[MR] History Blog: Scottish Land Grants and Murder

Garth Groff via Atlantia atlantia at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org
Tue Jun 2 13:14:38 PDT 2015


Noble Friends,

My friend Lady Sophia just sent me a link to an interesting entry in The 
History Blog--Murder through the lines of medieval land charters: 
http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/36792 . The piece here concerns a 
collection of Scottish land grants to the Fleming family who were 
important knights and courtiers from the Lowlands. Apparently they also 
were handy with daggers, as you will discover by reading the article. In 
Scotland the dagger, or more properly the dirk, was the favorite means 
of removing enemies, troublesome relatives, the occasional king, and 
pesky door-to-door salesmen.

A comment or two is in order about some of the facts presented here. 
Nobody knows for sure what happened between Robert the Bruce and John 
"The Red" Comyn. They were supposed to be holding a parley in the 
Greyfriars Church to settle some of their differences. Somebody drew a 
dagger, and John Comyn ended up stabbed. Some versions of the story say 
The Bruce only wounded him, but his knights rushed into the church to 
finish off the job. This is the first time I've read that John Comyn was 
beheaded. Rough place, Scotland!

There were actually a lot of Flemings in Scotland besides those who bore 
that name (Wallace was another Flemish name). Besides those who were 
exiled by Henry I, the King of the Scots David I made it policy to grant 
land in the Lowlands to Anglo-Normans, Normans, Flemings, and probably 
others, in exchange for military service and the construction of 
castles. He had seen what knights could do in battle, and wanted to 
build up his own forces. It was easy to entice third or fourth sons who 
had no prospect of inheriting family lands to Scotland.

Knighthood in Scotland was generally not inherited in those early days. 
Knight were men who had done something valiant in battle, and somehow 
lived to be recognized. Even some Scottish kings were not knights. This 
all changed when James I was a "guest" of the English for some 20 years. 
He picked up a lot of English notions during his time in the courts of 
Henry VI and V (exactly what his hosts intended, hoping to make him an 
ally). Among these new ideas was hereditary knighthood. Jamie was a bit 
too English for the taste of his subjects, and some of them eventually 
offed him. With dirks, of course.

Well, I'm getting far afield now. Enjoy the blog, and if you are a Scot, 
always keep your dirk sharp and within reach.

Yours Aye,


Lord Mungo Napier, That Crazy Scot


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