Scottish Baronial Families 1250-1750, by David Dobson - review

The Genealogical Publishing Company has kindly sent me a copy of David Dobson's new book, Scottish Baronial Families 1250-1750, for review.

Under Scotland's old feudal system, baronies were erected as administrative areas in Scotland, with their chief overseers, the barons, being the Scottish equivalent of the English 'lord of the manor'. Barons were not a peerage rank, with a baron only being a baron so long as he retained the barony to which he had been granted a right to oversee - or to be more accurate, so long as he retained the 'caput' of the barony, where the barony courts were held. As a feudal possession. baronies were heritable, and could thus be passed down to an heir. The role of baronies and their barons diminished following the passing of the Heritable Jurisditions Act of 1747.

David's book provides a concise introduction to the topic, summarising the role of the barons in Scottish society, and identifying the limited number of baronies for which records have been published. There then follows the main event, an alphabetical listing of over a thousand baronial familes known to exist over a 500 year period from 1250-1750. The main source used by David is The Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, and in the introduction he notes that for more concise information on the families themselves, Margaret Stuart's Scottish Family History (1979, GPC, Baltimore) should be consulted. 

The book does not act as a manorial documents register, as found down south, it identifies the individuals known to have held baronies, and when they were granted the right to do so, with no further source citations noted in most cases, apart from a very general bibliography noted in the introduction. This means that if you wish to chase records for those noted, many of which are in private hands, there will still be some work to do for the reader. In addition, an index of barony placenames might have been a useful addition, which is unfortunately missing. 

Nevertheless, this is still a very useful guide to those known to have held baronies in Scotland, a much under-used source for local records. An appendix at the end also identifies some Scots-Irish baronets, not to be confused with barons, these being created for entiriely different purposes from 1611 as a means to fund the Plantations of Ulster and the settlement of Nova Scotia.  

Scottish Baronial Families 1250-1750, by David Dobson, is available to buy from the Genealogical Publishing Company in Baltimore Maryland, USA, priced at US $35. For further details visit https://genealogical.com/store/scottish-baronial-families-1250-1750/.

(With thanks to the GPC for the review copy)

Chris

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