When the Castle of Alnwick
was besieged by the Scots in 1093, the English garrison capitulated on
condition that their King, Malcolm III., should in person receive the keys
of the gates. They were brought on the top of a spear by Mowbray, a knight
who purposely sent the point through the King’s eye, causing his death.
One of the King’s companions was Ewen de Maccuswell, who married a
daughter of the Lord of Galloway, with whom he received the Castle of
Caerlaverock. It was in this stronghold that Edward Baliol – who resigned
during the minority and exile of the son of Robert Bruce – took up his
abode to make his last stand in Dumfriesshire, when the young David II.
was restored to his father’s throne. An English army had crossed the ford
at the Solway to Baliol’s assistance in 1332; but Caerlaverock was
captured by Roger Kirkpatrick and John Stewart, in the name of King David,
whose rival was compelled to retreat to England with a remnant of his
foreign allies more anxious to carry off their plunder than to assist a
losing cause. The Maxwells supported the Crown against Douglas in 1425,
for he had hung their near relation, Lord Herries of Terregles. They
married with the Carlyles, Murrays, Johnstones, and other Annandale
families, and increased much in importance during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. In 1424, Sir Herbert Maxwell was made a Lord of
Parliament by the title of Lord Maxwell of Caerlaverock, and a little
later his family shared in the plunder of the Douglases, which brought
them into Annandale, and they supplanted the Crichtons in Nithsdale. Lord
Maxwell was imprisoned with Archibald Earl of Douglas, the Earl of Angus,
Dunbar, Earl of March, and Hepburn of Hailes, when Murdoch, Duke of
Albany, and his sons were seized by James I., and Murdoch was shut up in
the Castle of Caerlaverock, but as it was not politic to kill the leaders
of the independent Borderers, who might be used again by the English
against Scotland, these chiefs were released after Murdoch’s execution.
Early in the 16th century, the Maxwells almost monopolised the Wardenship
of the Borders, which up to that time they had held alternately with the
Earls of March, the Earls of Douglas, the Johnstones, and the Murrays of
Cockpool, and this produced much of the ill-feeling which existed between
the Maxwells and the Johnstones for nearly 100 years.
The lord of Johnstone, who
fought at Chevy Chase, had been a surety for the peace with England, in
conjunction with Sir John Carlyle and Stuart of Castlemilk. His son Adam
was distinguished in a battle fought against the English near Graitney or
Gretna, where the Maxwells and Johnstones were opposed to the Welsh, the
fiercest battalions of the enemy (1448). The contemporary chronicler of
Auchinleck, writing from the victor’s side, gives this brief description:—
"The 23d day of October was
the battle of Lochmaben Stone, within the parish of St. Patrick, where
Hugh of Douglas, Earl of Ormonde, was chieftain on the Scottish side, and
with him Sir John Wallace of Cragy, the Lord of Johnstone, the Lord
Somerville’s son and heir, David Stewart of Castle Mylk, the Sheriff of
Ayr, with other sundry gentles of the West land, and their men was called
4000. And on the English side the younger Percy and Sir John of Pennyton
were chieftains, and with them 6000 of Englishmen; of whom their
chieftains were taken and 1500 with them slain; drowned, 500."
The English chronicler
Holinshed, writing in 1577, gives a more detailed account of the battle,
and a larger number of slain. He also mentions Maxwell, whom the Scottish
chronicler omits, although he was Warden of the Marches. His daughter was
married to Sir Adam Johnstone’s eldest son John. Sir Adam had married Lady
Janet Dunbar, the youngest daughter of the rebel Earl of March. He had
three sons besides his heir—Gilbert, who married Agnes, the heiress of
Elphinstone, and was knighted for his services against the English;
William, who died in 1468; and a Dumfries record mentions another son,
James, as living in 1476. To judge by the legal cases in which Sir Gilbert
Johnstone of Elphinstone and his son Adam were summoned by Dumfriesshire
men, he lived chiefly in his native county till 1491, and then his name
disappears; but most of his descendants migrated to Elphinstone, in
Haddington, where they are now considered to be extinct. In 1484 Sir
Gilbert Johnstone, as Sheriff of Edinburgh, opened the session of
Parliament, and was also a guarantor of the Treaty of Peace with the
English.
