Dol is a Breton term meaning "low and fertile place in the flood plain of a waterway;" cf.

[4] Legend has it that while there he was assigned by King Budic II to subdue a belligerent winged dragon, which he was said to have tamed and then tied to a rock in the sea off Brittany.

In the fourteenth century, Walter Stewart (so named for his family's hereditary possession of the office of High Steward of Scotland), a descendant of Walter Fitzalan, married Marjorie Bruce, daughter of King Robert I of Scotland.

Nominoe, the ruler of Brittany attempted to establish a metropolitan archbishop for the Breton church in a move to give it autonomy, and thereby strengthen his rule and further secure his independence from the Carolingian Empire.

In 1076 the town was unsuccessfully besieged by William the Conqueror following in particular the reinforcement of the king of France at the time, and taken by Henry II of England in 1164.

[5] In June 1173 Hugh de Kevelioc, 5th Earl of Chester, laid siege to Dol-de-Bretagne and captured the settlement as part of the Revolt of 1173–1174 against Henry.