334 The Swintons of that Ilk, by A. Campbell Swinton. 



of the Scots auxiliaries, and in recognition of his well-known 

 valour was at once created Duke of Touraine. But his proverbial 

 ill-fortune attended the gallant Tineman. At the battle of Yer- 

 neuil, on the 1 7th of August 1424, the combined forces of France 

 and Scotland under his command, were totally defeated by an 

 English army under the Duke of Bedford, acting as Eegent for 

 Henry VI. Among the slain were the Earl himself, Buchan, 

 Stewart, Lindsay, and Sir John Swinton, "with above two 

 thousand others of all sorts."* Apparently before going on 

 foreign service Swinton had, by a deed dated at Dunbar, granted 

 to the Prioress and Convent of Coldstream, a lease of his lands of 

 Little Swinton for ten years from Whitsunday, 1424. The 

 amount of rent is not stated, merely " the reward maid and to be 

 maid to me both temporal and spiritual," the latter no doubt 

 being prayers for his safety. Sir John Swinton had been twice 

 married ; first, to Lady Marjory Dunbar, daughter of George 

 Earl of March, who died shortly afterwards without issue ; and 

 secondly to his cousin-german, Lady Marjory Stewart, daughter 

 of the Eegent Albany, who was a son of King Eobert II. 



XIII. Sir John Swinton of Swinton, the son of this marriage, 

 being an infant at the time of his father's death, was left under 

 the guardianship of William cle Wedderburn. By Wedderburn, 

 a notarial instrument was taken in the Monastery of Coldstream, 

 on the 15th of January, 1426, to the effect that Lady Margaret 

 Swinton, his ward's grandmother, consented to the payment of a 

 debt due by her late husband out of her terce of the lands of 

 Cranshaws. Among the witnesses to this instrument, are Lady 

 Marion of Blackburn, Prioress of the Monastery, and Lady Jean 

 of Stichale, Nun. On occasion of the forfeiture of the Earl of 

 March, a question arose whether the lands of Cranshaws were his 

 in property or in tenandry. The dispute lasted for upwards of 

 twenty years, and was ultimately decided by an inquest ap- 

 pointed by Parliament in 1484, to the effect that March held in 

 tenandry only ; and that the lands belonged to Swinton in virtue 

 of the original grant to his grandfather, f This Sir John Swin- 

 ton had, besides a son John who succeeded him, a daughter, 



* Hume's History of the House of Wedderburn, p. 129. 

 f The representation on the subject made by Sir John Swinton to the King 

 bears that the said lands of Cranshaws past memory of man was a tenandry 

 of the Earldom of March, and belonged in property and heritage to the Lady 