When the Albany and Douglas
rebellion of 1483 was in progress, Sir Gilbert Johnstone, by order of
James III., deputed his nephew Adam of Johnstone to arrest Sir James
Liddell of Halkerstone and others of the insurgents. William and Robert of
Johnstone witness Adam of Johnstone’s formal summons to Sir James to
surrender himself to the authorities. As stated, the rebels were finally
crushed by the Dumfriesshire chiefs, among whom was Sir Gilbert’s brother,
the Lord of Johnstone.
Although some of the
Carruthers family were faithful to the King, the Laird of Mouswald, their
head, seems to have leagued with the Douglases. He was keeper of Lochmaben
Castle, and the Auchinleck chronicler relates that in 1454 "the Lord of
Johnstone’s two sons took the Castle of Lochmaben from the Lord of
Mouswald, called Carruthers, and his two sons, and all through treason of
the porter; and since, the King gave them the keeping of the house to his
profit." The King’s adherents in Dumfriesshire—the Johnstones, Maxwells,
Carruthers of Holmains, Crichton of Sanquhar, Cuthbert Murray of Cockpool,
and Charteris of Amisfield—were rewarded with part of the confiscated
estates of the Corries and Douglases, though it entailed long disputes
with the relatives of the ancient possessors. In 1516, we find James
Johnstone of that ilk confrmed by a Royal Charter in the barony of Corrie,
which had been held in the previous century by the Corrie family in
conjunction with Newbie, Stapleton, and the parish of St. Patrick, now
divided into Kirkpatrick-Fleming and Gretna, and which the Corries had
obtained from the Carliles, while in 1494 John Murray had been returned
heir to his father Cuthbert in the hereditary lands of Cockpool, Ryvel or
Ruthwell, as well as of Rampatrick, or Redkirk, also part of the Corrie
property.
As the question whether
Newbie Castle and Gretna or Graitney passed direct from the Corries to the
Lord of Johnstone has been one of dispute, not only when the Annandale
peerage claims were last tried, but in 1772, in a case heard before the
Scottish Courts, when the Earl of Hopetoun, curator-in-law of the last
Marquis of Annandale, produced on his behalf the charter settling Newbie
on William Johnstone of Gretna, and his wife, Margaret Crichton, in 1541,
we may here make some allusion to this subject. The Counsel for the
Marquis, who was trying to prove his right to certain fisheries from
remote times, held that the manner in which Newbie afterwards passed to
the Lord of Johnstone in 1607 shewed that William Johnstone’s descendants
were cadets of his house. Chalmers, in his Biographia, and the compiler of
the "New Statistical History of Scotland," were impressed with this
notion. The last states that many Johnstones of Annandale are interred
under the old church at Gretna; and these Johnstones were all William’s
descendants. The author of the "Biography of Eminent Scotsmen" took the
same view, and also the editor of the New Monthly Review in his
obituary of the representative of William’s family in 1802. So did the
second Marquis when he put Johnstone of Gretna in his entail. The
Johnstones of Gretna are described in the oldest peerages (Crawford of
1716, and Nesbitt, published by Royal authority in 1722) as cadets of
Johnstone of that Ilk; and in various local histories the Johnstones of
Gretna and Newbie are also described as his cadets. The same claim is
engraved on the monument of John Johnstone of Galabank, their descendant
in 1774, when the last Marquis was alive, and his mother and two half
brothers resided at Comlongon Castle, in the immediate neighbourhood, and
its authority was not called in question. The connection was, therefore,
supported by common repute.
But now to proved facts. In
1453 a Gilbert de Johnstone de Gretna signed a retour at Dumfries for Lord
Maxwell, whose sister was married to the eldest son of Sir Adam Johnstone.
