 

This noble Scots family first appeared in Britain around 1300 and settled on the

Scottish border (Brown 1998). One standard reference book observes that the “Douglases

were one of Scotland’s most powerful families [and] it is therefore remarkable that their

origins remain obscure” (Way and Squire 1998, p. 384). We have seen in chapter 2 that

the Douglases have many branches, but all seem to agree in being originally Gothic, with

the majority of DNA matches turning up in the Iberian peninsula. The name Douglas

means “dark stranger” in Gaelic and may have originated from the Mediterranean com-

plexions of the family’s founders (M. Brown 1998).“ The Black Douglases (so named for

their dark coloring) were the dominant force on the borders between England and Scot-

land from 1300 to 1455 (M. Brown 1998). Family portraits attest to their ancestral Mediter-

ranean physiognomy.

 

Septs associated with the Douglas clan include Blackstock, Blalock, Brown, Drys-

dale, Forrest, Inglis, Kilgore, Kirkpatrick, Lockerbie, McGuiffie, Morton, Sandilands,

Soule, Symington, Troup and Young. The following genealogy is based on The Black Dou-

glases (1998):

 

William of Douglas is the “first of [the Douglas name] for which any certain record

has been found.” He is thought to have been born in or before 1174. “William was surely

related to [probably brother-in-law of] Freskin the Fleming, who came to Scotland before

the end of the reign of David I.” It is believed that both William of Douglas and Freskin

the Fleming came with their families from Flanders, “perhaps connected with the Flouse

of Boulogne.”

 

Other than the possible connection with the Fleming, the wife of William of Doug-

las is unknown. He did however have one known son:

 

1. Archibald of Douglass, who was given lands at Hermiston in Lothian.

 

Archibald of Douglas was born sometime prior to 1198 and died ca. 1240. While his mar-

riages are unknown, he had two known sons:

 

1. Sir William of Douglas

 

2. Sir Andrew of Douglas, ancestor of the Douglases of Morton

 

Sir William of Douglas, known as “Longleg, ” was born ca. 1200 and died sometime after

1274. He had two sons:

 

1. William “le Hardi” Douglas

 

2. Hugh of Douglas

 

Sir William “le Hardi” Douglas was born ca. 1240.

 

While governor of Berwick he was captured when the town was besieged by the English

and spent time in an English prison. He was released later only after agreeing to accept

English King Edward I as overlord of Scotland. However, he later fought alongside William

Wallace. He first married Elizabeth Stewart, and later married Eleanor de Louvaine. He had

one child by each, and one of uncertain maternity:

 

1. Sir James Douglas, “the Good, ” by Elizabeth Stewart. James was a lifelong friend

and supporter of Robert the Bruce, King of Scots. After the Bruce’s death, Sir James

was the Black Douglas charged to take the heart of Robert the Bruce to Jerusalem.

Sir James died in battle in Spain during the crusade against the Moors. He had one

known (illegitimate) son:

 

a. Archibald Douglas, “the Grim, ” who fought in the defense of Edinburgh castle

against English King Henry IV in 1400, and achieved the rank of Lieutenant Gen-

eral of Scotland. Was killed in action along with his son while fighting the English

in France.

 

2. Sir Archibald of Douglas, child by Eleanor de Louvaine

 

3. Hugh Douglas (Lord of Douglas)

 

Sir Archibald of Douglas was born ca. 1297. He married ca. 1328 Beatrice Lindsay, and

they had two known children:

 

1. Eleanor Douglas

 

2. William of Douglas

 

Sir Archibald of Douglas defeated Edward de Baliol, King of Scotland, in 1332 and was

appointed Regent of Scotland during the minority of King David II. He was killed on 19 July

1333.

 

William of Douglas, 1st Earl of Douglas, was born ca. 1323. His first marriage was

to Margaret, Countess of Mar (daughter of Donald, 8th Earl of Mar). Whether through

death, affair, or divorce, either before or after Margaret of Mar, he was also associated

with and possibly married to Margaret Stewart. He also had at least one other child by

marriage or affair. Children by Margaret of Mar:

 

 

3. Genealogies of the First Wave of Jewish Families, 1100-1350 c.E.

 

1. James Douglas of Drumlanring

 

2. unknown (m. Alexander Montgomerie)

 

Child by Margaret Stewart:

 

3. George Douglas

Child by unknown:

 

4. Margaret Douglas (m. Sir Herbert Herries)

 

George Douglas, 1st Earl of Angus, and born ca. 1376, is credited with being the found of

the “Red Douglas” branch of the Douglas family. He married on 24 May 1387 Lady Mary

Stewart (daughter of King Robert III of Scotland). They had three children:

 

1. Elizabeth Douglas (b. ca. 1397; m. Alexander Forbes)

 

2. William Douglas

 

3. Mary Douglas, m. Sir David Hay (1421/34 — before 1 Mar. 1478); son:

a. John Hay (1st Lord Hay of Yester)

 

Sir William Douglas, 2nd Earl of Angus, was born ca. 1399. In 1425 he married Margaret

Hay and had two children:

 

1. George Douglas

 

2. Helen Douglas, m. by 1460 William Graham (ca. 1448-1472)

 

George Douglas, 4th Earl of Angus, was born after 1425. He was married to Isabel Sib-

bald, and they had two known children:

 

1. Archibald Douglas

 

2. Jane Douglas, m. David “the Younger” Scott, who d. 1492

 

Archibald Douglas was born ca. 1454, and was the 5th Earl of Angus. He married on 4

Mar. 1467/8 Elizabeth Boyd and had three children:

 

1. George Douglas

 

2. Sir William Douglas

 

3. Lady Marjory Douglas (b. after 1467/8, m. Cuthbert Cunningham)

 

George Douglas, Master of Angus, was born ca. 1469. He was married by March of 1487/8

to Elizabeth Drummond (b. ca. 1460) and had five children:

 

1. Alison Douglas

 

2. Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, b. after 1488, m. 1. Margaret Hepburn, affair

with Stewart (first name unknown), m. 2. Princess Margaret Tudor, m. 3. Margaret

Maxwell

 

3. Elizabeth Douglas, b. ca. 1489, m. John Hay

 

4. George Douglas, ca. 1490-Aug. 1522, m. Elizabeth (Isabella) Douglas

 

5. Janet Douglas, ca. 1495-17 Jul. 1537, m. John Lyon

 

Notable in this genealogy are the relatively frequent marriages with the Royal Stew-

art family (which regarded itself as being of Jewish ancestry), marriage to cousins of the

same name (Douglas), and alliances with other families believed to be of Jewish descent

(for instance, Forbes, Hay and Lyon). We might also draw attention to the perpetuation

of the Greek name George, a name drawn from the orbit of late antiquity and the Byzan-

tine world.

 

Gordon

 

The Gordons first distinguished themselves in south central Scotland during the

1300s; the family then moved to Aberdeen on the northeast coast of Scotland (Smout

1969). Here they entered several guilds normally occupied by persons of Jewish ancestry,

e.g., gold and silver smithing, banking, international trading, tin working and leather

tanning (McDonnell 1998). The Gordons seem to have originated in France, where the

name was probably Jardine, meaning “garden” or “gardener, ” which was perhaps later

conflated with the name Jordan. 12

 

However, there is a strong family tradition of origination in Macedonia (northern

Greece), a sojourn in Spain and subsequent immigration to southern France. If this is

the case, then the family probably came to Britain with William the Conqueror in 1066.

Their clan septs include the surnames Jardine, Gardner, and Gardener in addition to Gor-

don. Additional surnames associated with this clan are given below. Several of these are

common to Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews (e.g., Blair, Davidson, Hay, Lyon, Napier,

Hebron, Pollack).

 

 

Aiken

 

Henderson

 

Bisset

 

Hepburn/Hebron

 

Blair

 

Jardine

 

Broun/Brown

 

Lyon/Leon

 

Burnett

 

MacBean/Bean

 

Carnegie

 

Mhoir

 

Chisholm

 

Moubray

 

Davidson

 

Muir

 

Eaken

 

Napier

 

Fleming

 

Oliphant

 

Gardyne

 

Pollock/Pollack

 

Glass

 

Wemyss

 

Hay

 

Wier/Weir

 

 

As with the other families we have studied, Gordon portraits show them to be dark-

skinned with Mediterranean features. Moreover, we have remarked on the fact that poet

Lord (George Gordon) Byron’s uncle openly practiced Judaism in England during the

1700s (see chapter 2, note 18).

 

Stewart

 

We have already discussed the Stewart family in some detail in chapter 1. The Clan

Stewart (Stuart) Web site states the following 13:

 

The Stewarts descend from the seneschals of Dol in Brittany (France). They came to England

with William the Conquerer; Walter the Steward came to Scotland with King David I. Walter

 

3. Genealogies of the First Wave of Jewish Families, 1100-1350 c.E.

 

was created Steward of Scotland and given estates in Renfrewshire and East Lothian....

 

James, 5th High Steward, swore fealty to Edward I of England, but later joined William Wal-

lace in his quest for Scottish Independence. On Wallace s death, he joined the cause of The

Bruce. Walter Steward married the Bruce’s daughter, Marjorie, thus securing the Kingship

for his son on the death of Bruce’s only son, David II. Sir Walter s son and Bruce s grandson,

Robert Stewart, became King Robert II.... The Royal line continued with male heirs until

Mary, Queen of Scots. The Stewarts held the Scottish (and later the English) throne from

Robert II until 1714.

 

Among the septs allied with the Stewarts are several having Sephardic ties, these

include Lombard/Lumbard, Lyle, DonLevy, Leay, Levack, Lay, Lea, Lew, Lewis, Robb,

Mitchell, Glass, Jameson, and Jamieson. The Lev surnames derive from the Hebrew tribe

of Levi, Robb from Rueben, Mitchell from Michal, Jameson from Chaim, and Glass from

glass-production, a Sephardic skill. Lombard/Lumbard (from Langobardi, the 6th cen-

tury invaders of Italy) was an early medieval name for money-changers from Italy, many,

if not most of them, Jewish; in England, it became synonymous with “banker” and left

its heritage in the name of the main street in the City of London where the stock exchange

took shape (Adler 1939, pp. 211-12). In medieval Oxford, Lombard Hall was named after

its Jewish proprietor (Tovey, p. 8). 14

 

As we explored in chapter 1, HRH Prince Michael Stewart (2000) claims to be of

Davidic Jewish descent. 15 In chapter 5 we will present documentation concerning Jewish

communities dwelling in France prior to the arrival of the Normans. To complete the

picture of Scots-Jewish families, however, it is probably most appropriate to include in

this chapter several Stewart-connected genealogies which suggest a strong Jewish ances-

try feeding into those Norman, Frankish, French, Hungarian and Flemish families that

made their way to England — and onward to Scotland — during the 1050-1150 time period.

 

Figure 4, Hungarian Descent of the Kings of the Scots, shows the descent to Mar-

garet, the wife of Malcolm Canmore (1058-1093 ), who became King of Scots at the time

of the Norman conquest of England. Notably, Margaret descends from several persons

who would appear to be Jews: among them Zoltan, his consort, the daughter of Maroth,

Prince of Bihar, Geza, Prince of the Magyars, whose first daughter was named Judith

(= female form of Judah) and whose second daughter married a king of Hungary named

Samuel Aba (Fig. 5).

 

The genealogy of Maud (Matilda) de Lens shows that Malcolm and Margaret s son,

David I of Scots, also appeared to marry a woman of Jewish descent, Maud de Lens. Her

ancestors included Louis the Pious, King of the Franks (d. 840), who was married to a

Judith. The same genealogy also indicates that the grandmother of William the Con-

queror was a French woman named Judith — and further, that Maud de Lens mother was

also named Judith. Although it may seem odd to place so much emphasis on the female

given name Judith, keep in mind that this was the Middle Ages, a time when the ethnic

identity of given names was of critical importance. It is very unlikely that a woman of

noble birth would be named Yehudah unless she was, indeed, a Jewess, and it was wished

by her parents that she be recognized as such.

 

The degree of consanguinity in the family of the Conqueror also becomes apparent

from this genealogy. The Vatican tried to prevent his marriage to Matilda of Flanders,

his 8th cousin twice removed, related to him within a forbidden eleven degrees of canon

 

First Prince of Hungevy

 

Figure 4. Hungarian Descent of the Kings of the Scots. Figure by Donald N. Yates. Geza II

 

Figure 5. Davidic Descent from Charlemagne to the Kings of Jerusalem. Figure by Donald N. Yates.

Gruffyd ap Lelewelyn d.

 

Senena

 

Richard Comyn of

 

Hextilda

 

1282

 

 

Badenoch

 

Llewelyn II (the Last) Prince of Wales

 

mistress

 

William Great Chancellor of

 

Marjorie Countess of

 

1246-82

 

 

Scotland

 

Buchan

 

 

William 5th Earl of

 

 

Elizabeth

 

Mar

 

 

Helen widow of Malcolm 7th Earl of

 

 

Donald 6th Earl of

 

 

Fife

 

 

Mar

 

Gartnait

 

Isobel of

 

King Robert 1 the Bruce of

 

Marjorie

 

John of Strathbog Eart of

 

(Gratney)

 

Christiane Bruce sister of

 

 

Marjorie

 

Walter 6th High Steward of

 

Isabel

 

Edward Bruce brother of

 

Robert 1

 

Bruce

 

Scotland

Robert

 

Robert II

Stewart

 

Steward of Scotland and King of Scots

 

Figure 6. Descent from Iago (Jacob), King of Wales, to Isobel of Mar. Figure by Donald N. Yates.

 

3. Genealogies of the First Wave of Jewish Families, 1100-1350 C.E.

 

law. Maud de Lens was also his cousin, within the same degree. His children went even

farther: Henry Beauclerc’s second wife was Adelicia, daughter of Ida and Geoffrey of Bra-

bant. She was a 3rd cousin through one parent and a 4th cousin through the other. 16

Albert II of Namur and his wife Princess Regulinde were 4th cousins, clearly illegal (hav-

ing a 7th degree of consanguinity).

 

Figure 6 shows the descent path to Isobel of Mar, who married Robert I Bruce and

was the mother of Marjorie Bruce and grandmother of Robert II, the first Stewart

monarch. Through Isobel’s mother, Helen, her lineage continues back to Iago (Jacob) ap

Idwal, king of Gwynedd (Wales). By the same reasoning used with Judith, we can infer,

given the historical context, that the name Jacob marked one as a Jew.

