The
Lords of Kinfauns

The Pirate
"Red Reaver"Sir Thomas Charteris, Lord of Kinfauns

Every good title needs a founding legend, and Kinfauns has one of the best: its first lord was a pirate. According to legend the first lord of Kinfauns was Sir Thomas de Longueville, later named Charteris. He was a native of France, and representative of a family well known in that country; but at the close of the thirteenth century, when at the court of Philip the Fair, having a dispute with one of the noblemen, he slew him in the king’s presence. Being refused pardon for the rash and bloody act, he betook himself to the high seas, and under the name of the Red Reaver, became terrible to all seafaring people as a remorseless pirate.

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Sir William Charteris, Lord of Kinfauns

The pirate’s son kept what his father had won. Sir William, 2nd of Kinfauns, succeeded his father in the half of Kinfauns. In 1378 he also had a charter of confirmation from James Douglas, son and heir of Sir William, Earl of Douglas, for the lands of Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire. Those had been granted by John Randolph, Earl of Moray, to his uncle Sir Patrick de Carnoto, who seems to have died without children, and the grant was confirmed again by Robert Stewart, Earl of Fife, on 17 March 1391. Note the Earl of Moray in that chain. It is not the last time the name appears on this page.

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Sir Thomas Charteris of Cagnore, Lord of Kinfauns

With Sir Thomas the paper trail gets firmer. He had a charter for the half lands of Kinfauns as heir to his father on 5 April 1408. On 10 July 1412 Robert de Ross of Craigie gave him a licence to take water through his lands, and in it calls him his “beloved brother”, a small human touch across six centuries.

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Sir William Charteris of Cagnore, Lord of Kinfauns

Sir William was served heir to his grandfather, Thomas Charteris, in the lands of Lumphanan on 1 October 1443, and he married three times. One wife was Christian, daughter of Sir Robert, 1st Lord Erskine, and widow of Patrick, 1st Lord Graham, who had died in 1465; she is named with him in a complaint dated 9 July 1476.

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de jure

Sir Thomas Charteris, 1st Lord Kinfauns

This is the moment the title enters the record. The crown charter of 13 July 1470, held in a private collection, uses the style dominus Kynfawnis, Lord Kinfauns. By it his father conveyed to him the lands of Haltoun, Craigton, Pitmorche and Craigour, all in the lordship of Lumphanan, and those of Kinfauns and Pitsindy in the lordship of Kinfauns. On 15 June 1487 King James III confirmed it under the Great Seal, and the published register describes the lands as lying in dominio de Kynfawnis, in the lordship of Kinfauns. The family had held half of Kinfauns by charter since 1330.

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Sir John Charteris, 2nd Lord Kinfauns

Sir John first appears as son and heir of Sir Thomas Charteris of Kinfauns on 17 September 1506, witnessing the charter by which William Comyn of Inverallochy gave half of his lands of Audiall to the University of Aberdeen. He was served heir to his father in the lands of Kinfauns on 2 October 1520.

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Sir John Charteris, 3rd Lord Kinfauns

John became lord because his brother was murdered, and he did not let it rest. He was served heir to Thomas on 10 April 1553, and on 11 March 1553 he and his brother’s widow, Katherine Graham, raised an action against the men responsible for the killing.

By 17 May 1551 he had married Janet, daughter of Sir James Chisholm, 2nd of Cromlix, and together they disponed their lands of Lumphanan to Mr Patrick Carnegy. Then came a turn nobody could have planned. His only surviving son, George, died before him, so he adopted Henry Lindsay as his heir, who appears afterwards as Henry Lindsay alias Charteris, filius adoptive of John Charteris of Kinfauns. John died about 1600.

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Henry Lindsay, 4th Lord Kinfauns

An adopted heir, a wedding present and an earldom, all in one life. Henry Lindsay became Harry Charteris by adoption and held the lordship of Kinfauns until 1608, when he gave it, lands and all, to his son as a wedding present. The charter calls him Lord of Carelstoun. He later inherited the earldom of Crawford, though he enjoyed it only for the last two years of his life.

