Clan More / Muir
Crest: A savage’s head couped, Proper
Motto: Durum patientia frango (I overcome difficulty by patience)
Origin of Name: Gaelic “Mor”, large
Region: Lowlands
Historic Seat: Rowallan Castle
Clan Chief: None, armigerous clan
Associated Names
Clan Campbell has the inclusion of the name Mure, Muir, or Moore among Campbell septs, this is perhaps rather optimistic since the family have a perfectly good Chief of their own in the person of Mure of Rowallan, in Ayrshire, one of Scotland’s oldest and most historic families.
There are however two instances of a Campbell connection on which, presumably, the attribution is based. James Mure Campbell, who succeeded his cousin as 5th Earl of Loudoun in 1782 had added the name Mure to his own on succeeding to the estates of Rowallan. These he inherited through his mother who was the daughter of of David Earl of Glasgow and Jean Mure, heiress of Rowallan.
Members of the same family had been among the Presbyterian lowlanders imported into Kintyre the previous century by the Marquess of Argyll in order to ensure the payment of rent from his estates there and from the later 1600s onwards, the name figures among the Earl’s tenants in Kintyre.