Clergy (Corporate)
This is one variant — a specific cloth: this exact thread count and colourway, with its own provenance below. It is one weaving of the sett (the scale-free proportion — the same cloth at any scale or shade), whose colour order is pattern KYBKYKYBYBY.
Sourced from register-of-tartans. It is a 11 stripe tartan.
Original link https://www.tartanregister.gov.uk/tartanDetails.aspx?ref=684
2 attestations — the source records this cloth was collapsed from (oldest owns this page)
- 01/01/1850 — Clergy (Corporate) (register-of-tartans, record)
It is claimed that in earlier times the Highland clergy wore the Highland dress and carried arms and that many attempts were made to prevent them wearing tartan and to force them to wear conventional ministerial habit. These, however, had only limited success. The Clergy tartan is sometimes called "The Priest's Sett", but in the Highlands is known as "Breacan nan Cleirach" - the tartan of the Clergy. As with so very many tartans, there are many variations of the Clergy sett, due to the vagaries of the illustrators of tartan books. There is no categorisation for occupational tartans so all the clergy tartans are classed as "Corporate". This is woven by Lochcarron and sold as Clergy. The same sett but with the first pivot (Black8) changed to Blue8 and with the light grey changed to white is sold as Clark (#633). - pre 1850 — Clergy (Corporate) (tartans-authority, record)
It is claimed that in earlier times the Highland clergy wore the Highland dress and carried arms and that many attempts were made to prevent them wearing tartan and to force them to wear conventional ministerial habit. These, however, had only limited success. The Clergy tartan is sometimes called "The Priest's Sett", but in the Highlands is known as "Breacan nan Cleirach" - the tartan of the Clergy. As with so very many tartans, there are many variations of the Clergy sett, due to the vagaries of the illustrators of tartan books. There is no categorisation for occupational tartans so all the clergy tartans are classed as "Corporate". This is woven by Lochcarron and sold as Clergy. The same sett but with the first pivot (Black8) changed to Blue8 and with the light grey changed to white is sold as Clark (#633). Willie Scobie writes: "That tartan was worn by the clergy of mediaeval Scotland is almost beyond doubt. The following reference may verify this "1549: The clergy wear only round birettas and shall always take off their caps in churches, especially in choirs and in time of divine service and not dress, as for example, in top-boots and double-breasted or oddly-cut coats, or of forbidden colours, as yellow, green and such kinds of parti-colour. "(Provincial Council of Prelates and Clergy: Edinburgh) That there was an instruction prohibiting such garb suggests that it was, in fact, being worn, and 'parti-colour' was often an expression which referred to tartan. We also have clearer evidence that the Presbyterian leaders of Scotland?s Reformed Kirk frowned on the wearing of tartan by its ministers 1575: "We think unseemly all using of plaids in the Kirk by readers and ministers." (General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, recorded at the Tolbooth of Edinburgh).
Dataset — provenance for this record, inherited from the source manifest
- source
- Scottish Register of Tartans
- data captured from
- https://github.com/thetartan/tartan-database/blob/master/data/register-of-tartans/data.csv
- data date
- 1850 (this record)
- licence
- Crown copyright
Capture chain — the hands this data passed through, oldest first; each capture carries its own licence
- Scottish Register of Tartans · Crown copyright
the living register — still published by National Records of Scotland - thetartan/tartan-database 2016-2017 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Levko Kravets's frozen compilation — the capture we vendored, and where its CC licence text came from - this dictionary captured 2026-06-10 · commit 5bf86c7566
each re-capture is a git commit to data/sources
Register references
External register numbers recorded for this tartan.
- Scottish Register of Tartans: 684
- Scottish Tartans Authority (ITI): 1221
- Scottish Tartans World Register: 1221
Thread count
K/8 LR8 T58 K58 LR8 K58 LR8 T12 LR8 T28 LR/8
One full sett is 508 threads.
Palette
Palette (Tartan Register)
| Colour | Shade | Ref | OKLCh |
|---|---|---|---|
| T | #5C8CA8 #5C8CA8 | B4 | oklch(61.7% 0.067 235.0) |
| K | #000000 #000000 | K2 | oklch(0.0% 0.000 0.0) |
| LR | #A0A0A0 #A0A0A0 | N4 | oklch(70.6% 0.000 89.9) |
Sample pattern
Nearest tartan variants
The nearest existing variants by ΔTartan distance, with this cloth at the top so the swatches line up against it.
Neighbour map
Every grey dot is one of 13621 variants placed by the first two principal components of the ΔTartan feature space (42% of its variance). Red is this tartan; blue dots are its nearest — click one to open its page.
ID: /variants/s11/k4lr4t29k29lr4k29lr4t6lr4t14lr4x2lr2800000-t2503227/