Clan Lockhart is one of the older families of Lanarkshire, their name connected to one of the most distinctive legends in Scottish clan history and their heraldic tradition among the most immediately recognisable in the entire Scottish armigerous canon. The name appears in historical records as Lockhart, Locard, Lokard, Loccard, and Loccart in older documents, and its origin is believed to combine a personal name of Germanic root — meaning something close to strong or hardy — with the territorial associations that gave the family their early identity in the Lowlands of Scotland. For those tracing Scottish ancestry through Lanarkshire, the upper Clyde valley, or the wider west-central Lowlands, the Lockhart name is one of the more consistently documented gentry families of the region, their story running from the age of Robert the Bruce through the turbulent politics of the seventeenth century and into the Jacobite tradition of the eighteenth in ways that make them an unusually vivid subject for those researching their Scottish heritage.
Where Does the Lockhart Name Come From?
The Lockhart family's origins in the Scottish documentary record belong to the medieval period, when the name begins to appear in connection with landholding in Lanarkshire. The family's principal seat at Lee, near the town of Lanark in the upper Clyde valley, is documented from an early period, and their presence in the landed community of Lanarkshire is attested across a wide range of documents from the thirteenth century onward. The name's evolution from the earlier form Locard to the later Lockhart reflects the kind of gradual phonological and orthographic change that affected many Scottish surnames across the medieval and early modern periods, and those researching this family in genealogical records should search under both the early form Locard and the later Lockhart to ensure a complete picture of the documentary trail.
The town of Lanark itself — one of the oldest royal burghs in Scotland, with a history stretching back to the early medieval period — was the commercial and administrative centre of the world in which the Lockhart family lived, and their estate at Lee placed them within reach of this centre while maintaining the distance that was characteristic of the landed gentry's relationship with the urban world of the burgh.
What Lands and Castles Were Associated with Clan Lockhart?
Lee Castle, near Lanark in the upper Clyde valley, was the ancestral seat of Clan Lockhart and has been associated with the family for many centuries. The castle — in its current form a substantial nineteenth-century building that incorporates elements of earlier structures — stands in the Lanarkshire countryside and remains the most tangible surviving connection to the Lockhart family's territorial history. The estate of Lee and its surrounding lands were the foundation of the family's position in Lanarkshire, and their management of the estate across many generations of the medieval and early modern period speaks to the consistent rootedness in place that characterised the most enduring of the Scottish gentry families.
The broader Lanarkshire world in which the Lockharts lived was shared with other great families of the west-central Lowlands, including Clan Hamilton — whose own Lanarkshire base and long presence in the county parallel the Lockhart story across many of the same centuries of Lowland Scottish history — and Clan Douglas, the great southern Scottish family whose connection to Robert the Bruce and whose role in the expedition that carried the king's heart toward the Holy Land makes them the essential companion to the Lockhart story in the period of the family's most celebrated legend.
Those proud of their Lockhart roots can explore clan gifts including the Lockhart tartan woven heritage blanket at Celtic Ancestry Gifts.
A Lockhart clan tartan woven blanket bearing the motto Corda Serrata Pando, I Open Locked Hearts, a keepsake of the Lee Castle and Lanarkshire heritage of Clan Lockhart. Browse Lockhart gifts here.
What Is the Clan Lockhart Motto and What Does It Mean?
The motto of Clan Lockhart is Corda Serrata Pando — Latin for I Open Locked Hearts. It is one of the most elegant and intellectually playful mottos in the entire Scottish heraldic tradition, combining a direct reference to the family name — the lock in Lockhart, and the heart of the Bruce legend — with a philosophical claim about the power of sincerity, loyalty, or love to open what is closed. The motto plays directly on the heart-and-lock imagery that defines the family's heraldry, and the combination of the visual and the verbal creates a heraldic identity of unusual coherence and memorability. For a family whose most celebrated story is about carrying a heart across the world, a motto about opening locked hearts carries a biographical resonance that few Scottish clan mottos can match.
