Vestiarium Scoticum

The Vestiarium Scoticum (full title, Vestiarium Scoticum: from the Manuscript formerly in the Library of the Scots College at Douay. With an Introduction and Notes, by John Sobieski Stuart) was a book which was first published by William Tait of Edinburgh in a limited edition of 1842. John Telfer Dunbar, in his seminal work History of Highland Dress referred to it as "probably the most controversial costume book ever written."

The book itself is purported to be a reproduction, with color illustrations, of an ancient manuscript on the clan tartans of Scottish families. Shortly after its publication it was denounced as a forgery, and the "Stuart" brothers who brought it forth were also denounced as impostors for claiming to be the grandsons of Bonnie Prince Charlie. It is generally accepted today that neither the brothers themselves nor the Vestiarium are what they were purported to be.

Nevertheless, the role of the book in the history of Scottish tartans is immense, with many of the designs and patterns contained therein passing into the realm of "official" clan tartans.

The 1842 edition of the Vestiarium had its beginnings in the late 1820s, when the Sobieski Stuart brothers, the then residents of Moray, Scotland, produced a copy of a document containing tartan patterns and showed it to their host, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, Bt. This manuscript, however, was not the one which the brothers claimed to be the basis for the later publication of the Vestiarium.

As explained in the Preface to the 1842 edition (which is extensively excerpted in Dunbar's History of Highland Dress) the copy which Sir Thomas saw (now known as the Cromarty MS), which bore the date 1721 on the first page and with the title Liber Vestiarium Scotia, was said by its possessors to have been obtained from a certain John Ross of Cromarty, and was said also by them to be an inferior copy of an earlier manuscript.

In this same Preface, it is claimed that the 1842 edition is based on an original manuscript (now known as the Douay MS) whose date was claimed to be 1571 (or earlier) which was at that time in the possession of John Lesley, Bishop of Ross. This Douay MS is said by the author of the Preface to be the "oldest and most perfect" copy of the Vestiarium. Having once been in the possession of Bishop Ross, subsequently it had found its way into the library of the Scots College at Douay. From there, it was supposed to have come into the possession of Bonnie Prince Charlie himself who took over the MS when on a visit to the Scots College in the early 1750s.

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