TAIT'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

OCTOBER, 1849.

EARLY SCOTTISH HISTORY.

THE LIVES OF THE LINDSAYS.*

THIS work has been known for a considerable || demand on their resources for clothing of any sort. time to the more eminent living persons of the house of Lindsay, and to various antiquaries, and other parties who are interested in genealogies, heraldry, and history. It was printed for private circulation amongst the clan, and the learned in clan histories. In that form it was not, without consent, an object of criticism. It might contain valuable information, and yet be no more open to public use, stricture, or criticism, than manuscript volumes of private letters from a man to his "kith and kin." The work was the property of the Lindsays, to be used as best it could, like their family honours and mischances, for their personal behoof, warning, and edification. The author has altered the position of his book by its publication to the world; and the "Lives of the Lindsays" have become public property, to be used

as such.

These Arabs would fairly out-reckon the Lindsay, the Lindeseye, or the Limesay--whatever orthography his lordship might adopt in the East-by two thousand years or more. They would never stop till they reached Ishmael; and Lord Lindsay could carry them on till Adam-from the head of their clans to the first of the world. Another consideration, and one of more importance in checking the aristocratic feeling arising from pride of birth, is the great number of people who can be fairly counted on as participating in the solid advantages which may accrue from this possession. Lord Lindsay writes lives of the Lindsays, and has some satisfaction in dedicating his work to Sir Coutts and Margaret Lindsay; but here in the directory is the firm of Lindsay and Company, Lindsays and Lindsays, Lindsays Brothers-Peter and James, William Family histories are necessarily wings, or con- and John, George and David, as the case may be-tingents, to national histories. They either give, drapers and clothiers, wine and spirit merchants, or they should afford, more detailed narratives con- calico printers, button or doll-eye manufacturers, nected with the old state and circumstances of small smiths and engineers-anything you please-but districts than may be found in works of general they are a respectable firm, who hold their account history; but they cannot minutely detail the events far more than square at their bankers', pay cash, connected with one family, and omit a general re- and care nothing for nobody farther than scrves view of circumstances connected with their con- to promote their own interest. temporaries-sometimes their allies, often their was a Lindsay, and a decent hodman. Now, what rivals. The pride of birth, encouraged by such have they to do with Earl David? Here is works, is of small consequence in the present day. Peter Lindsay, the railway porter, an active, inNo man is the worse for believing that he is come of telligent man-a credit to the family—who works decent people; and the probability is strong that duly from morn to night for fifteen shillings paid he will be little better of supposing that some of his to him weekly. But, my lord, he may be as directly ancestors wore mail, and rode out to fight on barbed and honourably descended from Earl Beardie, the chargers. All that he can make out of the latter tiger, as yourself-he may be your own cousin, not circumstance is, the combined prudence and wealth very many degrees removed; and all the lapse beof these old gentlemen, who did not unnecessarily tween him and you, on the social scale, per the expose their bodies to blows from edge tools. The operation of the entail and primogeniture laws, may vassal who fought in woollens on their side was, have occurred with no demerit on his part, and as perhaps, the bravest man; but certainly his cou- little on that of his ancestry, and without any rage was more directly tried, for he had less than merit to you or yours. The porterage of the counhis leader between him and danger and death. try is borne, in a large proportion, by the younger The pride of descent is, moreover, greatly checked sons of younger sons, on whom the calamity of by the limited length of the line in this country. coming late into the world has fallen for eight or Lord Lindsay is best known in the world by his ex- ten generations; or, as the present Governor-Gecellent letters from the East. When collecting||neral of India, when a candidate for the representheir materials he had for guides many Arabs who were proud, and would, necessarily, have been tattered, if their climate had made a great and steady

Their grandfather

tation of Edinburgh, expressed it, for twentyseven generations. The division of ancestral merit or demerit does not even end here. The practice of

*By Lord Lindsay. In 3 vols. London: John Murray.

VOL. XVI,-NO, CXC.

