One of the most audacious castle captures of the Wars of Independence. Douglas and his men wore dark cloaks and crawled toward the walls on all fours — English sentries on the walls thought them a herd of cattle in the darkness. Douglas threw up grappling hooks and scaled the wall. The constable Gillemin de Fienne was killed trying to escape by rope. The castle was demolished. The action, coordinated with Randolphs capture of Edinburgh Castle, cleared the Border strongholds just days before Bannockburn transformed the strategic situation entirely.
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in Britain — drawing on Domesday records, scheduled monuments, Victorian OS maps, geological data and archaeological archives to tell the full story of a place.
Research a location near Roxburghshire