mans, of mixed Scandinavian and French blood, who followed William the Conqueror in his invasion of England in 1066. He was born in England of either Norman or Anglo-Norman parents. When he came to Scotland, tradition says he married a "Scottish chieftain’s daughter." Thus the Norman and possibly English blood was mingled with the native Celt to form the strain from which the Houstons of ancient and modern times trace their ancestry. From this blending, the line remained remarkably true, Scots marrying Scots in the native Lowlands, then in Northern Ireland and in the Colonial years in America. Racially and religiously, they were a clannish people until the late 18th century.

Hugh of Padinan, now of Kilpeter, built houses for his tenants and laborers near the walls of the castle where his people could take refuge inside the keep in times of danger from English invaders from the south or Scottish Highlanders from the north. Thus a village sprang up and the natives called it Hugh’s town. Through the years this was shortened to Hu’ston and eventually, through many changes the name of the place became Houstoun. This was the name and spelling finally adopted by succeeding barons as a surname. They were officially Houstoun of that Ilk, that is Houstoun of Houstoun. The lands of Kilpeter became the parish of Houstoun and in modern times, Houston.

There are varying legends as to how Hugh received his knighthood. According to one of these, related by historian Amelia Williams, on an occasion when the young Scottish king Malcom IV and his army were hard pressed by their foes, "Sir Hugh, at the head of fifty retainers, came to the rescue and lifted bodily his liege lord from the clutches of the enemy and bore him away to safety. For this timely succor the grateful king bestowed upon his rescuer the rank of Scottish knight, and granted him a rich estate in Renfrewshire (then a part of Lanarkshire). At the king’s command, Sir Hugh’s Norman coat-of-arms, which bore the device of ravens on a rectangular escutcheon, was changed by the addition of rampant grey-hounds on either side of the shield, with a winged hourglass. in which the sands were almost run; above it and surmounting the whole, ran a ribbon of graceful folds bearing the motto ‘In Tempore’.

"The additions to the Norman symbols were to commemorate the swiftness with which Sir Hugh had brought assistance