3 R

naming a man after his father being very uniform, || the world, very generally in diverse branches. They is also very convenient. This is one of those cases may have one deep channel in the lineal branch, in which whatever is, is right; still it admits of on which old honours and properties centre; but some doubt whether a child is not more likely to many noble streams are traced to the parent river, resemble its mother than its father. Even nurses, that have wandered from it far away ere they meet and the gossips of a neighbourhood, are sometimes the sea; while, of its waters, more still may have compelled reluctantly to acknowledge that such is sunk into the earth, doing work not less valuable the case. Taking that view of affairs, how widely than that which glitters on the surface; and some are the honours of the greatest houses circulated; may have disappeared amongst the intervening and how little of them really remains to the person banks of the shore, forming, if their noble cousins who, by virtue of the law, bears at present the re- please, the quicksands of our democracy, who may presentation of the old feudal barons! In order to be not ineptly described, in the language of the old ascertain anybody's claim on the good or bad deeds || Hungarian constitution, as “misera plebs contriof these old Lindsays, a family map would require || buens." to be drawn, over an extent equivalent to the front We may turn to the lives of the Lindsays in of his house, and then examined. The House of particular, for they combine some of the most inPeers, in recent times, have been compelled to dig teresting passages in Scottish history. Lord Lindmen out of the lowest places in society, to assume the say traces their origin to a Norman knight; and coronet and the estate claimed for them by clever at- there they are lost. The most curious inquiry retorneys. "Then," say the Lord Lindsays of the pre-garding all our aristocracy, and, of course, respectsent day, "we have the goods, the estate, the fortune of the house." So you have; and so has John Grubb, the retired cotton broker, goods, estate, and fortune equal, or more than equal, to your own. That is but the pride of riches-a mean feeling. And if you plead possession of the hereditary titles and privileges, we must acknowledge your veracity; but when her Majesty the Queen takes Sir Robert Peel by the hand, and places him amongst the Peers, which she will do whenever he pleases, his titles and privileges will equal your own; and the Lives of the Peels will begin, in our fathers' times, with that of an honest and worthy man.

ing the people, has yet crept no farther than the Baltic; but they did not originate on the shores of the North. They were there only pilgrims and strangers, emigrants on the route westward; but all these northern nations had a former home in the East, and the interval that elapsed from their disappearance out of Asia to their invasion of central and civilized Europe, from the North, is the period of which, as respects its character and duration, the greatest ignorance exists.

The researches into the early history of the clan may be passed over without a general expression of belief in their descendant's opinion, that they all A satirical passage in one of Dean Swift's ser- came from France. That part of the book would mons has been recently made familiar to newspaper hardly bear to be disputed, if we were to admit the readers. 'Brethren," said the Dean, "three kinds statement, which is not proved (page 3, vol. 1), that of pride exist-pride of birth, pride of riches, and the names of Lindsay and Limesay are identical, pride of talents. With the last-named vile wicked- both of them implying "Isle of Limetrees;" for ness, none of you are chargeable, and I shall say the Limesays are an old French family, whose denothing on that subject." The sarcasm would be scendant by the female line preceded the "Lindentirely inapplicable to Lord Lindsay's work, or to say" here in publishing in France a history of the race anything in which he engaged. The talent dis- half-a-century since. The Limesays of France failed, played in his works is unquestionable. Few more says Lord Lindsay, in the middle of the thirteenth agreeable writers exist at the present day. He century; and the expression means that a female goes into all his subjects with an enthusiasm de- succeeded to their estates, and married some baron serving praise, and worthy of imitation, and covers with a different name, which was, of course, assumed over disquisitions, naturally dry, with a mantle by their descendants. The Limesays, on that acwoven by a bright and sparkling genius. count, failed not. They, doubtless, may be found in We do not wish to stand amongst those who de- the faubourgs of Paris, amongst the looms of Lyons, spise the research displayed in works of this cha- on the quays of Marseilles, or the farms of the deracter. The histories of families are the rills that partments. "The name of a barony," says Skene, compose the histories of nations-the great rivers in his history of the Highlands, quoted in this work, of narrative that absorb all attention. The storied "was exclusively used by its possessors and detraditions of old houses are a succession of biogra- scendants; and the possession of a territorial name phies formed from the salient points in the history of barony as surely marks out a descent from some of men who exercised great influence during their of the ancient barons as if every step of the genelives. Whatever advantage attaches to other bio-alogy could be proved." This assertion, quite con graphies clings to them, with this difference, that we get at the corn generally without the chaff. They are full of data from which to judge the characteristics of society in bygone years; and, if|| they sometimes lay bare deeds of unpalliated wickedness, yet are these dark shades brightened by many noble gleams of truth and kindness; better than valour; nobler than cold, dry, stern wisdom. These old houses run out like the great rivers of

sistent, we have no doubt, with truth, made by a most distinguished antiquarian, humbles all old aristocratic ideas of "blood and pedigree" to the Highland level: for they must be shared by many amongst us in the humblest positions at the present day, and the descendants of the Norman barons earn bread at the lowliest avocations.

