William Douglas, 6th Earl of Douglas

Who was William Douglas, 6th Earl of Douglas?

William Douglas was a short-lived Scottish nobleman. He was Earl of Douglas and Wigtown, Lord of Galloway, Lord of Bothwell, Selkirk and Ettrick Forest, Eskdale, Lauderdale, and Annandale in Scotland, and de jure Duke of Touraine, Count of Longueville, and Sire of Dun-le-roi in France. He was the eldest son of Archibald Douglas, 5th Earl of Douglas and Eupheme Graham.

He married Janet Lindsay, daughter of David Lindsay, 3rd Earl of Crawford, and succeeded to the earldom on the death of her father, who had served as regent of James II. Following Archibald Douglas's death, Sir William Crichton, Sir Alexander Livingston of Callendar, and James Douglas, Earl of Avondale shared power. Together they conspired to break the power of the late Archibald Douglas's family, and summoned William and his younger brother David to Edinburgh. The so-called 'Black Dinner' which followed saw the two boys summarily beheaded on trumped up charges, in the presence of the young King James II.

The lordships of Annandale and Bothwell fell to the crown; Galloway to Margaret Douglas, and the Douglas lands and earldom passed to William's great-uncle James Douglas, the Earl of Avondale, who was accordingly seen later as the main perpetrator.