Sir Adam’s father was named Gilbert, and his second son was named Gilbert,
and was able to write, not a common accomplishment at that time. Sir Adam
was then Warden of the Borders, and would therefore be likely to put a
near relative into Gretna, as it was the gateway to England, and commanded
his own neighbouring estates at Cavertsholme and Dunskellie. Retours were
signed by relations and connections, and as no mere tenant in a distant
place would have been called upon to sign Lord Maxwell’s retour at
Dumfries when he had connections much nearer, it is probable that Gilbert
Johnstone of Gretna was Gilbert, the second son of Sir Adam, or else a
brother of Sir Adam, and that he was custodian of Gretna Tower, a Border
fortress, when his relative was Warden. Unless the Annan was navigable
higher up than it is now, it is difficult to see how the lairds of
Johnstone could have been "naval admirals," have owned "ships to trade
with English ports," or, considering the small extent of the family
estates inland, could have carried sufficient weight on the borders to act
as Constables and Wardens, a hundred and fifty years earlier, if they had
no footing on the Solway; and Graitney Tower and Saltcoats, with a few
maritime villages afterwards owned by William Johnstone of Graitney and
Newbie, are the only points not claimed elsewhere. Hoddam was then owned
by the piratical Lord Herries of Terregles. During the rest of the 15th
century, there is no mention of Gretna in any record; but a Thomas
Johnstone, described as of Gartno—that is, Gretna—is alluded to in a
justiciary case of 1504. He was not a judge of the assize. There is no
sasine concerning him in existence, and nothing to show that he was a
landowner or had any connection with William Johnstone, the young lord of
Gartno, who appears in 1513.
In 1511 an Adam Johnstone
de Newbie appears as a judge of the assize at Edinburgh. Adam of Johnstone
of that Ilk was dead in 1509, when his son James was returned his heir.
His family, of all the leaders of the King’s party against the Douglas
rebellion, would have had no share in the spoil if he had not been
rewarded with some of the lands of the rebel Corries, who, as before
stated, owned the baronies of Corrie and of Newbie, Mylnfleld, Robgill,
Cummertrees, Bonshaw, and Stapleton, within a mile of Gretna, and
adjoining the Laird of Johnstone’s property at Dunskellie, Cavertsholme,
and Kirkpatrick-Fleming. They would naturally prefer the estates which
intersected their own lands, and being good soldiers and nearly related,
as well as friends at that time with the Warden of the Borders, he would
have been likely to approve of their infeftment into the part of the
forfeited demesne, which bordered on England, to aid him in the defence of
the country. In 1508-9 the Lord of Johnstone and Adam Johnstone were two
of the judges of assize who convicted William Carruthers of uplifting
cattle from the lands of Newbie. This Lord of Johnstone was Adam, who died
a month or two later. The other Adam Johnstone on the assize was probably
the same as Adam Johnstone of Newbie mentioned in 1511, and may have been
the second son of the Laird, or his grandson, afterwards known as Adam
Johnstone of Corrie.
In 1516 James Johnstone of
that Ilk obtained a charter confirming him in the possession of the Barony
of Corrie. He had previously received a charter of the Barony of Johnstone,
the advowson of the Church of Johnstone, the lands of Wamphray, the mill
and lands at Dunskellie, in Kirkpatrick-Fleming, and the lands of
Cavertsholme (near Gretna) owned by his father, "which lands," it states,
"were sequestrated at the King’s instance for certain fines of Justice
Courts, which now his Majesty freely discharges, and dispones the land to
him again." This sequestration must have taken place after James IV.
