By 1426, John was holding his lands under Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Douglas.

In return, John owed feudal obligations attached to the land grant.

John’s land interests include Holmains and Little Dalton, Ecclefechan, Plewlands, Copwood, Bengahill, Moffat, Tundergarth, Glaisters, Newlands and Ruthwell. These weren’t all neighboring fields. They were scattered across the countryside, stretching north toward Moffat and south toward the Solway.

I find language in the old record sounds wonderfully romantic today.

John held £10 lands at Ecclefechan, some merk lands elsewhere, something called ‘husbandlands’ at Ruthwell—and, tucked into the list, a saltcoat?

Land was commonly identified in value, while a husbandland was an agricultural holding associated with a tenant farmer.

So, the ‘little saltcoat at Ruthwell’ property is my favorite! What is it??

They regarded it as probable that he was a son of the John de Carrutheris who had received land from King David II in 1361.

In 1375 there was Roger de Carruthers receiving Holmains, Little Dalton and Fourteenaikerbank. Fifty years later a Carruthers controlled those properties and substantially more. Generation after generation thereafter can be followed through charters, retours, sasines, marriage settlements, lawsuits and testaments.

Eventually the descendants of this small fourteenth-century landed house would become the senior Carruthers line.

James had married Angus’s sister Margaret. Their children carried the blood of both Douglas houses, and the families were tied together by marriage as well as name. But being family did not mean standing together when politics turned ugly.

By 1526, Angus had gained control of the young king. James V was about fourteen years old, old enough to understand that although he wore the crown, other men were deciding where he went, whom he saw, and how Scotland was governed.

Not everyone was willing to leave him there.

That summer, Walter Scott of Buccleuch gathered men in an attempt to take the king out of Douglas hands. James of Drumlanrig joined him.

It was an extraordinary position for James to find himself in. He was a Douglas riding against other Douglases, including the family of his own wife.

They belonged to a cadet branch of the powerful Johnstones of Annandale, a family whose influence stretched across Dumfriesshire for centuries. Corheid itself lay only a short distance from Breconside and formed part of a network of Johnstone properties that included Lochhouse and neighboring estates.

By the middle of the seventeenth century, James Johnstone the younger of Corheid had married Janet Douglas, linking the Border Johnstones with one of Scotland's most distinguished noble families. Their children inherited far more than land.

They inherited a world shaped by clan loyalty, legal tradition, and generations of service to the Scottish Crown.