[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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