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Sir John Lindsay, 5th Lord Kinfauns

Not many people can say they were given a lordship as a wedding present. Sir John Lindsay was, and in 1608 the King confirmed it in a royal charter under the Great Seal. That King was James VI, who was by then also King James I of Great Britain, France and Ireland. Sadly Sir John died before his father.

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Sir George Hay, 6th Lord Kinfauns

With Sir George Hay, born in 1570, Kinfauns arrives at the very top of Scottish public life.

In 1620 he was infeft of the lordship of Kinfauns, becoming 6th Lord Kinfauns, a title tied to the barony. His charter gave him the keeping of the Tay, with a salmon from every boat. He was made Viscount of Dupplin in 1627 and Earl of Kinnoull in 1633 by King Charles I, and along the way he served as Lord Clerk Register, Privy Councillor and Lord Chancellor of Scotland. A Lord Kinfauns as Lord Chancellor of Scotland is hard to beat.

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Sir George Hay, 7th Lord Kinfauns

Sir George Hay, born in 1596, was the only surviving son of the 1st Earl of Kinnoull and Margaret Halyburton. From 1621 to 1634 he was styled Lord Kinfauns as a courtesy title, taken from his father’s lordship, and in 1634 he succeeded as 2nd Earl of Kinnoull and 7th Lord Kinfauns.

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Sir Alexander Blair of Balthayock, 8th Lord Kinfauns

With Sir Alexander the lordship passes to the Blairs. He succeeded to Kinfauns in 1647, and in February 1654 he and his wife, Dame Elizabeth Fotheringham, formally disponed the lands and lordship, with their rights and properties, to their kinsman William Blair, a younger son of the Blairs of Tarsappie, who was infeft of the lordship of Kinfauns. The grant spells out the hereditary rights that went with the title: the office of Baillie of the Tay, the teind sheaves and the salmon fishings on the river.

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Sir William Blair of Kinfauns, 9th Lord Kinfauns

Sir William Blair of Kinfauns was created 1st Baronet of Kinfauns in the Baronetage of Nova Scotia on 18 September 1666. The baronetcy was limited to the heirs male of his body, and there lay the problem: he had two daughters and no sons.

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Ann Blair, 10th Baroness of Kinfauns

Here is the first woman on the list. Ann Blair, daughter of Sir William Blair of Kinfauns, married the Hon. Alexander Carnegie, son of David Carnegie, 2nd Earl of Northesk, on 7 August 1671. Under the marriage contract her father resigned the barony to the couple for £40,000, and they received a crown charter of the lands and barony of Kinfauns on 28 February 1673, which made Ann the 10th Baroness of Kinfauns. Ann died about 1687 and her husband in 1691. Their son, Alexander Blair Carnegie, succeeded as 11th Lord Kinfauns in 1695.

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Alexander Blair Carnegie, 11th Lord Kinfauns

Born about 1682, the son of Alexander Carnegie and Ann Blair, he inherited Kinfauns through his mother and joined the two family names as Blair Carnegie. He was served heir to his mother in 1695, and he was only fourteen or fifteen when he married two years later.

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John Gray, 12th Lord Kinfauns

The Grays arrive by marriage. On 17 October 1741 John, 11th Lord Gray, married Margaret Blair, heiress of Kinfauns in Perthshire, and with her the lordship and property came into his family. They had five sons, two of whom died before their father and three of whom succeeded to the title in turn, and seven daughters. Their daughter Jean married Francis Stuart, 9th Earl of Moray, and that marriage is why the Earls of Moray inherited Kinfauns more than a century later.

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Charles Gray, 13th Lord Kinfauns

Charles, son of John, 11th Lord Gray, and Margaret Blair, succeeded his father in 1782. He had only four years as lord and died in 1786.

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William Gray, 14th Lord Kinfauns

William, Charles’s younger brother, took the title on his death in 1786 and held it for two decades, running the family estates until 1807.