 

Figure 7 shows the ancestry of Mary of Guise, wife of James V of Scotland. Here we

see the extensive entry of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean ancestry into the Royal

Stewart lineage. Persons such as Isaac Angelos, Hasan Artsume, Stephen of Armenia,

John (Isaac) Comnenos, Isabella of Cyprus, Esther, Judith Bonne of Bohemia, and Louis

the Duke of Saxony are certain to have contributed not only Judaic, but also Central Asian

and Mediterranean heritage to the Scottish Royal Family.

 

And finally we arrive at figure 8, the piece de resistance. It shows the ancestry of the

House of Boulogne and kings of Jerusalem, to which many of our Scottish clans are

linked. We start out with Dagobert I, King of the Franks and a Merovingian (rumored

by various Biblical conspiracy theorists to be of Jewish ancestry, possibly Davidic). We

follow this line down to Theodoric, named Makir Theodoric, whom we will discuss

presently when we turn to St. Machar of Scotland in chapter 5. In the same line, just below

him, we find William de Toulouse de Gellone, the Davidic-descended head of the Jew-

ish state of Septimania in southern France and founder of the Judaic Academy at Gel-

lone (791-828 c.E. ). We will also discuss him at some length, in a future chapter.

 

Significantly we see Judaic naming patterns among the Merovingians and Carolin-

gians. Charlemagne names one of his daughters Dhuada (= Davida, feminine form of

David), 17 and one of his sons, Louis the Pious (d. 840), as we have already noticed, mar-

ried Judith of Bavaria. Poignantly, these lineages continue onward until they reach the

Bouillons and Baudouins (Baldwins) who served as the kings of Jerusalem during the

Crusades.

 

 

Figure 7. Ancestry of Mary of Guise

 

Descent to Marie de Guise-Lorraine, wife of James V of Scots

Khachi’k Artsruni Manuel Comnenos

 

Prince of T’ornavan

 

Hasan Artsruni John Comnenon

 

d 1067

 

= Anna Dalassena

 

Abulgharin Artsruni

Governor of Tarsus

 

Alexis I Comnenos

 

Eastern (Byzantine) Emperor 1081-1118

 

\L = Irene, dau of Andronikus Dukas

 

daughter

= Oshin I

Prince of Lambron

 

 

John (Ioannes) II Comnenos Isaac Comnenos

 

Eastern Emperor 1118-43

Hetum II = Prisca (Irene), dau of

 

Prince of Lambron King Ladislaus I of Hungary

& Tarsus

 

 

Smbat I John (Isaac) Comnenos

 

Prince of Paperon d 1153 d 1174

 

 

Rita

dc 1210

 

= Stephen of Armenia

son of King Leo I

 

Maria Theodora = Andronikus I Comnenos

 

= Amuary I (Amalric) Eastern Emperor

 

King of Jerusalem d 1174 1183-5

 

 

Doleta

= Bertrand I

Lord of Giblet,

 

Cyprus

 

Hugh de Giblet

BalifF of Cyprus d 1233

 

Isabella I

 

of Jerusalem dc 1208

= Henri I

 

Count of Champagne

King of Jerusalem 1191—

 

Alice of Champagne— =— Hugues I

 

of Cyprus d 1219

 

Amalric I

of Cyprus

Amuary II

of Jerusalem

d 1205

 

Irene

 

= Isaac II Angelos

Eastern Emperor 1203-4

Irene

= Philip

 

of Swabia

d 1208

Bertrand II de Giblet

 

Isabella of Cyprus

 

Henry I

 

d 1258

 

d 1264

 

of Cyprus

 

= Henry of Antioch

 

d 1253

 

Margaret

 

Hugues II

 

= Baudouin d’lbelin

of Cyprus

 

of Vitzada

 

Hugues III of Cyprus

King of Jerusalem

d 1284

 

d 1267

 

Kunigunde

= Wenzel III (Vaclav)

King of Bohemia

1230-53

 

Premsyl Otakar II

King of Bohemia

1253-78

= Kunigunde

dau of Rostislav

Prince of Halitch

 

Isabel ________

 

= Guy d’llelin

 

Seneschal Jean I of Cyprus

of Cyprus Jean II of Jerusalem

 

1284-5

 

sL *

Guy of Cyprus

d 1303

 

 

Wenzel IV (Vaclav II)

King of Bohemia

1278-1305

King Waclaw I

 

Alice

 

Henri of Jerusalem

1285-91

 

Henri II of Cyprus

1291-1324

 

= Hugues IV

 

King of Cyprus

1324-59

of Poland

1296-1305

= Jutta, dau of

Rudolf of Habsburg

 

 

Elizabeth d 1330

= John (Jan) of Luxembourg

King of Bohemia 1310-46

 

James (Jacques), King of Cyprus

1382-98 (Titular King of Armenia)

= Esther

 

Judith (Bonne) of Bohemia

1315-49

 

= King John II of France

1350-64

 

Janus

 

King of Cyprus

1398-1432

 

 

King Charles V of France

1364-80

 

= Joanna, dau of Peter I

Due de Bourbon

 

 

Charlotte de Bourbon — = — John (Jean) II

dau of John I King of Cyprus

 

Count de la Marche 1432-58

 

1 Guilhelm Makir b. Babylon +Guibourg

2 Prince Bernard of Septimania +Princess Dhuada (Davida)

 

3 Guilhelm d' Aquitaine d.s.p.

 

3 Bernard Master of Aquitaine

4 Louis II Emperor of Italy 855-75

5 Irmengarde +CountBoso of Vienne

6 Kunigund +Sigebert of Verdun

7 Gozelo I Duke of Lower Lorraine 1023-44

 

8 Godfrey II Duke of Upper Lorraine d. 1069 +Doda (Davida)

 

9 Ida (Saint Ide d' Ardennes) 1040-1 1 13 -HEustache II Aux Grenons Comte de Boulogne

10 Eustache III Comte de Boulogne +sisterof David I King of Scots 1124-53 Mary

11 Matilda=Stephen of Blois

10 GODEFROI DE BOUILLON c. 1060-1 100

10 Baudouin I King of Jerusalem 1 100-18

8 Gozelo II Duke of Lower Lorraine 1044-6 +(mistress)

 

8 Geoffroi III d. 1098 illegitimate

 

9 Baldwin of Le Bourg Count of Rethul +Ida

10 Hugues I de Rethul +Melusine

 

11 Baudouin II King of Jerusalem 11 18-31 +Morfia of Armenia

 

12 Melisende Queen of Jerusalem 1131-52 +Fulques V d' Anjou King of Jerusalem 1131-43

13 Baudouin III King of Jerusalem 1 143-62

 

13 Amaury I (Amalric) King of Jerusalem +Maria of Byzantine Comnenos emperors

14 Baudouin IV the Leper King of Jerusalem 1 174-85

1 4 Sybille Queen of Jerusalem 1186-90

 

15 Baudouin V King of Jerusalem 1 183-6

14 Isabella I of Jerusalem d. 1208 +Henri I Count of Champagne

 

15 Alice of Champagne +Hugues I of Cyprus son of Almaric II King of Jerusalem

16 Isabella of Cyprus d. 1264 +Henry of Antioch

17 Hughes III of Cyprus King of Jerusalem d. 1284

18 Guy of Cyprus d. 1303

 

19 Hugues IV King of Cyprus 1324-59 +Alice

20 James (Jacques) I King of Cyprus +Esther

18 Jean I of Cyprus (II of Jerusalem)

 

21 Janus King of Cyprus 1398-1432

 

22 John (Jean) II King of Cyprus +Charlotte de Bourbon

23 Charlotte Queen of Cyprus 1458-60

23 Anne +Louis Due de Savoy d. 1465

 

ancestor of Mary of Guise & Mary Queen of Scots

 

 

Figure 8. Ancestry of the House of Boulogne and Kings of Jerusalem. Figure by Donald N. Yates.

 

 

Chapter 4

 

 

Genealogies of the Second Wave of

Jewish Families, 1350-1700 C.E.

 

The families discussed in this chapter are known to have arrived in Scotland after

1350. Most came from the Mediterranean and have been found to have Sephardic-

matching DNA.

 

 

Caldwell

 

The Caldwells are believed to have arrived in southwestern Scotland from France

around 1550. Their somewhat jumbled origin story is given below. Despite some obvi-

ous inaccuracies, what is instructive about it is the report of long-term religious harass-

ment by the Catholic Church in Spain and of the dark, Mediterranean complexions of

the Caldwells upon their arrival in Scotland.

 

Before the name Caldwell came into existence, our ancestors were part of two groups of peo-

ple living in Italy who called themselves the Albigenses and Waldenses. Both these groups

were Protestant in their beliefs and are mentioned often in historical accounts. At this time

(i.e., early 1200s), 1 those of Protestant belief were being subjected to heavy persecution by

the Roman Catholic Church. Eventually, because of these persecutions, they were forced over

the mountainous border that separates Italy from France and settled in a small village called

Toulon, near the foot of Mt. Aud (also called Mt. Arid in some accounts). It was here that

three brothers, John, Alexander, and Oliver, were born....

 

The three brothers were originally aligned with the Barbarossa brothers, generally

considered pirates of much note at the time. The Barbarossas were of Algerian birth and

became the dominant power in Algeria. The name “Barabarossa” is a European one mean-

ing “red beard, ” which the leader of these pirates (Khaii-ed-din by his Algerian name,

who died in 1546) apparently had. Nonetheless, these pirates were themselves defeated

by the Governor of Aran when he made a massive effort to end the dominance of the Bar-

barossas. John, Alexander and Oliver escaped without being captured by the Aranian

Governor and returned to Toulon for a short time....

 

 [The Caldwell brothers] put their years of experience on the sea to good use and

amassed a naval fleet of their own, one rivaling the defeated Barbarossa’s in force. Now,

however, Spanish merchants hired John, Alexander and Oliver to do away with

the remaining pirates on the Mediterranean. Though hired by the Spanish, King Francis

I of France was so pleased with their success that he rewarded the brothers, as well. They

decided from that time forward to abandon the high seas and returned to their home

in Mt. Aud, France. But on their return there, they found France in a state of turm-

oil as a result of the persecutions suffered by the Huguenots and Piedmontese, as the

Protestants in France were called. They, being Protestant themselves, returned at once to

Spain. 2

 

From Spain, they took a merchant ship bound for the coast of Scotland. They landed at a

place called Solway Firth. And finding the country (Scotland) in peace under the Protestant

reign of King James VI (approx. 1567-1603) who then became King James I, King of England

(1603-1625), they determined to settle there. After finding a large landholder, he being a

wealthy bishop of the place, they purchased from him a large estate. [They then] sent back to

their native land for other relatives and friends and in a few years became numerous and

prosperous. But in order to acquire full title to this land, it was necessary that they should

gain the consent and signature of the King to their purchase.... The King, upon signing their

titles, imposed the following condition; that the three brothers should, when the King

required it, each send a son with a troop of twenty men to aid in the wars of the King.

 

Our forefathers were... of dark skin, with deep penetrating eyes, [and] high... foreheads.

Although naturally of dark complexion, in mingling with the blue-eyed belles of Scotland

through thirteen generations, the younger generations have shown many instances of the fair

hair and blue eyes of the mother’s family. Thus the blue eyes and the black eyes appear in

almost every family. 3

 

What is evidenced by this account, despite some obvious historical inaccuracies, is

a basically credible story of a French-Iberian family fleeing the Inquisition across Italy

and France, becoming pirates during the mid-1500s, and then seeking safe haven with

other Iberian refugees in the southwest of Scotland. The story takes pains to portray the

family’s founders as Protestants, which is possible, yet unlikely. Few Iberian Protestants

served as pirates in the Mediterranean during the 1500s, while many Sephardic Jews and

Moors did (Benbassa and Rodrique 1995; Fletcher 1992). It also omits mention that at

least one branch of the Caldwell line settling in Philadelphia prior to the American Rev-

olution opened a goldsmith and silversmith shop. These skills were usually passed from

father to son through apprenticeships and were almost exclusively controlled by Jews and

Moors (Fletcher 1992).

 

Further, paternal DNA tests have matched the Caldwells with known Sephardic fam-

ilies, such as Rodriguez and Cooper. This fact, coupled with the prevalence of Caldwells

in Melungeon settlements in the Appalachians, suggests that they were most probably of

French-Iberian Jewish, not French-Iberian Protestant, origin.

 

The entire territory over which the Caldwells purportedly roamed was the same as

the land awarded after the fall of Rome to the Visigoths 4 in 419 C.E. It became the Reg-

num Tolosanum and later the Kingdom of Toulouse (Gibbon II, p. 214). At its center,

Toulon is an important naval port on the Cote d’Azur between Marseilles and St. Tropez

with the Monts de Maures (Moorish Mountains) looming behind it on the French Riv-

iera. Until the Spanish secured Lombardy and the Duchy of Milan, this area belonged,

variously, to Provence, Languedoc, Anjou, and the German Empire. At different times,

it also was part of Savoy, Lorraine, Aquitaine, and the Papal State of Avignon.

 

Significantly, an edict of expulsion against the Jews of Provence was first issued in

1500. Jews in the Kingdom of Naples (which included the duchy of Milan) were partially

exiled in 1510. Wealthy Jews in Spanish-ruled Italy were expelled again in 1541. Begin-

ning in 1555, Jews in Italy were ghettoized, a situation that was to last until Napoleon’s

invasion in 1796. The expulsions of 1515, 1550, and 1575, were to the interior of Italy. In

1572, the Duke of Savoy attempted to give Jews special permission to settle in Nice, but

renounced the plan under pressure from Spain and the Pope. Phillip II of Spain ordered

the expulsion of Jews from the Duchy of Milan again in 1597, and many took refuge in

Protestant Switzerland (Barnavi 1992). From these bare facts it is obvious that Jews liv-

ing in Toulouse had to keep moving to stay ahead of the changing jurisdictions and poli-

cies.

