As Dr. David Dobson has noted in the Introduction to his new book, Scottish Baronial Families, 1250-1750, medieval Scottish kings established administrative units overseen by barons to assure that the King’s laws were enforced, taxes were collected, and, when necessary, knights and other warriors were available to defend the kingdom.
By the late seventeenth century there were hundreds of baronies in Scotland; however, in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising of 1745-1746, the British Government enacted the Heritable Jurisdiction Act of 1747, which reduced the powers of barons and the nobility in general.
Working mostly from primary sources written in Latin—especially the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland from about 1320–Dobson has traced the origin and line of descent of nearly 1,000 Scottish baronies and baronetcies, including some whose progeny eventually moved to the Americas. Representative of the contents of Scottish Baronial Families, are the following two pages describing the barons Graham/Grahame/Graeme/Grayme .
