page_title: House of Bethune
section_title: Early Bethunes in Scotland
hierarchical_section_title: House of Bethune / Possibly related families / Early Bethunes in Scotland
caption_attribution_description: English: Balfour House before demolition
context_page_description: The House of Bethune is a French noble house from the province of Artois in the north of France whose proven filiation dates back to Guillaume de Béthune who made his will in 1213. This family became extinct in 1807 with Maximilien-Alexandre de Béthune, duke of Sully.
  There are other families called de Bethune or Bethune, but their links with the house of Bethune is not proven.
context_section_description: According to Bishop John Leslie, there were members of the Bethune family in Scotland before 1093. However the first surviving evidence is a century later, when around 1192 a charter of Lindores Abbey mentions Robert de Bethune, probably Robert VI (died 1193) of the Artois family. Before 1210 the cartulary of Arbroath Abbey records a cleric John de Bethune. Around 1220 Robert de Bethune is mentioned in connection with St Andrews Cathedral Priory and Sir David de Bethune, a knight, in another Arbroath document. From then on the names of clerics and knights called Bethune occur increasingly in Scottish records, mainly in the counties of Angus and Fife, but it is not possible to link the scattered references into a family tree. For that one has to wait until the knight Sir Alexander de Bethune who, according to Hector Boece, in 1314 sat in the Parliament of Scotland held at Cambuskenneth and in 1332 died fighting for the Bruce legitimists against the Balliol rebels at Dupplin Moor. Tradition makes him the father of Robert, who married the heiress of Balfour.
  Over the centuries the pronunciation of the family name shifted from the original French bay-tune to the Scots bee-tn, usually written Beaton. From about 1560, members of the family started using the French spelling again. In the funeral oration delivered for Archbishop James Bethune in 1603, the Bethunes in Scotland are said to descend from a member of the French family who went to Scotland around 1449 and married the heiress of Balfour. The man in question is named as Jacques de Béthune, also known as Jacotin, whose father Jean died at Agincourt in 1415. No Scottish records bear out this assertion.
caption: Balfour House before demolition
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