~R. JL73-. National Library of Scotland inn •B000021722* THE HOUSE OF SETON A STUDY OF LOST CAUSES BY SIR BRUCE GORDON SETON, Br., C.B. VOLUME I LINDSAY AND MACLEOD io GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH r 939 ILAURISTONCASIII: I LIBRARY ACCESSION PREFACE This is the first of two volumes which, in a sense, are u complementary to the monumental House of Seton," by George Seton, and are the last work of my husband, Sir Bruce Gordon Seton of Abercorn, Bt. The work, involving enormous labour, was commenced by him shortly after he inherited the " Touch Charter Chests," following upon the death of Sir Douglas Seton-Steuart of Touch, Bt., and was finished only a few weeks before my husband passed over. The printing and publishing of these volumes would have been very costly, and I desire to express my appreciation to Mr. Fred. T. Macleod of Messrs Lindsay & Macleod, reproducers of Court of Session and other papers, for kindly agreeing to undertake the responsibility of reproducing by duplication 150 copies of the Manuscript. He desires me to state that the volumes, the second of which will shortly be completed, are simply copies of my husband's Manuscript, and that no editing or revision thereof has been adopted. A complete detailed index will form part of the second volume. ELMA SETON 10 Elvaston Place London To its women the Family of Set on owes many of its triumphs, and some of its mis advent tires - In token of this, the compiler of this review of the history of a declining house dedicates his efforts to JEAN GORDON SETON MARIE de SETON SETON and EGIDIA HAY SETON in the certain knowledge that, in an Age characterised "by a soulless uniformity and disappearance of ideals, They, at least, possess all the qualities which brought joy and sorrow to the men, long passed away, whose great Name they have the privilege to bear. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from National Library of Scotland http://www.archive.org/details/houseofsetonstv100seto CONTENTS. Page r Foreword ... ... ... ... .* 1 Introduction ... ... ... ... ... 2 The Distaff Side ... ... ... *.. 12 Feudal Tenures.. ... ... ... .. 18 THE MAIN LINE OF THE FAMILY . CHAP. I. The Origin of the Family.... ... 25 II. The early Setons in Scotland (circa 1150-1350) and Yorkshire. ... 43 III. The Lords Seton (1350-1600). ... 99 IV. The Earls of Winton (1600-1716) ... 172 CADETS . 7. Setons of Parbroath, Lathrisk, Kippilaw. ... ... ... 232 71. Setons of Cariston. ... ... 259 711. Setons of Barnes ... ... ... 276 7III. Setons, Earls of Dunfermline ... 289 IXo Setons of Kylesmurej the Seton Earl of Eglinton ... ... ... 316 X. Setons of Olivestob; Setons, Vis counts Kingston; Setons of Garleton, Windygoul, Monkmylne, Northrig. ... ... ... 328 XI. The Fraser-Tytlers. ... ... 351 XII. Setons in France and Holland etc.... 358 LOST CAUSES FOREWORD. This book makes no claim to be a history of Scot- land. History, as written, is a function of the men- tality of the writer, the resultant of his reaction to - recorded facts; and this position is complicated fur- ther by the difficulty of getting anything like unifor- mity in the records themselves. The humble student of the history of a family is compelled, therefore, to select his facts in accordance with his own temperament, and not as laid down in any text book. The conflict that has raged round the life of the Martyr Queen will probably never be settled satisfac- torily; she has to be accepted as one of the many Lost Causes for which men have sacrificed life, position, everything they had - and would do it again. Nor does the author claim to have produced a com- plete family history. It may be asked what is the object of a book which is neither a history nor a biography and which yet, in a sense, is both. The object, as far as the general reader is con- cerned, is to show how a typical Scottish family helped to mould the history of the country, sometimes to their own advantage, generally to their great loss. Its pri- mary object, as far as the rising generation of that family is concerned, is to show how their ancestors, during many centuries, pursued causes, long after the world recognised they were lost, with a loyalty and singleness of purpose which, though equalled by many of their contemporaries, were never exceeded. Perhaps they too, in the days before them, will re- member the motto "Forward Ours" , even though they appre- ciate that to resile from a course of action taken up may be easier and more profitable than to go forward. But they must endeavour, before embarking on such a course, to live up also to the other motto "Hazard Warrilie" INTRODUCTION . It is not claimed that the family of