William the Hardy, Lord of Douglas, was a Scottish nobleman and father of Sir James Douglas, Robert the Bruce’s famous commander. He resisted English authority during the crisis that followed the death of Alexander III and supported William Wallace’s rising.
Captured by the English, Douglas died in imprisonment in the Tower of London in 1298. His defiance and family inheritance helped establish the Douglas name within the struggle for Scottish independence.
In J.R. Tomlin’s Call of the Cross, Four years after Largs, Sir William Douglas answers a papal appeal for crusading service and leaves the disputes of his homeland for the eastern Mediterranean. In J.R. Tomlin’s On a Sword’s Edge, Sixteen-year-old William Douglas serves as a squire when Haakon IV brings a great Norwegian fleet towards the western coast.