visited Dumfries in August 1504, and held an assize, in person, as on that
occasion Adam Johnstone was pledge for his eldest son, James. While the
Lord of Johnstone was ejected from the Barony of Johnstone and his
residence at Dunskellie he would be likely to live at Graitney with his
immediate followers. The Justiciary Records are not always very exact in
their descriptions, as James Johnstone is described as the Laird of
Johnstone in his father’s lifetime. He was for some years an outlaw, but
in 1513 he acted as pledge at Dumfries for his relative, Adam Scot, and
for several Johnstones, including William, the young lord of Gartno
(Gretna or Graitney), and a "David Johnstone, brother to John Johnstone in
Bartycupen," which was not far from Lochwood, and he was fined for their
non-appearance. A man began life early at that date, and as Robert
Johnstone of Racleuch was only eleven years old when we find his name
among those respited in 1594 for arson and slaughter, William of Gretna
may have been no older in 1513. The David and John mentioned were probably
James Johnstone’s two illegitimate sons of that name. Gretna was not a
lairdship, and those described as of Gretna could not have been
landowners, while William being distinguished by the term "young laird,"
shows he was the son of a laird, and he could not have made the good
marriage he did if he had been a mere tenant. In the affair for which he
was summoned in 1513, a relative of Lord Crichton, the Sheriff, had been
killed in an attack on Dumfries by Maxwell and his followers, including
these Johnstones, while the assize was being held. Not only did the Laird
of Johnstone protect William and David, but he offered to pay half the sum
adjudged by the Lords in Council (See Acta Dom. Con. 25, f. 168, t. 172,
1513) to be paid by Lord Maxwell to the injured party, Lord Crichton. [In
most instances the Constables of the Borders were given lands on condition
that they maintained garrisons, and kept lighted beacons on the towers
near the English frontier. Hoddam and Graitney were very important ones.
Graitney is a little to the east of the village.]
James, Laird of Johnstone,
died in August, 1524. On October 14, 1527, we find an entry in the
Justiciary Records that John Johnstone of that Ilk, John, Andrew, and
Roland Bell, William and Matthew Johnstone, were charged with the cruel
murder of Symon Armstrong, James Douglas of Drumlanrig being their
cautioner; and failing to appear, they were all denounced rebels, which,
with a subsequent sequestration, accounts for the Johnstone estates being
in ward four years. John Johnstone entailed his lands in 1542, and
mentions four brothers: Adam of Corrie, William, Symon, and John. There
were also two illegitimate brothers, David and John, so that in one family
there were three brothers named John. Adam, the second brother, had
inherited the barony of Corrie, and it seems likely that he was the Adam
Johnstone of Newbie mentioned in 1511, and had later received from his
father the more secure possessions of Corrie. The Corrie family continued
to claim Newbie, and to style themselves of Newbie, as late as 1630, but
Thomas Corrie was an outlaw some time before 1523, and being respited in
1527, he instituted proceedings against William Johnstone of Graitney, who
for three years past (i.e., since the death of the laird of
Johnstone) had occupied the lands of Newbie. Newbie was worth only six
pounds a year less than the Barony of Johnstone, and, as we have stated,
with its dependencies intersected the estate of Johnstone of that Ilk, and
was a near neighbour to his chief residence, Dunskellie. It is clear that
William Johnstone could not have taken possession of so large an estate
without the concurrence of the great Annandale chief; and Gretna, it
appears from later documents, was only held in feu from the Murrays of
Cockpool. The mistake of calling a man laird of a place when he lived
there, but was only son or brother of a laird, occurs in the Acta Dom.
Con. in 1594 with regard to a Johnstone of Newbie. At last William
Johnstone purchased a clear right to Newbie from Thomas Corrie, who was to
retain a life interest in it, but was killed at the battle of Pinkie in
1547.
In 1541 William Johnstone
obtained a charter, which the late Sir John Holker, Attorney-General,
described as the most extraordinary which had ever been brought before the
House of Lords. He entailed Newbie and its lands,--but not Gretna—first,
on his own and his wife’s (Margaret Crichton) legitimate children;
secondly, on his own legitimate male heirs; thirdly, on his son George and
his heirs; fourthly, on his brother David and his heirs; fifthly, on his
son Herbert and his heirs; sixthly, on his son John and his heirs;
seventhly, on his brother John and his heirs. These brothers and sons
mentioned by name were undoubtedly illegitimate, and the fact that the
Laird of Johnstone and his brother William had at the same period two
illegitimate brothers, named David and John, seemed, with the evidence
already given, to point to the conclusion that they were the same people,
and that William Johnstone of Graitney and Newbie was identical with
William, the second brother of the laird. Also, the fact that Graitney
descended to William’s illegitimate son George, while Newbie went to his
eldest legitimate son John, who in 1565 was returned his father’s nearest
and legitimate heir, would further show that Graitney was not regarded as
a special hereditary possession of his family. This John, second Baron of
Newbie, is the ancestor of the Johnstones of Galabank and now of Fulford
Hall. It appeared as if James, lord of Johnstone, had bequeathed the
confiscated Corrie property to his second and third sons, the elder
receiving Corrie, for which he had obtained a regular charter; the other
Newbie, for which he had to enforce his claim. Another brother, James of
Wamphray, is not mentioned in the entail, but in 1550 he formed a bond of
manrent with the laird. The descendants of George Johnstone of Graitney
died out in the male line, and their present representative in the female
line is Lord Ruthven. In 1592, they bore the arms of Johnstone of that
Ilk, charged with two mullets to show cadency, and a different crest to
denote legitimized bastardy. We learn by the charters of 1536 and 1541
concerning William of Graitney that he bore the same arms as Johnstone of
that Ilk, proving that he was legitimate.
