Character sketch William Douglas
Answers
Explanation:
William Douglas was the son of Sir Archibald Douglas (died 1333) and Beatrice de Lindsay, the daughter of Sir Alexander de Lindsay of Crawford, South Lanarkshire. He was the nephew of "Sir James the Good", the trusted deputy of King Robert I of Scotland (Robert the Bruce). From the time of his father's death at the Battle of Halidon Hill, Douglas is described as being a ward of his kinsman and godfather, William Douglas, Knight of Liddesdale, and was educated in France. In 1342, under pressure from Liddesdale, his uncle Hugh the Dull resigned the Lordship of Douglas to him, though Liddesdale rapaciously administered his estates while it was in his ward-ship, and assumed direct ownership of some of the Douglas territories.
Douglas returned to Scotland, upon reaching his majority in 1348, and immediately started to put his house in order. In 1346-47 following the Battle of Neville's Cross, King David II, and other nobility, including Liddesdale, were held captive by the English. Edward Baliol used the opportunity to ravage the whole of the south of Scotland. Douglas gathered his men and drove the English out from his ancestral lands of Douglasdale. Douglas went in the style of his uncle, the Good Sir James, and for the following few years waged guerrilla war against the English in the Ettrick Forest and Jedforests.
Douglas next became one of the commissioners to negotiate with the English for the release of David II of Scotland.