James Binnie

James Binnie was another of the family to work the soil all his life.  He was the son of a ploughman and became one himself.  Although he was sometimes described as an agricultural labourer, the ploughman had skills which included the management of the horses and the equipment associated with the ploughing.  Farming skills were in the family as all James's ancestors seemed to have been from the farming community around Linlithgow going back to the start of the church records.  The name Binnie is fairly common in those communities if you include the spelling variations and there is every chance that they all derive from William Binnock (or Binning, depending on which report you read), the farmer who masterminded the recapture of Linlithgow Castle from the English in the Wars of Independance shortly before the Battle of Bannockburn.

Sir Walter Scott describes the action and the link to our family.

The Castle of Linlithgow is only mentioned as being a peel (a pile, that is, an embattled tower surrounded by an outwork). In 1300 it was rebuilt or repaired by Edward I., and used as one of the citadels by which he hoped to maintain his usurped dominion in Scotland. It is described by Barbour as “meikle and stark and stuffed weel.” Piers Luband, a Gascoigne knight, was appointed the keeper, and appears to have remained there until the autumn of 1313, when the Scots recovered the Castle under the following interesting circumstances: —

There was, says our authority, Barbour, dwelling in the neighbourhood of Linlithgow, a stout-hearted husbandman, named William Binnock, who, observing that the Scots were on every hand recovering from the English the castles and fortresses which the invaders possessed within Scotland, could not brook that the peel in his vicinity, which was large, strong, and well supplied with arms and garrisons, should remain unassailed. He formed a stratagem, equally remarkable for ingenuity and audacity. The garrison was usually supplied by Binnock with hay, and they had lately required from him a fresh supply. He assured them of the excellence of the forage, and undertook to send it in early in the morning. But the hay was so arranged on the wain as to conceal eight well-armed and determined men; the team was driven by a sturdy peasant, who bore a sharp axe under his gaberdion. Binnock himself walked beside the waggon, to superintend, as it seemed, the safe delivery of the forage. The porter, on approach of Binnock, with his well-known wain, lowered the drawbridge and raised the portcullis. Just at the very gateway, the driver, as he had been instructed, drew his axe suddenly and cut asunder the soam, or tackle, by which the oxen were attached to the waggon. Binnock at the same instant struck the warder dead, and shouted the signal word, which was “Call all, call all.” The assailants jumped from amongst the hay, and attacked the astonished garrison. The wain was so placed that neither could the gate be shut nor the portcullis lowered, nor the bridge raised, and a party of Scots, who were in ambush for the purpose, rushed in to second their forlorn hope, and were soon masters of the place.

Bruce, faithful to his usual policy, caused the peel of Linlithgow to be dismantled, and worthily rewarded William Binnock, who had behaved with such gallantry on the occasion. From this bold yeoman the Binnies of West Lothian are proud to trace their descent; and most, if not all of them, bear in their arms something connected with the waggon, which was the instrument of his stratagem.

I feel proud to be associated with this patriotic action even if we are talking maybe twenty generations back in history.  If you have time to read a lengthy, melodramatic, pretty imaginary, embellished version of events you can find it here in a book from 1807, written in a wonderful olde-worlde Romantic style.  It's a bit like a Shakespeare play, a fiction based on reality.

The farming aspect of James's ancestry also leads back to Gateside, Kingscavil and Auldhill farms and in fact his father was born at Auldhill, the farm on whose lands the village of Bridgend was later built and which housed more recent Old family members.

As is usual with farm labourers of the time he moved around for the work but in the 1891 census he seems to be in a very large house for a farm worker - it had 5 rooms (with windows) according to the census record.  It was at Gogar Stone and as far as I can see there was no cottage of that size there.  However, just to the south there is scope for a property of that size in the grounds of Gogar Mount and it is possible that he was the groundkeeper for that estate while still being close enough to Gogar Stone to be noted as such.  Gogar Mount estate is now Gogarburn Golf Club and was the sight of a skirmish between Oliver Cromwell and the Scottish Army under John Leslie in 1650.  Wikipedia uses Cromwell's description of the limited action.

We marched westward of Edinburgh towards Stirling, which the Enemy perceiving, marched with as great expedition as was possible to prevent us; and the vanguards of both the Armies came to skirmish, - upon a place where bogs and passes made the access of each Army to the other difficult. We, being ignorant of the place, drew up, hoping to have engaged: but found no way feasible, by reason of the bogs and other difficulties. We drew up our cannon, and did that day discharge two or three hundred great shot upon them; a considerable number they likewise returned to us; and this was all that passed from each to the other. Wherein we had near twenty killed and wounded, but not one Commission Officer. The Enemy, as we are informed, had about eighty killed, and some considerable Officers. Seeing they would keep their ground, from which we could not remove them, and our bread being spent, - we were necessitated to go for a new supply: and so marched off about ten or eleven o’clock on Wednesday morning.

No doubt he'd have been finding cannonballs in the grounds from time to time.

After this, he seems to have found employment as a gardener in the prestigious West End of Edinburgh as noted in his 1898 death record.  Dean Path isn't too high-class but his son seems to have opened a grocer's shop in the area and James's widow and that son were living in Belford Road in 1901, which is pretty good for a ploughman's family.  To be a gardener in the West End there is just the suggestion that he may have been working in the grounds of some of the bigger institutions around the edge of the city, such as Donaldson's School or Daniel Stewart's College or two buildings which have now become art galleries, the Orphan Hospital and John Watson's Institute.  I have no information on this but a look at the map of the time and the location of his home strongly suggests this.