Our author believes that the English "Lyndysays" shared the fate of the French Limesays

that is, became extinct in the male branch; but he||a needle point. This superiority could not have does not prove satisfactorily, and adduces no clear evidence from any other authority, that the "Lyndysays" did not exist and flourish in England before the arrival of the Normans-in other words, that the great district of Lindesey, in Lincolnshire, was not represented by a Saxon family of that name, and that the Scottish Lindsays are not descendants of the Saxon earl-who may have found a refuge in the court of Malcolm Caenmore, to which many Saxons fled with the royal Saxon family, and were kindly received, in gratitude for the entertainment of Malcolm Caenmore at the English court, during his exile.

existed during the many hundred years of Roman occupation of England, and of the south of Scotland, when walls were formed from sea to sea, to build out the northern tribes. It could not have existed when the distressed ancient Britons and Roman colonists, whose descendants are still, we believe, existing in England and Scotland, begged a legion or two from Rome to save them from their destructive and irritated neighbours. It could not have existed during the Heptarchy; for to which of the Saxon kingdoms was Scottish fealty due? It was only after England began to be consolidated by Alfred, that any claim of this nature could have been

A descent from a Saxon earl is not less credit-possibly raised. History shows that the Saxon able for all good purposes than one from a Norman baron; and, so far as the Scottish Lindsays are concerned, is the more probable turn in their genealogy. The existence of a French Norman family of the name of Limesay is proved. The extension of a branch of this family to England, with the Normans, is almost equally clear; but the existence of two names so nearly resembling each other as Lyndysay or Lyndeseye, and Limesay, does not prove them to be the same, although, at a subsequent period, they may have been confounded with each other, as was doubtless the case in England.

monarchs, from Alfred to Harold, never were in a condition to make any claim of that nature. It could not have grown up during the reign of Malcolm Caenmore's predecessor; and it could not have been preferred during the period immediately preceding that, for Scotland was divided amongst different chiefs, who exercised regal authority, and one of whom invaded England. The superiority claimed resolves itself into a defensive alliance, common amongst nations at all times; for a superiority that could not touch property, manners, laws, or liberty, is nothing, and ex nihilo nihil fit. The preA chapter follows on the origin of the different tence originated in the circumstance that the Scotraces that people these islands; and Lord Lindsaytish kings were sometimes extensive English landadopts the views of those who suppose that the Celts are a mixed race, mixed in a more marked degree than the Teutonic, to which both Saxons and Normans belong-insomuch as that the descendants of Japheth and Ham are intermingled amongst the Celts endorsing thus a curious legend in old Irish tradition. The origin of the Teutonic race is hid-"unpalatable to our national pride;" but we do not den in the deepest gloom. They came thundering down, we are told by Lord Lindsay, from the Persian mountains; and it may be true, but the subject requires, and would repay, more minute inquiry than it has ever yet received. If they came from the Persian mountains, they are in a fair way of completing the circle by the re-occupation of the same mountains again.

owners, and, in that capacity, were as much feudatories of the English crown as any other owners of the English soil. The only "incontrovertible historical authority," quoted by Lord Lindsay is Sir Francis Palgrave His lordship alleges that the historical fact-the imaginary superiority-may be

share that feeling. We cannot get over the facts that England is, and always has been, a larger, more populous, and wealthier country than Scotland; and these facts are not unpalatable. We cannot change them, and have no reason to be nationally ashamed of their existence. If, therefore, the Saxon emperors, as they are styled, had achieved a superiority of some kind, and the Lord Lindsay holds, "though it may be unpala-one claimed for them is impossible, the Scotch table to our national pride, that the Scoto-Pictish|| could have had no more reason to be hurt by the Kingdom was subjected, not in property, but politically, to the Saxon Kings;" and states, on what he calls "incontrovertible historical evidence," that the Saxon "Basileus," or "Emperor, held this superiority -not, as may be supposed, over provinces feudally held of England, but over the whole of the Scottish dominions of the Scottish kings-a superiority, it is to be remembered, purely political, and implying neither right to the soil, nor interference with the national laws, liberties, and manners-while the protection thus accorded to the Scottish kings in acknowledgment of their dependence, saved those laws and liberties, in instances innumerable, || title of " Bassileus," or Emperor of Britain, being from annihilation." We can make nothing out the rightful heir to the English crown, by maof a superiority which was not to interfere with pro- ternal descent; and we cannot help thinking perty, with laws, with national liberties, or national that the Norman kings would have prevented manners. Lord Lindsay might perceive that these the employment of any of their titles by one exceptions preclude the possibility of its exist-of their feudal dependants, if they had been They occupy the entire ground, without in a condition to enforce obedience. A feudal inleaving to the superiority claimed the breadth of ferior was not likely to advance such claims and

