Series 1 > History of Greater Britain, as well England as Scotland

CHAP. XIX.]
OF GREATER BRITAIN
It was John Couplant, a Gascon, that made David his prisoner,
but not before David had with one blow knocked out two of David’s feat,
his teeth. The iron points of two arrows remained fixed in his iron points
flesh. One of them, indeed, was removed by a skilful opera- body. m 15
tion; the extraction of the other resisted every attempt that
they could make; but when he came to visit the shrine of a miracle
Saint Ninian in Scotland, the iron came away of its own will
by divine intervention. After David had been made prisoner,
two strongholds were surrendered to the English : Roxburgh,
to wit, to the lord Percy, and Hermitage. At that time the
English held March, Teviotdale, Tweeddale, Forestham, the
valley of the Annan, and Galloway. Their boundary they
placed first at Cockburnspath and Sutra1, and afterwards at
Carlinlyppos2 and Crossecarne. Edward Baliol was at that The doings
time tarrying at Brintel3, in Galloway, and, along with English [Baliol].
Percy, he laid waste Lothian with fire and sword, and passing
through the country around Glasgow, he dealt in the same
fashion with Cunningham and Nithsdale, and then returned
home. This wide-spread plundering and pillaging led to the
election as guardian of Scotland of the lord seneschal, who had The guardian
not fallen into the hands of the English at the same time with of Scot,and•
David. It was now, too, that William Douglas, son to Archi- William
bald, the brother of that lord James who had lost his life the
among the heathen, returned from France to Scotland. He
was the first earl of Douglas. When he came to his own land
of Douglasdale, of which the English had lately taken posses¬
sion, he drove them out, recovered his lands, and likewise
gained over to his side the Forest of Ettrick and Teviotdale.
In the thirteen hundred and fifty-third year of the Lord,
William Douglas, then prisoner in England, contrived the slay¬
ing of David Barclay, a knight, of Aberdeen, in revenge for the David Barclay
death of John Douglas of Dalkeith, at which the said David had 15
been present. For that John of Dalkeith was brother to David4.
1 * Soltre The place is the Soutra of the present parish of Fala and Soutra.
2 May this be Carlops—which some have derived from Carlin's Loup ?
3 ‘Brynt-yle’ in Wyntoun, Bk. vm. ch. xL ; vol. ii. p. 477, Laing’s ed. Sir
Herbert Maxwell quotes a ‘ Bruntland ’ in his Studies in the Topography of Gal¬
loway, p. 98. Edin. 1887.
4 Davidis ’; but ? ‘ Gulielmi