SC5». S, f # I PUBLICATIONS OF THE SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY THIRD SERIES VOLUME LI WIGTOWNSHIRE CHARTERS I960 WIGTOWNSHIRE CHARTERS Edited by R. C. REID, LL.D. EDINBURGH Printed by T. and A. Constable Ltd. Printers to the University of Edinburgh for the Scottish History Society 1960 Printed in Great Britain PREFACE This volume represents some ten years voluntary work undertaken for the National Register of Archives since that body was first formed. It has involved the examination, calendaring and indexing of all documents prior to the year 1600 of the following collections presently lodged in the Register House: Charters of the Earl of Galloway, Lochnaw (Agnew) Charters, Logan (McDowell) Charters, and Barnbarroch (Vaus) Charters; in addition to the following collections, still in private hands, Mochrum Park (Dunbar) Charters, Myrton (McCulloch) Charters, Monreith (Maxwell) Charters, the Craichlaw and Shennanton Papers, and the Cardoness and Kirkconnell Charters, as well as much unpublished material in the Scottish Record Office. I have to express my thanks to the owners and custodians for giving me the necessary access and facilities. In the presentation and editing of these documents I have received ready assistance from many quarters, but I would fail in my duty if I did not mention especially Mrs. A. I. Dunlop, LL.D., and Dr. Gordon Donaldson, who have ungrudgingly drawn on their wide experience as archivists, and Mr. Athol Murray, LL.B., of the Scottish Record Office, who has called my attention to documents and entries in the public records and even undertaken a search of the Registers of the Archbishops of York. Above all I must acknowledge, on matters relating to the pre-Reformation Church, my indebtedness to the Rev. Father J. O’Dea for generously placing at my disposal many appropriate transcripts from the Vatican archives, especially relating to Glenluce. Dr. E. W. M. Balfour-Melville, as Secretary of the Society, has added to many past services by reading the proofs and saving the author from some blunders and omissions. R. C. R. CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE v INTRODUCTION ix DOCUMENTS RELATING TO WHITHORN . 1 DOCUMENTS RELATING TO GLENLUCE . 37 DOCUMENTS RELATING TO SAULSET . 85 DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE BURGH OF WIGTOWN 115 WIGTOWN v. WHITHORN 137 DOCUMENTS RELATING TO CRUGGLETON. 147 DOCUMENTS ANENT PARISH CLERKS . 153 APPENDIX 159 INDEX 255 ;l generous contribution from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland towards the cost of producing this volume is gratefully acknowledged by the Council of the Society. INTRODUCTION I. THE FEUDALISATION OF GALLOWAY It has been said that ‘ the history of Galloway is a blank from the time when the father of Kenneth I was slain upon the borders of Kyle (844) until the days of David I.’1 The intervening three centuries supply a minimum of data on which it is almost impossible to form any clear con- clusions. The same must be said of its once powerful neighbour the ancient kingdom of Strathclyde, which at one time had extended from Clyde to Solway, embracing, linguistically at least, what is now the modern Galloway. But by the year 756 Strathclyde had become subject to Northumbria,2 and though it made several efforts to throw off that suzerainty the pedigrees of its kings seem to end with Run, son of Arthgal.3 In 870 Alclyde now Dumbarton, the capital of the kingdom, after a four months’ siege by the Northmen, was taken and destroyed.4 In 875 a new foe swept into Strathclyde from the south when Halfdan the Dane made great slaughter of the Straecled Wealas, as the Strathclyde Britons are called in the Saxon Chronicle, leaving desolation and destitution in his wake and rendering Carlisle uninhabited for two centuries. In 878 Eochaid, son of Run, king of the Strathclyde Britons, is stated to have been expelled from the kingdom.5 He can have left but little kingdom behind him. The wretched Britons, assailed on all sides, were that year deprived of the support of their kinsmen in Wales by the death of Rydderch ap Mervyn. So the men of Strathclyde, who refused to be absorbed by the English, decided to forsake the ancient country of their forefathers and go to Gwynedd. A con- 1 2 Robertson’s Scotland under her Early Kings (1862), i, 856. 3 A. O. Anderson, Early Sources of Scottish History, i, 243. 4 Ibid., i, p. clviii. 