Margaret Seton became the heiress of the extensive Seton estates. She married Alan de Wyntoun, a cadet of her own family. The marriage led to a sanguinary contest with rival and disappointed suitors, called ‘ Wyntoun’s War,’ which, according to Wyntoun, the metrical chronicler, caused more than a hundred ploughs to be laid aside from labour.

Alan de Wyntoun died in the Holy Land, leaving a daughter, who became Countess of Dunbar, and his eldest son, Sir William Seton, ‘...was the first creatit and made lord in the Parliament, and he and his posteritie to have ane voit yairin, and be callit Lordis.’

The younger son of this powerful baron married the Heiress of the great family of GORDON, and became the progenitor of the Dukes of Gordon and Marquises of Huntly, as well as of the Setons of Touch, hereditary armour-bearers to the King; the Setons of Meldrum, of Abercorn, of Pitmedden, [Colonel Seton, of the 74th Highlanders, whose heroic conduct at the shipwreck of the Birkenhead, where he perished, excited universal admiration, was a cadet of the Pitmedden family].

The half-sister of the 7th Lord Seton, was one of ‘the Four Maries,’ celebrated in tradition and song, daughters of Scottish noblemen—Livingston, Fleming, Seton, and Beatoun — all of the same age and Christian name, who accompanied Queen Mary when in her childhood she was taken to France, and were her playmates there.

Mary Seton