In 1546 the English invaded
Scotland, and razed Annan to the ground, whereupon the neighbouring chiefs
gave in their submission, and swore fidelity to the English King.
Holinshed’s "Scottish History," published in 1577, mentions the Laird of
Newbie among them, but no other representative of the Johnstones; while
the English State papers describe William, the brother of the Laird, as
surrendering on behalf of the Johnstones. They also speak of George
Johnstone (William of Newbie and Graitney eldest illegitimate son) as
heading the Newbie dependants. The Laird of Johnstone was a prisoner, and
his next brother (Adam) dead; but his nephew, James of Corrie, a man of
full age, was also a prisoner among the English. In 1548 an Act of the
Scottish Parliament outlawed the Laird of Newbie and several other chiefs,
but no other representative of Johnstone of that Ilk, for their surrender,
and from this period William Johnstone of Newbie disappears. In 1558
William Johnstone, brother-german to the laird, signs (with his hand at
the pen) a renunciation of his rights to Hartope, in Nithsdale, and as
these lands were part of the Crichton property, the fact of William
Johnstone, Laird of’ Newbie,, being married to a Crichton seemed another
proof of the identity of these Williams, particularly as at that period
the English occupied Newbie and Gretna, and he had been outlawed as Laird
of Newbie, so would hardly have signed his name with that appellation. In
1542, when the Johnstone property was provisionally entailed on the
Laird’s brother William, he is simply mentioned as brother-german to the
Laird, but he did not possess the life-rent of Newbie till 1557, and seems
to have had no real property in Gretna till 1544 (in which year William,
brother of the Laird, signed his name himself as witness to Simon
Carruthers, [Married to Marion Johnstone] his brother-in-law), and when,
by letters under the Privy Seal, a grant of the non-entres of Gretna, that
had been held by the Crown since the decease of "the late Johnstone, his
father," is made to William of Gretna until such time as another heir
should appear. The son and heir of this William in 1569 acted as pledge
for the Laird of Johnstone and his clan, thereby preserving the castles of
his chief from being destroyed by the Regent Murray after the outbreak on
behalf of Queen Mary. He was a guardian of the peace with the English, and
was one of the kinsmen selected by the Laird of Johnstone to adjust his
quarrel with Lord Maxwell in 1574. His son, Edward Johnstone, was curator
to the young Laird of Johnstone in 1608, and had possession of the
Annandale charter chest, which still contains many charters concerning the
Newbie family. In 1613 a Crown charter states that all the old papers
concerning Gretna had been destroyed in the wars and conflagrations of
which it had been the centre, so it appears as if William Johnstone had
been the custodian of the fortified tower at Gretna—an important post
before the Union of the Crowns. His wife’s mother, Elizabeth, was the
daughter of Cuthbert Murray of Cockpool. Margaret Crichton’s father was
Sir Robert Crichton, Lord of Sanquhar, dead before 1517, when Ninian
Crichton is mentioned as her guardian; and James and Ninian Crichton were
cautioners for William Johnstone in 1535, with regard to the contract with
the Corries of Newbie.
But the point which weighed
against the claim of the descendants of William Johnstone of Gretna and
Newbie, that their ancestor was identical with the third son of the Laird
of Johnstone, was the discovery of a precept for a charter under the Privy
Seal of 1543. It had been overlooked by two searchers in the Register
House at Edinburgh, but a copy was found among the papers of a deceased
advocate, which brought it to light. It was a precept of legitimation for
George, Herbert, and John, the illegitimate sons of William Johnstone of
Gretna, and of his illegitimate brother John, the natural son of the late
William Johnstone of Gretna—this last name of the late William, &c., being
added over the line, as if an afterthought on the part of the clerk.