The Latin form connects the Lockharts to the educated humanist tradition of Lowland Scotland, and the elegance of the phrase — its wordplay, its symbolic richness — speaks to a family that valued intellectual distinction alongside the martial virtues more commonly celebrated in Scottish heraldic tradition.
Who Were the Most Notable Figures in Lockhart History?
Symon Locard — the ancestor whose name is the root of both the family surname and its most celebrated legend — is the defining figure of the Lockhart origin tradition. According to tradition, Symon was entrusted after Robert the Bruce's death in 1329 with carrying the embalmed heart of the king on a crusade to the Holy Land, fulfilling the king's dying wish. The mission was diverted to Spain, where the party fought against the Moors at the Battle of Teba in 1330 alongside Sir James Douglas — whose death in that battle is historically documented — and Locard is said to have brought the heart back to Scotland, subsequently incorporating a heart and a lock into the family's heraldry and giving the name its distinctive symbolic identity. Whether the precise details of this legend are historically verifiable or represent later embellishment of a genuine episode is a question that historical scholarship continues to debate with interest, but the heraldic tradition it generated is both distinctive and ancient.
Sir William Lockhart of Lee served as a diplomat and soldier under Oliver Cromwell in the 1650s, negotiating the Treaty of Paris in 1657 and serving as ambassador to France — a remarkable career for a Scottish Lowland laird that reflected the opportunities the Interregnum opened up for men of ability willing to work within the new political order. His subsequent management of the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, retaining both his position and his lands, required considerable political skill.
George Lockhart of Carnwath, Sir William's nephew, represents a very different political tradition — a committed Jacobite who served as a Scottish commissioner in the negotiations for the Act of Union of 1707 while privately opposing it, and whose Memoirs Concerning the Affairs of Scotland, published posthumously, remain a valuable historical source for those seeking an insider's critical perspective on the Union from the viewpoint of someone who believed it to be a betrayal of Scottish interests. His Jacobite sympathies eventually forced him into exile, and he died abroad in 1731.
What Role Did Clan Lockhart Play in Scottish History?
The Lockhart family's role in Scottish history was shaped by their position as a Lanarkshire gentry family whose consistent participation in the political and military life of Scotland across the medieval and early modern periods was punctuated by two moments of particular historical significance — the Locard legend of the Bruce heart expedition, and the contrasting careers of Sir William and George Lockhart in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The contrast between Sir William's pragmatic accommodation of Cromwellian power and George's principled opposition to the Union captures something of the range of political positions that a single family could encompass across two generations of extraordinary upheaval in Scottish and British history.
The Lockhart family's Lanarkshire base gave them a consistent presence in the governance of one of the most important counties in the Scottish Lowlands, and their participation in the legal, military, and administrative structures of the county across many generations reflects the pattern of consistent local service that characterised the most enduring of the smaller Scottish gentry families.
What Is Clan Lockhart's Place in the Modern World?
The Lockhart name today is found across Scotland and in the diaspora communities of North America, Australia, and New Zealand, carried outward by the emigrations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The various spellings — Lockhart, Locard, Lokard — mean that those researching the name in genealogical records should cast their search broadly, particularly for the earlier periods when orthographic conventions had not yet settled into the form familiar today. Lanarkshire parish records at the National Records of Scotland, alongside the Old Parochial Registers of the Lanark area, provide the richest Scottish starting point for genealogical research into this name.
The heart at the centre of the Lockhart heraldry — brought back from Spain after the abortive crusade of 1330, incorporated into the family arms, and expressed in a motto that has endured for nearly seven centuries — remains the most distinctive and recognisable element of a family identity that has proven remarkably durable across many centuries of Scottish and British history.
If you're proud of your Lockhart heritage, you can explore gifts and home décor featuring the Lockhart name by using the search bar above.
We carry thousands of Scottish and Irish surnames across a wide range of products, helping families celebrate their heritage every day. Use the search bar above to find your name.
Carry a different surname? Many families connected to Clan Lockhart through marriage, history, or geography carry other names entirely. Use the search bar above to find gifts and home décor for your own family name.
