The Maxwell's

The Maxwell's were a large and powerful Border family, emanating originally from Nithdale in Dumfriesshire. During the 14th and 15th centuries they expanded northwards and occupied castles in the Glasgow area at Cadder, Calderwood, Haggs, Mearns, Pollock and Stanley.

In 1402 the marriages of two heiresses, daughters of Sir Robert Denniston of Finlaystone, brought two important families into the lands south of the Clyde. Margaret the elder, married Sir William Cunninghame of Kilmaurs and when her father died three years later, inherited the lands of Finlaystone, which lies 6 miles down the Clyde from Dargavel. One of their heirs became Earl of Glencairn. He and his heirs played an important part in the history in the Scotland.

Elizabeth, the younger daughter, married Sir Robert Maxwell of Calderwood and, when she inherited the barony of Newark (now Port Glasgow) (for more information see Newark House). He changed his name to Maxwell of Newark.

Patrick Maxwell, great grandson of the first Maxwell of Newark, in 1516 obtained, from the Earl of Lennox, the Grant of the lands of Dargavel and became the first Maxwell of Dargavel.

A coat of arms on the east gable of Dargavel House (including in it the stag's head of the Maxwell crest) is dated 1584. This may recall the date of the building but, more likely of an improvement of the original house. Described as 'Z' plan building, it was similar to Kelbourne and Knock castles in Ayrshire, built at the same time. Rectangular in shape it lay roughly north to south.

With large turrets at it's north west and south east corners. With roughcast walls, it had three storeys and an attic.

The main doorway was on the west front, now obscured by later additions. A passage to the left of the front door led to the main spiral stair in the north-west turret. There are two cellars and a kitchen on the ground floor, with the main hall and private room on the first floor. From their a small turnpike stair. Located in a turret and the main east wall, led to the families private rooms on the second floor, while accommodation for domestics and other retainers was on the top floor.

The windows in the old building are the original ones, with moulding on the jambs and the lintels, the one in the west gable at the second floor level are particular ornate.

The sundial, dated 1670, in the wall of the south-east tower, may commemorate some later rebuilding. The whole house was reconstructed and extended in 1849 by the laird John Hall-Maxwell CB of Dargavel, David Bryce RSA being the architect.

Dargavel is situated in the Parish of Erskine (now Bishopton). The name Erskine had its origins in Viking times. Early in the 11th century, a Scotsman, having killed a Viking general, cut off his head and with the bloody dagger in his hand, showed it to King Malcolm II saying in Gaelic, referring to the head and dagger "Eris Skyne". Malcolm thereupon gave him the surname Erskine, and no doubts also the lands along the Clyde.

The next record of the family is 200 years later (1225) when Henry de Erskine witnessed a charter. The Erskine's continued to play their part in the history of the Kingdom of Scotland. Sir Robert Erskine became Great Chamberlain in 1350; Robert, 3rd Lord Erskine died beside his King at Flodden (1531); John 5th Lord Erskine was made hereditary Keeper of Stirling Castle and his son John, 6th Lord Erskine was made Earl of Mar in 1562 by Mary, Queen of Scots.

By 1638, when the Erskine family had for some time been settled in Alloa and the Stirling district, they sold the Manor (now the site of Princess Louise's Hospital) to Sir John Hamilton of 0rbiston.

There is no information as to what caused the rivalry between the Hamilton's of Orbiston and the Maxwell's of Dargavel, which came to a head under William, grandson of this Sir John.

Since the Erskine's had been away from the parish for about a century, there were no fixed seats for them in Erskine church. Dargavel, on the other hand, had a seat and what is described as table in the church, as well as burial rights in the churchyard. This filled Orbiston, as laird, with great resentment.

These were Covenanting times, when opinions in Scotland were split between those who accepted Charles II's establishment of a Church of Scotland governed by bishops, and those who adhered to two National Covenants, which declared the right of the Scots Kirk to democratic Presbyterian government. Orbiston is known to have been anti-Covenanter, so there may have been politico-religious differences between the two men, as well as personal antagonism.

With the support of some neighbours, in April 1692 Orbiston collected about 100 men, armed with guns, pistols, swords, bayonets and other offensive weapons. They failed to ambush the Maxwell's on their way to church; possibly they had been warned and had taken a different route. The quarrel must have been over more than a seat in church for the neighbours to have taken part.

During the service, the sound of trumpets and drums outside the church heralded the approach, in military formation, of Orbiston's men, headed by his Baillie, whose name happened to be Maxwell. This party erupted into the church and, seizing Dargavel and his followers, threw them out and overturned their seats and the "table". There is no record of the minister's reaction to the invasion, but those who protested peacefully about this unseemly conduct were roughly handled. Meanwhile the Maxwell family gravestones had been overturned or removed from the churchyard. A fierce struggle ensued outside the church, but there were no serious casualties.

Dargavel brought the matter before the Privy Council where the Earl of Glencairn, as principal heritor of the parish, intervened in the dispute. Dargavel had to surrender his right to an exclusive chair in the church, while Orbiston had to allow him burial rights in the ground to the east end of the graveyard, permission to fence it round and even the right, if he so wished, to make a door in the east gable end of the church.

Relations between Orbiston and his neighbours at Erskine must have become very strained because, 11 years later (1703), he sold his land to Lord Blantyre and returned to Lanarkshire in 1812, when the church walls were crumbling, the contemporary 1aird Blantyre gave land for a new church to the west of the site, so as to preserve the existing graveyard. The church now at Erskine is the one completed in 1815.

On its north wall is a plaque recording the end of the line of Maxwell's of Dargavel. During the First World War three sons and two grandsons of the last laird were killed in action. Some of the mature villagers still living in Bishopton remember the Misses Maxwell driving to Erskine church on Sundays in their horse-drawn carriage. The Maxwell's of Dargavel faded from history when their Lands were absorbed into the Royal Ordnance Factory area.

Sources:

MacGibbon & Ross - "Domestic Architecture in Scotland" Vol IV

Melville Stewart, Rev D. "Ye Anciente Kirk of Eriskyne"

Metcalfe, Rev William M., DD - "History of the County of Renfrew"

Millar, A.H., FSA (Scot) - Castles and Mansions in Renfrewshire

Tranter, Nigel - "The Fortified Houses in Scotland" Vol IV

Young, Rev Walter, FRS - "First Statistical Account" (1795)

Elizabeth M Main, MA, JP Ashcroft, Kilmacolm, January 1986