ence.

result, in their feelings of national pride, than any other small nation beaten by a great power. The conquest of Scotland was not an achievement calculated to reflect additional honour on the rivals of France. We treat the claim, therefore, as any other groundless statement put now in a form that could not be true. Lord Lindsay, indeed, says that Malcolm Caenmore failed in endeavouring to throw off this superiority at the date of the Conquest, and was compelled to do homage to William the Conqueror; while, in the same page, he informs us that Malcolm's successor, Edgar, assumed the

forming the highest summits, that have given the engineers the greatest trouble, and from which the Annan and the Clyde run south and west, in different directions, to the sea. The Earldom of Crawford was, therefore, long retained in the family of the Lindsays after their chief possessions were achieved in Forfarshire; and their principal resi dences were at Edzell, in Glenesk; and Finhaven,

to use this title. We cannot doubt the civilizing ||riod-the beginning of the twelfth century—a comresults to Scotland from the influx of Saxonparatively modern date. In the early part of the earls and refugees at the period of the Conquest. thirteenth century, the Lindsays became connected The security found by them north of the border with the district of Crawford-the barren ground evinces the utter hollowness of this claim for supe-intersected now by the Caledonian railway, and riority on the part of the English crown. If superiority meant anything, it would carry the power to expel rebels against the English king from the boundaries of Scotland. If Malcolm Caenmore paid homage to William the Norman for the crown of Scotland, he would have been required to expel the Saxon refugees from his court and the country. This demand seems never to have been made, and certainly it was not conceded. The great immi-on the South Esk, in that county. The Lindsays, gration of Saxon refugees, "the noblest of the nation," into Scotland, after the Norman conquest, while it tended to advance the country, also fixed the implacable hatred to English power, entertained by those refugees, into the national feeling, and prolonged it for centuries after its origin was forgotten. The English and Scottish nations had no causes of quarrel; but the Scottish people represented, undoubtedly, the Saxon enmity to the Norman power, even after the latter had assumed the Saxon name. The number of Norman barons who are supposed to have found their way into Scotland is no evidence on this subject; for the alliance of Scotland with France was long and intimate, and Norman families reached this country direct from the Norwegian rocks and the Baltic shore. Lord Lindsay, in reference to this source of civilization,

says:

at a subsequent period, became the first Dukes of Montrose; although the title subsequently fell to "the gallant Graham," as did the lands of Crawford to the great family of the stern Douglasses.

We have already mentioned a feature, if not a peculiarity, in Scottish nationality that is calculated to reduce the pride of the highest and oldest of the noble families in their genealogies; for the honours of the proudest houses are, or they may be, shared with the humblest men. The tendency of the Scottish commonalty to trace back, and claim descent from, or connexion with, some great family, has been the subject of frequent satire. It has been most distinctly marked amongst the Highland clansmen, who had the most direct and legitimate right to such advantage and honour as they could derive from the claim; for, amongst the original Scots and Picts, the land was held in commonthe chieftain was an elective official, whose power and privileges were derived from the suffrages of his neighbours and relatives, and who had no more right to alienate their property in his own favour, or in that of others, than the director of a public institution to appropriate its funds. Purists with titles look horrors at the presumed delinquencies of a Hudson; but if all could be proved that the committee of the York and North Midland write, nothing would be shown more corrupt than the manner in which some of their estates were obtained in early times. Their ancestors were appointed chairmen of the clans' directors, and they seized rails, stations, locomotives, waggons, carriages, and earthwork-the whole plant, and the whole receipts;

