Opposite are the green hills of Fawdon, and the
farm-place itself, and what is now the shepherd's house, but once a
separate holding, the Clinch, near a water gulley or ravine. Fawdon was
one of the Umfrauiville fees, in the Barony of De Vescy. In the reigns of
Kings Richard and John, it belonged along with the moiety of Nedderton to
HENRYde BATAIL, whose ancestors had been enfeoft'ed in them at the
Conquest by Robert With-the- Beard. Near the end of the reign of Henry
III., it was in possession of one of the ancestors of the house of
Douglas, William de Douglas called "
the Hardy," from the gift to his father and him of Edward I., then
Prince Edward. This same William was nearly wounded to death and cut to
pieces by another claimant of the property.
The Douglases were
also a Northumbrian family, and possessed the manor of Fawdon in the
same county, as far back as 1267. In that year, as we learn from an
English record, William Douglas accused Gilbert Umfraville Lord of
Redesdale, and John Hirlaw, of having falsely calumniated him at the
siege of Alnwick to Prince Edward, son of Henry III., as being an enemy
to the King and the Prince, with the view of obtaining the manor of
Fawdon in Northumberland, held by William, of Gilbert, and which Edward
had granted to him. A jury, to whom the matter was referred, acquitted
Douglas, who, in consequence, was reinvested by the King in the
property. Thereafter Umfraville, at the instigation of Hirlaw,
despatched a hundred men of Redesdale to Fawdon, who destroyed, and
carried off Douglas's goods and chattels, " et Willielmum filium ipsius
Willielmi de Duglas, lethaliter vulnaverunt, ita quod fere amputaverunt
caput ejus." William the son, however, recovered, doubtless in
consequence of the hardiness of his frame, which eventually gave him the
surname of "William the Hardy."
With Sir William de Douglas,
named Long-leg (c. 1240- 1276), the family emerges from the mist of an
almost unwritten antiquity. William de Douglas, appointed a regency to
act until Alexander III. should come of age. Douglas from the first
adhered to the English party, and his is a typical example of the
influence affecting many of the Scottish nobility in the coming struggle.
His principal possessions may be assumed to have been in Douglasdale, but
he certainly also held lands in the county of Northumberland, whereof
the possession was so long in dispute between the Kings of England and
Scotland.
There is some reason to suppose that his wife (possibly
a second wife) CONSTANCE or COUSTANCE was one of the family of BATTAIL
of FAWDON in Northumberland, from whom in 1264 Douglas purchased the
lands of Fawdon. Clearly, therefore, it was his interest to keep
in favour with the English King. In 1257 the Menteith party
strengthened their hand by capturing King Alexander at Kinross, and won
the trick; after which there was a coalition of factions and a
suspension at least of violent intrigues, enabling Long-leg's eldest son
Hugh to choose a wife from an ultra-nationalist house, to wit, that of
Abernethy. The indenture between Sir Hugh de Abernethy and Sir William
de Douglas for this marriage is the earliest charter of the Douglases
which has escaped destruction. It is dated 1259.
Sir William died
before 16th October 1274. It is doubtful whether his eldest son Hugh
survived him. Little of Hugh de is known about him beyond the fact of
his marriage with Marjory de Abernethy, and tradition points to a
recumbent figure in St.
Bride's Church as marking her tomb. Tradition also is the only
warrant for an exploit attributed to her husband Hugh by Maitland and
Godscroft. Hugh is said to have got into feud with one of his neighbours
in Douglasdale, Fatten Purdie of Umdrawod, who laid an ambush for Hugh
as he rode alone. Hugh, perceiving the trap in time, turned and galloped
off, pursued by Purdie's men, till he met a party of his own people,
when he in turn became the pursuer and inflicted severe punishment upon
his assailants. Purdie and two of his sons were slain, and Maitland
quotes some doggerel in which the affair was commemorated.
Upon
Hugh's younger brother, William " le
Hardi," the light of history falls clearly. He is first mentioned in
the proceedings of an assize at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1256, when his
father, Sir William, reported that he had granted him a carucate of land
at Warndon(1) in Northumberland for his homage and service.
About
the year 1264 Sir William, the father, purchased the house and lands of
Fawdon in the same county. These he held as the vassal of a Scottish
noble, the Earl of Angus. But this earl was none other than the English
knight, Gilbert de Umfraville, Lord of Redesdale, who had come by that
great earldom through his mother, and now laid before Prince Edward
(afterwards Edward I.) charges of disaffection against Douglas, begging
a gift of his manor of Fawdon. The case was tried before a jury, Douglas
being acquitted and Fawdon restored to him. Thereupon Umfraville, taking
the law into his own hands, attacked the house of Fawdon with a hundred
men on I9th July1267, captured it, appropriated 31L marks in cash,
besides silver spoons, cups, clothes, arms, jewels, gold rings, etc., to
the value of 100, carried Douglas off and imprisoned him in
Harbottle Tower. In the mellay young
William Douglas was wounded in the neck nearly to death.
A second
trial followed in 1269, whereat Douglas was adjudged owner of Fawdon,
and Umfraville was fined William le Hardi was knighted before 1288. In
that year Duncan, Earl of Fife, one of the Six Guardians, was foully
done to death at Pitteloch in Fife by Sir Hugh de Abernethy and other
gentlemen of the opposition. Now Sir Hugh was the brother of Douglas's
sister Marjory, and in those days kinship commonly overrode other civil
obligations; but on this occasion the Douglas was all for law and order;
it was to him that Sir Andrew de Moray handed over Abernethy, to be
imprisoned in the vaults of Douglas Castle,
where he died before 1293. Not often did captives survive for long
the intolerable rigours and unwholesomeness of mediaeval dungeons. In
1291 Edward I., as overlord of Scotland, ordered the transfer of
Abernethy from Douglas to one of the royal prisons, but his commands
were not obeyed.
In 1289 Douglas sent a messenger from Glasgow to
the Abbot of Kelso to receive his family charters, which had been stored
in the cell of Lesmahagow for safety. In the receipt for these
Douglas styles himself Lord of Douglas ?the first instance of the use of
that title. He had married Elizabeth, daughter of Alexander the Steward,
but she was dead before 1288, nor was the widower so disconsolate as to
omit business considerations in the choice of a second spouse. Moreover,
in giving effect to that choice he proved the fitness of his sobriquet?"
le Hardi."
Notes:
1. The carucate or carrucate was a medieval unit
of land area approximating the land a plough team of eight oxen could
till in a single annual season. It was known by different regional names
and fell under different forms of tax assessment.
2. William Le Hardi
is said to have sold his lands in 1270 so as to go on Crusade, serving in the retinue of Earl Adam
as a Squire. A seal
exists in the Selby deeds.
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