ABSTRACT
In April 1354 the suitors of a baronial court convened at Balantrodoch heard an astonishing tale of gross misconduct on the part of the master of the (by then defunct) Scottish Templars in his efforts to win control over the lands of Esperton in Midlothian. The story that the assembled jurors retold was an astonishing one, involving a violent assault on the widow of a deceased tenant, a fraudulent claim on her estate and the murder of her son.2 The master’s outrageous actions were a source of fascination to the historian who published an edition of the court record a hundred years ago,3 and prompted another scholar to venture the opinion that there was ‘a genuinely unattractive side to the Templars’ character’,4 but the document is noteworthy on several other counts. Not least of these is the vivid detail with which the plaintiff, who clearly came to court primed with facts salient to his claim to Esperton, presented his case. His precise recollection of events and even conversations that had taken place as far back as 1296 bear witness to oral tradition passed carefully down through several decades, an impressive grasp of the minutiae of land law, and (implicitly, if not explicitly) an appreciation of the value of written documents in the curial setting. More than sixty years after the unfortunate widow Christina first lost her hold on the estate of Esperton, Robert Semple of Halkerston successfully won sasine of the lands. On another occasion, this one dating from the early thirteenth century, the monks of Melrose confronted a claim not unlike that of Robert Semple, this time in respect of the patronage of the church of Ochiltree, which they had received as a gift from Eustacia de Colville. When challenged in respect of his title, Abbot William summoned into his court the lady of Ochiltree herself, who recounted in precise fashion the history of her family’s involvement with the church and its adjacent lands.5 In this case, too, the successful claim to valuable property depended ultimately on the preservation of
1 The author wishes to acknowledge with thanks the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in the research undertaken for this article.