 

Many anomalies formed in this ambiguous, ever-shifting territory. The Jewish state

of Leghorn was established by Portuguese conversos in 1593, and the Jewish community

of Marseilles managed to maintain a continuous existence until Hitler. The Piedmon-

tese Jews were not relegated to ghettos until the 1730s and 1740s. A splendid Rococo syn-

agogue located between Genoa, Turin and Milan, dating back to 1598, survives as

testimony to the past glories of Piedmontese Jewry. 5

 

 

Kennedy/Canaday/Canady

 

The Kennedys first appear in southwest Scottish history around 1360, shortly after

an anti-Jewish pogrom in France (Smout 1969). Their lands were named “Cassilis, ” which

may be derived from the Sephardic name Cassell, and, indeed, Cassell is listed as one of

the Kennedy septs. 6 Other Kennedy sept names are Cassilis, Ulrich, Canady/Canaday,

and Carrick (because Kennedys married into the Carrick family ). DNA analyses have sug-

gested that the Scottish Kennedys and their American descendents are likely of Sephardic

ancestry, and that their original name may have been Candiani (“from Candy”). 7 One of

the primary Melungeon researchers in recent years is N. Brent Kennedy (1997). Genealo-

gies of the Kennedy family of Hyannisport, Massachusetts, do not go farther back than

to Patrick Kennedy, a prosperous farmer of Dunganstown, County Wexford, Ireland,

who was born about 1785 and whose son emigrated to America ( Burke’s 1992). However,

there is no reason to rule out a possible French origin for the Massachusetts Kennedys

before the family became Irish. Both Cassel and Canady appear on a list of refugee

Huguenots to Ireland. 8

 

 

Alexander

 

The Alexanders arrived in Scotland in the late 1400s or early 1500s, concurrent with

the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions (Roth 1937). Further, both as a given name and

surname, Alexander is not indigenous to the British Isles. Rather it is Greek in origin and

was one of the most widely used names among Mediterranean Jews in the Middle Ages

(Roth 1937). 9 The Alexander family settled in the southwestern portion of Scotland, near

Stirling on the English border — a locale with easy access to France and the ports of the

Mediterranean. The lineage of the Alexander Earls of Stirling is instructive in showing a

pattern of intermarriage with other DNA-confirmed Sephardic-Scottish families (e.g.,

Forbes, Douglas). 10

 

 

Lineage of the Alexander Earls of Stirling

 

Thomas ALEXANDER was born before 1505 in Menstrie, Sterling. His son was Alexander

ALEXANDER. Alexander ALEXANDER was married to Elizabeth FORBES. Alexander

ALEXANDER and Elizabeth FORBES had the following children:

 

1. William ALEXANDER (Earl of Stirling) was born in 1557 in Menstrie, Sterling, Scot-

land. He died in 1640 in Scotland. William ALEXANDER (Earl of Sterling) was married to

Janet ERSKIN about 1580. William ALEXANDER (Earl of Stirling) and Janet ERSKIN had

the following children:

 

2. John ALEXANDER was born about 1590 in Tarbert, Kentyre, Scotland.

 

a. William ALEXANDER was born at Eridy, Donegal Co., Ireland.

 

b. Phillip ALEXANDER.

 

c. Robert ALEXANDER was born in 1610 in Stirling, Scotland. He died in Drumiquim,

Tyrone, Ireland.

 

d. John ALEXANDER was born between 1624 and 1653.

 

e. Andrew ALEXANDER D.D. REV. was born about 1635 in Co. Coleraine, Ireland.

 

f. Archibald ALEXANDER was born about 1614 in Scotland or Co. Armagh, Ireland. He

died on 31 Mar. 1689 in Belleghan, Donegal, Ireland.

 

3. William ALEXANDER was born between 1613 and 1656 in Menstrie, Sterling.

 

William ALEXANDER was married to Margaret Douglas. William ALEXANDER and

Margaret DOUGLAS had the following children:

 

1. James ALEXANDER was born about 1618 in Menstrie, Sterling. He died 9 Dec. 1691 or

17 Nov. 1704 in Donegal, Donegal Co., Ireland.

 

James ALEXANDER was married to Mary MAXWELL about 1639/40 in Raphoe, Done-

gal, Ulster, Ireland. Mary MAXWELL was born about 1634/35 in Raphoe, Donegal, Ulster,

Ireland. She died in Cecil C., Md.

 

James ALEXANDER and Mary MAXWELL had the following children:

 

a. Joseph ALEXANDER was born between 1639 and 1660 in Raphoe, Donegal, Ulster,

Ireland. He died on 9 Mar. 1729/30 in New Munster, Cecil Co., Md.

 

b. William ALEXANDER was born about 1646 in Raphoe, Donegal, Ulster, Ireland. He

died in 1715 in Somerset Co., Md.

 

c. Andrew ALEXANDER was born about 1648 in Raphoe, Donegal, Ulster, Ireland. He

died before 1700 in Cecil Co., Md.

 

d. Elizabeth ALEXANDER was born in 1650 in Raphoe, Donegal, Ulster, Ireland. She

died between 1714 and 1716 in Manokin Hundred, Somerset Co., Md.

 

e. James B. ALEXANDER, weaver and carpenter, was born about 1652 in Raphoe, Done-

gal, Ulster, Ireland. He died in 1719 in New Munster, Cecil Co., Md.

 

f. Frances ALEXANDER was born about 1654 in Raphoe, Donegal, Ulster, Ireland. He

died about 1701 in Somerset Co., Md.

 

g. Samuel ALEXANDER was born about 1657/58 in Raphoe, Donegal, Ulster, Ireland. He

was buried in 1733 in Bethel (Chesapeake City) cemetery. He died on 14 Jun. 1733 in

Cecil Co., Md.

 

h. Jane ALEXANDER was born about 1659 in Raphoe, Donegal, Ulstger, Ireland. She

died on 28 Mar. 1692/93 in Manokin Hundred, Somerset Co., Md.

 

 

4. Genealogies of the Second Wave of Jewish Families, 1350-1700 c.E.

 

i. John ALEXANDER was born about 1662 in Raphoe, Donegal, Ulster, Ireland. He died

after 1718 in Cecil Co., Md.

 

j. Thomas ALEXANDER was born in 1676 in Donegal, Donegal Co., Ireland. He died in

1749 in Augusta Co., Va.

 

Note that the Alexander family immigrated to Baltimore, Maryland — the arrival

point for many immigrants of Sephardic origin due to Maryland’s relatively lax religious

constraints. The burial of Samuel Alexander occurred in Bethel Cemetery, likely a Judaic

burial ground and not a Presbyterian or Anglican churchyard. Finally, Thomas Alexan-

der, born in Donegal, Ireland, is recorded as having died (1749) in Virginia’s Augusta

County, believed to be a Melungeon/Crypto-Jewish community (Kennedy 1996).

 

Additional support for the Alexander’s Sephardic and Crypto-Jewish status comes

from genealogical information on the family once it had reached the American colonies.

Inquiries taken from the Alexander Genealogical Forum on the Internet show a naming

pattern for the children which is markedly Hebrew. There was frequent intermarriage

with the Houston and Kennedy families, both believed to be of Sephardic descent through

DNA testing.

 

Before leaving Alexander, let us present some additional statistics. According to the U.S.

Census for 1990, Alexander is the 96th most common surname in America. If you add the

variants Sanders (75th) and Saunders (421st), the frequency climbs to 0.2 percent, rather

high in the scheme of things. However, Alexander is even more common as a specifically

Jewish surname. It is among the top ten researched surnames at the Jewish Genealogical Soci-

ety of Great Britain, and it figures prominently in Rabbi Malcolm Stern’s Americans of Jew-

ish Descent (1991), as well as in studies of Jewish tombstones in Barbados and Jamaica by

Barnett (1959) and Wright (1976). The Alexander genealogical manuscripts of the Ameri-

can Jewish Historical Society are voluminous. For example, Abraham Alexander, born in

London in 1743, came to Charleston, S.C. in 1760 and was hazan for that city’s Beth Elohim

congregation 1764-1784. Several generations of Scottish Alexanders came to the Shenan-

doah valley from Glasgow, via northern Ireland, to “escape religious persecution” and along

with the McKees, Davidsons and Houstons were benefactors of a stone “temple” built near

Lexington in Rockbridge County in the mid-eighteenth century. 11 Finally, it was an Alexan-

der who presented Glasgow’s Jewish community with an ark (Torah receptacle) for the new

synagogue in South Portland Street, the largest in Scotland in 1901 (Collins 1987, p. 104).

 

The somewhat surprising popularity of the Alexander name among Jews is explained

by a legend enshrined in the writings of the Roman Jewish author Josephus (27-95 C.E.;

Graves 1975, p. 84):

 

According to Josephus, when Alexander [the Great] came to Jerusalem at the outset of his

Eastern conquests [winter of 332 B.C. E.], he refrained from sacking the Temple but bowed

down and adored the Tetragrammaton [the four Hebrew letters for God’s name ] on the High

Priest’s golden frontlet. His astonished companion Parmenio asked why in the world he had

behaved in this unkingly way. Alexander answered: “I did not adore the High Priest himself,

but the God who has honoured him with office. The case is this: that I saw this very person

in a dream, dressed exactly as now, while I was at Dios in Macedonia.

 

“In my dream I was debating with myself how I might conquer Asia, and this man

exhorted me not to delay. I was to pass boldly with my army across the narrow sea, for his

God would march before me and help me to defeat the Persians. So I am now convinced that

Jehovah is with me and will lead my armies to victory.” The High Priest then further encour-

aged Alexander by showing him the prophecy in the Book of Daniel which promised him the

dominion of the East; and he went up to the Temple, sacrificed to Jehovah and made a gen-

erous peace-treaty with the Jewish nation. The prophecy referred to Alexander as the “two-

horned King” and he subsequently pictured himself on his coins with two horns. He appears

in the Koran as Dhul Karnain, “the two-horned.”

 

The surname Alexander was often shortened to Sanders or Saunders and also took

the forms Sender, Sand, Andrus, Andros, and Anderson. 12 Numerous surnames begin-

ning with Sand- (e.g., Sandford) are thought to be related (Jacobs 1906-1911).

 

 

Cowan/Cowen

 

Septs: Cowan, Cowen, Cowans, MacCowan, MaCowan, McCowen, McCown

The Clan Cowan Web site states:

 

Cowan, Cowen, and Cowans are common surnames in Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire, and other

Lowland counties. There was a James Cowhen, chaplain in North Berwick, in 1560. There

was also an old family in Stirling of Cowane. Cowane’s Hospital in Stirling was founded in

1639 by John Cowane, a merchant there. A John M’Coan was in Duchre, parish of Kilbran-

don, in 1691. A David M’Kowne was a notary in Glasgow in 1550, and his name was also

spelled M’Kownne and M’Kowin.

 

Some additional commentary on members of Clan Cowan in the American Colonies

states:

 

Alexander McCown, Sr. was shown in VA in 1715. His six sons came to America in 1728.

Alexander Sr. was a distinguished Presbyterian minister and his son, George, was a ruling

elder of the Presbyterian church. They were Scotch-Irish and suffered religious persecution

in Ireland. Alexander McCown’s ancestors came tp Ireland [from Scotland] in the 1600’s....

 

John McCown, with five brothers, George, James, Malcolm, Alexander, and Moses, emi-

grated from County Tyrone, Ireland, in 1728. John McCown settled in Calf Pasture, Augusta

County, Virginia. James, Moses and Alexander settled in Catawba County, South Carolina,

and George in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania [ U. S. Biographical Dictionary — 1876 — Mis-

souri, p. 723, under McCown, Col. William H., Carthage, Mo.].

 

Alexander McCown was born in Scotland, and moved to Tyrone, Ireland. His six sons...

came to America in 1728 from Tyrone, Ireland. They were called the Blacks and the Reds,

because three of them had black hair and dark eyes and dark complexion. The other three

had red hair and light complexion. The sons named were: James, Alexander, Moses, George,

Malcolm, and John [Mr. Bobby S. Mullins, of Nashville, Tennessee, in correspondence to

Lou Poole dated 29 October 1994].

 

Rico, and South America.

 

Presumably the Crypto-Jews who remained in England after the Expulsion in 1290

presented themselves as practicing Christians, which at that time would have meant

Roman Catholicism, the prevailing religion in England. They would have “switched” to

Anglicanism under the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547), in order, once again, to con-

form to external norms.

 

When Crypto-Jews entered England from Iberia at the time of the Inquisition (1492),

they were readily recognizable as Spaniards or Portuguese; hence pretending to be Angli-

can would not have been a credible cover. Thus, as Katz (1996) reports, these Crypto-

Jewish arrivals pretended to be Roman Catholic, the state religion of Spain and Portugal.

“The Spanish Jews who had come to London undoubtedly continued as they had done

at home, worshipping according to the Roman Catholic rite and behaving outwardly in

every respect like any Iberian merchant” (p. 2). By the 1530s, Katz writes, “In the Jewish

world, at least, it was possible to speak of a secret Jewish community in London” (p. 4).

 

Near Regensberg

 

Bamberg

 

Germany

 

House

 

 

Middlebourg

 

Germany

 

House

 

 

Hall

 

Germany

 

House

 

 

Brunswick (Braunschweig)

 

Germany

 

House

 

Rorich

 

Germany

 

Fiefdom

 

In Pomerania

 

Pausin

 

Germany

 

Fiefdom

 

In Pomerania

 

Wildenheuh

 

Germany

 

Fiefdom

 

In Pomerania

 

Bach

 

Hungary

 

 

Herefordshire

 

House

 

Hampshire

 

House

 

Worcestershire

 

House

 

Suffolk

 

House

 

Suffolk

 

 

In addition to the stunning list given above, there were also several preceptories in Scot-

land and Ireland, which were dependent on the Temple at London. 5 Addington summarizes:

 

The annual income of the order in Europe has been roughly estimated at six millions ster-

ling! According to Matthew Paris, the Templars possessed nine thousand manors or lord-

ships in Christendom, besides a large revenue and immense riches arising from the constant

charitable bequests and donations of sums of money from pious persons.,..

 

The principal benefactors to the Templars amongst the nobility were William Marshall, 6

Earl of Pembroke, and his sons William and Gilbert; Robert, Lord de Ross; 7 the Earl of Here-

ford; William, Earl of Devon; the King of Scotland; William, Archbishop of York; Philip

Harcourt, dean of Lincoln; the Earl of Cornwall; Philip, Bishop of Bayeux; Simon de Senlis,

Earl of Northampton; Leticia and William, Count and Countess of Ferrara; Margaret,

Countess of Warwick; 8 Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester; Robert de Harecourt, Lord of

Rosewarden; William de Vernon, Earl of Devon, etc.

