The Earls of Winton

 

ROBERT, first Earl of Wintoun, was a prudent manager, and freed his ancestral estates from the heavy encumbrances in which they were involved by his adventurous father. He married the heiress of the illustrious family of the Montgomeries of Eglintoun, and his sixth son, Alexander, was adopted into that family, and became sixth Earl of Eglinton. Lord Wintoun was a great favourite of James VI., who met the funeral procession of the Earl, 5th April, 1603, when on his journey to take possession of the English Crown, and remarked as he halted at the south-west corner of Seton orchard until it passed, that he had lost a good, faithful, and loyal subject. There is not much notice in the lives and characters of the next three Earls. They fought, of course, on the royal side in the Great Civil War, and suffered severely in fines and imprisonment for their loyalty.

GEORGE, third Earl, was noted for his architectural taste and the extent of his building operations. Lord Kingston says, ‘He built the house of Wintoun (being burnt by the English of old and the policy thereof destroyed) in Anno 1620. He founded and built the great house from the foundation, with all the large stone dykes about the precinct, park, orchard, and gardens thereof.’ This Earl, as Mr. Billings remarks, appears to have been a magnificent builder, for we find, from the same authority, that he made great additions to the old princely mansion of his family. ‘He built, in Anno 1630, two quarters of the house of Seton, beginning at Wallace’s Tower at the east end thereof, which was all burnt by the English, and continued the building till Jacob’s Tower, on the north syde of the house.’ He also erected salt-pans on the adjoining shore of the Firth, and built a harbour at Cockenzie. He was a zealous royalist, and suffered much in the cause of Charles I. during the Great Civil War. Yet the family historian records the great additions made by him to the family estates in East Lothian. He died in December, 1650, in the midst of preparations to attend the coronation of Charles II. as a ‘Covenanted King’ at Scone.

His eldest son, George, Lord Seton, was imprisoned in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh in 1645, fined £40,000 Scots, and ordered to dispose of a portion of the family estates in Linlithgowshire in order to pay the fine. He was taken prisoner at Philiphaugh, and was confined first at St. Andrews and afterwards in the Castle of Edinburgh, but was liberated on his father giving a bond for £100,000 Scots that he would appear when called. He predeceased his father, in 1648, at the age of thirty-five, and his eldest son, GEORGE, though only ten years of age at the time, became fourth Earl and succeeded to the family titles and estates on the death of his grandfather in 1650.

GEORGE, fifth and last Earl, was possessed of excellent abilities, but from his early years he displayed a marked eccentricity of character. Some family misunderstandings caused him to leave home while a mere youth, and he spent several years in France as bellows-blower and assistant to a blacksmith, without holding any intercourse with his family. On the death of his father, Viscount Kingston, the next heir, taking for granted that the young Earl was dead, was proceeding to take possession of the title and estates, when he suddenly appeared and vindicated his rights. It was afterwards ascertained that a confidential servant kept him apprised of what was taking place at home and in the family, and had sent him notice of his father’s death.

The Seton family, as we have seen, had always been noted for their loyalty and their attachment to the old Church, and the last Earl, though he had renounced the Romish faith, held firmly to the political creed of his ancestors. He was living peaceably in his own mansion at Seton when the rebellion of 1715 broke out. It is probable that he would, under any circumstances, have taken the field in behalf of the representative of the ancient Scottish sovereigns; but his doing so was hastened, if not caused, by the outrageous treatment which he received from a body of the Lothian militia, who forcibly entered and rifled his mansion at Seton, as he alleged on his trial, ‘through private pique and revenge.’ ‘The most sacred places,’ he adds, ‘did not escape their fury and resentment. They broke into his chapel, defaced the monuments of his ancestors, took up the stones of their sepulchres, thrust irons through their bodies, and treated them in a most barbarous, inhuman, and unchristian like manner.’ On this disgraceful outrage the Earl took up arms against the Government, assumed the command of a troop of horse mostly composed of gentlemen belonging to East Lothian, and joined the Northumbrian insurgents under Mr. Forster and the Earl of Derwentwater. Their numbers were subsequently augmented by a body of Highlanders under Brigadier Macintosh, who formed a junction with them at Kelso.

The English insurgents insisted on carrying the war into England, where they expected to be reinforced by the Jacobites and Roman Catholics in the northern and western counties. The Scotsmen proposed that they should take possession of Dumfries, Ayr, Glasgow, and other towns in the south and west of Scotland, and attack the Duke of Argyll, who lay at Stirling, in the flank and rear, while the Earl of Mar assailed his army in front. The English portion of the insurgent forces, however, persisted in carrying out their absurd scheme in spite of the strenuous opposition of the Scots, and especially of the Highlanders, who broke out in a mutiny against the English officers. The Earl of Wintoun disapproved so strongly of this plan that he left the army with a considerable part of his troop, and was marching northward when he was overtaken by a messenger from the insurgent council, who entreated him to return. He stood for a time pensive and silent, but at length he broke out with an exclamation characteristic of his romantic and somewhat extravagant character. ‘It shall never be said to after generations that the Earl of Wintoun deserted King James’s interests or his country’s good.’ Then, laying hold of his own ears, he added, ‘You, or any man, shall have liberty to cut these out of my head if we do not all repent it.’ But though this unfortunate young nobleman (he was only twenty-five years of age) again joined the insurgent forces, he ceased henceforward to take any interest in their deliberations or debates. The Rev. Robert Patten, who officiated as chaplain to the insurgents, and afterwards wrote a history of the rebellion, indeed states that the Earl ‘was never afterwards called to any council of war, and was slighted in various ways, having often no quarters provided for him, and at other times very bad ones, not fit for a nobleman of his family; yet, being in for it, he resolved to go forward, and diverted himself with any company, telling many pleasant stories of his travels, and his living unknown and obscurely with a blacksmith in France, whom he served some years as a bellows-blower and under-servant, till he was acquainted with the death of his father, and that his tutor had given out that he was dead, upon which he resolved to return home, and when there met with a cold reception.’

The Earl fought with great gallantry at the barricades of Preston, but was at last obliged to surrender along with the other insurgents, and was carried a prisoner to London, and confined in the Tower. He was brought to trial before the House of Lords, 15th March, 1716, and defended himself with considerable ingenuity. The High Steward, Lord Cooper, having overruled his objections to the indictment with some harshness, ‘I hope,’ was the Earl’s rejoinder, ‘you will do me justice, and not make use of "Cowper-law," as we used to say in our country—hang a man first and then judge him.’ On the refusal of his entreaty to be heard by counsel, he replied— ‘Since your lordship will not allow me counsel, I don’t know nothing.’ He was of course found guilty, and condemned to be beheaded on Tower Hill. ‘When waiting his fate in the Tower,’ says Sir Walter Scott, ‘he made good use of his mechanical skill, sawing through with great ingenuity the bars of the windows of his prison, through which he made his escape.’ He ended his motley life at Rome, in 1749, aged seventy, and with him terminated the main branch of the long and illustrious line of the Setons. Male cadets of this family, however, came by intermarriage to represent the great historic families of Huntly and Eglinton, besides the ducal house of Gordon, now extinct, and the Earls of Sutherland, whose heiress married the Marquis of Stafford, afterwards created Duke of Sutherland. The earldoms of Wintoun and Dunfermline, the viscounty of Kingston, and the other Seton titles were forfeited for the adherence of their possessors to the Stewart dynasty, and have never been restored; but the late Earl of Eglinton was, in 1840, served heir-male general of the family, and, in 1859, was created Earl of Wintoun in the peerage of the United Kingdom.