Quote Originally Posted by Twa_Corbies View Post

My point was that for a family or name to be considered a "clan" it must have had a patriarch or founder who bore the original undifferenced arms of the name in question; thus establishing it's recognition by the Crown and hence its status as a noble incorporation.
There is one other aspect that needs to be explored, and that is the "following" of a chief. There are a great many old and landed families in Scotland, Highlands and Lowlands alike,-- the McKerrells, for example-- that never became "clans" (in the usual, or popular, sense of the word) because the founder, and successive heads, of the family never established a following. The mere granting of arms, even to the most senior member of the family, did not make him a chief if he didn't have a following. And what was a following? In the simplest of terms it was men with swords.

If a man could raise 100 "swords" simply by calling for them he was a chief. If he couldn't, he wasn't. Now this is an over simplification, and there was no "statutory" number of men-at-arms required to form a clan or to be a chief of a clan, but I think you get my meaning.

Merely the possession of a coat of arms, the outward sign of personal nobility, did not- and does not- create a man a chief.