Lord of Lorn and the False Steward, The [Child 271]

DESCRIPTION: The Lord of Lorn, having done well in school, is sent to France to study. His steward abuses him, takes his possessions, and sets him to begging. Eventually the truth is revealed; the Lord regains his property and the Steward is executed
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: apparently 1580 (stationer's register entry for "The Lord of Lorne"); it was in William Thackeray's broadside catalog by 1690; first text before 1750 (Percy Folio)
KEYWORDS: nobility trick abuse begging help punishment execution
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (9 citations):
Child 271, "The Lord of Lorn and the False Steward" (2 texts)
Bronson 271, comments only
Hales/Furnival-BishopPercysFolioManuscript, volume I, pp. 180-198, "Lord of Learne" (1 text)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 76, "The Lord of Lorn" (1 text)
Olson-BroadsideBalladIndex, ZN1523, "It was a worthy Lord of Lorn"
ADDITIONAL: Leslie Shepard, _The Broadside Ballad_, Legacy Books, 1962, 1978, p. 138, "A pretty ballad of the Lord of LORN and the false Steward" (reproduction of a broadside with no imdication of source)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSPercyFolio}, The Percy Folio, London, British Library MS. Additional 27879, page 73
RELATED: Versions of the Romance "Roswall and Lillian" --
Rhiannon Purdie, _Shorter Scottish Medieval Romances: Florimond of Albany, Sir Colling the Knight, King Orphius, Roswall and Lillian_, Scottish Text Society, Fifth Sieries, No. 11, 2013, pp. 125-199, "Roswall and Lillian" (2 texts, of the "long" and "short" versions)
Roud #113
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Greensleeves" (tune)
NOTES [2539 words]: A broadside printing of a song with this title entered into the Stationer's Register in 1580 lists the tune as "Greensleeves." This is also the tune listed on the broadside in Shepard. Since the ballad has not been found in tradition, this remains unverified. In any case, given the apparent wild popularity of "Greensleeves" at the time this was published, it is quite possible the printer tried to take advantage of a tune not normal to the ballad ("Lorn" can be sung to "Greensleeves," but only with effort; it is not a good fit).
And what was a ballad about a Scottish lord doing being registered in England anyway?
The first verifiable text is from the Percy folio, though Bronson thinks, probably correctly given what we find in the Station's Register, that it comes from a lost broadside. Rollins, p. 135, lists three broadsides that are presumably this piece: #1546, "The Lord of Lorne and the false Steward" (registered October 6 1580 by Jno. Wally); #1545, "Lord of Lorne" (registered December 14, 1624), and "A pretty ballad of the Lord of Lorne & the false steward" registered March 1, 1675). The last of these is probably later than the Percy Folio, but either of the first two could have been the source.
Child makes a great deal of the romances analogous to this ballad. Briggs, volume A.2, pp. 475-479, prints one of these, "Roswal and Lilian," from Hazlitt, and notes on p. 479 that this it is essentially the well-known tale of "The Goose Girl" but with the roles reversed. The romance is also known as "Roswall and Lillian."
Similarly Purdie, p. 51, declares that "The texts are not so close as to share any actual lines, but the plot of the 'Lord of Learne' is essentially a simplified version of [Roswell and Lillian]." Further, she points out that the hero in both ballad and romance goes by the strange name "Dissawar," and that it is the only proper name given in the ballad.
"Dissawar" is also, if one thinks about it, close to the name "Roswald" spelled backward. It is a sort of an oral anagram of "Roswald." And "Lillian," especially in a dialect which drops the letter "r," is a bit like "Lord o' Lorn."
Usually we expect ballads to be derived from romances. But, as Purdie notes on p. 52, "the evidence for the existence of the 'Lord of Learne' inconveniently predates that for Roswall." The earliest copy of "The Lord of Lorn," the Percy Folio text, may be more recent than the text of "Roswall" (although even this is uncertain; there are no manuscript copies of "Roswall," only print versions, the oldest being from the seventeenth century; Purdie, p. 56). But the evidence that "Lorn" is older relies on more than just the dates of the extent copies; as mentioned, the "Lord" seems to have been entered into the Stationer's Register in 1580 (Purdie, p. 52), and we also have a mention of "Ballads... Of patient Grizell, and the Lord of Lorne" from Charles Cotton in 1675 (Brushfield, p. vi).
Purdie further argues, pp. 73-74, that "Roswall" is dependent on the story of "Clariodus," which cannot be earlier than 1503 and it probably some decades later, and which would probably require some additional time to become well-known.
Also, the popularity of "Roswall" seems to be quite late. No version can be shown to be much older than the earliest dated print of 1663 (Purdie, p. 73), and the most of the prints are from long after the manuscript era. (Purdie counter-argues, pp. 75-79, that some of the words in the text argue for a sixteenth century date as they went out of use after that. However, some of her examples -- "syne," for instance -- endured into the twentieth century, so I am very far from convinced.)
It all adds up to a noteworthy LACK of evidence that "Roswall" predates "Lorn."