 

As the reader gathers from this lengthy enumeration of holdings and privileges, the

Knights Templar were an enormous, extraordinarily rich and very powerful organiza-

tion. In essence, they were the first multinational corporation — one over which no court

or tribunal had jurisdiction. The seal of the brotherhood featured “a man’s head, deco-

rated with a long beard, and surmounted by a small cap, and around it are the letters

Testis V. Magi” (Addington 1892, p. 106). At this time, Templar masters in England

included persons named William de La More and Amadeus de Morestello. Clearly, Mus-

lims, as well as Jews, were in England.

 

From Addison’s (1892) account, we now turn to that of Piers Paul Read, who wrote

a critically acclaimed history of the Templars in 1999. Read’s work is very well researched,

and he delves into the ancient origin of the group, predating the Crusades. He starts by

recounting the history of the Jewish people. At the point when King David reconquers

Palestine from the Jebusites, we are given great detail concerning David’s assembling of

materials for a Jewish worship center, the First Temple, built by David’s son Solomon

Around 950 b.c.e.

 

After Solomon’s death, the Jewish state went into decline and was conquered by sev-

eral eastern nations in succession. In 586 b.c.e., King Nebuchadnezzar, a Chaldean,

destroyed the Temple of Solomon and enslaved the Jewish population, taking many of

them (including those of Davidic descent) to Babylon. However, by 515 b.c.e., the Per-

sians under their king Cyrus had defeated the Chaldeans and permitted the Jews to return

to Judea, where they rebuilt their temple. By the fourth century b.c.e., the Macedonian

Surgeons, Barbers

 

James IV

1530

Bakers, Bonnet-makers

 

James V

1581

Goldsmiths (separated from Hammermen)

 

James VI

1586

Skinners

 

James VI

1635

Post Office

 

Charles I

1640

Dyers (incorporated with Bonnet-makers)

 

Charles I

1672

Hatters (incorporated with Wakers)

 

Charles II

1681

Merchant Company

 

From the ranks of the newly created, operative Guilds, the Knights Templars selected certain

members who were keen to extend their minds to matters of science, geometry, history and

philosophy, as detailed in the ancient manuscripts which the original Order had brought out

of Jerusalem and the Holy Land.... Scotland became a beacon of enlightenment. The new

brotherhood of “Free” Masons supported their less fortunate neighbours, and their respec-

tive Guilds set money aside for the poorer members of society, thereby beginning the estab-

lishment of charitable organizations in Britain. 9 King James VI became a speculative

Freemason at the Lodge of Perth and Scone in 1601, and on becoming James I of England

two years later, he introduced the concept south of the Border.

 

Stewart further reports that the Scottish Guilds were given access to the Templar

banking system, which enabled them to construct and maintain their international trade

network. Aberdeen, with its very broad-based trade channels, founded Freemason Guilds

on the French model in 1361, according to Stewart (p. 117-118):

 

[Further, ] quite apart from the Guilds, the Knights also received lay-people into their allied

confraternities and, for a small annual subscription of a few pence, men and women alike were

afforded numerous privileges by way of personal and family support in times of need. This

was, in fact, the beginning of the insurance and life assurance industry, and it is the reason why

so many of today’s leading British underwriting institutions emanated from Scotland.

 

 

The Cabala

 

We will close this chapter with a section designed to segue between what has been

presented about the Templars and what will be covered in chapter 9, on Aberdeen and

northeast Scotland. This has to do with a branch of Judaism termed the Cabala. The

Cabala originated in the Holy Land around 70 C.E. and incorporated Judaic religious

ideas together with geometric principles developed much earlier, very likely at the time

of the building of the pyramids of Egypt. The same architectural and mathematical prin-

ciples were applied to the construction of the Temple of Solomon in Israel.

 

As we shall see, the theorems behind both the pyramids and the First Temple are

based on the discovery of pi, phi, a number of Pythagorean theorems, and other geo-

metric principles emanating from Eastern learning. They are not magical or mystical,

per se. Yet, to the human minds capable of grasping them, they must have seemed God-

given and divinely- inspired. Their perfection, symmetry and consistency would have

produced awe and amazement among those gifted enough to comprehend and use them.

This same set of mathematical principles also had enormous pragmatic utility in fields

as diverse as astronomy, architecture, navigation and land measurement. Because of the

precious intellectual capital they represented, these- geometric theorems were closely

guarded, shared only among a select group of Middle Eastern cognoscenti.

 

The Templars embraced this body of knowledge eagerly, more particularly since it

had been the subject of earlier philosophical, scientific and religious speculation in Greece,

Rome and Moorish Spain, and it became one of the spoils of conquest when they seized

control of the ancient civilizations of the East. In medieval Palestine, the principles had

been combined with a mystical numerical system which assigned each letter in the Hebrew

alphabet to a number or digit. By recasting Torah texts as numerical sequences, the Jews

created elaborate mathematical metaphors that were used to give additional levels of

meaning and correspondences to their sacred scripture. In the Diaspora after 100 c.E.,

these notions were elaborated and embroidered in Cabalistic centers of learning, first in

Provence in southern France, then in Spain, and by the 1500s, cycling back to the Holy

Land and other Levantine centers such as Alexandria, Istanbul and Salonica.

 

As Benbassa (1999, p. 38) notes, the spread of Cabalistic doctrines occurred within

the larger context of the cross-translation of important philosophical and scientific trea-

tises in the Mediterranean area:

 

The [French-Jewish] Kimhi and Ibn Tibbon families distinguished themselves in the domain

of translation. In the one, Joseph Kimhi (1105-70) and his son David ( 1 160? — 1 235), and in

the other, Judah ibn Tibbon (1120-90) and his son Samuel (1150-1230), translated the great

classics of Judeo-Arabic thought from Arabic into Hebrew, including the works of Saadya

Gaon (882-942), Ibn Gabiron (10201-1057? ), Judah Halevi (before 1075-1141), and Bahya

ibn Pakuda (second half of the eleventh century).... They also devoted themselves to the

translation of Greek and Arabic scientific works, particularly in medicine. The texts of the

Muslim physician, philosopher, and mystic Avicenna (980-1037) and, especially, of the

philosopher Averroes (1126-98) were translated from Arabic into Hebrew. 10 Spanish Jews

trained in their homeland in Arabic astronomy brought it with them to Provence; some

invented astronomical instruments, others translated works from Latin.... Samuel ibn Tib-

bon produced a translation of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed (1200) that appeared

before the author’s death in 1204.... Indeed, Provence was also the homeland of Levi ben

Gershom, commonly known as Gersonides (1288-1344).... At once a philosopher and the-

ologian, commentator on Averroes and biblical exegete, talmudist, mathematician and logi-

cian, he was also the inventor of an astronomical instrument....

 

Provence, land of philosophy, was also a land of mysticism. It is there that the Sefer-ha-

Bahir (Book of Brightness), the first document of theosophic kabbalism, was compiled on

the basis of oriental sources between 1150 and 1200.... Abrah ben Isaac, president of the rab-

binical court of Narbonne (d. 1180), and especially Isaac the Blind ( 1 160? — 1235) — grandson

of Abraham ben Isaac... developed a contemplative mysticism. Born in Provence and along

the coast of Languedoc, the kabbalah was rapidly transplanted to Catalonia, which main- tained close political and cultural ties with these regions.

 

The earliest known mention of the Cabala comes from the first century of the Com-

mon Era, in Judea. Here, four of the classical texts were written: (1) Heikalot Books, (2)

Sepher Yetzirah (Book of Formation), (3) the Zohar (Book of Splendor), and (4) the Bahir

(Book of Brilliance) (Bernstein 1984). The Heikalot Books are based on the biblical Book

of Ezekial, which uses the Throne of Glory and the Heavenly Chariot (Merkabah) as cen-

tral symbolic devices. The Book of Ezekial and the Book of Genesis both were popular

religious texts within Judea from 538 b.c.e. to 70 C.E., that is, during the Second Temple

period. Commonly, the wheels of the heavenly chariot are drawn to incorporate the

Pythagorean theorem; metaphorically, this means that mathematical wisdom could raise

mankind to a perfected state (Bernstein 1984).

 

The Sepher Yetzirah (Book of Formation) is the oldest non-Biblical treatise of

Judaism, having been written down in the second century (Bernstein 1984). This book

develops the theme of the ten Sephiroth or primordial numbers and the 22 letters of the

Hebrew alphabet. Some of its main images are the ladder of wisdom, with each step lead-

ing to a higher level of knowledge, and the tree of life, which combines aspects of the

ladder going upward from Earth to Heaven with the additional symbolism of “above

ground tree, below ground roots, ” or, “As Above, So Below.” 11 The tree metaphor posits

that activities on Earth are reflections of actions in Heaven. An important theme through-

 

Tau

 

Sign of the cross

 

out is the perfectibility of the world through human endeavor, often expressed in Judaic

tradition as Tikkun Olam (“perfecting the universe”).

 

The Zohar (Book of Splendor) is a collection of many different writings on various

religious topics. Possibly authored by Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai (160 c.E.), it is the most

influential of the Cabalistic writings. It was first published in its entirety by Rabbi Moses

de Leon of Guadalajara, Spain, around 1290 C.E. (Bernstein 1984). Rabbi Simeon was

known as “the Sacred Light, ” and we see this name carried forward to the Saint Clair/ Sin-

clair /Sanctus Clarus family of France and Scotland. Further, we will find in Aberdeen

many persons having the surname of Norrie/Noory/Nory/Norris, which is Arabic for

“light” or “illumination.” The Zohar proposes that the Torah is actually a series of numer-

ical codes that reveal a much deeper level of divine meaning than the “surface” letters,

words and stories.

 

The Bahir (Book of Brilliance) was also produced in the early Talmudic period (ca.

100 C.E.) and almost lost as a text, only to reappear in Provence, France, during the 1200s.

The Bahir introduces metaphors of reincarnation and the masculine-feminine nature of

God. The Jewish scholar most closely associated with the tradition of the Bahir is Rabbi

Forbes

 

Roper (Sp. “old clothes dealer”)

Riach (Arabic “wind”)

 

Skene, Tarves, Turriff, Tyrie

 

Again, these are cemeteries whose names are strongly redolent of the Mediterranean

world. Tyrie is likely named for Tyre, the ancient capital of Phoenicia (now Lebanon),

and Tarves invokes Tarshish, referred to in the Bible, located by some in southern Spain,

the homeland of the Sephardim. 25 Buried at Skene, just north of Aberdeen, are persons

named Low, Massey, Hector, Davnie, Kellas, Menzies, Gammie and Tawse (Thow). An

unusual feature of many of these names is their evident Greek origin. One might specu-

late that so much Greek in one place bears testimony to the vestiges of a colony of Roman-

iots (Greek Jews), perhaps displaced to faraway Scotland by the fall of Byzantium in 1453. 26

 

At Tarves cemetery several graves had flat stones and “open book” designs indica-

tive of Jewish burial practice. Names found here were Tough (= Thow), Godsman, Perry,

Norrie, Luias, Argo, Cassie, and Cheyne (= Hebrew letter Shin, with a pun on schon,

“beautiful”). Turriff cemetery also had several flat stones and names such as Chessar

(Hezar), Imlach, Taws, Shirof (Sharif), Grassie (- Grassi, Garcia, Gracia, the ancestral

village of a famous noble Sephardic family from the area of Barcelona), Chivas, and Loban

(perhaps from Lobbes, a commercial center in the Low Countries). Finally, Tyrie

graveyard had several Semitic surnames: Pirie, Lyon, Lee, Lovie, 27 Lowe (indicative of

lion/Loewe, for the tribe of Judah), Shirran, Lunan (Sp. de Luna) and Chivas.

 

 

Skene Churchyard

 

Hepburn

 

Aberdeen

 

We now turn to the population of Aberdeen proper, the earliest useful record for

which is the list of merchant and trade burgesses, beginning 1600-1620. To become a

burgess required social, political and economic standing in the community. It was a

hereditary status, passed from father to son and not granted to outsiders unless they mar-

ried the daughter of a burgess. The names of several burgesses in Aberdeen from 1600 to

1620, 1631 to 1639 and 1640 to 1659 are listed below. As the reader will see, they include

a great many names that are, prima facie, Sephardic, French Jewish and even Islamic.

 

From 1600 to 1620, for example, we find Allies (= Ali, Arabic for “man”), Balmanno,

Frachar, Gareauche, Horne (cp. Hebrew shofar), Menzies, Pantoune and Zutche. From

1621 to 1639, names such as Alshinor, Ezatt, Goldman, Omay, and Zuill appear on the

list. The time period of the 1640s and 1650s sees Arrat, Daniell, Dovie, Izods, Pittullo and

Yair added. By the time of the first Scottish national census in 1696, additional Jewish

and Islamic surnames had made their home in Aberdeen, including Deuran (cp. the rab-

binical family of Duran), Orem, Lucas, Scrimgeor, Monyman, Aeson, de Pamaer, and

Lorimer. By the late 1700s (1751-1796) a list of apprentices in Aberdeen included Chillas,

Gillet, Kemlo, Silver, and Tilleray.

 

 

1696 Census: Aberdeen Environs

 

The 1696 census also sheds light on who was living in the areas around Aberdeen.

For example, in Belkelvie and New Machar we find Barok, Brockie, Salmon, Talzor, Cow-

ane, Hervie, Wysehart, Pyet and Essell (Heb. Assael). And in nearby Daviot, Bethelnie

and Bourtie, there are the surnames Hebron, Gammie, Lunan, Shivas, Shirres, Argoe,

Currie, Yool, Benzie and Japp.

 

Although we have not listed all the surnames in the northeast section of Scotland,

we have given a representative sampling in the lists published here. What is striking is

the very low incidence of “traditional” Scottish surnames (once the origin of aristocratic

Jewish families like Gordon, Fraser, Leslie and their ilk is factored in). The candidate pop-

ulation for a significant paternal genetic legacy in Aberdeen strongly resembles the

Sephardic Jewish contribution to the founders of Colombia, a Spanish colony established

in South America at about the same time.

