George Seton, 7^th Lord Seton

He was born in 1531, and succeeded his father in 1549.  It was to this “noble and mighty lord” that Maitland dedicated his history of the Seton Family, begun at the request of his father.  He was addicted to horse-racing and to hawking in his youth, and on May 10, 1552, won a silver bell which was run for at Haddington, the county town.

Before he was twenty he married Isabel, daughter and heiress of Sir William Hamilton of Sanquhar, at the time one of the Senators of the College of Justice and Captain of Edinburgh Castle, a singular combination of Peace and War.  She brought him the Manor of Sorn and other lands in Kyle.  A number of gold medals were struck to commemorate this union, on account, especially, of the bride’s relationship to the Earl of Arran, Regent of Scotland and Duke of Chatellerault in France.  The medal is now very rare.  It is described by Francisque Michel in his Civilization in Scotland.

Sir William Hamilton of Sanquhar was also Lord Treasurer to James V, and invited his Majesty to Sorn Castle, in Ayrshire, to be present at the marriage of his daughter to Lord Seton.  On the eve of the appointed day the king set out on the journey; “but he had to traverse a long and dreadry tract of moor, moss, and miry clay, where there was neither road nor bridge; and when about half-way from Glasgow, he rode his horse into a quagmire, and was with difficulty extricated from his perilous seat on the saddle.  Far from a house, exposed to the bleak wind of a cold day, and environed on all sides by a cheerless moor, he was compelled to take a cold refreshment in no better position than by the side of a very prosaic well; and he at length declared, with more pettishness than wit, that ‘if he were to play a trick on the devil, he would send him to a bridal at Sorn in the middle of winter.’  The well at which he sat and swore is still there and is called the King’s Well; and the quagmire in which his hourse floundered is ironically called the King’s Stable.

Soon after coming of age, Lord Seton was elected Provost of Edinburgh, and governed the capital for several tumultuous years with firmness and discretion.  On one occasion there was an uproar in the city, whereupon two of the municipal officers hurried out to the Provost at Seton; but he, finding they were to blame, promptly confirned them in his castle dungeon, while he rode into Edinburgh, summoned the guard, and suppressed the riot.  Toward the end of 1557 he was one of the Commissioners appointed by Parliament to be present at the marriage of Queen Mary Stuart with the Dauphin of France, afterward Francis II, on which occasion a magnificent present of silver plate exquisitely wroght by Benevenuto Cellini was made him by the king.  This work of art, superior to anything yet seen in Scotland, after serving at banquets prepared for royalty and Winton House and Seton Castle, was finally stolen and beaten to pieces or melted down, in the plunder of the family mansions in 1715.

The Seton’s were always in the forefront of culture and refinement, and progress.  As an illustration, it is  stated, among other things, in the Memorie of the Somervilles, that “the first coach brought to Scotland was by this Lord Seton when Queen Mary came from France.”  After the marriage of Mary and Francis, he was sent to England to present Queen Mary’s portrait to her cousin Queen Elizabeth, and was worthily entertained at the English Court.  He returned to France to accompany Queen Mary, now a widow, back to Scotland; and having enjoyed her favor in the hour of prosperity, he was a devoted friend in the days of her adversity.

He was sworn by the young Queen one of her Privy Council, and appointed Master of the Household.  He was also a knight of the most noble Order of the Thistle.  Nisbet describes a life-sized portrait of him at Seton, in which he grasps his official baton, and underneath which were painted in letters of gold lines:

                               “In Adversitate Patiens –

                                 In Prosperitate Benevolus –

                                 Hazard Yet Forward !”

A motto which denotes his characteristics of patience, courtesy, and courage.  Mottoes were all the vogue among distinguished  people in this and the following reign.  Under the arms of the celebrated Lord Chancellor Seton, moulded in stucco at Pinkie House, is this one:

                               “Nec Cede Adversis Rebus”

                                 Nec Crede Secundis.”

It lacks the chivalrous sentiment of his fathers, and smacks too much of the Jesuit Balthasar Gracian’s Art of Worldly Wisdom.

