= Bailiff: v. under Bailey.

There was a youthe, a well-beloved youthe, And he was a squires son; He loved the bayliffes daughter deare, That lived in Islington.

—‘The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington’: Percy's Reliques.

“from the Norman office of Le Bailli, a species of Viscount or Sheriff. The name occurs as Bailof in Battle Abbey Roll” (this is in Leland’s copy). “The office, being of importance, was usually held by Normans of rank.”—The Norman People. My own conviction is, that Bailif here stands for Baliol—one of the great names hitherto supposed to be missing on the Roll. In an old list, preserved in the Durham Bolden-Buke, of the “Chivaliers demorantes en le Franchise de Duresme demy Tyne et Teys, q. furent a Baner en le temps le Roy Henry, fitz le Roy John, a le Bataille de Lewes,” the three first names we find are the following:— “John de Baillof demorants a Chastell Bernard: Hugh de Baillof son fitz a Seleby: Eustace de Baillof dem’ant a Querundon.”

In another similar MS. list, said to have been found in Lord Conyers’ study, the name is spelt Bailiffe; but in both cases it stands for Baliol.—Hutchinson's Durham, vol. i., p. 220.

It is the name of a small Norman town, Bailleul, two miles from Argenton, “d’0ù étaient originaires les Bailleuls, Rois d’Ecosse.”—Vosgier, 1799. The above-mentioned John was fifth in descent from Guy, the patriarch of the race, who received from William Rufus the barony of Bywell in Northumberland, and the forests of Teesdale and Marwood, the lordship of Middleton-in-Teesdale, and Gainford, “with all their royalties, franchises, and immunities,” in the co. of Durham. His son, Barnard I., who “shared in the honour of the signal defeat which the Scots sustained at the battle of the Standard” in 1138, built the famous stronghold that gives its name to the town of Barnard Castle on Tees. He chose a noble site for the head of his Honour. “Barnard Castle,” as Leland says, “standith statelie upon Tese,” crowning the precipitous rock that here stems the wild current of the river, and guarding its passes from this overhanging brow. It once covered seven acres of ground, and was reputed the strongest fortress in the North of England; and though its fair battlements have been long since defaced and ruined, it still towers aloft in its pride of place, looking down upon the grey roofs clustering at its feet, the beautiful Tees rushing past in its wooded glen, and far over Marwood Chase to the moorland hills beyond. There is a fine description of “proud Barnard’s bannered towers” in Rokeby — “High crowned he sits, in dawning pale, The sovereign of the lovely vale.”

But the view, magnificent as it is, falls short of the compass ascribed to it by Scott:— “Nor Tees alone, in dawning bright, Shall rush upon the ravish’d sight: But many a tributary stream Each from its own dark dell shall gleam: Staindrop, who from her sylvan bowers Salutes proud Raby’s battled towers: The rural brook of Egliston; And Balder, named from Odin’s son: And Greta, to whose banks ere long We lead the lovers of the song: And silver Lune, from Stanmore wild.

And fairy Thorsgill’s murmuring child: And last and least, but loveliest still, Romantic Deepdale’s slender rill.”

When Alexander of Scotland invaded the Northern counties in 1216, he reconnoitred Castle Barnard (as it was first called), but left it unmolested; for, while surveying its formidable defences, a cross-bow shaft from the battlements laid his brother-in-law, Eustace de Vesci, dead at his feet.

“Barnard II. succeeded his father before 1167. In 1174 he joined Robert de Stuteville and other Northern barons in relieving Alnwick Castle, then besieged by William King of Scotland. Towards morning, when they had proceeded about twenty-five miles from Newcastle, so thick a fog arose as to render the march dubious or dangerous; but sensible of the advantages of speed and decision: 'Stay or turn who will,’ said Baliol, ‘if I go alone, yet will I onward.’ Fortune favoured the enterprise; the mist suddenly dispersed, and the towers of Alnwick glittered before them in the morning sun. William of Scotland was observed in the distance in the open field, with no stronger escort than a party of sixty horse, whilst most of his troops, fearless of any surprise, were plundering the country in scattered parties. After a short but gallant resistance the Lion of Scotland was led away prisoner, and delivered to King Henry at Northampton.”—Surtees.

