Search just our sites by using our customised search engine Unique Cottages | Electric Scotland's Classified Directory The Great Historic Families of Scotland The Douglases IN the story of Scotland,� says Mr. Froude, �weakness is nowhere; power, energy, and will are everywhere;� and this national vigour, determined will, and indomitable resolution seem to have culminated in the �Doughty Douglases.� Their stalwart and tough physical frames, and the strong, resolute, unbending character of such men as �William the Hardy,� �Archibald the Grim,� and �Archibald Bell-the-Cat,� the types of their race, eminently fitted them to be �premier peers��leaders of men. From the War of Independence down to the era of the Reformation, no other family played such a conspicuous part in the affairs of Scotland as the Douglases. They intermarried no less than eleven times with the royal family of Scotland, and once with that of England. They enjoyed the privilege of leading the van of the Scottish army in battle, of carrying the crown at the coronation of the sovereign, and of giving the first vote in Parliament. �A Douglas received the last words of Robert Bruce. A Douglas spoke the epitaph of John Knox. The Douglases were celebrated in the prose of Froissart and the verse of Shakespeare. They have been sung by antique Barbour and by Walter Scott, by the minstrels of Otterburn and by Robert Burns.� A nameless poet who lived four hundred years ago eulogised their trustiness and chivalry. Holinshed, in the next century, speaks of their �singular manhood, noble prowess, and majestic puissance.� They espoused, at the outset, the patriotic side in the War of Independence, and they contributed greatly to the crowning victory of Bannockburn. They sent two hundred gentlemen of the name, with the heir of their earldom, to die at Flodden. There was a time when they could raise thirty thousand men, and they were for centuries the bulwarks of the Scottish borders against our �auld enemies of England.� They have gathered their laurels on many a bloody field in France, where they held the rank of princes, and in Spain and in the Netherlands, as well as in England and Scotland, and� �In far landes renownit they have been.� They have produced men not only of �doughty� character, but of the gentle and chivalric type also, like the �Good Sir James,� and the William Douglas who married the Princess Egidia, justifying the exclamation of the author of the �Buke of the Howlat �� �O Douglas, Douglas, Tender and true !� On the other hand, it cannot be denied that their haughtiness and turbulence and ambition often disturbed the peace of the country, and imperilled the stability of the throne. On the whole, however, setting the good and the evil against each other, it may be said, in lines which were old in the days of Godscroft, and were then, he says, �common in men�s mouths �� �So many, so good, as of the Douglases have been, Of one sirname were ne�er in Scotland seen.� The cradle of the race was in Douglasdale, but their origin is hid in obscurity. �We do not know them,� says Godscroft, in his �History of the House and Race of Douglas and Angus,� �in the fountain, but in the stream; not in the root, but in the stem: for we know not who was the first mean man that did raise himself above the vulgar.� The traditionary account of the descent of the family from �a dark-grey man� (Sholto-Dhu-Glas), who rescued Solvathius, a mythical king of the Scots in the eighth century, from imminent danger of defeat in a battle with Donald Bane, is evidently fabulous. It is alleged by Chalmers that the founder of the family came from Flanders, about the year 1147, and was named Theobald the Fleming, and that he received from Arnold, Abbot of Kelso, a grant of lands on Douglas Water (Dhu-Glas), the dark stream, from which the family name was derived. But this is mere conjecture, not supported by any evidence; and it has been ascertained that the lands granted to Theobald are not those of which the first known Douglas, in the next generation, was in possession, and that these lands never formed a part of the barony of that name. Wyntoun is of opinion that the Douglases had the same origin as the Murrays, either by lineal descent or by collateral branch, as they have in their arms the same stars set in the same manner. Through the innate energy of their character, the Douglases seem to have sprung almost at a bound into the foremost rank of the Scottish nobles. The first mention of their name in any authentic record is in a charter by Joceline, Bishop of Glasgow, to the monks of Kelso, between 1175 and 1199, which was witnessed by William of Dufglas, who is said to have been either the brother or brother-in-law of Sir Freskin de Kerdale in Moray. Sir William was a witness to a charter in 1240, and, along with Sir Andrew of Dufglas, to another charter in 1248. His great-grandson, surnamed the �Hardy,� from his valour and heroic deeds, fought on the patriotic side in th...