 

The male and female lines of the Colombian population were genetically mapped

in exacting detail by Carvajal-Carmona and his team of geneticists at the University of

Antioquia (2000). They found an unusually large (16 percent) frequency of paternal

 

 

9. The Judaic Colony at Aberdeen

 

Semitic ancestry, including the Cohen modal haplotype of Jewish priests (p. 1290). Sim-

ilarly, the correspondence between Jewish names mentioned in the records of the Span-

ish Inquisition and reflected in the Aberdeen burgess and merchant lists is much too high

to be coincidental. In both records one can trace the path of Jewish refugees fleeing the

Iberian Peninsula in order to escape the long arm of the Holy Office. If readers were to

tabulate the complete listings in the original documents we cite using the surname touch-

stones we have argued for in these pages, around 50 percent of the surnames would fall

into the French-Jewish/Sephardic/Islamic column. 31 Those marked with an asterisk appear

in the same form in a contemporaneous record of Jewish surnames compiled by the Span-

ish Inquisition. 32

 

 

Aberdeen Merchant and Trade Burgesses, 1600-1620

 

 

Merchant (= Heb. Jacob) 38

 

Further, there is also surname evidence that this exotic population extended north

to the Orkney Islands. The Orkneys were ruled by the Sinclair family — of Templar fame —

and thus it would make sense that they would permit Templar-linked refugees to settle

on their lands. In the Yell Cemetery on Orkney, likely named after the Hebrew Jehiel

(“God lives”) — there is also a Yell County, Arkansas, incidentally — we find, for exam-

ple, a Hosea Hoseason, a Basil Pole, a Jemima Jeromson and a Janet Tarel — all domi-

ciled there quite recently.

 

The Orkney Island surname genealogy listings include Annal, Arnot, Esson, Gor-

rie, Lyon, Davie, Gullion, Holland, Hourie and Omand as “native born.” Patterns such

as these call into serious question the presumption that even these northernmost por-

tions of Scotland were inhabited by persons primarily of Viking/Scandinavian descent.

Indeed, genetic investigations of the population in the remote north of Scotland have

found the gene pool there surprisingly low in “Viking genes, ” though how much of the

dominant Atlantic Modal Haplotype (AMH) is Celtic and how much is Iberian has not

yet been reliably determined; see, for instance, Wilson et al. 2001, also Helgason et al.

2000.

 

Mid- and South Yell: Orkney Cemetery

 

 

Young

 

 

Source: http: //www.cursiter.com/pages/origins.htm  

 

 

Aberdeen and the World: 1200-1750

 

We believe that it was this Judaic community that provided Aberdeen its large role

as an international center of trade from the 1200s onward. Keith (1974, p. 46-47) writes:

 

As commerce went in those days, Aberdeen plied a busy trade in the fifteenth century with

both the Netherlands and the Baltic ports, Danzig and Poland particularly. The Danzig busi-

ness developed sharply after 1500 [when additional Sephardim would have arrived there

from Iberia], and during the next 200 years the number of Scotsmen trading in Poland was

so large as to become proverbial. Several observers put them at 40, 000.... After 1500 there

were Aberdonians of the name of Skene with cloth mills and sugar refineries in Poland....

 

The older and steadier commerce was with the Low Countries. Bruges, Middleburg, and

Campvere were in turn the Scottish staple there — the clearing-house for all Scottish

imports....

 

There were about half a dozen great Aberdonian shipping families— the Cullens, Blindse-

les, Rattrays, Fiddeses and Pratts. Greatest of all the town’s merchants were Andrew Cullen

and Andrew Buk. Cullen was Provost in 1506 and 1535.... Even Bishop Elphinstone engaged

in the overseas trade, though as a priest he must have procured a special licence to do so (! ).

When he was building King’s College he sent abroad wool, salmon, trout, and money, receiv-

ing in exchange carts, wheelbarrows, and gunpowder — to quarry and transport the freestone

from Elgin which he was using in Old Aberdeen.

 

Royalty also was closely aligned with Aberdeen. David II had opened a mint there

for the making of coins and his sister Matilda was married to Thomas Isaac (obviously

Jewish), a clerk and burgess of the city. By the early 1400s, a Sephardic family, the

Menezes/Menzies, had arrived. Keith (1974, p. 67) comments:

 

In the first half of the fifteenth century, a new family appears upon the scene. The

Chalmerses [from de Camera, Cameron, Chambers, meaning “chamberlain”] were still at the

height of their influence when the first member of this house, which was to rule the destinies

of Aberdeen for 200 years, made his appearance in the provost’s seat. This was Gilbert Men-

zies, surmised to have been a son of Sir Robert Menzies of Wemyss. Gilbert came from

Perthshire 40 to Aberdeen about 1408.... No more brilliant autocratic family than the Menzies

ever resided in Aberdeen. They held their heads high before royalty; they lived side by side

with the most opulent of the nobility.

 

Also prominent among Aberdeen’s leading families were the Bannermans, one of

whom, Alexander Bannerman, was physician to David II. Yet another was Robert David-

son. John Barbour (= Berber) became archdeacon of Aberdeen in 1357. Keith (1974, p.

95) notes he “was a scholar and a man of business, as well as a priest and a poet... and

above all, he was a historian.... He several times audited the King’s household accounts

and those of the Exchequer.... He twice traveled in France. Both David II and Robert II

gave him pensions.” Another Aberdeen provost, in 1416, was Thomas Roull (= Raoul),

mentioned by Keith (p. 97).

 

Keith also records (p. 104) that an Andrew Schivas was the “Master of Schools” for

Aberdeen. And the same Skene family that was operating linen factories and sugar mills

in Poland also produced Gilbert Skene, who held the chair of medicine at Kings College

in 1556 and became physician to King James IV. Skene also authored the first book on

medicine in Scotland. Even earlier, Bernard Gordon had written an excellent treatise on

the subject (1305 c.E.), and this text was still in use at the renowned medical school of

Salerno (Italy) in 1480.

 

Another Gordon, one named Patrick, held the Hebrew chair at Marischal Univer-

sity in Aberdeen in 1642. Keith (p. 176) informs us he “learned Hebrew from a Jew”: most

likely, he already knew it. And yet another Gordon, Thomas, was making regular trips

to the island of Leghorn in Italy during the early 1600s. At this time, Leghorn, or Livorno,

had a large and prosperous Jewish population, thanks to licenses and special dispensa-

tions by the de Medici rulers of Florence; it was also the center of the coral export trade

with India (gems and metals were the import goods). John Burnet, another Aberdonian,

was already engaged in the tobacco trade with Maryland and Virginia. In English eyes,

the Scottish tobacco trade was illegal. It was carried out behind the backs of the mer-

chants of the Royal Exchange in London, becoming enormously profitable in years when

Aberdonian and Glaswegian traders managed to undercut the state contract with France.

 

A wealthy Scottish merchant and financier in Danzig, Robert Gordon, left £ 10, 000

for the establishment of a school for indigent boys in Aberdeen. Another Gordon from

London, William, was the doctor of medicine at Kings College from 1632 to 1640. He had

been educated at Padua in Italy and studied dissection, which he introduced into the

medical curriculum. He also served as the business manager for the college (Keith, pp.

306, 339).

 

Not all the scions of Jewish-descended families in the North of Scotland, however,

were pillars of polite society. Several were smugglers (Wilkins 1995). In France, an Alexan-

der Gordon of St. Martins and a Robert Gordon of Bordeaux supplied John Stewart of

Inverness, Scotland, with contraband salt and liquor. Similarly, Andrew Cruikshank,

John Sutherland, and Alexander Brodie smuggled tobacco from Port Hampton, Virginia,

to their factory in Gourdon during the American War of Independence, proving perhaps

once again that money outbids politics when it comes to power.

 

Finally we must ask the question: Did these Aberdonian families still maintain social

and economic ties with their ancestral families in France and with other Crypto-Jews in

that country or elsewhere? We believe the answer is a resounding Yes and will use the

overseas suppliers of Stewart et al. shown as a case in point. First, the reader is invited

to take at look at the list of cities with which these Scots had trading relationships. They

range from Scandinavia (Copenhagen, Stockholm, Bergen) to Holland (Rotterdam), to

France (Rouen, Boulogne), to Spain (Barcelona), to Italy (Livorno)— all places of

Sephardic Crypto-Jewish settlement after the Inquisition. Further, the trading partners

used in these cities included not only persons with relatives or ancestors now in Aberdeen

(e.g., Robert Gordon and John McLeod in Bordeaux; Campbell in Stockholm; Farquhar

in Bergen, Norway), but — very importantly — Jewish trading houses which would usu-

ally only trade with other Jewish companies. For example, Jacob Ferray in Le Havre;

Shalet, Vonder and Ferrant in Barcelona; and Rosenmeyer, Flor and Co. in Frederick-

swaag. This, we posit, is strong evidence of a common Judaic awareness and ethnic iden-

tity recognized on an international level.

 

Overseas Suppliers Used by John Stewart,

 

Equally eloquent of Scottish Jews’ ties to other countries are the names of Scots who

served in the Russian military or operated businesses in Russia during the 1600s and

1700s. Russia at this time was extremely accommodating to Jews from a variety of coun-

tries, Poland, Germany, Pomerania and Hungary among them, in an effort to interna-

tionalize its economy. Virtually all of Scotland’s leading families sent members to Russia.

Among the most noteworthy were the Gordons and Davidsons. The latter became

Davidoffs/Davidovs, and both of them have Russian (and doubtless also Israeli) descen-

dants recognized as Jewish. Indeed the two Russian Jewish Gordons whose DNA we tested

both carried the Kohanim gene.

 

 

Scots Serving in the Russian Army or Operating

Businesses in Russia, 1600-1800

 

 

Sir Robert Adair 1791

James Balfour 1770

James Bannatine 1632

 

John Carr /Kar 1618*

Robert Carr /Kerr 1610*

George Forbes 1675

James Forbes 1633

George Keith 1650s

George Keith 1661

James Keith 1696

John Muir 1661

Andrew Murray 1632

Ethan Murray 1632

James Murray 1632

Peter Murray 1632

William Murray /Morea

1636

George Napier 1730s

George Ogilvy 1648

 

 

*Still many descendants in Russia.

 

Robert Pont (du Pont)

 

1562

 

Thomas Drummond

 

1564

 

Adam Bellenden

 

1615-1635

 

William Fogo 5

 

1619-1623

 

 

Keep in mind these patterns of office holding predate the enormous out-migration

of Iberian Jews due to the Inquisition. Indeed, religious scholars have pointed out that

it would be foolhardy to assume that the estimated 200, 000 Jews expelled from Spain and

Portugal after 1492, added to the millions of others who had already converted, genuinely

or not, to Catholicism, had no impact upon the religious practice in the countries to

which they migrated (see Lavender 2003, p. 1). How could they fail to have a rather large

one? They were well educated, in many cases more steeped in learning and better trained

in the professions than the Christian majority. They were multilingual, well traveled, and

socially active, often holding key positions in government, finance and civil administra-

tion. (For instance, John Mossman was royal treasurer to James IV of Scotland, and an

architect-master mason named Moise Martyne designed the East Range facade of Falk-

land Palace for James V.) Their numbers included a high proportion of physicians, pro-

fessors, artists, philosophers, international traders, astronomers, manufacturers,

craftsmen, cartographers, ship builders, architects, bankers, brokers, metallurgists, jew-

elers, smiths, glaziers and chemists. Some moved in the upper ranks of society, becom-

ing counselors to kings and emperors, popes and princes; indeed, not a few had careers

within the Catholic Church (Gitlitz 2002, pp. 563-69).

 

In all these social roles, their private religious beliefs must have influenced their dis-

course, actions and counsel. Lavender (2003), who recently uncovered the Sephardic

ancestry behind his family’s French Huguenot roots in Charleston, S.C., draws attention

to the fact that the Huguenot Seal of 1559 has the same four Cabalistic Hebrew letters,

YHVH (the Tetragrammaton), 6 engraved upon it — within a burning bush, no less— as

we found emblazoned on the title page of the Edward Raban psalter in Aberdeen in 1623.

Many of the Huguenots were formerly Jews and Moors (Roth 1932), and in France, the

persecution of Jews and Huguenots went hand in hand. The King’s dragonnards came

after both with equal ferocity, and often the same legislation was used to condemn them

 

This headstone from the Dunblane Cathedral cemetery has a Judaic Ten Commandments motif.

Photograph by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman.

 

This headstone, also from Dunblane Cathedral cemetery, displays the Judaic dove and olive branch

symbol. Photograph by Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman.

 

in the courts and seize their assets. Could it not be more than merely fortuitous that the

Protestant Reformation sprang from those very countries to which Sephardim fled —

France, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, England and Scotland?

 

Remarking on the main difference between the Reformation in Scotland and in

England, M’Gavin wrote:

 

England... retained many of the ceremonies, the habits, and almost all the frame-work, of the

previous [Catholic] establishment. In Scotland, these were generally swept away; and an order

was established, simple and unostentatious, having more of a spiritual kingdom, and much

less of the splendour of this world, than our neighbour in the south [Howie 1981, p. xi].

 

Curiously, few scholars have actively pursued this angle of investigation in explor-

ing the origins of Protestantism. We suspect it is for the same reasons Scottish history is

normally told as a monothematic battle for independence from the British “elephant”

that one popular writer finds himself “in bed with” (Kennedy 1995) — told with such par-

tisan zeal, in fact, that “Scots” and “Scottish” come to be defined only as a counterfoil to

“British, ” eclipsing all other strains of nationality and culture that went into the making

of modern Scotland. We propose that the Reformation, beyond being a movement against

Catholicism, should also be seen as a movement toward Judaism.

 

 

John Calvin/Cauvin (1509-1564)

 

John (Jean) Calvin was born in 1509 in Picardy, France; the family name was per-

haps actually Cauvin. John’s father, Gerard, was employed as an attorney by the Lord of

Noyon. Of John’s youth we know only that he served the noble family of deMontmor and

studied for the priesthood. In early adulthood, Calvin moved to Paris, where he became

friends with the two sons of the French king’s physician. Given their surname and their

father’s occupation, Nicholas and Michael Cop were likely of Crypto-Jewish descent.

