Galloway, the Solway Shore and the Nature of Borders

Abstract

The region of Galloway has been described as a microcosm of Scotland both topographically, by encompassing within its borders examples of all those physical features which have come to typify Scotland, and politically, by providing a major focus in the struggle for independence of the early fourteenth century which reflected the situation in the country as a whole.¹ While the reasons for this latter focus are readily apparent in the conjunction in the area of the interests of the three major families involved in the struggle, those of Balliol, Bruce and Comyn, and in its proximity to England, there is a measure of irony in the fact that a region which had for so long repudiated the full overlordship of the kings of Scots and had, on occasions, courted English support against them should be seen as representative of the nation as a whole in its battle for the defence of Scottish sovereignty against its absorption into an English realm.² Although Galloway had been increasingly drawn under the domination of the kings of Scots since the time of Fergus, it was only after 1234, following the death of Alan of Galloway, the suppression of his bastard son Thomas’s claim to the lordship by Alexander II and the division of the region between Alan’s three daughters and their predominantly English husbands, that its autonomy was effectively ended and it was brought fully under Scottish jurisdiction.³ This was scarcely two years before the treaty of York by which Alexander II formally agreed to relinquish Scottish claims to the three northern counties of England, in return for lands worth £200 annually, and the long-established customary line linking the Solway Firth to the Tweed was thereby confirmed as marking the definitive border between the two kingdoms.⁴