High Middle Ages
Tradition names Dundee as the location of a court palace of the House of Dunkeld. However, no physical trace of such a residence remains, and such notions are likely to have been due to a misinterpretation of the ancient name of Edinburgh, Dunedin.
Dundee history as a major town dates to the charter in which King William granted the earldom of Dundee to his younger brother, David (later Earl of Huntingdon) in 1179-1182. Earl David is thought to have built Dundee Castle, which formerly occupied the site now occupied by St Pauls Cathedral.
Dundee's position on the Tay, with its natural harbour between St Nicholas Craig and Stannergate (now obscured by development) made it an ideal location for a trading port, which led to a period of major growth in the town as Earl David promoted the town as a burgh.
On David's death in 1219, the burgh passed first to his son, John. John died without issue in 1237 and the burgh was divided evenly between his three sisters, with the castle becoming the property of the eldest, Margaret and, subsequently, to her youngest daughter, Dervorguilla. Dervorguilla's portion of the burgh later passed to her eldest surviving son, John Balliol, and the town became a Royal Burgh on the coronation of John as king in 1292.
At the outbreak of the First War of Independence in 1296, Edward I installed an English garrison at Dundee Castle. The castle retaken by siege by the forces of William Wallace in 1297, immediately prior to the Battle of Stirling Bridge.
Dundee's burghal status renewed with a charter from Robert the Bruce in 1327.
Read more about this topic: History Of Dundee
Famous quotes containing the words high, middle and/or ages:
“This insight, which expresses itself by what is called Imagination, is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path, or circuit of things through forms, and so making them translucid to others.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead,
When she was good
She was very, very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1822)
“but as an Eagle
His cloudless thunderbolted on thir heads.
So vertue giv’n for lost,
Deprest, and overthrown, as seem’d,
Like that self-begott’n bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows nor third,
And lay e’re while a Holocaust,
From out her ashie womb now teem’d
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deem’d,
And though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird ages of lives.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)