The Great Historic Families of Scotland
The Drummonds

THE founder of the Drummond family was long believed to have been ‘a Hungarian gentleman,’ named MAURICE, who was said by Lord Strathallan, in his history of the family, to have piloted the vessel in which Edgar Atheling and his two sisters embarked for Hungary in 1066. They were driven, however, by a storm to land upon the north side of the Firth of Forth, near Queensferry, and took refuge at the Court of Malcolm Canmore, which was then held at Dunfermline. After the marriage of the Scottish king to the Princess Margaret, the Hungarian, as a reward for his skilful management of the vessel in the dangerous sea voyage, was rewarded by Malcolm with lands, offices, and a coat-of-arms; and called Drummond; ‘and so it seems,’ says Lord Strathallan, ‘this Hungarian gentleman got his name, either from the office as being captaine, director, or admiral to Prince Edgar and his company—for Dromont or Dromend in divers nations was the name of a ship of a swift course, and the captaine thereof was called Droment or Dromerer—or otherwise the occasion of the name was from the tempest they endured at sea;’ for Drummond, his lordship thinks, might be made up of the Greek word for water, and meant a hill, ‘signifying high hills of waters; or Drummond, from drum, which in our ancient language is a height.’ The myth was enlarged with additional and minute particulars by succeeding historians of the family. Mr. Malcolm exalts the Hungarian gentleman to the position of a royal prince of Hungary, and affirms that he was the son of George, a younger son of Andrew, King of Hungary. The late Mr. Henry Drummond, the banker, and M.P. for West Surrey, in his splendid work, entitled, ‘Noble British Families,’ adopts and improves upon the statements of the previous writers, and gives the Hungarian prince a royal pedigree in Hungary for many generations anterior to his coming to Scotland in 1066. All three agree in stating that the first lands given to that Hungarian by Malcolm Canmore lay in Dumbartonshire, and included the parish of Drummond in Lennox.

Mr. Fraser, in his elaborate and most interesting work, entitled, ‘The Red Book of Menteith,’ has proved, by conclusive evidence, that these statements respecting the origin of the Drummond family are purely apocryphal. The word Drummond, Drymen, or Drummin, is used as a local name in several counties of Scotland, and is derived from the Celtic word druim, a ridge or knoll. The first person who can be proved to have borne the name was one Malcolm of Drummond, who, along with his brother, named Gilbert, witnessed the charters of Maldouen, third Earl of Lennox, from 1225 to 1270. But this Malcolm was simply a chamberlain to the Earl. Mr. Drummond states that he was made hereditary thane or seneschal of Lennox, which is quite unsupported by evidence; and he asserts that Malcolm’s estates reached from the shores of the Gareloch, in Argyllshire, across the counties of Dumbarton and Stirling into Perthshire, which Mr. Fraser has shown to be an entire mistake. Instead of the Barony of Drymen, or Drummond, having been granted to a Prince Maurice by Malcolm Canmore in 1070, the lands belonged to the Crown previous to the year 1489, when for the first time they were let on lease to John, first Lord Drummond, and afterwards granted to him as feu-farm. The earliest charter to the family of any lands having a similar name was granted in 1362, by Robert Stewart of Scotland, Earl of Strathern, to Maurice of Drummond, of the dominical lands, or mains of Drommand and Tulychravin, in the earldom of Strathern. It is doubtful if he ever entered into possession of these lands; but it is clear that, whether he did so or not, they did not belong to the Drummond family previous to the grant of 1362, but were part of the estates of the Earl of Strathern, and that they are wholly distinct from the lands and lordship of Drummond afterwards acquired by John Drummond, who sat in Parliament 6th May, 1471, under the designation of Dominus de Stobhall, and, sixteen years later, was created a peer of Parliament by James III.

