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Robertus Dominus
There is a discussion about whether there was ever a man named / referred to as Robertus dominus de Rodyrforde. A majority of people have him starting the Rutherford family, while others say he never existed. They say that Robertus dominus de Rutherford/Rodyrforde, was witness to a charter granted by David I to Jervasius Ridal in 1140.
I sway between Robert existing and never existed. I have never thought he was the first male of the Rutherford line.
'dominus'
To begin with the word 'dominus' these days is taken to mean he was a lord, if Robert existed then at that time he was around this word meant knight.
'de Rodyrforde'
At the time Robert is supposed to exist there was no barony or village (that I can find) in Scotland, however there were locations elsewhere. There was a location in England called Rodyrforde, it sits in Yorkshire (for more information refer to Rutherford Locations). There was a town in modern day Belgium that had existed since the 900s CE that had various spellings of it's name including Ruddervoorde (for more information refer to Rutherford Locations).
So if Robert did exist I would say that he came from another location outside of Scotland, which at the time he is supposed to exist in was a very common thing, even the King had lived in England as a prince before becoming the King of Scotland.
On another point is the use of the name Rutherford (spelt differently), the earliest use I have found in Scotland for this name is in a charter in the "Liber Sancte Marie de Melros, Vol1" which is dated to the reign of King William (1165-1214). In this charter it is use to refer to a location, not a person with this name.
The following are images of the charter (on image 2 you will see 'tre/tra de Ruderford referred to):
'1140 charter'
I have searched for the matching charter that is referred to. I was informed by a Rutherford researcher that I would not find the charter because it was in private hands, then I was told it was lost. An interesting point is that the researcher that informed me it was in private hands when I asked them said they have never seen it and in further emails stated that they did not believe Robert existed. However they did seem to flip between seeming to accept he existed and believing he never existed.
What I can say for sure is that there is a charter dated around 1140 involving the King of Scotland and G. Ridell', however there is not a witness by the name Robertus dominus de Rodyrforde. It can be located in the book "Early Scottish Charters to 1153".
The following are images of the charter and about the charter:
There are another couple of charters involving G. Ridell around this time period (give or take 5 years), however none of these have a Robert in the witness list.
'Who started the story?'
Those that believe Robert never existed often blame Thomas H Cockburn-Hood for creating him. I decided to research where the idea came from for Robert's existence. The following is what I found:
As I have found Cockburn-Hood was far from the first to make reference to Robert, the first mention was in 'Scottish Nation' 17 years before Cockburn-Hood published the chart that went with his Rutherford book - so he can not be blamed for perhaps creating the existence of this man.