5 EarlySkene, Sources, Celtic Scotland, i, 363-4. i, 324. WIGTOWNSHIRE CHARTERS siderable body under the leadership of a man named Constantine set forth for a new home in Wales. Constantine fell in battle at Lochmaben attempting to force a way south. But his followers, undismayed by his loss, persevered in their enterprise, arriving—perhaps by sea—in time to assist the northern Welsh to win the great battle of the Conway.1 They had been promised by king Anaraut to be allowed to settle in his domains if they could drive out the English. ‘ Thus Gwynedd was freed from the English through the might of the Men of the North.’ 2 It seems as if the remnants of the population of Strathclyde were deprived not by conquest but by devastation of their richer lands and larger settlements, sinking, it may well be, lower in the scale of civilisation and nursing in song and legend the tradition of a greatness that had passed away—of the heroic days of Coel Hen and Urien of Rheged—until today such songs are only represented by folklore or remembered in nursery rhymes, such as Old King Cole. In the 10th century, as the probable result of Irish-Norse invasions of western England, a notable expansion of the British or Cumbrian kingdom of Strathclyde occurred. As late as the reign of Edward the Confessor the district defined by the Derwent, the Eamont, the Pennine range and the marshes at the head of Solway were covered by the phrase the ‘ lands that were Cumbrian ’ 3. Whether this area was recovered by the king of Scottish Strathclyde or established its own autonomy has yet to be established.4 But in 945 there was a Dunmail, king of Cumbria, who was defeated by king Edmund, successor to Athelstan, and has been claimed 5 as none other than the Strathclyde king Dun- 1 2 Robertson, op. cit., i, 54-5. 3 Early Sources, i, 368. 4 ProfessorWestmorland Sir Inventory,Frank Stenton introduction, affirms that p. 1. the local dynasty of Strath- surelyclyde becamethe local extinct dynasty at wasthe ofdeath Cumbria of Eugenius and not theof ScottishBald c. Strathclyde1015. But argues(R. C. M. that Inventory, this revival Westmorland, of Strathclyde Introduction, only affected p. Hi.) Cumbria W. G. southCollingwood of the andSolway Westmorland and that the Antiquarian capital of Owen and Archaeological(920-937) was atSoc. Penrith. Trans., (Cumberland N.S., xx., P 60).6 Hodgson-Hinde in Archaeological Journal, xvi, 225. INTRODUCTION xi wallen who in 975 died at Rome. In the year 945 king Edmund commended Strathclyde to Malcolm, king of Scots, the lands having been ‘ ravaged by the English who slew cruelly those they found in their way, of the Britons to whom it belonged V It was a matter of high policy with Edmund and Malcolm, who had enough on their hands with the Danish invasions on the east coast, to oppose together the extension of the Gaelic-Norse settling on the west. These Norsemen from the Isles were a hybrid race from Norse fathers and Gaelic mothers. They seem to have settled in the Whithorn area early in the 10th century and spread along the coasts and up the valleys. The tombstone of one of them is still to be seen as a lintel of Wamphray church. Their presence in modern Galloway has been the subject of a careful study by W. G. Collingwood.2 But for the counties north of Dumfriesshire and Galloway we must await the further volumes of the Ancient Monu- ments Commission and a future historian. The collapse of Strathclyde was the Norse opportunity, and at the opening of the 11th century it was possible for a chronicler to describe the south of Scotland as ‘ From the Tweed to the great river Forth are Looine (Lothian) and Galweya.’ 3 The Norse from the west must have penetrated and spread over the thinly populated and largely desolated lands of Strathclyde, from the west coast almost to the forest of Selkirk.4 Whithorn was their centre in the south and soon after the battle of Clontarf (1014) an Icelander came thither and spent the winter with the Norse Malcolm, earl of Argyll.5 In 1034 is recorded the death of Suibne, Kenneth’s son, king of the Galwegians.6 Suibne or Sweeny : the Norse would have probably called him a jarl or an earl, the Irish equivalent term being king. This ‘ king ’ was followed by Thorfin the Mighty, who according 1 2 Early Sources, i, 449. Dumfriesshire and Galloway Antiquarian Soc. Trans., vii, 97. See 3 also Ralegh Radford’s summary in D. and G., xxvii, 97. 4 ChroniclesSkene, i, 235-6. of the Piets and Scots, p. 154. xii WIGTOWNSHIRE CHARTERS to the Orkneyinga Saga possessed not only a large riki In Ireland and all the Isles but also nine earldoms in Scotland.1 These earldoms are not specified, but they almost certainly included Dumfriesshire and a Galloway greatly extended northwards and eastward. The Saga says ‘ he resided in turn in Caithness and in what is called Gaddgedler, where England and Scotland meet ’. But after his return from Rome he must have spent most of his time at Birsay. So powerful was he that on his death, c.