George Seton, 4th Lord Seton
He was the son of Sir John, Master of Seton (Ambassador Extraordinary to the Court of England) and Lady Christian Lindsay, daughter of the 1st Lord Lindsay of the Byres. George succeeded his grandfather, the 3rd Lord Seton, and exemplified in his person the hereditary love of learning in his family. Maitland says: “He was much given to Letters, and was cunning in divers sciences, as in astrology, music and theology. He was so devoted to study that even after his marriage he went to the University of Saint Andrew’s, and after a while to that of Paris to prosecute his researches.” A nobleman in that age who made physical experiments and spent money in such things, who traveled only to become acquainted with learned people, and strove to increase his knowledge in spheres not affected, but rather distained by men of rank, was generally suspected of dealing in the black art, and consequently we are not surprised or ashamed that, appended to the name of this Lord Seton in a curious pedigree of Scotch families complied in 1604, we find the words, Vocatus Necromanticus. Shortly after his accession to the title he entered (July 3, 1480) into what was called a Band of Friendship, for mutual support, encouragement, and counsel with his neighbor, Sir Oliver St. Clair of Rossyln. Between 1484 and 1503 he was engaged in the public affairs of the kingdom, while at the same time devoting considerable attention to his patrimonial estates, with a fine eye to architecture and to the dignity of Religion. In this line he built Winton House, and laid out the garden and park around it; but his more enduring memorial is the Collegiate Church of Seton. A Church of Seton, Ecclesia de Seethun, is mentioned as early as 1242, and the Rev. Joseph Stevenson, S.J., discovered “a presentation of the church of Seyton, in the year 1296.” It must have been a considerable church even before it was made a collegiate by papal authority, because a Brief of Pope Paul II., in 1465, which is preserved among the treasures of the Society of Antiquaries at Edinburgh, mentions the “Provost of Seton” – Prepositus de Seton. Schools of the elementary instruction were almost always attached to these old Scottish churches. The learned Bellesheim, author of the History of the Catholic Church of Scotland (translated by Dom Oswald Hunter Blair, O.S.B.), gives a list of forty collegiate churches in the kingdom, and says: “During the second half of the fourteenth century we first find recorded the foundation of a collegiate church, a proof of the influence still exercised by religion on men’s hearts. These collegiate churches were establishments of secondary importance to the great cathedral and monastic institutions, and consisted generally of a dean and a certain number of cannons, whose principal duty was the solemn performance of divine service”.
There exists in the Advocate’s Library at Edinburgh a Brief of Pope Alexander VI., written on vellum, and dated 1492, dans potestatem… ad procedendum in erectione ecclesiae collegiatae de Seton. In consequence Lord Seton, on June 20, 1493, had the provisions of the Brief carried out by the ecclesiastical authorities to whom it had been committed – viz., the Bishops of Candida Casa (Whithorn) and Dunblane, and the Abbot of Newbattle. It is one of the only two remaining churches in Scotland that are roofed with stone.
This little church, whose original pile is very ancient, was for many centuries the family tomb for the Seton family, and received from them whatever decorations, endowments, furniture of sacred vessels, and ornaments they imagined could add to it’s magnificence. The present structure was erected in the thirteenth century, and King Robert I granted to the “town of Seton the liberty of having a weekly market every holiday after mass,” when the traders would expose their goods in booths beside the church, where the presence of the clergy and the sanctity of the place, under the invocation of Our Lady and Saint Bennet (Benedict), patron of the family tended to preserve order among the people and justice in their dealings.
In the year 1493 it was made a collegiate establishment for a provost, six prebendaries, two singing boys, and a clerk, to whose support George, Lord Seton assigned the tithes of the church and various chaplainries which had been founded in it by his ancestors. At later dates other members of the family made additions to the edifice, multiplied it’s ornaments, increased it’s wealth, and raised within it some sumptuous monuments.
The most notable affair in the life of this lord was his capture by Dunkerkirs in the course of one of his voyages to France. After losing all his baggage he was obliged to ransom his life from these Flemish pirates or privateers, but with the firm resolve to bide his time and punish them severely. This he did soon after, although at great cost to himself in land and money. On the 22nd of January, 1498-99, as appears in the Register of the Privy Seal, he bought a ship from the King of Scotland called the Eagle, fitted her for war, and put to sea against his enemies, slew many of them, and took and destroyed several of their vessels. The streamers and flags, embroidered with family arms, used on this occasion were preserved at Seton Castle, and were seen and described by Alexander Nisbet, the writer on Heraldry, over two hundered years later.
Lord Seton married Lady Margaret Campbell, eldest daughter of Colin, first Earl of Argyll, and had three sons and two daughters:
George, his successor;
John, who died without issue;
Robert, a man at arms in France, who died in the Castle of La Rocca, at Milan, during the Italian wars of Louis XII., leaving two sons: William, also a man at arms, in the Scots Guards in France, and Alexander, who married Janet Sinclair, Heiress of Northrig, and founded the line of the Seton’s of Northrig.
Martha, who married William Maitland of Lethington, of the ancient and distinguished family, and was ancestress of the Earls of Lauderdale.
Catherine, who refusing many good offers of marriage, entered the convent of Saint Catherine of Siena, at Edinburgh, and died there a professed sister at the age of seventy eight.
“ This lord,” says Maitland, “took great pleasure in the company of cunning men: he was a great setter in music.” He lived during the twenty years of King James IV’s reign, and must have had much in common with his Majesty, who “himself was skilled both in vocal and instrumental music.” As illustrating a family trait, the love of music, I shall anticipate, and mention the fact that this lord’s great-grandson, Chancellor Seton, persuaded King Charles I., who had been in his Ward in minority, to endow a Music School in Musselburgh.