History of the Johnstones, 1191-1909, with ... - Electric Scotland

SO
CHAPTER I.
The Earliest Johnestouns—Bruces—Wallace— Douglas.
late as the time of Sir Walter Scott, Dumfriesshire was still known
as the Southern Highlands. Its Keltic inhabitants, aided by the Scoto-
Irish immigrants were the most determined opponents of the Roman
legions and of all who followed them, till they were subdued by the peaceful
policy of David I.
This prince, the son of Malcolm III. and of Margaret, the sister of Edgar
Atheling, accompanied his sister to England when she married Henry I.
He was struck with the result of the superior education of the Normans,
and the advantages of the feudal system in enabling the King to control a
mixed community ; and as the independent tribes of Dumfriesshire were a
thorn in the side of England when she annexed Cumberland, peopled as it
was by the same race, he followed the example of William Rufus, who had
planted colonies free of taxes in Westmoreland and Cumberland, not only to
defend the border but to repress the natives. David gave the lordship of
Annandale to his old companion in arms, Robert de Brus, and encouraged
settlers from Flanders to introduce a superior style of building. Sir Herbert
Maxwell thinks it probable that the Houses of Douglas and Moray 1 were
derived from a common Frisian or Flemish stock.
The Danes and Norsemen had already made settlements in Dumfriesshire,
and probably found wives among the natives, who were undoubtedly mixed
with the descendants of the Roman Legion formerly quartered in those parts.
The ancestors of de Brus, or Bruce, had an early connection with Orkney
when they were Norwegian chiefs, and the family owned estates in Normandy
and Yorkshire. In 1 123 they were accompanied or preceded to Dumfriesshire
by the seigneurs of Bailleul or Baliol (also from Yorkshire), Jardine and Comin,
with others of the Anglo-Norman race.
Bruce and his son did not appreciate Annandale, because there was "no
wheaten bread," and the elder lived chiefly in England, but the 500 followers
of his descendant, and of Prince David of Scotland, who accompanied
Richard I. to the Holy Land, included a large proportion of Dumfriesshire
B
1 House of Douglas.