James IV., after his accession to the throne, granted a lease for five years, on 6th June, 1489, in favour of John, Lord Drummond, of the Crown lands of Drummond, in the shire of Stirling. On the expiry of the lease, the King made a perpetual grant of the lands to him by a charter under the Great Seal, dated 31st January, 1495, bearing that the grant was made for the good and faithful services rendered by Lord Drummond, and for the love and favour which the King had for him. After the death of James IV., Lord Drummond exerted all his influence to promote the marriage between his grandson, the Earl of Angus, and the widowed Queen Margaret. ‘This marriage begot such jealousy,’ says Lord Strathallan, ‘in the rulers of the State, that the Earl of Angus was cited to appear before the Council, and Sir William Cummin of Inneralochy, Knight, Lyon King-at-Armes, appeared to deliver the charge; in doing whereof he seemed to the Lord Drummond to have approached the Earl with more boldness than discretion, for which he gave the Lyon a box on the ear; whereof he complained to John, Duke of Albany, then newly made Governor to King James V.; and the Governor, to give ane example of his justice at his first entry to his new office, caused imprison the Lord Drummond’s person in the Castle of Blackness, and forfault his estate to the Crown for his rashness. But the Duke, considering, after information, what a fyne man the lord was, and how strongly allyed with most of the great families of the nation, was well pleased that the Queen-mother and Three Estates of Parliament should interceed for him, as he was soone restored to his libertie and fortune.’ It would have been well for Lord Drummond if he had remembered, on this occasion, the motto of his family, ’Gang warily,’ and his own maxim, in his paper of ‘Constituted Advice,’ ‘In all our doings discretion is to be observed, otherwise nothing can be done aright.’

On the 5th of January, 1535, King James V. entered into an obligation to infeft DAVID, second Lord Drummond, in all the lands which had belonged to his great-grandfather, John, the first lord, and which were in the King’s hands by reason of escheat and forfeiture, through the accusation brought against John, Lord Drummond, for the treasonable and violent putting of hands on the King’s officer then called Lyon King-of-Arms. Certain specified lands, however, were excepted—viz., Innerpeffrey, Foirdow, Aucterarder, Dalquhenzie and Glencoyth, with the patronage of the provostry and chaplaincy of Innerpeffrey, which were to be given by the King to John Drummond of Innerpeffrey, and to the King’s sister, Margaret, Lady Gordon, his spouse. It was stipulated in the obligation that David, Lord Drummond, was to marry Margaret Stewart, daughter of Margaret, Lady Gordon. The instrument of infeftment, dated 1st and 2nd November, 1542, affords the most positive proof of the distinction between the old and new possessions of Drummond in Stirlingshire and Drommane in Strathern, and the two were for the first time, by a charter dated 25th October, 1542, ‘united, erected, and incorporated into a free barony, to be called in all tymes to cum the Barony of Drummen.’ It is evident, then, that ‘whatever lands in the Lennox the earlier members of the house of Drummond might have held, such certainly did not comprehend the lands bearing their own name.’ The lands of Drummond were sold by the Earl of Perth, in 1631, to William, Earl of Strathern and Menteith. The eighth and last Earl entailed them upon James, Marquis of Montrose, and they have ever since formed part of the Montrose estates.

The lands of Roseneath, in Dumbartonshire, were also said by Mr. Henry Drummond to have been granted by Malcolm Canmure to the alleged Hungarian prince, but these lands were in reality acquired by the Drummonds in 1372, by a grant from Mary, Countess of Menteith, and were soon restored. The bars wavy, the armorial bearings of the Drummonds, were alleged to have been taken from the tempestuous waves of the sea, when Maurice the Hungarian piloted the vessel which carried Edgar Atheling and his sisters. The late Mr. John Riddell affirms that this supposed origin of the Drummond arms is too absurd and fabulous to claim a moment’s attention. Mr. Fraser has shown that the bars wavy were the proper arms of the Menteith earldom, and that the Drummonds, as feudal vassals of the Earls of Menteith, according to a very common practice in other earldoms, adopted similar arms.