During the years of comparative peace and happiness following Queen Mary’s home-coming she was a frequent visitor to Seton, where she would practice archery and play at golf, two games for which the Seton Butts and Seton Links were famous.  Chambers, in his Stories of Old Families, describes the joyous times at Seton; and the beautiful “Seton Necklace,” sold with other Eglinton heirlooms a few years ago, was a prize won by Mary Seton at golf in a game against the Queen.  Maitland mentions some of the architectural improvements and additions of this lord to his principle residence, which had suffered severely from English depredations, being on the direct road from Edinburgh to Berwick.  Maitland also tells us how on the 16^th of February, 1561, at two o’clock in the morning “the great dungeon of the old tower of Seton fell to the ground, but as God would have it, it did nobody harm.”

Nevertheless Lord Seton rebuilt and enhanced the old Palace which was esteemed at the period and for many years afterward, much the most magnificently constructed and furnished house in Scotland.  It was often called, in accordance with the Scotch fashion introduced under the influence of French ideas, the Palace of Seton, because it was so frequently the abode of royalty.  This vast and handsome structure occupied a pleasant position in the midst of a well-wooded demesne in East Lothian, on the coast of the Firth of Forth, and took it’s name from one of the oldest, wealthiest, and most influential families in the kingdom.  There is no end of traditions regarding the princely style maintained at Seton.  It had been visited in the royal progresses by Queen Mary, by her son King James VI, by the unfortunate Charles I, and by the merry monarch Charles II, and an account of the masques and ceremonies on these occasions would fill a volume.

At the Reformation and for almost a century afterward, Seton House was the stronghold of the Catholic party in the South, one of the refuges and hiding places for the priests, and the first mansion at which the clergy coming from the Continent were received and entertained, after landing in disguise in that part of Scotland.  The Seton’s also had a large and magnificent townhouse in Edinburgh.  Lord Darnley sojourned there in 1565, and about eighteen years later the French ambassador Manzeville.  It is referred to in the Diurnal of Occurents in Scotland.

When Queen Mary, then at his house, was about to create her half-brother, Lord James Stuart, Earl of Moray, in January, 1561, she proposed to advance her faithful friend also; but he asked – with a pride, perhaps, that apes humility – to be allowed to retain his lower rank, because, as it has been alleged, he preferred to be the premier baron, rather than the junior earl.  It has also been noted that there was an arriere pensee which he was too perfect a courtier to express, and that the real reason of his refusal was that, Stuart being a bastard and a bad man – “False to his vows, a wedded priest” – a gentleman of Lord Seton’s high sense of honor – no king had ever found a mistress of his name and blood – would not share the glory of an earldom in his company.  It was on this occasion that the Queen wrote with a diamond ring upon the window of the great hall – called Sampson’s Hall – at Seton these Latin verses:

                               “Sunt comites, ducesque alii, sunt denique reges;

                                 Setoni dominum sit satis esse mihi.”

Sir Walter Scott has rendered them into English:

                               “Earl, Duke, or Duke, be thou that list to be;

                                 Seton, thy lordship is enough for me.”

To indicate the unshaken loyalty of himself and family, and express in a single line his religious and political principles, he caused to be carved in stone and filled in with large gilt letters, and then set up over the main entrance to the house which he rebuilt, the following French inscription:

                               “Un Dieu, Une Foy, Un Roy, Une Loy.”

In june 1567, Queen Mary and Bothwell, with several lords  who had answered their unhappy sovereign’s appeal, and a considerable force assembled for battle on Carberry Hill.  In Aytoun’s poem of Bothwell Lord Seton is described at the moment:

                               He was of a noble stamp

                               Whereof this age hath witnessed few;

                               Men who came duly to the camp,

                               When’er the Royal trumpet blew.

                               Blunt tenure lords, who deemed the Crown

                               As sacred as the Holy Tree

                               And laid their lives and fortunes down

                               Not caring what the cause might be.

Lord Seton’s gallant rescue of Queen Mary from her captivity in Lochleven Castle in May, 1568, is the most romantic episode in her life and in his own career.  After her escape she rested for several days at his castle of Niddry; and it is of her stay there, to give time for her adherents to assemble under the Hamiltons, that Miss Strickland says: “She stood a Queen once more, among the only true nobles of her realm, those whom English gold had not corrupted, nor successful traitors daunted.”