It's worth noting that the Percy Folio is full of texts that seem to be semi-cut-down romances -- still longer than ballads, but shorter than any normal romance. (Oddly enough, "Roswall" also underwent this process; Purdie, p. 56, describes a "Long Version" of about 850 lines and a "Short Version" of 412, which seems on its face to have been created in modern times. "Roswall and Lillian" is a romance, but whether it is a MEDIEVAL romance is altogether another question -- I incline to think it is not.)
The nature of the Percy romances is a hint that there might be an earlier, lost "Lord of Lorn" romance, which in turn raises the possibility that "Roswall" is derived from this, or that both are derived from some still earlier "Dissawar" romance.
I don't want to push that too far. It is much speculation based on the thinnest of evidence -- a Stationer's Register entry and the tendency of a manuscript. But it would explain a few things.... Child seems not to have noted the significance of the titles of the characters in the "Lord of Lorn," e.g.; I wonder if there might not be an allegory floating around somewhere in the background that was built up when the romance was balladized. So here is some of what Child omitted:
The story starts with Robert the Bruce (died 1329), the King of Scotland who won the Battle of Bannockburn and re-established Scottish independence. Bruce claimed the throne in 1306 after twenty years of confusion in Scotland (for background on this period, see the notes to "Sir Patrick Spens" [Child 58] and "Gude Wallace" [Child 157]).
The Scots at the time Bruce claimed the throne were divided into at least four parties: Those who favored the English, those who favored the deposed king John Balliol, those who favored the Bruce -- and those who, while opposed to the English and not enthusiastic about Balliol, were absolutely opposed to the Bruce claims. This included the powerful family of the Comyns, whose leader the Red Comyn Bruce had just slain (Magnusson, p. 166).
Of these four factions, the pro-English party was weak simply because any party associated with the English King Edward I would naturally have had the the independence beaten out of it (Edward was an absolute autocrat), and the Balliol faction was weakened by the fact that their monarch was a rather weak man long gone from Scotland. The anti-Bruce faction, though, was strong, including the MacDougalls.
Dougall MacDougall, a supporter of the Comyns (there was a marriage alliance between the familes; Thomson, p. 8), had actually defeated and killed two of Robert Bruce's brothers (Magnusson, p. 171). John MacDougall, Lord of Lorn, twice fought against Robert Bruce (Magnusson, pp. 175-177). In 1308, Bruce drove John MacDougall into exile; his family did not return until 1330 (Thomson, p. 11). (It is perhaps little surprise, then, that the Campbell clan first comes to our attention at about this time as supporters of Bruce; Thomson, p. 10, notes that the second known head of the clan, Neil Campbell, married Bruce's sister Mary. Since the MacDougalls had probably been responsible for the death of his father Colin -- Thomson, p. 1 -- the alliance was a natural one.)
After the great Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, of course, Robert Bruce was too firmly established to be pushed aside; he was able to deprive the MacDougalls of much of their property (Prebble, p. 23, observes that Glencoe, later site of a famous massacre, went to the MacDonalds; for the Massacre of Glencoe, see the song of that title). But there was the matter of the succession after Robert Bruce died.
By his first wife, Isabella of Mar, Bruce had only one child, a daughter Marjory/Marjorie. Given her importance for the succession, she needed a husband who had power and respect, so she was married to Walter, the hereditary Steward of Scotland. They had a single child, Robert; the pregnant Marjorie fell from a horse in 1316 (Cook, pp. 107-109) and died giving birth (Magnusson, p. 192, says she died and the child was saved by Caesarian surgery). The boy Robert (died 1390) would eventually become Robert II and ancestor of the Stewarts.
By the time of Marjorie's death Robert the Bruce had remarried, to Elizabeth de Burgh. But she was in English custody from 1306 to 1314; by the time she and Bruce reunited, there was some concern about whether she was even still capable of having children (Magnusson, p. 192). It turned out she was; she bore two daughters, then at last twin sons, David and John (Magnusson, p. 193). John died young, but the living boy would be the future King David II (Cook, p. 112). Unfortunately, it was nearly certain that he would be a minor when he came to the throne; although Robert Bruce was only in his fifties, he was also ill with a disease which was called (although almost certainly was not) leprosy.
Still, there was no question that David was Robert Bruce's heir, and he duly succeeded at the age of five -- though he would spend little of his life actively ruling Scotland. He began his reign as a minor, was sent to France for seven years (Mackie, p. 86); upon returning home, he went to war with England but was heavily defeated in 1346 at Neville's cross (Mackie, pp. 86-87). He was wounded and captured in the battle, and remained in English hands for eleven years (Magnusson, p. 204) apart from a little time on parole as he sought to raise a ransom (Magnusson, p. 205).
David was married even before he came to the throne, to Joanna "Make-Peace," the sister of Edward III of England (they had been wed the year before Robert Bruce died, when David was four and Joanna seven; Magnusson, p. 192).
This marriage, however, was childless and "apparently... loveless" (Ashley-Kings, p. 551); she apparently left Scotland, never to return, in 1357 (Boardman, p. 15). David would remarry after Joanna died in 1362, but his second wife (his former mistress, Margaret Drummond, who "was regarded by his nobles as in every way unworthy," according to Mackie, p. 88) could no more produce a child than did Joanna (odds are that the fault was David's, since she had had a son by her first husband; Magnusson, p. 106). They divorced in 1370 (Ashley-Kings, p. 551).