Calvin’s father persuaded him to abandon training for an ecclesiastical career and instead

pursue an education in the law. However, in 1529 Calvin decided instead to seek an edu-

cation in the humanities under scholar Andrea Aciate 8 in Bourges, France. Calvin was

joined there by a friend from Orleans, Melchior Wolmar. Wolmar instructed Calvin in

Greek and later in Paris, Calvin became proficient in Hebrew, as well.

 

From 1532 to 1534, Calvin experienced a religious epiphany, turning to Protes-

tantism. Concurrently, his friend Nicolas Cop was elected rector of the University of

Paris. Calvin helped prepare Cop’s inaugural address which was strongly Protestant in

tone. As a result, Cop was ordered to appear before the Parisian Parliament, but fled

instead to Basel, Switzerland — a Protestant stronghold.

 

At the time, a war was in progress between Francis I and Charles V, so Calvin was

forced to make his own way to Switzerland through Geneva. In Geneva, William Farel 9

(bearing a Sephardic surname), founder of the Reformed Church in Geneva, convinced

Calvin to stay and help preach the new Protestant theology. Calvin obliged and set up

several Protestant religious schools in the city.

 

However, theology within the new Protestant movement was in flux; a diversity of

theological positions was present even from the earliest days, perhaps due to the desire

to overthrow the strict orthodoxy of the Catholic doctrine. Thus Calvin’s views were

shared by some but not by all Reform theologians of the time period. Calvin next moved

on to Strasbourg where he married a widow, Idelette de Burre, in 1540. He continued to

preach, write and teach in Strasbourg, establishing himself as one of the prime movers

of the new theology.

 

From this capsule biography we learn that Calvin’s father was an attorney in Picardy,

which contained at the time a flourishing Marrano colony. 10 Obviously his father was lit-

erate and well-educated; he was also an advisor to nobility— common traits of Crypto-

Jews. Gerard Cauvin was clearly ambitious for his son, guiding his career with an eye

toward social and economic advancement. He was not a force of Catholic religious fer-

vor or conventional piety.

 

We read also that John chose to learn both Greek and Hebrew, languages which

would have permitted him to read the Old Testament (i.e. Torah) in its original ancient

form, rather than relying upon Christian translations into Latin. We perceive as well that

he favored universal literacy, a Judaic value, that two of his closest friends, Cop and Farel,

both had Sephardic surnames, and that he married a woman named Idelette de Bure, evi-

dently of possible Sephardic descent. A surviving sketch of John Calvin shows him with

leather head covering, full beard and dark features. While we do not presume to judge

the sincerity or Christian orientation of his beliefs, we do hold that he was of Crypto-

Jewish descent, that he moved in circles that included Marranos, and that his theology

would naturally have been influenced by these ancestral and communal ties.

 

 

John Knox (1513/14? to 1572)

 

Details of John Knox’s childhood and even his birth date are unknown. Historians

believe he was born around 1513 or 1514 in Haddington, Scotland. It is known that Knox

attended a university, but unknown whether it was St Andrews or the University of Glas-

gow. 12 It appears unlikely that Knox graduated, choosing instead to take up the priest-

hood as a career around 1540. By the early 1540s he was serving as a theological lecturer

and by 1545 had come under the influence of George Wishart, a Lutheran-oriented min-

ister.

 

In March 1546, Catholic Cardinal Beaton ordered Wishart burned at the stake for

heresy and Scotland entered the bloody throes of the Reformation. The Cardinal him-

self was killed by an angry mob of Protestants, among them John Knox, who stormed

his castle at St. Andrews.

 

The Protestant radicals were soon defeated, however, and Knox was sent in chains

to serve as a galley slave in France for 19 months. When pro-Protestant King Edward VI

of England obtained his release, Knox made his way back to the Scottish borders, serv-

ing as a royal minister in Berwick and New Castle. Sickly Edward soon died, however,

bringing the staunchly Catholic Mary Tudor (“Bloody Mary”) to the throne of England.

Knox fled to Europe, first to Frankfurt, Germany, and then on to Geneva, Switzerland,

where he joined forces with John Calvin and also assisted in the translation of the Bible

from Latin to English, resulting in the Geneva Bible. It was also in Geneva that Knox

wrote the tract “Faithful Admonition” (1554) which advocated the violent overthrow of

“godless rulers” by the populace. He became pastor of the English Reformed Church in

Geneva (1556-1558) and subsequently published his tract “First Blast of the Trumpet

against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, ” which attacked the policies and right to

rule of Catholic monarchs Mary of Guise (Scotland) and Mary Tudor (England).

 

In 1557, several Protestant Scottish noblemen, including James Stewart, the Earl of

Moray (see chapter 1), signed a covenant declaring Protestantism the national religion of

Scotland. Knox had been in correspondence with them and returned to Scotland at their

request in May 1559. With Knox’s leadership, the Scottish Parliament declared itself a

Protestant nation and adopted the “Scots Confession”; Catholicism was banned from

Scotland.

 

In 1560, a general assembly was held to assist the reformation of the Scottish church.

By 1561, the “Book of Discipline” was adopted by the Scottish Parliament, placing Calvin-

ist Presbyterian structure at the center of church governance. In this treatise, Knox out-

lined a system of education and welfare covering the entire Scottish population that was

to be financed by the sale of former Catholic properties. 13 Knox also re-designed the con-

tent of the worship service itself, determining that all rites and practices must be based

in scripture.

 

To go a little more deeply into Knox’s theology, let us have a look at the recent biog-

raphy by Rosalind Marshall (2000). While Marshall never doubts that Knox was a whole-

hearted Christian, she characterizes him as modeled largely after the Old Testament

prophets. In her narrative, Knox emerges as a Biblical purist, much like the Jewish

Karaites. He believed that the Bible was the word of God and that only the scriptures

should serve as a religious guide. Among his favorite texts were the Book of Daniel,

Psalms (especially Psalm 6), Exodus and passages describing David and Moses. He was

virulently anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish, viewing both Mary Stuart Queen of Scots and

Queen Mary of England as “idolatrous harlots” and “Jezebels.” He advocated that “God

should send ajehu to slay Mary Stuart.” 14 He once threw a painting of the Virgin Mary

into the river saying (p. 25), “Such an idol is accursed and therefore I will not touch it.”

 

He railed against women as monarchs, especially Mary of England, stating that under

her rule the English were “compelled to bow their necks under the yoke of Satan and of

his proud mistress, pestilent Papists and proud Spaniards” (Marshall 2000, p. 107). 15 His

exhortations to his congregants were likewise rooted in the Old Testament (p. 145). For

instance, he applied Psalm 80 (“Turn us again, O Lord God of Hosts, cause thy face to

shine and we shall be saved”) to current events, equating his present congregation to the

ancient Israelites.

 

Knox also urged the adoption of Mosaic law as the governing rule of Scotland. Under

it, “certain crimes [including] murder, blasphemy, adultery, perjury and idolatry” (Mar-

shall 2000, p. 67) would be punishable by death. He further proposed that Scotland cre-

ate a universal system of education so that every individual in the population would be

literate and able to read the scriptures; he also envisaged a universal charity system to care

for the indigent, ill and disabled. All three of these concepts are rooted in Judaic tradi-

tion, not in Christianity. Knox described the resulting society as one in which events on

Earth would mirror those in Heaven— a metaphor which Marshall attributes to St. Augus-

 

tine, but which could just as easily, and more immediately, be derived from the Cabalis-

tic tradition in France. In Knox’s view, Scotland was “a new Israel dedicated to uphold-

ing God’s law” (Smout 1969).

 

By 1656 the Scottish Parliament had institutionalized Sabbatarianism, “forbidding

anyone to frequent taverns, dance, hear profane music, wash, brew ale or bake bread,

profanely walk or travel or do any other worldly business” on the Sabbath (Smout, p.

79). Also forbidden on the Sabbath were “carrying in water or casting out ashes, ” a pro-

vision that had been in effect in Aberdeen as early as 1603, according to Smout (p. 79).

These restrictions echo in remarkable detail the Jewish mitzvoth regarding the keeping

of the Sabbath (Gitlitz 2003, pp. 317-354).

 

Knox also developed very detailed guidelines for the religious training of ministers.

“Trainee ministers would study not only theology, but Hebrew, mathematics, physics,

economics, ethics, and moral philosophy” (Marshall 2000, p. 153), a curriculum that

appears to be patterned more on the Islamic and Jewish ideals emanating from Spain and

southern France than on any prior Christian educational scheme.

 

Knox advocated that every household have its members instructed in the principles

of the Reform religion, so they could sing the psalms at Sabbath services and hold house-

hold prayer services morning and evening in their homes (Marshall 2000, p. 153). Both

parents were to “instruct their children in God’s law” (p. 29); highly reminiscent of the

familial worship practices of Orthodox Jews. Virtually the only exceptions to the Judaic

nature of his religious ideology were the absence of dietary rules, or kashrut (for instance,

a prohibition of pork); and the requirement that males be circumcised.

 

Examining Knox’s family and friends helps shed some additional light on his think-

ing and sympathies. Among his most ardent supporters was Thomas Lever, formerly mas-

ter of St. Johns College in Cambridge and later a Protestant minister living in Zurich.

Lever is a surname of Semitic origin. Descendants of this same family afterwards immi-

grated to the American colonies and established the Lever Brothers Corporation; they

were practicing Jews. Also among the early Protestants in Frankfurt, Germany, with one

of the largest Jewish communities in Europe, were Thomas Parry (a common Sephardic

surname) and John Foxe (= Fuchs, an Ashkenazic surname). When Knox returned to

Scotland, he lodged in the house of a “well-known Protestant merchant, James Syme”

(Marshall 2000, p. 89), and had for his assistant another Scot, James Barron (both, of

course, are Sephardic surnames).

 

In 1652, Knox performed the wedding ceremony uniting Lord James Stewart and

Lady Agnes Keith, the former a man who was self-consciously of Jewish descent and the

latter a woman from an Aberdonian family that we have suggested was also of Jewish ori-

gin. Knox himself had married Marjorie Bowes (the surname Bovee is French Jewish),

and the couple named their two children Nathaniel and Eleazer, Old Testament Hebrew

names uncommon among Christians at the time. When Marjorie died in 1560, she gave

her sons her blessing, “praying that they would always be as true worshippers of God as

any that ever sprang out of Abraham’s loins” (Marshall 2000, p. 155) — a strange injunc-

tion for a Christian mother.

 

In 1564 Knox remarried at the age of 50 to Margaret Stewart, age 17, a member of

the royal Stewart family. Of course, because of its linking of a noblewoman with a com-

moner (especially one who had presided over Catholic Mary Stewart’s downfall), and

because of the pairing of a young woman with an elderly man, this marriage makes lit-

tle sense — unless it is viewed from a Judaic perspective. As Marshall (2000, p. 199)

explains, Knox was the “leading minister” in Scotland at that time. If we recognize Knox

as the Head Rabbi, then his marriage to a woman of the ruling house, and of Davidic

descent, makes imminent sense. 16

 

So, can we prove that either John Calvin or John Knox were of Marrano descent?

No. But we can sum up our case by pointing to the preponderance of the evidence, which

suggests that their ancestors were Jewish and that they, themselves, were aware of this. If

we are correct in this inference, then perhaps the ultimate irony is that the Spanish Inqui-

sition — intended to crush Judaism and send Spain’s Sephardim into ignominious exile —

actually had the opposite effect. The displaced Jews, like so many tiny floating seeds from

a milkweed pod, landed on fertile ground in Holland, France, Scotland, Germany, Switzer-

land, and England, where they grew into the Protestant Reformation.

 

 

Chapter 11

 

 

Jews in the National Consciousness

of Scotland: Scott’s Ivanhoe

 

Significantly, it was a Scottish lawyer and antiquary who fired the first salvo in the

public debate over Jews in Britain; this debate intensified with the Reform Movement in

national politics and eventually led to their emancipation in the 1830s. And just as

significantly, the Jews were Sephardic. 1 He was Sir Walter Scott, Edinburgh publisher,

national champion of Scots culture and author of the immensely popular Waverly nov-

els (1771-1832). It may be surprising to learn that the best-paid author in Britain in the

first decades of the nineteenth century was a Scotsman. 2 Scottish Border Minstrelsy, bal-

lads that Scott collected on journeys through his native Borders country, had catapulted

him to fame in 1802, and The Lay of the Last Minstrel sealed it. Now he turned to prose,

and with Waverly in 1814 he created a new literary genre, the historical novel, an inven-

tion that would inspire “Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, George Eliot,

Anthony Trollope and other accomplished Continental writers of nineteenth-century

literature, such as Balzac, Hugo, Flaubert, and Tolstoy” (Herman 2001, pp. 309-310), not

to mention the American writers Irving, Hawthorne, Melville, Cooper, Twain, and Wal-

lace.

 

The debt author Washington Irving owed to Scott, and vice versa, is especially note-

worthy, for Scott’s Rebecca of York was apparently inspired by Rebecca Gratz, a member

of Philadelphia’s elite and widely regarded as the foremost American Jewess of her day

(1781-1869). 3 The story is told by Stephen Birmingham in The Grandees (1971, pp. 160-62):

 

A particularly close friend of Rebecca Gratz’s was Matilda Hoffman. It was in the office of

Matilda’s father, Judge Ogden Hoffman, that Washington Irving studied law, and presently

Miss Hoffman and Washington Irving became engaged. But before the pair could marry.

 

Miss Hoffman became ill with “wasting disease, ” a common affliction of the day, and

Rebecca went to live at the Hoffmans’ to help nurse her friend. Rebecca was there to close

Matilda’s eyes at the end.

 

The devotion of one young woman to another impressed Irving. When he went to

England to try to forget his sweetheart’s death, Rebecca Gratz and her kindness to Matilda

became almost an obsession with him.... One of the people he told the story to was Sir Wal-

ter Scott.... [W]hen Ivanhoe was published... Scott wrote Irving a letter saying...”How do

you like your Rebecca? Does the Rebecca I have pictured compare well with the pattern

given? ”

 

Thus a vivacious and emancipated Sephardic Jewish American served as the model for

Ivanhoe’s Rebecca, infusing contemporary meaning and life into the ancient tale.

 

It is counter-intuitive for many of us to realize that Scotland at that time was far

more literate and literary than England. In 1696, Scotland’s parliament had passed the

country’s progressive School Act calling for the establishment of a school in every parish

nationwide.

