New Werk Stories
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Feuds and vendettas in 16th century Scotland reached a peak that have rarely been surpassed in any country. How the Scots found time to fight against their mutual enemy England is difficult to imagine but they often did not use the excuse that the enemy of their enemy was their friend, rather that the enemy was the English and any feud that intervened was set aside for the “good of the nation”.
Such events frequently started over trivial matters that gradually escalated, and the origins lost as the subsequent actions were far more serious.
Feuds became so numerous and complex involving families, relatives, husbands, wives and anyone with a connection that the story became almost impossible to tell and so I have tried to give the account of one family who were involved in one of the biggest vendettas in Scotland which lasted over two hundred years and may still be running today in a less extreme form.
To compound the complexity, the Scottish nation was going through the process of changing religions from Catholicism to Presbyterianism, which in itself established a series of feuds that certainly continues today and to the extent that schools, churches, places of entertainment and even football clubs were segregated until not so many years ago. Nowadays segregation is illegal, but such laws do little to change feelings or memories, which will hopefully melt in time.
Then there were the malevolent purges against witchcraft, not just in Scotland and England, but right across Europe. That the Scottish King James VI even wrote a book on the subject “Daemonology” is evidence of just how high feelings were running as thousands of men and mostly women were accused of witchcraft and many were burned at the stake or strangled to death.
There was an ongoing war against the English whereby the Scots were determined to be a separate nation which the English wished to annex. Constant invasions of Scotland by the English determined the Scots to sign an alliance with England’s enemy, the French. “The Auld Alliance” endured for several centuries and certainly lives on in the romantic memories of both countries.
Possibly one of the hardest parts of writing an historical novel about a relatively obscure family in medieval times is finding written records, contemporary or otherwise. The next most difficult is to separate different individuals from the information that you can find, so for example Patrick the son of Patrick or Patrick son of George, who then named his son George after his father. The difficulty is further compounded by the variety of spellings of the same name, so even a simple name like Mure is also spelt as Muir, Muire, Muer, More, Moore etc. I have used a single spelling throughout for a family name.
Historians in the 19th century frequently confused names and dates, as I may have done, however I have tried to keep timelines and names as accurate as possible. Should there be any proven errors then please let me know in order that amendments can be made in subsequent editions.
The Maxwells were a very significant family in Scottish history, Sir Robert Maxwell the First of Calderwood who was knighted in about 1402 shortly after his marriage to Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of Sir Robert Danielston. Sir Robert had large estates, and as his two daughters, Lady Maxwell and Lady Kilmaurs, were his sole heirs. The lands of Mauldslie, Finlayston, Stanley, Newark, and others, were thus added to his already extensive possessions. He was held in high esteem by the Regent, the Duke of Albany and served as an Ambassador in trying to secure the release of King James I from captivity by the English. Unfortunately he met an untimely end in France when commanding the Scottish forces near Chinon in 1420. Successive generations maintained the delicate balance of staying in favour of the Crown and more distant relatives fed off this relationship.