Barnard II.’s grandson, Hugh, one of the great Northern barons, answered for thirty knight’s fees in 1215, and throughout the Baron’s war stoutly maintained his allegiance to the King, being accounted one of his “fautors and evil counsellors.” He was lavishly rewarded with confiscated estates; and “Certain it is,” says Dugdale, “that Hugh Baliol benefited himself not a little in those troublesome times of King John; for when all was at quiet at the entrance of Henry III., he could not forbear his wonted course of plundering.”

His son and heir, John, who was taken prisoner with Henry III. at Lewes, married the great heiress that transformed the fortunes of the family, Devorguill, the daughter of Alan of Galloway and the Scottish princess Margaret, and eventually eldest co-heir of the blood royal of Scotland. This “brought him into close connection with the Scottish kingdom. On the marriage of Margaret of England to the young King of Scotland, the tuition of the Royal infants and of their kingdom was committed to him, and to another powerful baron still nearer to the Border, Robert Ros, of Wark. Within two years they were both accused of abusing their authority as Regents. The rich and powerful Baliol made his peace partly by payment of a heavy fine, and partly by calling to Henry’s recollection the services which his father had often rendered to his father John at his greatest need.”—Surtees. He died in 1268, and the Lady Devorguill had his heart embalmed and encased in a coffin of enamelled ebony, “Lockit and bounden with silver bright,”

which she carried with her wherever she went. At dinner and supper, she caused it to be laid on her husband’s vacant seat, and never took her own place at the table till she had paid it due reverence—the same accustomed reverence as if her lord had been actually in presence. When she died she directed that it should be laid on her breast in her coffin, and buried with her in the Cistercian house she had founded for its reception—Dolce Cor, or Sweet Heart Abbey, near Dumfries. Her husband had given “annual exhibitions to certain poor scholars of Oxford,” requesting her on his death-bed to continue this charity; and she dutifully undertook the completion of his design, and founded Baliol College in 1284.

She was the mother of four sons and four daughters. Alan, the eldest son, had not survived his father; Hugh, the 2nd, died s. p. in 1271; as did Alexander, the 3rd, in 1279; and John, the youngest, then succeeded to a vast inheritance. “Besides Barnard and its dependencies, he held the barony of Bywell in Northumberland, and large estates in Herts, Northampton, and several southern counties. In Scotland he inherited from his mother the lordship of Galloway, the castle of Botel in Kenmare, and Kirk-Andrews; whilst in France he still held the ancient Norman estates of his house, Bailleul, Dampierre, Harcourt, and Verney. From Devorguill he derived the very dubious blessing of the nearest claim in blood to the crown of Scotland, after the decease of the Maid of Norway; and under the decision of Edward I. of England, to whom, as lord paramount, the competitors submitted their pretensions, his title, as representing the eldest daughter of David Earl of Huntingdon, was pronounced superior to those of Bruce and Hastings, who derived from younger daughters, and he was crowned King of Scotland at Scone on St. Andrew’s Day, 1292.”— Ibid, But this ill-starred greatness led only to the downfall of his house. His reign proved as brief as it was disastrous, and was remembered with such bitter­ness, that “his very name was accounted unfortunate, and no King of Scotland was ever after allowed to bear it.” In little more than three years and a half he was kneeling a suppliant, stripped of every ornament of royalty, at Edward’s feet, confessing, “for very fear of his life, his several offences against his liege lord; and then, by delivery of his wand and staff, making full resignation of all his right to the crown and realm of Scotland into the hands of the King of England.” —Ibid, Not only was he bereft of his kingdom, but of almost all his splendid inheritance, and “passed, without a blow, from a throne to an English prison.” He did not, however, remain long in the Tower, and was not banished the kingdom; but eventually retired to Normandy, where he still retained his ancestral estates, and died at Château Gaillard, a blind and neglected old man, in 1314. His son, Edward Baliol, on the death of King Robert Bruce, by a bold stroke seated himself on the vacant throne; and having acknowledged Edward as his suzerain, was for some years upheld there by the power of England; but in 1339 even this phantom sovereignty came to an end, and he died an obscure pensioner of the English crown. He left no children by the French princess he had married; and as his only brother Henry had been slain on his part at Annan in 1332, the chief male line of Baliol terminated with him.

Collateral branches were, however, not wanting: besides “many sprinklings of this great house that can scarcely with any certainty be applied to the parent stock,” Surtees thus enumerates them:— Barnard, son of Eustace, and brother of Hugh de Baliol (one of King John’s evil counsellors) was still living, and a baron by tenure in 1245. His descendants are not mentioned.