Twenty pounds had been paid for this precept, which was not signed or
followed by any charter, so could never have been carried out, as a
precept of legitimation requires to be confirmed by three charters to be
effective; and. it was written in such bad Latin that it might have been
construed that one William was the brother of the other, and that John was
the natural son of the deceased one. Just a month after the date of this
precept there was another precept for a charter to legitimatise David and
John, the natural sons of James, the Laird of Johnstone of that Ilk, and
this precept was given gratis, and followed by a charter. It might have
been suggested that the first was erroneous, and did not include William’s
illegitimate brother David, and that the second, which was issued just
sufficiently long after to allow of a journey from Edinburgh to Annan and
back again, was a correction of the first, and hence given without a fee;
that William Johnstone of Newbie had desired the legitimation of the two
brothers whom he had named in his entail, not of his sons, who might in
that case have interfered with the rights of his and Margaret Crichton’s
legitimate son John; and that the father’s name--the late William
Johnstone of Gretna—had been ignorantly added by the clerk, as it was
usual in such cases to give the father’s name, and "William Johnstone,
young Lord of Gartno," [Most family histories conjecture that the marriage
of Lady Janet Dunbar with Sir Adam Johnstone took place only in 1448; but
that is not likely (and there is no proof that he had a previous wife), if
she were the mother, as is alleged, of his younger son Sir Gilbert
Johnstone of Elphinstone, for her grandson (by her first husband, Sir John
Seton) was in possession of his grandfather’s estates in 1441, and in 1448
he was Ambassador Extraordinary to the Court of England. Her eldest son,
the father of this grandson, was killed in battle in 1424, and her father
was a Commissioner of the Peace with England in 1380. Her eldest sister
had been betrothed to David, Prince of Scotland, an engagement broken off
before 1402.] was a name found in the Justiciary Records in Edinburgh, as
sharing in an affray in 1513. But even if the two Williams were not
identical they were evidently closely related.
Sir Frederick Johnstone of
Westerhall claimed the Annandale Peerages on the ground that his ancestor
Matthew was a son of Sir Adam Johnstone, who died in 1455. Sir Adam left
four sons—John, his heir; Gilbert of Elphinstone; [Mr Archibald Johnstone
of Herriothill, Edinburgh, writes that he believes himself to be a
descendant of the Johnstones of Elphinstone (whom two lawsuits have
declared to be extinct in the male line). They exported coal from
Haddington till it was stopped by an order from the Lords in Council, who
feared the supply would become exhausted. The home trade was overstocked,
and having to support all the work people without remuneration they were
obliged to dispose of their lands, and removed to Newmonkland, where they
again farmed and mined for coal about 1693. But the heiresses of
Elphinstone, as of Wamphray, in more than one instance married Johnstones
of another branch, in accordance with their father’s will, and in this way
their maiden name remained to their descendants.] William, who died 1468;
James, who was living in 1476; and an old peerage includes Adam of
Pensakke, who was dead, but leaving a son Robert before 1495. Unlike the
Johnstones of Galabank and Fulford Hall, Sir Frederick was descended
almost invariably from eldest sons. Matthew is described as armiger or
esquire in 1455. There are several Matthew Johnstones on record in that
century, but it is a name absent from the direct line of Johnstones of
that Ilk. Sir Frederick’s ancestor received lands in Lanarkshire for
service against the rebel Douglas; and his descendants were from that time
little seen in Dumfriesshire till the close of the 16th
century, when they sold their property in Lanarkshire, and came to live on
their present demesne, the head of their house having married the sister
of Johnstone of that Ilk. They have long been reported to be an early
branch of the Johnstones of Lochwood, but they were unable to produce
proof of the connection of the two families at any special link. Their
claim, like that of Mr Edward Johnstone of Fulford Hall, was therefore
declared to be not proved to the satisfaction of the House of Lords in
1881. |