"The completion of the groundwork of Scottish civilization, by the introduction of the Norman element, the feudal law, and the monastic system, was reserved for David I., youngest son of Malcolm and Margaret, and successor of Alexander I.-the sainted son of a sainted mother, and allowed, even by Buchanan, to present the perfect model of a wise and virtuous sovereign. Educated in England among the most accomplished and chivalrous of the Normans, he had imbibed their character and principles; and even before his accession to the throne, during his administration of Strathclyde or Cumbria, he conceived the scheme of humanizing his country by introducing a new race of proprietors from Normandy and England-colonists, not conquerors-men who would diffuse the superior civilization of the South, foster the religions establishments he proposed to scatter over the land, and control the barbarism of the natives; and the wisdom and discrimination with which he selected these colonists are evinced by the superior happiness and prosperity enjoyed by Scotland during the reign of his successors down to the close of the thirteenth century. The whole history, in fact, of Scotland, subse-charging their relatives "fares" for living upon

quently to the reign of Alexander I., is that of the working out of the scheme first organised and brought into systematic action by St. David; and the mingling of races thus associated, the Celt, the Saxon, and the Norman, each strongly opposed in character, neither absolutely subjected to the others, and all of them contributing their quota or element to the formation of that national character which has been the result of their fusion, is the cause, in great measure, of those strong lights and deep shadows, of that strange antagonism of feelings and principles, sometimes in advance, sometimes in the rear, of the times, which renders the history of Scotland so picturesque and peculiar."

James the Seventh represented St. David as a "sair saunt for the crown;" but the introduction of all that was civilizing in the monastic system into Scotland occurred long before this period, and was the labour of love performed by the Culdees. Lord Lindsay surely does not mean to allege that the walls of old Iona were built by the Normans. The "Lives of the Lindsays" commences at this pe

and tilling their own land. These appropriations were greatly expedited by the introduction of the Norman or Saxon feudal system into Scotland; but they are not forgotten. Two years since, we heard an officer in her Majesty's service, a younger brother of a Highland chieftain, in a promiscuous assemblage, accuse the Highland landlords, not merely of a harsh, but of a dishonest, expulsion of their cottiers and clansmen. The traditions regarding the old state of Celtic property have had their effect in embittering the changes that have occurred on Highland estates; and it may be an apology for various atrocities in Ireland, that the perpetrators really believed themselves to be the avengers, by wild justice, of great wrongs. In the lowland districts of Scotland, the barons, as they were termed, were often nothing more than pilgrim fathers, whose descendants ramified into many tenantry,

and a few owners. At page 117, vol. 1, Lord Lindsay describes the result of these arrangements :

"Thus far, the picture I have drawn bears a close resem. blance to the feudalism of the Continent. But, owing to the mixture of Celtic and Norman blood, a peculiar element mingled from the first in the feudality of Scotland, and has left its indelible impress on the manners and habits of thought in the country. Differently from what was the case in England, the Scoto-Norman races were peculiarly prolific, and population was encouraged as much as possible. The Earl and Baron bestowed a fief, for an example, on each of his four sons, who paid him tribute in rent and service; each son subdivided his fief again among his own children, and they again among theirs, till the blood of the highest noble in the land was flowing in that of the meanest peasant, at no remote interval. This was a subject of pride, not shame, in Scotland. Within three or four centuries after their settlement in the North, above one hundred different minor houses, or families of Lindsays, were flourishing in Scot land, many of them powerful independent barons, holding in capite of the Crown-many more, vassals of the house of Crawford-the greater number settled in Angus, and the surrounding counties, yet others, in districts more remote, and in the extremity of the kingdom-all of them, however, acknowledging the Earls of Crawford as the chiefs of their blood, and maintaining constant intercourse with them, either by assistance in their feuds, or by sending their sons to seek service, either with them, or their more powerful kinsmen-the whole clan thus forming, collectively, more particularly during the fifteenth century, a great barrier and breakwater between the fertile Eastern Lowlands and the lawless clans of the Highlands. This is no imaginary sketch.

