Читать книгу Collins Tracing Your Scottish Family History - Ryan Tubridy, Anthony Adolph - Страница 27

The Ragman Rolls were two lists of nobles and other ‘subjects superior’ forced to swear allegiance to King Edward I of England during his interference in the Scottish succession in 1291 and 1296. The list, published by the Bannatyne Club in 1834, is at www.rampantscotland.com/ragman/blragman_index.htm. Its great use is identifying early (or earliest) bearers of surnames that were often taken from the land families were then holding. Queen Victoria’s prime minister William Ewart Gladstone (1809-98) did much to try to help poor Scots, through the Napier Commission, for example (see pp. 150-1). He was born in Liverpool, but his ancestry lay in Scotland. Hubert de Gledestan appears in the Ragman Roll. From him, a line comes down to the Gladstones of Arthurshiels, who settled in Biggar as maltmen. A branch of these moved to Leith, then Liverpool, producing the prime minister. Another branch ended with the mother of local genealogist Brian Lambie. She was the last Gladstone to be born in Biggar, although many Biggar people are cousins of the great Gladstone. The early Gladstones are buried on the outside wall of the old Libberton Kirk, which was rebuilt in 1810, partly over the old site, with the effect, as Brian says, ‘some Gladstones may now be partly inside with their feet out in the cold!’