• General Notes

  This feudal lord m. Devorgila, younger dau. and eventually sole heir, of Alan, Lord of Galloway, a great baron of Scotland, by Margaret his wife, sister of John le Scot, the last Earl of Chester and one of the heirs of David, sometime Earl of Huntingdon, from which alliance arose the claim of the Baliols to the crown of Scotland. By this illustrious lady he acquired the Scottish barony of Galloway. In the 28th of Henry III [1244], when ways and means were required to discharge the debt incurred by the war in Gascony, John de Baliol was one of the committee of twelve chosen to report to parliament upon the subject, and the next year he paid £30 for thirty knights' fees, which he held towards the levy in aid for marrying the king's dau. He was afterwards sheriff of Cumberland for six successive years and governor of the castle of Carlisle. Subsequently he had a military summons to attend the king at Chester to oppose the Welsh, and was sheriff of the counties of Nottingham and Derby for three years, at which time he had the honour of Peverell committed to his custody. In the baronial contest he adhered faithfully to the king and fell into the hands of the Earl of Leicester, with his royal mast, at the battle of Lewes in 1264, but he appears to have effected his escape and to have joined the other loyal barons in raising fresh troops for the captive monarch's redemption. This John Baliol and his wife were the founders of the college that bears the name of Baliol, at Oxford. He d. in 1268 and was s. by his son, then twenty-eight years of age, Hugh de Baliol. [Sir Bernard Burke, Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages, Burke's Peerage, Ltd., London, 1883, p. 21, Baliol, Barons Baliol]

Details of John's family with Devorguilla MacDonald