# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Ramsay, Alexander (d.1342)

​RAMSAY, Sir ALEXANDER (d. 1342), of Dalhousie, Scottish patriot, was descended from the main line of the Scottish Ramsays, the earliest of whom was Simundus de Ramsay, a native of Huntingdon in England, who received from David I of Scotland a grant of lands in Midlothian. Sir Alexander is supposed to have been the son of Sir William de Ramsay, who, for his lands of Dalwolsie or Dalhousie, Midlothian, and of Foulden, Berwickshire, swore fealty to Edward I in 1296, and also in 1304, but on 6 April 1320 signed the letter to the pope asserting the independence of Scotland. Sir Alexander was one of the principal commanders of the Scottish forces which defeated the Count of Namur and his French mercenaries at the Boroughmuir, near Edinburgh, in August 1335 (Wyntoun, ed. Laing, ii. 420) [see Randolph, John, third Earl of Moray]. In 1338 he relieved the fortress of Dunbar, which Black Agnes of Dunbar, daughter of Sir Thomas Randolph, first earl of Moray [q. v.], was heroically defending against the English under William de Montacute, first earl of Salisbury [q. v.], who blockaded it by sea and land. Sailing at midnight from the Bass Rock in a small vessel with forty soldiers, he unobserved ran it, laden with provisions, under the wall of the castle, with the result that the English, in despair of its capture, raised the blockade (ib. pp. 434–5). The same year he took part in a jousting tournament between English and Scottish knights at Berwick-on-Tweed, when two English knights were slain, and Sir William Ramsay, a kinsman of Sir Alexander, fatally wounded (ib. pp. 441–4). Some time afterwards Sir Alexander gathered a band of chosen followers, who made the caves of Hawthornden on the Esk their headquarters, and attacked the English whenever a fit opportunity presented itself (ib. p. 460). Having compelled the English to keep for the most part within the fortified castles which they held in Scotland, they began to make raiding expeditions into England (ib. p. 460). Returning from one of these, they were encountered near Wark Castle, Northumberland, by a strong force under Lord Robert Manners; but, by pretending to fly, Sir Alexander led the English into an ambuscade, and totally defeated them, killing many and taking Lord Robert Manners prisoner.
On Easter eve, 30 March 1342, Ramsay succeeded in scaling the walls of Roxburgh Castle, then held by the English, and, surprising the guards, captured the fortress (Fordun, ed. Skene, ii. 356). In recognition of his remarkable feat, the young king, David II, made him warder of the castle and sheriff of Teviotdale. These offices, however, had formerly been held by Ramsay's companion in arms, William Douglas, the knight of Liddesdale, who deeply resented the seeming affront thus put upon him and determined to have revenge. While Ramsay was holding a court in the church of Hawick on 20 June, Douglas entered the church with an armed retinue, and, seizing Ramsay, carried him on horseback in chains to the castle of the Hermitage, where he shut him in a dungeon to perish of hunger after surviving seventeen days. ‘In brave deeds and in bodily strength’ Sir Alexander Ramsay, says Fordun, ‘surpassed all others of his time; and as he was mightier than the rest in deeds of arms, so was he luckier in his struggles’ (ib. p. 357). He was succeeded by Sir William Ramsay.
T. F. H.