Seton - whether in its main line or its cadet branches - was other than a representative Scottish family. Many others did as much as they did; some, on certain occa- sions, accomplished more. But perhaps it may be said that, over the period which commenced with the War of Independence and ended in the tragedy of Cull od en, they pursued what they regarded as their ideals with a dis- regard of the consequence to themselves which is, to say the least, unusual in the chequered history of their native Land. Loyalty, an enduring, blind and perhaps irrational loyalty, was their prominent feature in successive gen- erations; and they had a flair for supporting Lost Causes which marked them out among most of their con- temporaries whose loyalty was spasmodic rather than con- tinuous. Their loyalty indeed, during the period re- ferred to, was what the Mendelian calls a dominant; and to the women they married through the generations is due the credit of the fact that very rarely was any reces- sive trait of disloyalty or selfishness introduced into the strain. It must have been at least as difficult in those days as it is now for a man to reconcile his duty with his interests. Life, from the social, political and still more from the religious point of view, was perhaps more complicated then than now, If only because the game demanded an initial stake, and the loser always paid. To belong to the national as opposed to the English party, to be a Catholic or even an Episcopalian, to be a Jacobite, meant, at certain periods of the history of Scotland, that a man must be prepared not merely to be defeated in a matter of academic interest, but to sacri- fice literally everything he owned, if and when he lost. Individuals in every Scottish family could always be found to accept the risk for the pleasure of the game or the chance of success; but of the Setorts it is literally true that, for more than four hundred years, . successive generations produced men who were prepared to follow their ideals, regardless of the disasters which had befallen their predecessors. Queen Mary, than whom no one had better opportuni- ties of judging, expressed in a motto which she is said to have given to Lord Seton what she regarded as a sum- mary of the family characteristics: "Ung Dieu, Ungne "Poy, Ung Roy, Ungne Loy" - and, when Seton refused an Earldom, Lord Kingston tells us; "She caused wryte "these verses Ylia des contes, des roys, des dues aussi, Cet assez pour moy d'estre seigneur de Seton" (1) The two mottoes, taken together, though applied in the first place to one distinguished individual, may be regarded as summing up the ideals of the family, and as explaining their general outlook on life. The first, looked at from the vantage point of the present day, connotes Lost Causes; the second suggests methods of dealing with Life's problems which were bound to be un- popular and might be fatal to the individual. Success often came to the Setons; but, sooner or later, - with few exceptions - the honours awarded by one King were lost in the defence of his successors. Attainder and forfeiture befell the last holders of the Earldoms of Winton and of Dunfermline and the Viscounty of Kingston, and complete ruin was the lot of many of the cadet branches - At different times the Gordons had to pay heavily for their hardihood in continuing in the minority, and some of the Eglintons suffered in their fortunes by espousing what even at the time appeared to be Lost Causes The fires have died out now, - the last flicker was seen in 1745 - and the family has stepped down to a dead level of respectability which affords neither the scope nor the opportunity for pursuing anything but a solution of those pressing problems which may be defined as "res angustae domi" . Perhaps to some of the few survivors 1. Kingston. Continuation of the History of the House of Seytoun. 57. of the more spacious days these problems are themselves essentially Lost Causes. Looking back over the history of Scotland there are four periods in which the activities of the Seton family, political and military, are most evident. In the inter- vals between, however, they were by no means inactive. Of these periods the first is that of the Wars of Independence from 1296 to 1314; the family at that time was small in numbers and was only commencing to occupy a position of any importance in Scotland. It consisted of the main line only, and the individuals composing It were faced with the difficulty of owing allegiance for their English possessions to the English King, and for their Scottish possessions to the Scottish Crown, the wearer of which was, for a long time, himself in the same precarious position.