It thus appears that the founder of the Drummond family was not a Hungarian prince, or even gentleman, but Malcolm Beg, chamberlain to the Earl of Lennox. When the War of Independence broke out the Drummonds embraced the patriotic side. JOHN OF DRUMMOND was taken prisoner at the battle of Dunbar, and was imprisoned in the castle of Wisbeach; but he was set at liberty in August, 1297, on Sir Edmund Hastings, proprietor of part of Menteith in right of his wife, Lady Isabella Comyn, offering himself as security, and on the condition that he would accompany King Edward to France. His eldest son, SIR MALCOLM DRUMMOND, was a zealous supporter of the claims of Robert Bruce to the Scottish throne, and like his father fell into the hands of the English, having been taken prisoner by Sir John Segrave. On hearing this ‘good news,’ King Edward, on the 20th of August, 1301, offered oblations at the shrine of St. Mungo, in the cathedral of Glasgow. After the independence of the country was secured by the crowning victory of Bannockburn, MALCOLM was rewarded for his services by King Robert Bruce with lands in Perth-shire. Sir Robert Douglas, the eminent genealogist, conjectures that the caltrops, or four-spiked pieces of iron, with the motto ‘Gang warily,’ in the armorial bearings of the Drummonds, were bestowed as an acknowledgment of Sir Malcolm’s active efforts in the use of these formidable weapons at the battle of Bannockburn. His grandson, JOHN DRUMMOND, married the eldest daughter and co-heiress of Sir John Montefex, [It has hitherto been supposed that the estates of Stobhall and Cargill, on the Tay, which still belong to the family, came into the possession of the Drummonds by marriage with this heiress, but they were in reality bestowed by David II. on Queen Margaret, and were given by her to Malcolm of Drummond, her nephew.] the first of the numerous fortunate marriages made by the Drummonds. Maurice, another grandson, married the heiress of Concraig and of the Stewardship of Strathearn. A second son, SIR MALCOLM, whom Wyntoun terms ‘a manfull knycht, baith wise and wary,’ fought at the battle of Otterburn in 1388, in which his brother-in-law, James, second Earl of Douglas and Mar, was killed, and succeeded him in the latter earldom, in right of his wife, Lady Isabel Douglas, only daughter of William, first Earl of Douglas. He seems to have had some share in the capture at that battle of Ralph Percy, brother of the famous Hotspur, as he received from Robert III. a pension of £20, in satisfaction of the third part of Percy’s ransom, which exceeded £600. He died of his ‘hard captivity’ which he endured at the hands of a band of ruffians by whom he was seized and imprisoned. His widow, the heiress of the ancient family of Mar, was forcibly married by Alexander Stewart, a natural son of ‘the Wolf of Badenoch.’ [See EARLDOM OF MAR.]

SIR WALTER DRUMMOND, who was knighted by James II., was the ancestor of the Drummonds of Blair Drummond, Gairdrum, Newton, and other branches of the main stock. SIR JOHN DRUMMOND, the head of the family in the reign of James IV., held the great office of Justiciar of Scotland, was Constable of the castle of Stirling, took a prominent part in public affairs, and was created a peer 29th January, 1487-8, by the title of LORD DRUMMOND. Although this honour, as we have seen, was conferred upon him by James III., Lord Drummond joined the party of the disaffected nobles, who took up arms against their sovereign, with the Prince at their head, and was rewarded for his services after the death of the King at Sauchieburn by a lease, subsequently converted into a grant, of the Crown lands of Drummond in the county of Stirling.

