Open Veils · Answer
McCurdy timeline on the isle of Bute and Stewart connection
The McCurdy–Stewart entanglement on Bute is a suppressed chapter of Scottish clan dispossession, refugee diaspora, and cross-family alliance forged under Covenanting persecution. The WikiTree genealogical record on Petheric McCurdy frames it explicitly as a land-grab narrative: the Stewarts leveraged Crown grants to crowd the McCurdys off ancestral Bute territory. The bitter irony documented there is that the same dispossession eventually drove both families into exile together in Ulster, where enmity dissolved into marriage.
Evidence
- Petheric followed, circa 1667, landing as 'a stranger in a strange land.'
- Per the Isle of Bute as a Gaelic-Norse Contact Zone (vikingislands.co.uk, July 2026), citing historian Crawford, Alan fitz Walter's pre-1204 grant of Kingarth to Paisley Abbey — the Stewarts' own monastic foundation — represents a deliberate 'extension of power over the Clyde from Renfrewshire to the island of Bute.'
- Rothesay Castle itself, per Wikipedia's entry (July 2026), was raised by that same Alan fitz Walter or his son, cementing physical dominance.
- The County of Bute record (Wikipedia, October 2026) confirms Robert the Bruce assigned the shrievalty to his illegitimate son John Stewart, whose line eventually became Earls of Bute in 1703 — a dynasty built on accumulated advantage.
- The Petheric McCurdy WikiTree entry preserves a remarkable passage: the Stewarts had 'unfairly crowded out' the McCurdys from much of their lands through Crown-sanctioned grants in which the Stewarts 'participated so generously.'