A brief  inscription on an oblong stone tablet – George Lord Seton of His Age 36, 1567 – long commemorated this nobleman over one of the windows of the castle.  It disappeared in the mid 19^th century, but by great good fortune a sketch of it was made in 1852, and is engraved in Ballingall’s Edinburgh Past and Present.  As is well known, the disasterous battle of Langside destroyed Queen Mary’s party.  Lord Seton here displayed the hereditary valour of his race, repeatedly charging the rebel heights with the cry, “god and the Queen! Set on! Seton on!”  He was wounded and taken prisoner, and came near being put to death.  “When he was brought into the presence of Moray, he was bitterly rebuked by him as having been the prime author and the chief performer in this tragedy; whereas according to Moray, it was his duty to have been one of the first to protect the infant king.  Seton answered that he had given his fidelity to one prince, and that he would keep it as long as he lived, or until the Queen should have laid down her right of government of her own free will.  Irritated by the reply, Moray asked him to say what he thought his own punishment ought to be, and threatened that he should undergo the extreme severity of the law.  ‘Let others decide.’ Said Seton, ‘what I deserve.  On that point my conscience gives me no trouble, and I am well aware that I have been brought within your power, and I am subject to your will.  But I would have you know that even if you cut off my head, as soon as I die there will be another Lord Seton.’”

As it was, he got imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, but after a year’s confinement went into exile.  He lived thus two years in great poverty and distress in Flanders and Holland, where he came into relations with Alva, and brought himself into serious trouble, which might have ended fatally, by trying to bring the Scots regiments then in the service of the rebellious States over to the Spanish side.  Lord Seton returned to Scotland in January, 1571, and is then constantly mentioned in letters and state papers, and always as an incorruptible and untiring agent of the imprisoned Queen and of the Catholic cause.  In Bellesheim’s History of the Catholic Church in Scotland, he says:

“An interesting glimpse of the condition of the Scottish Catholics at this time is given us by the letter sent to Pope Gregory on February 15, 1574, by John Irving, a Knight of Malta, from his prison in Edinburgh.

                “Irving, who attributes his present situation to the action of informers, affirms his adherence to the Catholic faith, for which he is ready by God’s grace to endure every extremity.  He mentions, as one of the most faithful of the Scottish nobles, Lord Seton, who had made great sacrifices in the cause of religion and who, together with his three sons, had been excommunicated by the Established Church.

                The writer adds that Lord Seton has under consideration various plans for the restoration of the Catholic faith in Scotland, which he doubts not will meet with the approbation of his holiness.”

In November, 1583, Lord Seton was sent ambassador to the King of France (Henry III), and letters were subsequently written to King James VI by the Duke of Lorraine, the Cardinals of Guise and Bourbon, and others relative to his embassy and commending his diligence, zeal, judgment, and unswerving loyalty.  An interesting letter from this Lord Seton to Pope Gregory XIII is published in Theiner’s Annals.

A portrait of this nobleman by Holbein was long in the possession of the Somervilles; but by far the most interesting one is the group by Sir Antonio More, which has been engraved by Pinkerton in his Scottish Iconographia, and was also in the possession of the Somervilles and now rests in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.  This famous composition consists of Lord Seton in his thirty-ninth year, his daughter and four sons.  It has been enthusiastically described by Sir Walter Scott in the Provincial Antiquities, who there calls attention to “the grave, haughty, and even grim cast of countenance” which distinguishes them all.  In July, 1882, at the disposal of the Hamilton Palace collection, a beautiful miniature of “George, Lord setone, aetatis suae 27,” by H. Bone, R.A., after an original in the Somerville family, was sold to Mr. Denison for $131 British pounds.

There are also exquisite vis-à-vis miniature portraits of Lord and Lady Seton at the top of the Armorial Pedigree of Touch in the possession of the Seton-Steuarts, Baronets.

After a life of trying vicissitudes, during which he had seen the subversion of the Ancient Faith, the captivity of his sovereign Mistress, and the establishment of the Protestant Religion in Scotland, Lord Seton died on the 8^th of January, 1585, and was buried in his family church, where, on a slab of black marble embedded in the wall, there is  a lengthy epitaph from the pen of his son, Alexander, who was an elegant Latin scholar.  It is now in parts defaced and indistinct.

By his marriage to Isabel Hamilton, Lord Seton left four sons and a daughter:

1.        Robert, first Earl of Winton.

2.        Sir John Seton of Barnes.

3.        Alexander Seton, first Earl of Dunfermline.

4.        Sir William Seton of Kylesmuir.

5.        Margaret, who married Claude Hamilton, created Lord Paisley.  Their son was the first Earl of Abercorn, ancestor of the present duke.  This marriage took place “with great triumph” at Niddry Castle on the 1^st of August, 1574.