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Biography
Adam de Glasgeu (fl. undated; probably fourteenth century) was a burgess of Berwick-upon-Tweed who held ten acres of arable land called Hiddeslaw in the tenement of Bondington outside Berwick.
Charter to Melrose Abbey
Adam is known from an undated charter printed in the appendix to the Liber Sancte Marie de Melros. It begins:
Sciant presentes et futuri quod ego Adam de Glasgeu, burgensis burgi Berwici super Twedam ...
That is:
Let all present and future know that I, Adam de Glasgeu, burgess of the burgh of Berwick-upon-Tweed ...
Adam granted to Melrose Abbey ten acres of arable land called Hiddeslaw, situated in the tenement of Bondington, with free entry and exit and its ancient boundaries.[1]
The land was bounded:
- towards the east by land of the nuns of Berwick and the house of
St Mary Magdalene;
- towards the north by land of the abbot and convent of Kelso and by
land of the Berwick nuns; and
- towards the south by the royal highway leading from the house of
St Mary Magdalene to the village of Bondington.
No western boundary is preserved in the printed copy.
The grant was made in pure and perpetual alms. Melrose was to hold the land of Adam and his heirs while performing the customary services owed to the chief lords of the fee. Adam and his heirs warranted the land to the monks against all people. This establishes that Adam possessed an alienable heritable interest in the property, but the superior lord or lords are not identified.
Date and Source Transmission
Adam's charter contains no date. The Dedications to Saints in Medieval Scotland database classifies it as possibly fourteenth century but gives no narrower date.[2]
Innes labelled his source “Regist. recent.” rather than “Orig.” The text therefore survives through a later Melrose register, not through a known original charter. The surviving copy ends with an abbreviation for “witnesses”, but no witness names are preserved. A date such as c. 1280–1294 cannot presently be justified.
The safest description is therefore “undated, probably fourteenth century”. An early-fourteenth-century date is possible, but remains unproved.
Bondington Context
Kelso Abbey held a substantial estate at Bondington. In 1266 it leased its whole ploughgate there, with buildings and crofts, to Thomas Batail, burgess of Berwick. A further Kelso deed dated 1307 describes a cottage and garden in the village of Bondington adjoining Kelso land and a royal road.[3]
These records confirm the kind of monastic and burgess landholding landscape described in Adam's charter, but they do not date his deed.
Name and Family
Adam's designation de Glasgeu is a locative byname meaning “of” or “from Glasgow”. This single occurrence does not establish that the name was hereditary.
The reference to Adam's heirs is standard warranty language. It does not name a wife, child or other relative, and no heir is known to have used the Glasgow name.
No evidence has been found connecting Adam with John de Glasgu, the Duffield family, later Glasgow families of the Borders, or any modern Y-DNA lineage.
Adam was not the first securely dated bearer of the designation in a secular context. Alexander de Glasgow, an escheator, appears in a Scottish Exchequer account rendered in 1289.[4]
Research Status
Adam is presently known from one record. His occupation, parentage, marriage, children, precise date and later fate are unknown.
Records: 1.
Possible identity with Adam called Moses of Bondington
A separate Bondington title records Nicholas called Moses as the son and heir of the late Adam called Moses of Bondington. Nicholas had earlier styled himself:
Nicholaus dictus Moyses de Bondyngton
The coexistence of dictus Moyses and de Bondyngton demonstrates that a personal or familial byname and a locative could be used together. The names alone therefore do not exclude the possibility that Adam called Moses was elsewhere styled Adam de Glasgeu, particularly if de Glasgeu denoted his origin while Moyses was his family byname.[5]
The property evidence is also compatible. Nicholas held land at Bondington adjoining Kelso Abbey property and a royal road. Adam de Glasgeu's Hiddeslaw acres likewise adjoined Kelso property and the royal road leading from St Mary Magdalene's house to Bondington. The parcels are not demonstrably identical, but they lay within the same local landholding landscape.
The identification remains unproved. No record calls Adam de Glasgeu dictus Moyses, no charter describes Nicholas as the son of Adam de Glasgeu, and Hiddeslaw has not been identified within the land which Nicholas inherited and later resigned to Robert I.
Adam de Glasgeu and Adam called Moses should therefore remain separate working identities. Possible identity may be recorded as a research hypothesis but should not be used to attach Nicholas as Adam de Glasgeu's son.
Even if the men were identical, Nicholas is recorded under the inherited byname Moyses, not de Glasgu. The identification would therefore not by itself prove hereditary transmission of the Glasgow designation.
Source references
- Cosmo Innes, ed., Liber Sancte Marie de Melros: Munimenta Vetustiora Monasterii Cisterciensis de Melros, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1837), Appendix no. 25, p. 688.
- Dedications to Saints in Medieval Scotland, document DO/JD/2961, “Possible 14th c. in date”.
- Cosmo Innes, ed., Liber S. Marie de Calchou, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1846), nos. 42 and 48, pp. 35, 40–41.
- George Burnett, ed., The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1878), p. 47.
- Cosmo Innes, ed., Liber S. Marie de Calchou, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1846), no. 42, pp. 35–36.
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