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Crawfordjohn There follows an extract from HISTORY OF THE PARISH OF
CRAWFORDJOHN, UPPER WARD OF LANARKSHIRE. 1153 TO 1928. Sir Thomas de Moravia was the second son of Christian, sister of Robert the Bruce, by her third marriage with Sir Andrew Murray of Bothwell. He succeeded his elder brother as Lord of Bothwell in 1352. Five years later he was appointed, as a representative of the Regent and barons, one of the commissioners for negotiating the treaty with England. The meeting was convened at Berwick-on-Tweed and resulted in the liberation of David II. from captivity in England-a captivity which had lasted eleven years. The ransom agreed upon was a hundred thousand pounds. Sir Thomas became one of the hostages for the fulfilment of the terms of restitution. The ransom, as is well known, was never paid. At the close of the year of David's restoration the Sheriff of Lanarkshire reported that he had collected nothing from the one hail of the barony of Crawfordjohn, as Sir Thomas was at that time a hostage for the King. He died, while still a hostage, of the plague in London in 1361, about Michaelmas, leaving an only daughter, Johanna, his heiress, who by her marriage with Archibald the Grim, Lord of Galloway and Earl of Douglas, carried both the Lordship of Bothwell, her father's property, and also her own hail of the barony of Crawfordjohn, into the possession of the great Douglas family. These lands remained in the hands of the Douglases for nearly one hundred years and were then lost under the following circumstances: James, ninth Earl of Douglas, rose in rebellion against his sovereign, 1454-55, actuated thereto both by personal ambition and also by desire to avenge the murder of his brother and predecessor, William, the eighth Earl of Douglas, who perished under the dagger of James II. Earl Archibald, however, was foiled in his attempt to capture the castle of Abercorn in West Lothian by the energetic action of the Scottish monarch and his superior forces. Deserted by his confederates, especially by his kinsman, Lord Hamilton, the Earl was fain to take refuge in flight and hide himseif in Annandale. A disorderly band of his remaining followers was mustered in Ewesdale and offered resistance to the royal authority until the 1st of May in 1455. On that day the rebellious rabble of an army under the command of Earl James and his two brothers, the Earls of Moray and Ormond, approached, and a battle took place in Arkinholm, on ground now partly covered by the town of Laugholm. In this encounter the Douglas faction was swept from the field in total rout. Moray and Ormond were captured and beheaded. Earl James took refuge in Argyle, and ultimately in England, where he received support from the Yorkist party. The Scottish Parliament, on the 10th of June 1455, passed an Act declaring that the Earl and all his abettors were traitors and had forfeited their lives, and that their property was escheated in the hands of the Crown, and so passed the Crawfordjohn hail barony out of the possession of the elder branch of the Douglas family and for a brief period became a royal domain.
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