Caldwell Chronicles Footnotes

1. James Montgomerie, Description of the Shire of Renfrew (c. 1650s):

“In this shire, at a hill called the Knock, on Greff near Renfrew, was King Robert, called Blear-eye, cutted out of the mother’s womb by John Forrester of Elliestoun (who hazarded in extremity to use that remedy to preserve the child’s life, the Queen having there taken her child ill, being in the fields and dying; the child being quick in her belly) who before that was reputed a simple man, from whom the house of Sempill and Lords thereof have their name, and part of their state. In memory of which there is yet a stone pillar erected and standing in that place.”

2. Although Robert II had a surgeon, Thomas Hall, it is unlikely that this surgeon had any experience performing abdominal incisions. Medieval surgeons dealt chiefly with wound repair and typically avoided abdominal dissection, because of the attendant risks of blood poisoning (sepsis). Midwives performed almost all of the deliveries. Slvia Clark, “Queen Blearie,” Journal, Renfrewshire Local History Forum, vol. 9, 1998, p. 4.

3. William Dunlop’s Description of Renfrewshire, c. 1690, is the first to mention that the Queen Marjory was hunting and was thrown from her horse and dislocated the vertebrae of the neck. Someone -- Dunlop does not say who --- cut out the future king, but because of unskillful hand, permanently injured the child’s eye. Others soon amplified this story with other details: Walter Macfarlane (c. 1690); William Hamilton, Lanark and Renfrew, 1703, and George Crawfurd, History of the Shire of Renfrew (1710). Slvia Clark, “Queen Blearie,” Journal, Renfrewshire Local History Forum, vol. 9, 1998, p. 4.

4. The stone to which Mongomerie referred was known as Queen Blearie. Sir James Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, in his Annals of Scotland (1776-9) sought to debunk the notion that the Queen Blearie stone was named after King Robert II. He pointed out that the words sound like the Gaelic words for battle monument, Cuine Blair. The area in which the stone was located was known as Kemp Knowe, ør champion’s hill. He concluded that this was the site of the battler of Renfrew (1164), where Walter I defeated a Gaelic King who had invaded Renfrew. He argued that Queen Blearie was not a person, but the stone itself. English Historian Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay describes Sir James Dalyrmple as one of the most prominent Scots politicians. The Complete Works of Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1910, p. 309. Dalyrmple served as Lord President of the Court of Session. In 1681 Sir James Dalrymple, 1st Viscount Stair, published The Institutions Of The Law Of Scotland.

5. William Semple (1782) and George Robertson’s continuation (1810) of Crawfurd’s History of the Shire of Renfrew (1710) pointed to the thinness of the evidence regarding any riding accident or caesarean birth, but did not totally reject the story. Slvia Clark, “Queen Blearie,” Journal, Renfrewshire Local History Forum, vol. 9, 1998, p. 5.

6. Tory poet William Motherwell edited Hamilton’s work of 1703 in 1830 and added an appendix in which he supports the romantic story of the riding accident and caesarean birth. A Tory, William Motherwell saw value in tradition, and assumed that most of this centuries old story likely was based on fact. Slvia Clark, “Queen Blearie,” Journal, Renfrewshire Local History Forum, vol. 9, 1998, p. 5.

7. In the 1870s, lawyer David Semple's "Popular Errors etc" in Local Memorabilia, advocated the correctness of Dalrymple’s interpretation. Semple was the author of the History of the Witches of Renfrewshire 1877, which reflected his dislike of tradition unsubstantiated by clear and convincing evidence.

8. Charles Stewart Black, wrote a History of Renfrew, 1947, in which he claimed that Robert II’s birth occurred in the presence of monks and nuns at Paisley Abbey.

9. Further information can be gleaned from Antiquary: A Magazine Devoted to the Study of the Past by Edward Walford, J. Charles (John Charles) Cox, George Latimer Apperson - 1915, pp. 60 - 77.