This book revises the standard accounts of the Lyons of Glamis. It describes how the family emerged as an entity in the mid-fourteenth century because of Sir John Lyon's links with a group of prominent crusaders, and how it expanded and progressed over the next four hundred years.
If there is a unifying theme to the seven essays in Part One, then it is the shift from a family structure largely based on feudal values to one that promoted the political and economic independence of its members.
The essays provide a backdrop for the fifteen genealogies that follow in Part Two. They deal with the main stem and the several known branches of this most remarkable Scottish family.

<p>Front: detail from W. F. Lyon, The Genealogical Tree of the Family of Lyon (London, 1861).</p>