Dervorguilla of Galloway

The Balliol family, into which Dervorguilla married, was based at Barnard Castle in County Durham, England. Although the date of her birth is uncertain, her apparent age of 13 was by no means unusually early for betrothal and marriage at the time.

In 1263, her husband Sir John was required to make penance after a land dispute with Walter of Kirkham, Bishop of Durham. Part of this took the very expensive form of founding a college for the poor at the University of Oxford. Sir John's own finances were less substantial than those of his wife, however, and long after his death it fell to Dervorguilla to confirm the foundation, with the blessing of the same bishop as well as the university hierarchy. She established a permanent endowment for the college in 1282, as well as its first formal statutes. The college still retains the name Balliol College, where the history students' society is called the Dervorguilla Society and an annual seminar series featuring women in academia is called the Dervorguilla Seminar Series. While a requiem mass in Latin was sung at Balliol for the 700th anniversary of her death, it is believed that this was sung as a one-off, rather than having been marked in previous centuries.

Dervorguilla founded a Cistercian abbey seven miles south of Dumfries in April 1273. It still stands as a picturesque ruin of red sandstone. It is claimed that she was also responsible for the establishment of the first library in Dundee.

When Sir John died in 1269, Dervorguilla had his heart embalmed and kept in a casket of ivory bound with silver. The casket travelled with her for the rest of her life. In 1274–75, John de Folkesworth arraigned an assize of novel disseisin against Dervorguilla and others touching a tenement in Stibbington, Northamptonshire. In 1275–76, Robert de Ferrers arraigned an assize of mort d'ancestor against her touching a messuage in Repton, Derbyshire. In 1280, Sir John de Balliol's executors, including Dervorguilla, sued Alan Fitz Count regarding a debt of £100 claimed by the executors from Alan. In 1280, she was granted letters of attorney to Thomas de Hunsingore and another in England, while staying in Galloway. In the same year, Dervorguilla, Margaret de Ferrers, Countess of Derby, Ellen, widow of Alan la Zouche, and Alexander Comyn, Earl of Buchan, and Elizabeth his wife sued Roger de Clifford and Isabel his wife and Roger de Leybourne and Idoine his wife regarding the manors of Wyntone, King’s Meaburn, Appleby, and Brough-under-Stainmore, and a moiety of the manor of Kirkby Stephen, all in Westmorland. Also in that year, Dervorguilla sued John de Veer for a debt of £24. In 1280–81 Laurence Duket arraigned an assize of novel disseisin against Dervorguilla and others touching a hedge destroyed in Cotingham, Middlesex. In 1288, she reached an agreement with John, Abbot of Ramsey, regarding a fishery in Ellington.

In her last years, the main line of the Royal House of Scotland was threatened by a lack of male heirs, and Dervorguilla, who died eight months before the young heiress Margaret, the Maid of Norway, might, if she had outlived her, have been one of the claimants to her throne. Dervorguilla was buried beside her husband at New Abbey, which was christened "Sweetheart Abbey", the name which it retains to this day. The depredations suffered by the abbey in subsequent periods have caused both graves to be lost. A replica is to be found in the covered south transept.

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