The Drummonds were not only a brave and energetic race, but they were conspicuous for their handsome persons and gallant bearing. Good looks ran in their blood, and the ladies of the family were famous for their personal beauty, which no doubt led to the great marriages made by them, generation after generation, with the Douglases, Gordons, Grahams, Crawfords, Kers, and other powerful families, which greatly increased the influence and possessions of their house. Margaret, daughter of Malcolm, Lord Drummond, and widow of Sir John Logie, became the second wife of David II., who seems to have been familiar with her during her husband’s lifetime. The Drummonds gave a second queen to Scotland in the person of Annabella, the saintly wife of Robert IlI., and mother of the unfortunate David, Duke of Rothesay, and of James I., whose ‘depth of sagacity and firmness of mind’ contributed not a little to the good government of the kingdom. They had nearly given another royal consort to share the throne of James IV., who was devotedly attached to Margaret, eldest daughter of the first Lord Drummond, a lady of great beauty. [The entries in the Lord High Treasurer’s accounts respecting the frequent rich presents lavished on a certain Lady Margaret, which have been adduced as proofs of the relation in which Lady Margaret Drummond stood to James, have been proved to refer to Lady Margaret Stewart, the King’s aunt. James, indeed, was a mere boy when those sums were paid; his connection with Margaret Drummond did not commence until the summer of 1496.] But that king’s purpose to marry her was frustrated by her death, in consequence of poison administered by some of the nobles, who were envious of the honour which was a third time about to be conferred on her family. Her two younger sisters, who accidentally partook of the poisoned dish, shared her fate. The historian of the Drummonds states that James was ‘affianced to Lady Margaret, and meant to make her his queen without consulting his council. He was opposed by those nobles who wished him to wed Margaret Tudor. His clergy likewise protested against his marriage as within the prohibited degrees. Before the King could receive the dispensation, his wife (the Lady Margaret) was poisoned at breakfast at Drummond Castle, with her two sisters. Suspicion fell on the Kennedys—a rival house, a member of which, Lady Janet Kennedy, daughter of John, Lord Kennedy, had borne a son to the King.’ A slightly different account is given in ‘Morreri’s Dictionary,’ on the authority of a manuscript history of the family of Drummond, composed in 1689. It is there stated that Lady Margaret, daughter of the first Lord Drummond, 'was so much beloved by James IV. that he wished to marry her, but as they were connected by blood, and a dispensation from the Pope was required, the impatient monarch concluded a private marriage, from which clandestine union sprang a daughter, who became the wife of the Earl of Huntly. The dispensation having arrived, the King determined to celebrate his nuptials publicly; but the jealousy of some of the nobles against the house of Drummond suggested to them the cruel project of taking off Margaret by poison, in order that her family might not enjoy the glory of giving two queens to Scotland.’ The three young ladies thus ‘foully done to death’ were buried in a vault, covered with three blue marble stones, in the choir of the cathedral of Dunblane.

John, first Lord Drummond, died in 1519, upwards of eighty years of age. His eldest son predeceased him, and William, Master of Drummond, his second son, was unfortunately implicated in a tragic affair which brought him to the scaffold. There was a feud of long standing between the Drummonds and the Murrays, and in 1490 the Master of Drummond, having learned that a party of Murrays were levying teinds on his father’s estates for George Murray, Abbot of Inchaffray, hastened to oppose them at the head of a large body of followers, accompanied by Campbell of Dunstaffnage. The Murrays took refuge in the church of Monievaird, and the Master and his party were retiring, when a shot from the church killed one of the Dunstaffnage men. The Highlanders, in revenge for this murder, set fire to the church, and nineteen of the Murrays were burnt to death. James determined to punish the ringleaders in this shocking outrage with death, and the Master of Drummond was apprehended, tried, convicted, and executed, in spite of the earnest entreaties of his mother and sister in his behalf.

He left a son, who predeceased his grandfather, and in consequence the first Lord Drummond was succeeded by his great-grandson DAVID, who became second Lord Drummond. He was a zealous adherent of Queen Mary. His second son, James, Lord Maderty, was ancestor of the Viscounts Strathallan. He married Margaret, daughter of Alexander, Duke of Albany, and grand - daughter of James II. His elder son, PATRICK, third Lord Drummond, embraced the Protestant religion. The great beauty, ability, and virtues of his daughter, the Countess of Roxburgh, were celebrated in glowing strains by the poet Daniel, and she was held in such high estimation by James VI. that he made choice of her to be the governess of his daughters. The Drummonds were a courtly family, and throughout their whole career were conspicuous for their attachment to the throne. They fought gallantly on the royal side, under Montrose, in the Great Civil War, and suffered severely for their loyalty. More fortunate, however, than most of the Royalist nobles, they were liberally rewarded at the Restoration for their fidelity to the Crown.

JAMES, fourth Lord Drummond, was created EARL OF PERTH in 1605. His brother, the second Earl, was a staunch Royalist, and was fined £5,000 by Cromwell for his adherence to the cause of Charles I. His grandson JAMES, fourth Earl, after holding the offices of Lord Justice-General and of an Extraordinary Lord of Session, was in 1684 appointed Lord Chancellor of Scotland. He was a special favourite of James VII., whose good will he and his younger brother had gained by renouncing the Protestant religion, and embracing the tenets of Romanism. ‘With a certain audacious baseness,’ says Lord Macaulay, ‘which characterised Scottish public men in that bad age, the brothers declared that the papers found in the strong box of Charles II. had converted them both to the true faith, and they began to confess and to hear mass. How little conscience had to do with Perth’s change of religion he amply proved by taking to wife a few weeks later, in direct defiance of the laws of the Church which he had just joined, a lady who was his cousin-german, without waiting for a dispensation. When the good Pope learned this he said, with scorn and indignation which well became him, that this was a strange sort of conversion.’