to introduce the evil system of entails in Scotland. The fortunes of the family had risen and fallen by matrimonial alliances; and against further vicissitudes to the Lindsays by this cause, he entailed on the heirs male of his house, being Lindsays, excluding the female side, and so securing, as he believed, the perpetuity of his name in the land. Man proposes, and God performs. There are no Lindsays now in the braes of Angus; the name is hardly, we believe, on the roll of justices or commissioners of supply for Angus and Mearns, where the great Earls of Crawford, from their fortresses of Edzell and Finhaven, issued their commands with sovereign authority. The Ogilvys, who were sometimes their allies, and sometimes their foes, survive, and are represented by the Earl of Airly; but the Lindsays are almost obliterated from that part of the land—a fate not unmeet in the case of those who, having an ambition to fulfil, made provision against the dealings of Providence in a way at once unnatural, and calculated to work, as it has wrought, the greatest harm to their country. The first act of entail was of necessity dishonest. The old castle of Edzell is now forgotten, and yet it was once "the finest and stateliest mansion in the east country." The new town of Edzell, designed by one of the last Earls Crawford, was never built; and the visitor to the scenery of the North Esk at Gan

low country-finds a village of a few houses, hidden from the busy world, where once "the Lyndsays held their court."

We do not comprehend the zeal of Lord Lindsay in endeavouring to establish that shadow of supremacy for England over Scotland claimed by the former power, unless it be to cover the conduct. of his own ancestry; for, as he says, the admission rescues us from the "inevitable and surely more un

The charters of the Earls of Crawford, and of their principal cadets, through several centuries, bear witness to the constant intercourse maintained, even with branches settled for genera-nochic-the pass of the river from the high to the tions in districts far removed from Angus, but whose claims of kindred were never forgotten by themselves, or overlooked by their chiefs; while a constant preference was given to priests, notaries, pedagogues, tradesmen, and even domestic servants, of the named blood of Lindsay. A principle of union and attachment thus reigned throughout the whole race; the tie of consanguinity was carefully acknowledged in each ascending stagethe meanest felt himself akin to the highest-the feudal bond was sweetened by blood, and the duty to their chief became the paramount principle of action; and it is to this mixture of feudalism and patriarchism, the result of the mingling of races above alluded to, and reigning throughout the whole social sys-palatable alternative of confessing our ancestors in tem, that much of that good faith, which a celebrated historian of France has recognised as the distinguishing and redeeming feature of feudal times in Scotland-passion and conviction bearing even a stronger sway than selfish interest-is attributable. The value for names, is, indeed, still strong in Scotland--a link of mutual interest between the upper and lower classes who bear the same patronymic. It is rare to find a Lindsay, a Hay, a Drummond, in the lower orders, who has not some tradition, at least, of descent, from the Houses of Perth, Errol, or Crawford.

And these traditions form, not unfrequently, a strong moral motive, producing self-respect, exertion, and independence, and deterring individuals who inherit them, from doing aught unworthy of the race they attach them to. It has been the fashion of late years to undervalue feudal and patriarchal times. They exhibit, it is true, but a limited and partial stage of civilization; but no nation ever rose to enduring constitutional greatness without passing through feudalism, or something akin to it. And we must not forget that we always in a rude age hear of the bad rather than the good, of those who are the curse rather than the salt of society. There must have been much happiness and|| much virtue which we do not hear of."

So originated the old proverb that blood is thicker or stronger than water; and it is creditable to the Lindsays, that they seem to have introduced and cultivated learning amongst their dependants and followers in Angus. At the end of the sixteenth, and early in the seventeenth century, many of the commonalty amongst the Lindsays could write well. We may remark, in passing, that one of the Lindsays, Earl Crawford, was the first baron

1174 and 1290 to have been dastards and villains." We can explain the conduct of some of the nobles, and, amongst others, of more than one Lindsay, upon a different ground than either downright cowardice or villany. They were large holders of land both in England and Scotland at the same time, and they had learned to "gripe fast." They were willing to vindicate their northern independence, if they could still retain their southern wealth. Their circumstances were undoubtedly trying, and their position incompatible with their duty to Scotland, as subjects to England as feudal barons. Even the Scottish kings held possession of lands in England; and, at one time, were the acknowledged feudal superiors of part of what is now embraced in the boundaries of that country. A regular war between England and Scotland involved a great sacrifice on the part of the Lindsays, who held wide and valuable estates in the former country. We are not, therefore, astonished at their attempts to reconcile conflicting interests by the acknowledgment of a claim by England, which was only offered as a shadow, until the dispute regarding the succession between Baliol and Bruce, when Edward of England gave greator solidity to the pretensions of that crown.

When Balio succeeded to the crown, he was