Ingelram, a younger son of Barnard II., acquired Inverkeillour, in Forfar, through the heiress of Walter de Berkeley, Chamberlain of Scotland, and built Red Castle near the mouth of Lunan Water. He was the grandfather of a second Ingelram, one of the Magnates of Scotland, 1280-84, who died childless; and in 1308 Red Castle had passed to the son of Constance de Baliol, Henry de Fishburn.

Eustace, supposed to be a brother of the elder John de Baliol, was a baron by tenure and Sheriff of Cumberland in 1260, having married a great Cumberland heiress, Hawyse de Levinton. Nothing is said of his posterity.

Alexander, Lord of Cavers in Roxburghshire, whom Dugdale calls King John’s brother, and others have declared to be his uncle. He was assuredly neither the one nor the other, for in one of his charters (dated 6 Hen. III., and preserved in the register of Binham Abbey, Norfolk), he gives the names of his father, Henry de Baliol, and his mother Lora. Henry de Baliol’s parentage has not been ascertained: but Lora “was the daughter of Peter de Valoines, and, as the co-heir of Christian, Countess of Essex, brought her husband lands in Norfolk, Essex, and Herts. Alexander himself obtained the Kentish Honour of Chilham through his wife Isabel de Dover, the widowed Countess of Atholl, and was Chamberlain of Scotland 1290-1307. He witnessed John de Baliol’s homage to Edward for the crown of Scotland in 1292, as one of the Scottish Magnates; but afterwards zealously espoused the English interests, and was repeatedly summoned for service in the Scottish wars. He was a baron by writ in 1299, and the next year followed the King to the siege of Carlaverock:— “Mes Alissandres de Bailloel, Ke a tout bien fere metoit le oel, Jaune baniere avoit el champ Al rouge escu voidie du champ.”

He is believed to have died about the year 1309, and left a son of his own name, who was the father of Thomas, presumed to have been “the last male heir of Baliol.” His sister and heiress, Isabel, was given in marriage by David II. to Ranald More. “The Lords of Cavers,” says Surtees, “still existed in 1368, but every trace of the name was extinguished before the close of the fourteenth century.”

There is an old Kentish house that claims to descend from the royal Devorguill, though it bears neither the name nor the arms of Baliol. Its pedigree assigns to her two more younger sons, Alexander of Chilham (who was, as we have seen, only a kinsman), and William, unnoticed, as far as I am aware, in any other record. He was, it goes on to say, styled Le Scot, and, dying about 1313, lies buried in the Whitefriars Church at Canterbury. His descendants, who all bore the name of Scott, were seated at Brabourne and Scott’s Hall in Kent, and eminent among the gentlemen of the county. Many of them appear as Sheriffs and knights of the shire; one was Chief Justice of the King’s Bench and Knight Marshal of England; another was Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and sent by Edward IV. on an embassy to France; while a third, appointed to command the Kentish levies at the approach of the Armada, was so popular and powerful in his neighbourhood, that he was able to despatch 4000 men to Dover the very day after he had received his commission from the Council. Seventeen generations of Scotts lie buried in Brabourne Church, where several stately monuments - among them a very singular one in the shape of a reredos or altar - have been raised to their memory. There is a curious heart-shrine that belonged to the family in the same church, which Mr. Scott conjectures once contained the heart of John de Baliol, brought thither when “their troubles with England came on, and the Baliols became unpopular in Scotland;” a mild form of expression for the downfall of a dynasty. But is it credible that the coffin of the royal Devorguill should have been opened in a religious house of her own foundation, in order to remove the treasured relic from which that house took its name? Nor do I believe that a brother of King John of Scotland—a prince of the blood of Malcolm Canmore—lived and died utterly ignored by every contem­porary chronicler, and content to abdicate both his name and his coat of arms. The Scotts bear Argent, three Catherine-wheels Sable within a bordure engrailed Gules; and lay great stress on the coincidence of this coat with the College mark of Baliol, which is a Catherine-wheel. But William Le Scot might possibly be identified with a Sir William de Baliol, who died in 1313 (though there is no record of this latter having discarded his patronymic), and “seems to have belonged in some shape to the line of Cavers, but his exact position has not been ascertained.”—Ibid. Was he the same William de Baliol who held lands in Notts and Derby by knight-service, and was ordered to attend muster at Nottingham, 25 Ed. I.?

A Norman name: From the Domesday Book, Belfou or de Belfaco. Bellevue; a local name