Clan Johnstone · 1593
The Galliard's stroke
On the wet saltmarsh of Dryfe Sands at the confluence of the Dryfe Water and the Annan, three miles north of Lockerbie in Dumfriesshire, on the late afternoon of the sixth of December 1593, Sir James Johnstone of Dunskellie, then about forty-three years old, the chief of the Johnstones of Annandale, with about four hundred of his clansmen-and-allies, broke a Maxwell host of about two thousand under John, eighth Lord Maxwell. The Maxwell column had committed to crossing the confluence under tight numerical superiority; the Johnstone horse caught it in column at the ford and rolled it back across the marsh. Maxwell was unhorsed, asked for quarter, and was killed on the wet sand by a single downward sword-stroke delivered across the face by William Johnstone the *Galliard*, Sir James's younger brother. The stroke is the original of the Dumfriesshire dialect-phrase *to lockerbie a man*, a downward sword-cut to the head, and the Maxwell power on the Western March was broken in the half-hour that followed. The feud continued in private for the next twenty years and was formally closed only in 1623 by the Privy Council.
It is twenty past four on the afternoon of the sixth of December 1593, on the wet saltmarsh at the confluence of the Dryfe Water and the Annan, three miles north of the Annandale market-town of Lockerbie, in the low winter light off the Solway estuary. He is about thirty-five years old (the Galliard's exact birth-year is unrecorded; he was the second son of John Johnstone of Dunskellie and was, by the Annandale Border-Reiver register of the 1590s, in his thirties at the action). He is William Johnstone, called the Galliard for his reputation as the best horseman of the Western March, in three-quarter plate over a buff coat, on a bay horse, with the Johnstone broad-sword drawn.
On the marsh below him, at about a hundred yards' distance, is the Maxwell line-of-battle that has just been broken by the Johnstone horse-charge across the ford. About fifteen hundred Maxwell men are in retreat across the soft saltmarsh ground in the direction of the Annan ford. John, eighth Lord Maxwell, forty years old, the warden of the West March and chief of the Maxwells of Caerlaverock, has been unhorsed in the press at the ford. He is, by the Galliard's immediate view down the marsh, on foot in the wet sand, his helmet off, surrounded by about a dozen Maxwell retainers who are trying to defend him.
He thinks: Maxwell is on the ground. Maxwell's father killed mine on the Crawford Moor action of 1585. The Crawford Moor feud has run twenty-two years. The feud is on this saltmarsh at this hour.
He thinks: the Maxwell retainers will, on the Border code, accept his surrender. Sir James my brother will, on the Border code, accept the surrender. The feud will, by the Crown-Privy-Council settlement that follows the surrender, be closed by the courts and not by the broad-sword.
He thinks: that is not, in plain reading, the just settlement of the twenty-two-year feud.
He rides at the gallop down the marsh, comes through the Maxwell retainer-line at the canter, and delivers a single downward two-handed sword-stroke across the face of John, eighth Lord Maxwell. The stroke opens Maxwell from the forehead to the lower jaw. Maxwell goes down on the wet sand and is dead within seconds.
The action ended within the half-hour. Sir James Johnstone took the Maxwell standard and the Maxwell-of-Caerlaverock helmet as trophies and rode them back to Lochwood Tower the same evening. About eight hundred Maxwell dead were left on the marsh. The Maxwell power on the West March, which had stood since the thirteenth century, was broken on the afternoon of the sixth of December 1593.
The Maxwell-Johnstone feud continued in private through the next twenty years. The ninth Lord Maxwell, John's son, killed Sir James Johnstone in cold blood at Achmanhill on the sixth of April 1608 in personal revenge for his father's death; the ninth Lord was tried and beheaded at Edinburgh on the twenty-first of May 1613. The feud was formally closed in 1623 by the Privy Council on the direct intervention of King James VI and I, the only Scottish-noble feud of the Stuart period to require formal Crown closure. The Galliard outlived his brother Sir James by two years and died at Lochwood of natural causes in 1610; he is buried in the Lochmaben churchyard in an unmarked grave. The saltmarsh at Dryfe Sands is, in 2025, mostly drained farmland; the Maxwell Society of Caerlaverock put up a stone marker on the western bank of the Dryfe Water on the four-hundredth anniversary in 1993.