His father remarried in late 1288 so Douglas' birth had to be prior to that; however, the destruction of records in Scotland makes an exact date or even year impossible to pinpoint.

Lamberton presented him at the occupying English court to petition for the return of his land shortly after the capture of Stirling Castle in 1304, but when Edward I of England heard whose son he was he grew angry and Douglas was forced to depart.

[3] Douglas's actions for most of 1307 and early 1308, although confined for the most part to his native Douglasdale, were essential to keeping the enemy in the South and freeing Bruce to campaign in the north.

Further attacks followed by the man now known to the English, according to the poet John Barbour, as "The blak Dowglas", a sinister and murderous force "mair fell than wes ony devill in hell.

While Bruce pinned down the enemy in a frontal advance through the pass, Douglas, completely unobserved, led a party of loyal Highlanders further up the mountain, launching a surprise attack from the rear.

Returning south soon after, Douglas joined with Edward Bruce, the king's brother, in a successful assault on Rutherglen castle near Glasgow, going on to a further campaign in Galloway.

The frustrations this obviously caused are detailed in the Vita Edwardi Secundi, a contemporary English chronicle; The king entered Scotland with his army but not a rebel was to be found...At that time Robert Bruce, who lurked continually in hiding, did them all the injury he could.

The Scots army, roughly a quarter the size of the enemy force, was poised to the south of Stirling and prepared to make a quick withdrawal into the wild country to the west.

However, their position just north of the Bannock Burn had strong natural advantages, and the king gave orders to suspend for a time the guerrilla tactics pursued hitherto.

[14] Once the English army was defeated, Douglas requested the honour of pursuing the fleeing Edward and his party of knights, a task carried out with such relentless vigour that the fugitives, according to Barbour, "had not even leisure to make water".

[citation needed] Bannockburn left northern England open to attack and in the years that followed many communities in the area became closely acquainted with the 'Blak Dowglas.'

The dead included one Edmond de Caillou Gascon governor of Berwick Castle, and seemingly a nephew of Piers Gaveston, the former favourite of Edward II.

With no troops in the area, William Melton, Archbishop of York, set about organising a home guard, which of necessity included a great number of priests and other minor clerics.

It was hardly a passage of any great military glory for Douglas but as a strategy the whole Yorkshire raid produced the result intended: there was such dissension among Edward's army that the attempt on Berwick was abandoned.

All that stood between them and the enemy raiders was a force commanded by John de Bretagne, 1st Earl of Richmond, positioned on Scawton Moor, between Rievaulx and Byland Abbey.

On 10 July a large English army, under the nominal command of the young king, left York in a campaign that resembles nothing less than an elephant in pursuit of a hare.

'Ye shall all die thieves of England'; and he slew three hundred men, some in their beds and some scarcely ready: and he stroke his horse with spurs, and came to the King's tent, always crying 'Douglas!

The Battle of Stanhope Park, minor as it was, was a serious humiliation, and after the Scots outflanked their enemy the following night, heading back to the border, Edward is said to have wept in impotent rage.

With no other recourse Mortimer and Isabella opened peace negotiations, finally concluded the following year with the Treaty of Northampton, which recognised the Bruce monarchy and the independence of Scotland.

John Barbour, alternatively, has Bruce ask that his heart should simply be carried in battle against "God's foes" as a token of his unfulfilled ambition to go on crusade.

According to Jean Froissart and the Gran Cronica de Alfonso XI, Douglas was killed as a result of making a premature attack on the enemy.

According to the Gran Cronica de Alfonso XI, Uthman, unable to bring the Christians to battle, devised a stratagem in an attempt to force them to abandon the siege.

He abandoned his attack and rode to support the diversionary force on the river where, unable to withstand the Castilian assault, his men were already starting to fall back.

Uthman arrived too late to prevent a general rout and the entire Granadan force was driven back in confusion to their camp in the Turon valley, 10 miles to the south.

It is in this phase of the battle that some modern commentators have placed Douglas' death, either caught in flank when Uthman's force reached the river or in the ensuing pursuit to the Granadan camp.

When Douglas saw Sir William St. Clair of Rosslyn about to be surrounded and cut off, he led the few knights who were with him to attempt a rescue but, outnumbered twenty to one, the group was overrun.

It does, however, state that in a fierce skirmish some days prior to the climactic battle, an unnamed "foreign count" (arguably a reference to Douglas) had died as a result of his own rash behaviour.

His bones, the flesh boiled off them, were taken back to Scotland by Sir William Keith of Galston in Ayrshire (who had missed the battle because of a broken arm), and deposited at St Bride's Church.

The poet and chronicler John Barbour provides us with a pen portrait of the Black Douglas, among the first of its kind in Scottish history, which in 1914 was rendered in modern verse translation: But he was not so fair that we Should praise his looks in high degree.

In visage he was rather grey; His hair was black, so I heard say, His limbs were finely made and long, His bones were large, his shoulders strong, His body was well-knit and slim And those say that set eyes on him, When happy, loveable was he, And meek and sweet in company, But those with him in battle saw Another countenance he wore!