Skirving

A name found generally in East Lothian. Black lists it as one of the commonest surnames in Haddington in the eighteenth century. Black John Skirving was said to have been the Earl Marischal’s standard bearer at the disastrous Battle of Flodden in 1513. Alexander Skirving was a burgess of the city of Edinburgh, whose son, Patrick, made up title to his estate in 1667. Lord Braxfield, the notorious eighteenth-century ‘hanging judge’, sentenced William Skirving, secretary of the radical group, Friends of the People, to fourteen years’ transportation in 1793.