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

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