Sir William DOUGLAS
- Born: Abt 1240-1250, Douglas, Lanarkshire, Scotland
- Married (2): Abt 1297, , , Scotland
- Died: Abt 1300, , , Scotland
 Other names for William were DOUGLAS Lord, "Le Hardi", DOUGLAS Sir Knight and BERWICK Governor.
Ancestral File Number: H12C-6B. User ID: 37822968.
General Notes:
"Le Hardi", Sir Knight DOUGLAS, Lord DOUGLAS, Governor of BERWICK, Crusader.
BOOKS
Robert the Bruce King of Scots, Ronald McNair Scott, Carroll & Graf Publishers Inc, New York, 1982.
p38: "...and by May 1297 the whole of Scotland, outside Lothian, was in revolt led by two outstanding men: Andrew Moray and William Wallace...
"...Men flocked to Wallace's banner and with a growing force he turned eastward to where the chief justice was holding his courts at Scone. On the way there he was joined by that stormy petrel, Sir William Douglas, late commander of the castle at Berwick, with a body of mounted men. Leaving the foot soldiers to follow, Wallace and Sir William, with all the horsemen of the party, galloped ahead in the hope of surprising the chief justice at his sessions. But in the nick of time he was warned of their approach and fled in the clothes he stood up in, relinquishing to his attackers a rich haul of booty.
"The gesture of Sir William was typical of the man. Crusader, warrior, egoist, he had gone his own way throughout his life with very little regard for anyone else. He had flouted the guardians of the interregnum and insulted the authority of King Edward by abducting and forcibly marrying Eleanor de Ferrers, an English widow, while she was staying with relatives in Scotland.
"Nevertheless, in that heraldic age, the adherence of this great nobleman immediately conferred on Wallace's band of outlaws the cachet of respectability. Sir William Douglas' kinship to the family of Moray and the fact that his first wife was the sister of James Stewart, Wallace's feudal lord, linked the two areas of insurrection. Behind his move it is reasonable to discern the fine hand of Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow...
"When news of Sir William Douglas' defection reached King Edward, he was deeply involved in English problems. Knowing of old the contrariness of this opinionated knight, he did not take the matter seriously enough to alert the English forces but sent orders to the Governor of Carlisle, the elder Bruce, to instruct his son to muster the men of Annandale and with them proceed to the Douglas lands and seize the Douglas castle..."
The Scottish Chiefs, Jane Porter, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921, New York, p4:
"...Sir John Monteith was bequeathed by his dying father to the particular charge of his friend William, Lord Douglas, at that time governor of Berwick. After the fall of that place and the captivity of its defender, Sir John Monteith had retired to Douglas castle, in the vicinity of Lanark, and was now the sole master of that princely residence. James Douglas, the only son of its veteran lord, being still at Paris, whither he had been despatched, before the defeatat Dunbar, to negotiate a league between the French monarch and the then King of Scots"
ANCESTRAL FILE
Ancestral File Ver 4.10 H12C-6B Born Abt 1240, Ver 4.19 91WP-HM Born Abt 1250.
Marriage Information:
William married Elizabeth STEWART, daughter of High Steward Alexander Stewart SCOTLAND and Jean McCrory BUTE. (Elizabeth STEWART was born about 1245 in , , Scotland and died before 1297.)
Marriage Information:
William also married Eleanor BOHUN, daughter of Earl Humphrey De Bohun HEREFORD, VI and Eleanor De BRAOSE, about 1297 in , , Scotland. (Eleanor BOHUN was born about 1240 in Brecknock, Breconshire, Wales, died on 20 Feb 1313-1314 and was buried in Abbey, Saffron Walden, Essex, England.)
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