 

In 1790 nearly every eight-year-old in Cleish, Kinross-shire, could read, and read well. By one

estimate male literacy stood at around 55 percent, compared with only 53 percent in England.

It would not be until the 1880s that the English would finally catch up with their northern

neighbors. Scotland became Europe’s first modern literate society [Herman 2001, p. 23].

 

While intellectuals such as Adam Smith and David Hume held sway in the seats of

learning, townspeople flocked to public lectures at the universities and Scotland’s work-

ing classes read avidly. Patrons of lending libraries included bakers, blacksmiths, coop-

ers, dyer’s apprentices, farmers, stonemasons, tailors and servants (Herman, p. 23). “An

official national survey in 1795 showed that out of a total population of 1.5 million, nearly

twenty thousand Scots depended for their livelihood on writing and publishing — and

10, 500 on teaching” (p. 25). With its passion for education and high literacy rate (not

neglecting its mathematical counterpart, computational ability), Scotland was uniquely

prepared to inform the literary tastes of the masses and set the tone for public discourse.

No one was better positioned to lead the popular groundswell that blended nostalgia with

progressiveness than Sir Walter Scott, whose family came of the same background as the

Stewarts, Leslies, Frasers, and Campbells.

 

In 1819, Scott published the first of his novels in which he adopted a purely English

subject. 4 Ivanhoe introduced a set of characters based on a defining moment in English

history, the late twelfth century, and its protagonists and antagonists were all English,

from Richard Lionheart to Robin Hood. 5 Saxons and Jews represented the “other” in this

sweeping book about cultural conflict, while Scots were conspicuously absent. With its

pathos-laden figures of Rebecca the Jewess and her father Isaac, Ivanhoe attacked the

prevailing stereotypes of English history at a time when the experiment in government

called Great Britain was going through “a crisis of acculturation and assimilation...

[when] the fabrication of the (Scottish or Jewish or Irish) Briton through parliamentary

legislation led to a variety of reactions: the attempt by these minorities to reinvent them-

selves, or their rejection of their new identity, or their rejection by so-called true-born

Englishmen” (Ragussis 2000, p. 775). Moreover, in Ivanhoe’s climactic scene, “Scott

rewrites English history as Anglo-Jewish history” (Ragussis 1995, p. 113). Scott also accords

a central role to Templars in the national consciousness and sets his tale in York, about

as close to Scotland as one can get without being in the Borders. Did he know something?

 

A recent writer on collective memory and cultural “forgetting” has demonstrated

that ancestry, pedigrees, dynasties, genealogies and ethnic origins are social constructs.

Like time periods, these notions take shape through a process of collective cognition,

the organization of unrelated and discontinuous events into coherent and meaningful

narratives (Zerubavel 2003). Many people, for instance, conceive that the Roman Empire

ended in 476 C.E., even though its Eastern part, known as Byzantium, continued for

another thousand years. Nationalities are constructed around the genealogies of their

ruling families (Zerubavel, pp. 32-43). Sometimes the dynastic pedigrees have to be rein-

vented or refashioned, as was the case with Saxon England’s Norman invaders, who had

to be recast as British and Celtic in the historiography of Geoffrey of Monmouth and

William de Newbury. To take a modern example, the House of Saxe-Coburg 6 that occu-

pied the British throne was converted into the House of Windsor in short order at the

beginning of hostilities between Great Britain and the German Empire in 1914. A simi-

lar process erased the dynasty’s Scottish links under the Hanoverians in the eighteenth

century. In this spirit, we can appreciate Scott as one of the inventors of British culture.

Notably, it is a culture that includes Jews and is not born in London, the capital, but rather

in a northern province.

 

The city of York was long associated in the minds of Jew and non-Jew with the

pogrom that took place there in the year 1190, the precise timeframe of Scott’s Ivanhoe;

in the words of Joseph Jacobs, a pivotal year that brought “the first proof that the Jews

of England had of any popular ill-will against them” (1911, s.v. “London”). While King

Richard (a philosemite) was away at the Crusades, a number of local Crusaders under

Sir Richard Malebis seized the opportunity to erase their debts by murdering Jews. Those

who escaped took refuge in the King’s castle, where, inspired by one of their celebrated

poets, the visiting French rabbi Yom Tob of Joigny, they committed collective suicide (Bar-

navi 1992, p. 98). Before that disaster, York Jewry enjoyed a high degree of prosperity.

Unlike Jewish communities in the rest of England, there was no Jewish quarter in York;

rather, Jews lived betwixt and between the Christian inhabitants (Adler 1939, p. 132).

 

Knights, fair maidens in distress, bloodthirsty Templars who say things like “Back,

dog! ” and dark heroines whose “long silken eyelashes... a minstrel would have compared

to the evening star darting its rays through a bower of jessamine” (Scott 1988, p. 249)

are apparently no longer in the step of literary fashion. Though generations of Southern

belles and beaus may have been nursed on The Lady of the Lake, our local libraries could

not produce one copy of the works of the author credited with inventing historical

romance and reviving clans and tartans. Assuming our readers would face some of the

same difficulties, we will save them the trouble both of tracking down this classic and

actually reading it. We provide here a plot summary of Ivanhoe. We will then be able to

look at some of the scenes and characters which hark back to a time “when Scotland was

Jewish.”

 

Wilfred of Ivanhoe, son of Cedric, a noble Saxon, loves his father’s ward, the lady

Rowena, who also traces her descent to Saxon King Alfred. Cedric is intent on restoring

the Saxon line to the throne of England, now occupied by Norman King Richard the

Lionheart, and he hopes to accomplish this by marrying his daughter Rowena to Athel-

stane of Coningsburgh. He has banished his own son, Ivanhoe, who has joined King

Richard on the Crusades. In Richard’s absence, his brother Prince John rallies the law-

less, dissolute Norman vassals to his own cause, intending to depose Richard. Among the

knights in John’s party are the fierce Templar Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert and Sir Regi-

nald Front-de-Boeuf.

 

The story centers around two events. At a great tournament at Ashby de la Zouch,

Ivanhoe together with King Richard defeats the Templars, but is wounded. It is at this

point, more than halfway through the novel, that Scott introduces Rebecca the Jewess,

who will upstage Rowena as the love interest for both Saxons and Normans and become

the intrinsic heroine of the tale. The Templars carry off Cedric, Rowena, the wounded

Ivanhoe, Rebecca and her father Isaac to the castle of Torquilstone, where, after an excit-

ing assault by King Richard and a band of Saxon outlaws led by Locksley (Robin Hood),

the prisoners are rescued — all except for Rebecca, with whom Bois-Guilbert falls in love

and carries off to the Templar Preceptory of Templestowe.

 

We relate the rest of the story in the words of The Oxford Companion to English Lit-

erature (Drabble 1985, p. 499):

 

Here the unexpected arrival of the Grand Master of the order, while relieving Rebecca from

the dishonourable advances of Bois-Guilbert, exposes her to the charge of witchcraft, and

she escapes sentence of death only by demanding trial by combat. Ivanhoe, whose gratitude

she has earned by nursing him when wounded at the tournament of Ashby, appears as her

champion, and in the encounter between him and Bois-Guilbert (on whom has been thrust

the unwelcome duty of appearing as the accuser), the latter falls dead, untouched by his

opponent’s lance, the victim of his own contending passions. Ivanhoe and Rowena, 7 by the

intervention of Richard, are united; the more interesting Rebecca, suppressing her love for

Ivanhoe, leaves England [for Spain] with her father.

 

When the book first appeared in 1819, many criticized its author’s sense of history

as wrong-headed. He should not have pitted the indigenous Saxons against the Norman

invaders at so late a period, for by the twelfth century both peoples were well assimilated

with each other. There was no rear-guard Saxon resistance, and Robin Hood belonged

to another era entirely, the fourteenth century and later. Scott anticipated his detractors

with a mock dedicatory epistle humbly addressed to the lofty antiquary “the Reverend

Dr. Dryasdust” and back-dated to 1817. He also fitted later editions of Ivanhoe with a

long introduction, defending his theme and fictional mode of operation (p. vii):

 

The period of the narrative adopted was the reign of Richard I, not only as abounding with

characters whose very names were sure to attract general attention, but as affording a strik-

ing contrast betwixt the Saxons, by whom the soil was cultivated, and the Normans, who still

reigned in it as conquerors, reluctant to mix with the vanquished, or acknowledge them-

selves of the same stock.

 

It is clear then that Ivanhoe is about national identity and the ethnic “Other.” Lest

the point be lost, Scott has his author, in the plodding and subservient persona of Lau-

rence Templeton, apologize for deserting the easy fables of Scotland to venture into the

more treacherous ground of English myth-making:

 

In England civilization has been so long complete, that our ideas of our ancestors are only to

be gleaned from musty records and chronicles, the authors of which seem perversely to have

conspired to suppress in their narratives all interesting details, in order to find room for

flowers of monkish eloquence, or trite reflections upon morals. To match an English and a

Scottish author in the rival task of embodying and reviving the traditions of their respective

countries would be... in the highest degree unequal and unjust [p. xvii],

 

Scott, therefore, will tell the real story of English nationhood, which is not found in any

of the history books. His tale includes not only the noble yet “homely” Saxons along with

the merry band of Robin and his thieves, but also usurious Jews, good and bad Templars,

indifferent kings, and learned Jewesses.

 

Virginia Woolf remarked that there was more originality to Scott’s novels than met

the eye. “Part of their astonishing freshness, their perennial vitality, is that you may read

them over and over again, and never know for certain what Scott himself was or what

Scott himself thought” (Herman 2001, p. 310). The man himself was a bundle of para-

doxes, a Tory among the Whig heirs to the Scottish Enlightenment then getting their sec-

ond wind, a painstaking antiquarian and confirmed reactionary with a flare for modernity,

“the last minstrel” and first promoter of the Edinburgh municipal gas company. He called

himself “half-lawyer, half-sportsman... half crazy... half-everything” (p. 291).

 

Of all Scott’s ethnic types, it is Rebecca, a woman and a Jew, who is at once “most

Other, ” yet at the same time, the quintessential ingredient. When she sails away to Spain

at the end of the novel, suppressing her love at the moment of its requital by the hero Ivan-

hoe, we sense the departure of Jews from English shores and experience a void that can

only be filled with nostalgia, wonder and guilt. Scott’s readers did not like this ending:

 

The character of the fair Jewess found so much favour in the eyes of some [female] readers,

that the writer was censured because, when arranging the fates of the characters of the drama,

he had not assigned the hand of Wilfred to Rebecca, rather than the less interesting Rowena.

But, not to mention that the prejudices of the age rendered such a union almost impossible,

the Author may, in passing, observe, that he thinks a character of [such] a highly virtuous and

lofty stamp is degraded rather than exalted by an attempt to reward virtue with temporal

prosperity.... A glance on the great picture of life will show that the duties of self-denial, and

the sacrifice of passion to principle, are seldom thus remunerated [ Ivanhoe, pp. xiii-xiv].

 

It is interesting to see what kind of prejudice against Jews Scott thought his char-

acters and readers had. As we have already noticed, he reserves the appearance of Rebecca

until the middle of the book. Even then, her identity as a Jewess is hidden from the hero

until she declares herself. At first, recuperating from wounds after the battle with the

Templars, awaking from sleep, Wilfred looks upon the figure who attends his sick-bed

as a dream from Palestine, a “fair apparition” of Eastern exoticism:

 

To his great surprise, he found himself in a room magnificently furnished, but having cush-

ions instead of chairs to rest upon, and in other respects partaking so much of Oriental cos-

tume that he began to doubt whether he had not, during his sleep, been transported back

again to the land of Palestine. The impression was increased when, the tapestry being drawn

aside, a female form, dressed in a rich habit, which partook more of the Eastern taste than

that of Europe, glided through the door, which it concealed, and was followed by a swarthy

domestic.... She performed her task with a graceful and dignified simplicity and modesty,

which might, even in more civilised days, have served to redeem it from whatever might

seem repugnant to female delicacy. The idea of so young and beautiful a person engaged in

attendance on a sick-bed, or in dressing the wound of one of a different sex, was melted

away and lost in that of a beneficent being contributing her effectual aid to relieve pain, and

to avert the stroke of death [pp. 247-48].

 

Wilfred goes so far as to call Rebecca “noble damsel” in Arabic before she dispels his illu-

sions and explains that she is Jewish:

 

“Bestow not on me, Sir Knight, ” she said, “the epithet of noble. It is well you should speedily

know that your handmaiden is a poor Jewess, the daughter of that Isaac of York to whom you

were so lately a good and kind lord.”

 

Now the scales fall from Wilfred’s eyes. At the mere word “Jewess, ” all his preju-

dices come tumbling out:

 

Dumfries

 

 

Annan

 

 

Gretna Q*

 

 

Cobrend

 

Carlisle

English West At

 

 

Scottish Borders area exhibiting high modern-day levels of Mediterranean and Semitic DNA halo-

types. Map by Donald N. Yates.

 

As evidenced in Roth (1937), two other descriptors used by medieval (and modern) Jews

are ha-Levi and ha-Kohane, denoting descent from the class of Levites and priestly caste of

the ancient Hebrews.

 

Since the word rabbi means “teacher, ” it was sometimes translated as Magister or Master.

“Cantor” may appear as le Prestre (the priest). Parnas, the head of the synagogue or of the com-

munity, and gabbai, synagogue (or community) treasurer are also found. Throughout much

of medieval Europe, the Jews had a great deal of autonomy over their own affairs, even to hav-

ing their own local courts of Jewish law. Jacobs (1893) explains the descriptor Episcopi (“of the

bishop”) which occurs several times as referring to the judge of one of these courts. The Hebrew

term is dyan, which has become a modern Jewish family name.

 

 

Appendix C

 

 

Several kings, starting with Richard I, appointed what amounted to a “King’s Minister or

Liaison for Jewish Affairs, ” a prominent member of the community and often a rabbi; these

are remembered as the Judeus Presbyter. The term was first translated as a sort of high priest,

although the role was secular. The term “presbyter” appears several times on the [Roth] list

and may well refer to these men (there were about a half dozen). One of the assistants, the

chirographer [scribe, or clerk], is also mentioned on the list [ha-Levi].

