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Before he was twenty, George Seton 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. She
brought him the Manor of Sorn and other lands in Kyle, which lands were later
confirmed on their youngest son Sir William Seton of Kylesmuir who was named
after his grandfather and who was Chamberlain to the Earl of Arran, his uncle. 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 above is now very rare, and is described by Francisque Michel in
his Civilization in Scotland.
Sir
William Hamilton of Sanquhar, Isabel's father (Lord Treasurer to James V), and
George Seton, 6th Lord Seton, invited his
Majesty to Sorn Castle, in Ayrshire, to be present at the marriage of his
daughter to the future 7th 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 horse
floundered is ironically called the King’s Stable, from His Majesty's note that
his horse was now truly stabled there.

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