Scottish Tartan Society notes: Perhaps dating back as far as 1587 but there is some debate as to the validity of the historical evidence. A charter granted to Hector MacLean, Heir of Duart, in the lands of Islay, the feu duty to be payable in the form of 60 ells cloth of white, black and green colours. This may well account for the colours, the proportions possibly being the invention of the early Tartan documenters, the Sobieski Stuarts. In his book, The Highland Textile, Jamie Scarlett says no evidence for the 1587 claim. As with so much of tartan research, the absence of positive proof does not discount the theory but merely places a question mark over it.