Boardman speculates that the divorce was perhaps an attack by David on the Stewarts, since Robert's son and heir John, the future Robert III, was married to a Drummond -- at David's insistence (Magnusson, p. 207). Ashley-Stuart insists that "Robert had been scrupulously faithful to [King David]" (p. 27), but the King himself clearly did not think so -- and, given that Robert fled the Battle of Neville's Cross at which David was captured by the Engiish (Magnuson, p. 204; for Neville's Cross, see the notes to "Durham Field" [Child 159]), and had for a time been part of an agreement in which the Douglases demanded "wiser government" (Brown, pp. 57-58), I certainly see David's point!
David had seemed, toward the end, to be doing all he could to block the Stewart succession: Seeking a third wife (Magnusson, p. 308), plus supporting anti-Stewart nobles (Boardman, pp. 24-25). He had previously tried to bring in the English prince John of Gaunt as an heir in preference to the Stewart (Magnusson, p. 207). But he ran out of time. David died unexpectedly in 1371 while still in his forties.
And suddenly there was a succession question. Robert Steward was the obvious heir, since he was the son of the oldest of Robert Bruce's three daughters, but there were objections. He was eight years older than his nephew David (Boardman, p. 1), and by this time was starting to fail in health; he was known as "Auld Blearie" or "Old Bleary" for his reddened eyes (Fry/Fry, p. 90; Magnusson, pp. 213-214, blames this description on Froissart). Plus he was regarded by some as a traitor (Ashley-Kings, p. 553), or at least someone who was willing to allow the English to control David (Magnusson, p. 204). And he had proved himself to be no general (Ashley-Stuart, p. 28).
Eventually Robert II suffered a sort of palace coup which pushed him aside in favor of his son (Magnusson, p. 215). Yet that just made the problem worse, because his sons were of questionable legitimacy. Robert II had had to seek a papal legitimization of his children by Elizabeth Mure (Boardman, p. 8). It seems the two were cousins, and they had gotten together in ignorance of this (Mitchison, p. 59; Mackie, p. 94 says that the marriage was made "in good faith"); Mure may also have been previously contracted to another (Cook, p. 135). It may be, in addition, that they had not been formally married (Boardman, p. 8) -- all in all, a lot of barriers to the legitimacy of the children.
Robert had later taken a second wife, and had additional sons (Mitchison, p. 59), but were the first brood his legitimate heirs, or were the second bunch, or were they both illegitimate?
If Robert II's claim to the kingship were set aside, or that of his children, then the Stewarts were not the heirs of David; rather, the true heirs of Robert Bruce would be the offspring of his daughters by Elizabeth de Burgh. (Indeed,it appears that some regarded the sisters as David's heirs all along -- Boardman, p. 9. Was this perhaps because they were "born in the purple," after Robert Bruce became king?)
On this line of argument, David's heir was his full sister Margaret rather than the son of his half sister Marjorie; Margaret had a son John who, from the time of his birth in 1346, seems to have been regarded as David's heir (since the children of Robert Stewart were not legitimized by the Pope until later, and Margaret apparently died in bearing the boy). But John himself died in 1361 (Boardman, pp. 8-9).
Next in line would be the children of Margaret's younger sister Matilda, should she have any. And she did: A daughter Joanna, who married John, Lord of Lorn (Boardman, p. 2). As it turned out, Joanna and John had no children, and the Lord of Lorn (John MacDougal, the head of Clan Dougal) died in 1388 (Boardman, p. 182) -- but no one could have known that at the time David died.
What's more, the Lords of Lorn (Lorne) had been rivals of the ruling dynasty for many years; Robert the Bruce had attacked the Lorn holding of Dunstaffnage in 1309 (MacLean, p. 41)
There was most definitely rivalry between the branches of the Scottish royal family at this time; while Robert Stewart did manage to ascend as Robert II, Boardman (pp. 42-45) describes what sounds like an abortive coup attempt on behalf of a Douglas. And it apparently took some time before Robert II managed to gain the full support of the nobility. In this period, a claim on behalf of the Lorn faction might have caused a great deal of trouble.
The conclusion is clear: A partisan of the Lords of Lorn might well have called Robert II (or his son Robert III) a "false Steward"; what's more, the Stewarts would set aside the MacDougalls when they had the chance. John MacDougall of Lorn was succeeded as Lord of Lorn by John Steward of Innermeath (died 1421). So if any lordship in Scotland would refer to a false Steward/Stewart/Stuart (as opposed to a mere false steward), it would be the Lords of Lorn.
Later, a Stewart actually became a Lord of Lorn: "In 1439 Jane [Queen Joan Beaufort, widow of James I and granddaughter of John of Gaunt] remarried, taking as her husband Sir James Stewart, Knight of Lorne" (Perry, p. 77). But while that had an effect on Scottish history (since it influenced the education of James II), I can't see a connection to this ballad. - RBW
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