Clan Barclay () is a Scottish clan of the Scottish Lowlands. History Origins of the clan Since the eighteenth century, Barclay historians, noted for their low level in medieval scholarship, have assumed the Scottish family Barclay (de Berchelai) is a branch of one of the Anglo-Norman Berkeley family of Berkeley, Gloucestershire. However, the link between the Scottish and English families is disputed. The Collins Scottish Clan Encyclopedia agrees that the Barclays came over from France during the Norman conquest and that they settled in Gloucestershire, England where as the Earls of Berkeley, they built Berkeley Castle in 1153. Some of the family moved north to Scotland where they settled in Aberdeenshire and Fife. An old family tradition is that the Scottish family is descended from John de Berkeley, who was the son of Roger de Berkeley, provost of Berkeley, and went to Scotland in 1069 with St Margaret. Another theory is that the clan is descended from a John de Berkeley who went north in 1124 with Maud, queen of David I. Another theory of the Barclay origin, put forth by the historian G. W. S. Barrow, points to the small village of Berkley in Somerset (in 1086 Berchelei). In 1086 the overlordship of Berkley belonged to Robert Arundel, whose main tenant was a Robert. Arundel's manors included Cary Fitzpaine (in Charlton Mackerell), near Castle Cary. Cary Fitzpaine seems to have been held by the tenant Robert as well. At the same time as Henry Lovel of Castle Cary first appears in Scotland, there appear the names of Godfrey de Arundel and Robert and Walter de Berkeley. The most recent work on the family rejects previous ideas and instead proposes that there were two migrations of Barclays. The first of these involved a younger son of the original English family moving to Scotland in the first half of the twelfth century, while a second migration occurred around 1220. Only a distant kinship existed between these separate branches of the Scottish Barclays in the early thirteenth century, and the original family, including such notables as Walter de Berkeley, Chamberlain of Scotland, had become extinct in the male line around 1200. Charters from the reign of William the Lion show that the king granted the estates of Laurencekirk and Fordoun to Humphrey son of Theobald, in right of his wife Agatha. Agatha was herself a "de Berkeley" and her husband and children