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Sir Francis Gray, 15th Lord Kinfauns

Francis, the youngest son of the 11th Lord Gray, assumed the title in 1807, the third brother in a row to do so. He sat in the House of Lords as a Scottish representative peer from 1812 to 1841 and served as Postmaster-General of Scotland. Kinfauns fans owe him most for the castle: the new Kinfauns Castle, built in the 1820s, was his project.

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John Gray, 16th Lord Kinfauns

John, son of Francis, followed his father into the House of Lords as a Scottish representative peer from 1847 to 1867, and was a Deputy Lieutenant of Perthshire. He carried on developing the Kinfauns estate.

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Madelina Gray, 17th Baroness of Kinfauns

Madelina, John’s sister, inherited on his death. She never married, and held the title as Lady Gray until she died in 1869.

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Margaret Murray, 18th Baroness of Kinfauns

Margaret was Madelina’s niece, the daughter of John Grant of Kilgraston and the Hon. Margaret Gray, and the widow of Major the Hon. David Henry Murray, a son of the 3rd Earl of Mansfield. Her memorial records that she was “the 18th in succession to the barony which now merges into the Earldom of Moray”. It happened in two steps. When she died in 1878, Kinfauns passed by entail to Edmund Stuart, who took the name Gray. When Edmund became 15th Earl of Moray in 1895, Kinfauns merged into the earldom and stayed there, while the Lordship of Gray went off down another line.

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Edmund Archibald Stuart Gray, 19th Lord Kinfauns

From here the lords of Kinfauns are Earls of Moray. Edmund, a cousin descended from the 11th Lord Gray, married Anna Mary Collinson on 6 September 1877. He succeeded to the Lordship of Kinfauns in 1878 and to the Earldom of Moray in 1895. He died on 11 June 1901 with no direct heirs, and his younger brother, Francis James Stuart, succeeded him.

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Lieut. Col Francis James Stuart, 20th Lord Kinfauns

Lieutenant Colonel Francis James Stuart was a soldier before he was an earl, reaching that rank in the Liverpool Regiment.

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Morton Gray Stuart, 21st Lord Kinfauns

Born on 16 April 1855 in Blandford, Dorset, Morton was the youngest son of the Reverend Edmund Luttrell Stuart and Elizabeth Jackson, and took a Master of Arts degree at Cambridge.

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Francis Douglas Stuart, 22nd Lord Kinfauns

Francis Douglas Stuart was born on 10 July 1892, the eldest son of Morton Gray Stuart, 17th Earl of Moray, and Edith Douglas Palmer. In the First World War he served as a Captain in the Scottish Horse and in the Royal Air Force, and won the Military Cross.

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Archibald John Morton Stuart, 23rd Lord Kinfauns

Born in Edinburgh on 14 November 1894, he was the second son of the 17th Earl of Moray, Morton Gray Stuart, and Edith Douglas Palmer. He was a navy man: educated at the Royal Naval Colleges, he served in the Royal Navy in both World Wars and reached the rank of Lieutenant-Commander.

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Douglas John Moray Stuart, 24th Lord Kinfauns

The 24th lord had the most unexpected childhood of any of them. Born in Johannesburg on 13 February 1928, he spent his early childhood on the family’s cattle ranch in Bechuanaland, now Botswana, went to school in South Africa, and only came to Scotland in 1945. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Royal Agricultural College, and went on to lead the Moray Estates Development Company through years of diversification and modernisation.

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John Douglas Stuart, 25th Lord Kinfauns

John Douglas Stuart is the son of Douglas John Moray Stuart, 20th Earl of Moray, and Lady Malvina Murray, and was educated at Loretto School and University College London.

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Fergus Commane, 26th Lord Kinfauns

The 26th lord brings the title to County Clare. Fergus Commane is Chief of Clan Ó Comáin, an Irish clan recognised in 2025 by Clans of Ireland, whose patron at the time was Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland. Its line is traced to the early Déisi kings of Munster and to the medieval chiefdom of Tulach Commáin. He married Maria Nadolski, whose family, Warzęta Korwin z Ślepowrony, has been counted among the Polish nobility since 1224, and they had three children.