 

Other descriptors referring to professions are aurifaber (goldsmith), medicus (physician),

and miles (soldier, or perhaps, knight). The Hebrew translation of medicus was ha-rophe

which can mean both “the physician” and “the leach.” A “furmager” or “fermager” is a tax

“farmer, ” paying the king a fee for the right to collect the tax in a given area. He kept the

taxes for himself with all monies above the original fee being his profit for the venture. “Scrip-

tor, ” scribe, generally referred to a sophar, a writer of religious texts, a busy man in a com-

munity whose religion emphasized literacy. “The Pointer” refers to two grammarians, students

of the Hebrew language.

 

Jewish custom calls for the use of two separate names. The shem ha-kodesh or religious

name is used during Jewish ritual such when one is being called up to read a portion of the

Torah. The common name, kinnui, was used in everyday affairs. It could be formed in sev-

eral ways: (1) the shem ha-kodesh could be translated into the vernacular. Thus, Berichiyah,

“blessing, ” becomes Benedict; Obediah, “servant of G-d, ” Norman French Serfdieu. (2) A

name similar in sound to— or using some of the letters in — the shem ha-kodesh could be

used; thus, Robert for Reuben, George for Gershom. (3) A nickname could be made from the

shem ha-kodesh.

 

Hebrew nicknames go back to the days of the Bible. Numbers 13: 4-15 lists the names of

the spies Moses sent into the land of Canaan, giving several with a nickname as well. Josce,

Hok, and Copin were common period English nicknames for Joseph [Isaac, and Jacob] (Heb

Yos-eph, Ytz-hok and Ya-a-kov, respectively). Biket was used for Rebeccah. Even kinnui were

not exempt. Deulecresse, the translation given for both Gadaliah and Solomon, is often abbre-

viated to Crease.

 

Sometimes, a name that in some way referred to shem ha-kodesh (or the individual) could

be used. A common practice was to take the references made by Jacob on his deathbed (Gen-

esis 49) or Moses in his final oration to the Children of Israel (Deuteronomy 33). Thus, Judah

became Leon (‘Judah is a lion’s whelp, ’ Genesis 49.9). Other times, a more obscure reference

was used. Jacobs suggests that Jornet, coming from the word ‘jerkin’ (jacket) was a kinnui for

Joseph. And, in what seems to be a rare instance, the name Belaset was derived from bella

assez (fair to look upon) and applied to Rachel (Genesis 29: 17, ‘Rachel was fair to look upon’)

Bonevent (good day) referred to a child born on a holiday, especially Passover (ha-Levi)....

 

Parents of Jewish girls, says ha-Levi, had more leeway in naming them. Some Biblical

or Hebrew names were used — Abigail, Zipporah, Esther, Anna or Hanna, Judith, Miriam and

Sarah. More common, however, were vernacular names: flowers (Fleur de liz, Fleur, Rose);

things of value (Almonda, Chera (Greek: Iekara, precious stone), Licoricia); desirable traits:

Bona (good), Belia (pretty), Genta (gentle), or terms of endearment: Columbia (dove),

Comitessa (countess), Pucella (little girl); or simply the names their neighbors used (Elfid,

Auntera, Margaret, Sweetecote).

 

 

Female and Male Jewish Names from Medieval England

 

 

Fleur de Liz

 

 

Flora

 

Floria, Fluria, Flurie

 

Gentil, Gentilia

 

Female

 

Miriam

 

Maria, Miriana

 

 

In 1292, just two years after the expulsion of the Jews from Angevin England, and shortly

before their banishment from the He de France and French-ruled areas, a census was made

by the royal authorities in Paris. Jews were marked with the letter J. These entries are shown

below, with our comments.

 

 

From Brabant (town in Flanders)

 

Appendix C

 

At the time this list was made, France was at war with England (and would be for another

hundred years). Many Jews in Paris were clearly regarded as ex-nationals of England. Their

association with Jews from Brabant, Brugges, Ghent, Soissons and Meux can be read as a sign

that some Jews expelled by Edward I took refuge with Flemish relatives and business part-

ners, likely retracing their steps in coming to England with the Normans. Here they also min-

gled with Jews from the Rhineland, Iberia and southern France, Prague, Palestine and Babylon.

 

 

Appendix D

 

 

Davidic Jewish Genealogies

 

 

Arthur Benveniste is one of the founders of America s Society for Crypto Judaic Stud

ies. He traces his Ladino family back to twelfth century Catalonia and Narbonne and ties it

to the Shealtiel, Gracian and Luna families of Sephardic Spain, all of whom claim Davidic

descent. Of the name itself, he writes that it belongs to an old, rich, and scholarly family of

Narbonne, the numerous branches of which were found all over Spain and the Provence, as

well as at various places in the Orient.” It is still borne, he notes, by certain families in Bul-

garia, Serbia, and Vienna, and until World War II it was also found in Salonika, Izmir and

Rhodes. His sketch of family history includes extensive biographical notes on leading related

rabbinical families through the ages.* * * §

 

In an online article titled “Can We Claim Descent from David? Moshe Shaltiel-Gracian

discusses Shealtiel Family Davidic Descent.t He responds to the article “Can We Prove Descent

from King David? ” by David Einsiedler, who points out that whereas a great many families

claim descent legitimately from Rashi, the most famous Talmudic scholar, others have gone

farther and claimed descent through Rashi to King David. t According to these authors, one

of the earliest claims to descent from King David is found in the genealogy Mishpachat Luna,

discussed by Abraham Epstein (Vienna, 1901). This source states that before his death, Yehiel

Luria told his nephew, Moses Enosh, that he had a yichus brief (pedigree scroll) going back

to Johanan Ha-Sandlar. Johanan Ha-Sandlar lived in the second century c.e., was a Tannah

(sage) of the Mishnah, and was considered a descendant of King David. According to Epstein,

this record “was lost in the Swiss War, and Johanan Luria mourned the loss of his yichus brief

more than the material goods he was robbed of. Einsiedler notes, moreover,

 

In Seder Ha-Dorot (The Order of Generations) (Zhitomir, 1867), R. Jehiel Heilprin claims

descent from Jehiel, the father of Solomon Luria (MaHaRaSHaL), § from Rashi, and from the

Tannah Johanan Ha-Sandlar. This claim is made on the title page; in Part II, page 201, under

the entry “Rabbi Johanan Ha-Sandlar” and again in the section on books under “Lulaot

Ha-Shir” (page 60). He gives no details. More detailed references are found in Maalot

Ha-Yuchsin (Degrees of Descent), by R. Ephraim Zalman Margolioth of Brody (Lemberg,

1900). It includes a fractional genealogy “from the Tannah Johanan Ha-Sandlar to Rashi to

 

* Arthur Benveniste, http: //home.earthlink.net/~benven/.

 

Sassoon and Ab Ravanel

 

The Sassoon family is often also referred to as being of Davidic descent. In The Sassoons

(New York, 1968) Stanley Jackson writes:

 

Small colonies (of Jews) have settled from antiquity in India and China, but Baghdad

remained the nerve center of the exiled. Over 40, 000 were living in the city by the 12th

century, and the Sassoons were among an elite who claimed their pedigree from King David

himself.... Among their ancestors were the Ibn Shoshans, princes of the community in

Toledo, Spain.... As early as the 17th century, a scholar and mystic of Venice, Abraham

Sason, proudly claimed descent from Shephatiah, the fifth son of King David.... The first

member of the family of whom there is any significant documentary evidence was Sason

ben Saleh, born in Baghdad in 1750, who was the Chief Banker and had the honorary title

of Sheikh, and became in 1778 Nassi (Prince of the Captivity) of the Jewish community.

 

However, as Einsiedler remarks (qtd. in Shaltiel), Davidic descent is not mentioned in either

Chaim Bermant’s The Cousinhood (MC, 1972) or Cecil Roth’s The Sassoon Dynasty (London,

1941).

 

The Ab ravanel / Abarbanel family of Spain is frequently characterized as of Davidic

descent. The Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem, 1972) reports that the family, first mentioned in 1300, attained distinction in Spain in the 15th century.... Don Isaac Abravanel (1437-1509), finance minister to the Kings of Portugal, then Spain, then Naples, wrote in his memoirs: “All my forebears, descended from King David, son of Jesse

of Bethlehem, were worthy leaders of our people” [Volume II, page 102].

 

But Shaltiel quotes Einsiedler as rejecting these claims, for the latter says, “I have not

found sources going far enough back to support the claim of Davidic descent.” Shaltiel

concludes,

 

The bottom line is: King David had a number of wives and concubines, and about two

dozen children are mentioned in the Bible. King Solomon “had seven hundred royal wives

and three hundred concubines” (I Kings 11: 3). One can only imagine how many children

he had. After nearly 3, 000 years, there may be an untold number of their descendants.

 

There is a fair possibility that you and I may be among them. All we need is good evidence

and records that go back that far and [to] give convincing proof of our claim. So far, avail-

able records cannot do it. Some individuals rely on tradition and faith to back their claim.

More power to them. The rest of us may have to wait for that promised descendant — the

Messiah.

 

We agree with this rebuttal and propose that these Sephardic families very likely con-

verted to Judaism around 750-900 c.e. in France, together with several families who subse-

quently moved to Scotland (e.g., the Stewarts, Davidsons). In all these cases, we suggest that

because they were converted by a Davidic descendant at the Jewish Academy in Narbonne,

they came to believe that they therefore descended from King David themselves, in accor-

dance with the generational myth-making process described by Zerubavel (2003). Note that

virtually all these “Davidic pedigrees” begin around 900-1100.

 

Notably also, DNA from over 10 descendants of the Sisson family in the United States

matched the Caldwell-Yates-Ramey- Stewart haplotype and is Rib Sephardic, but not Semitic.

 

 

Appendix E

 

 

Border Reiver DNA

 

 

Since completing When Scotland Was Jewish, the authors became aware of a large col-

laborative project called Border Reiver Families DNA Study (available at http: //freepages.

genealogy.rootsweb.com/~donegalstrongs/reiver_families. htm). The Borderlands separating

England from Scotland are notable as the traditional stronghold of several important Scot-

tish clans and septs, including Scott, Burns, Tait/Tate, Forster, Beatty, Rutledge, Graham,

Armstrong, Elliot, Johnston, Kerr, Kay, Gray, Hume, Bell, Davidson, Storey, Robinson, Crow,

Langley, Heron, Hunt, Lindsay, Jackson, Taggart, Bold, Reade, Young, Oliver, Brown, Watts,

Turner, Taylor, Chamberlain, and Maxwell. Members of these families emigrated in high

numbers to America during the Scots-Irish migration of the eighteenth century and crop up

among the Melungeons.

 

The interpretive results of this study will be years in coming, but it is evident at a glance

that the leading families who controlled this region have a similar mixture of DNA lines as

the Scots investigated in our book, with Iberian-centered Rib forming the overwhelming

majority of male lineages. Some surprises that tend to corroborate our thesis include Hall,

Moorish (E); Liddell and Armstrong (J2); numerous Hungarian names*; and Elliott (C).t

 

 

* Tentatively; we note Carruthers, Carr/Kerr (swordsman), Carnaby, Darby (D’Arby), Armstrong, Strange, Strong, Brown

(through translations of Hungarian words like kar, nagy and barnaj. Bell (Bela? ), Selby fcsel “deceive”), Taggart (mem-

ber) and perhaps Heron (white, blonde), Irvin/Erwin and Beatty (fearless). Carnegie (“big czar”) has already been dis-

cussed.

 

t About this lineage, the author of the Clan Elliott subsheet speculates: “The top five hits in YHRDfell in Gotland, China, Iran, Spain, Venice and among the Iraqi Kurds.... this haplotype may be Hunnish or Indo-Iranian in origin, and could have come to Britain with the Sarmatians in the Roman Army, or with Norman invaders of Alanic or Visigothic [empha- sis added] descent.... these Elliotts (or Eliots) were reputedly descended from a Norman knight surnamed ‘Aliot.’” We have suggested above that Elliot comes from Judeo-Arabic and means “those who go up” (i.e., who are called up for serv- ice, or make an aliyah, who become distinguished). The famous poet and man of letters, Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-

1965), has Anglo-French Jewish ancestry in both his maternal and paternal lines, a fact which sheds light on his efforts to help Jewish refuges and alleged anti-Semitism; see R.F. Fleissner, “T.S. Eliot and Anti-Semitism, ” Contemporary Review (Dec. 1999).

 

Chapter Notes

 

 

Chapter 1

 

1. Scotland even lacks an agreed-upon history of

its place-names. As has been pointed out, its land-

scape, glacial and volcanic at once, with marine fos-

sils in the Grampian Mountains, and some of the

deepest lakes in the world, was so bewildering that

the modern science of geology had to be created to

explain it (by James Hutton and Sir Charles Lyell;

see Magnusson 2000, pp. 2-3). Two archeological

marvels are distinctively Scottish, the brochs (stone

towers) and crannogs (lake fortresses), while all

Scotland’s major rivers and firths show evidence of

having been bridged with a network of highways

prior to the Roman arrival. Modern-day attempts to

etymologize many of Scotland’s oldest place-names,

however, are conflicting because no consensus has

emerged on the country’s underlying chronology of

settlement. Does the name Douglas derive from

“dark stranger, ” “black water, ” or “one from Gaul”?

It depends on what you believe was the original lan-

guage — Scottish Gaelic, some other Gaelic: English,

or French. Does the name for Tiree, one of the islands

of the Inner Hebrides, come from Gaelic Tir-iodh

“Land of Corn, ” or Tir fo Thuinn “Land Below the

Waves”? Or was the original name something else, in

a different language? Curiously, most of Scotland’s

islands bear names that were apparently given in the

Greek language: Hebrides = Hebrew Islands;

Orkneys = Islands of the Whales; Skye = Island of

the Scythians; Iona = Jonah’s Island; Tiree = Island

of the Phoenician Sea Goddess Tyre; Mull = Island

of Black Lead (Greek ^oXu^dop. Yet no Greek-speak-

ing inhabitants have ever been documented, much

less proposed, in Scotland’s entire history.

 

2. “Piets” (“painted people”) was the name given

by Romans to the indigenous people they found

when they conquered Britain in the first century.

Their language is presumed to have been Celtic, a

distant cousin of Latin and major branch of the

Indo-European language group. In the 18th century,

historians discovered evidence of a link between

When Bernard of Clairvaux integrated the Celtic church into the Cistercian order and


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