Apostasy from the Episcopal Church to Romanism, and especially apostasy such as this, was a sure passport to the confidence and liberality of James, and Perth speedily became the chief Scottish favourite of that weak and tyrannical monarch. He obtained a gift of the forfeited estates of Lord Melville, and was entrusted with the whole management of affairs in Scotland. He readily lent himself to carry out the arbitrary and unconstitutional schemes of his master, and took a prominent part in the cruel persecution of the Covenanters. Burnet ascribes to him the invention of a little steel thumbscrew, which inflicted such intolerable pain that it wrung confessions out of men on whom his Majesty’s favourite boot had been tried in vain. Perth’s younger brother was created EARL OF MELFORT in 1686, received a grant of a portion of the forfeited estates of the Earl of Argyll, and was appointed Secretary of State for Scotland. The unprincipled conduct of these two chief ministers of affairs rendered them very obnoxious to the people, and especially to the citizens of Edinburgh. A cargo of images, beads, crosses, and censers was sent from the Continent to Lord Perth, in direct violation of the law which forbade the importation of such articles. A Roman Catholic chapel was fitted up in the Chancellor’s house, in which mass was regularly performed. A riot in consequence took place. The iron bars which protected the windows were wrenched off and the inmates were pelted with mud. The troops were called out to quell the disturbance, the mob assailed them with stones; in return, the troops were ordered to fire, and several citizens were killed. Two or three of the ringleaders of the riot were hanged, amid expressions of strong sympathy for the sufferers, and of abhorrence of the Chancellor, on whom the whole blame was laid.

Perth and his brother were poor creatures both, and seem to have been destitute even of the physical courage of their house. When the Revolution took place and his royal master fled to France, the Chancellor, whose ‘nerves were weak and his spirit abject,’ took refuge at Castle Drummond, his country seat, near Crieff, under the escort of a strong guard, and there experienced ‘an agony as bitter as that into which the merciless tyrant had often thrown better men.’ He confessed that ‘the strong terrors of death were upon him,’ and vainly ‘tried to find consolation in the rites of his new Church.’ Believing that he was not safe even among his own domestics and tenantry, he quitted Drummond Castle in disguise, and, crossing by unfrequented paths the Ochil Hills, then deep in snow, he succeeded in getting on board a collier vessel which lay off Kirkcaldy. But his flight was discovered. It was rumoured that he had carried off with him a large amount of gold, and a skiff, commanded by an old buccaneer, pursued and overtook the flying vessel near the Bass, at the mouth of the Firth. The Chancellor was dragged from the hold where he had concealed himself disguised in woman’s clothes, was hurried on shore begging for life with unmanly cries, like his brother chancellor, Jeffries, and was consigned to the common jail of Kirkcaldy. He was afterwards transferred, amidst the execrations and screams of hatred of a crowd of spectators, to the castle of Stirling, where he was kept a close prisoner for four years. On regaining his liberty, in 1693, the ex-Chancellor went to Rome, where he resided for two years. King James then sent for him to St. Germains, appointed him First Lord of the Bedchamber, Chamberlain to the Queen, and governor to their son, the titular Prince of Wales, who, on his father’s death, raised the Earl to the rank of Duke—a title which was, of course, not recognised by the British Government. He was deeply engaged in all the intrigues and plots of the mimic court of the exiled monarch until his death in 1716.

His eldest son, JAMES, Lord Drummond, accompanied King James in his expedition to Ireland, took a prominent part in the rebellion of 1715, and was, in consequence, attainted by the British Parliament. But two years before this unsuccessful attempt to restore the Stewart family to the throne, he executed a disposition of his estates in favour of his son, which was sustained by the Court of Session, and affirmed by the House of Lords. Destiny, however, had set her hand on the ill-fated house, and its doom was only postponed, not averted. The heir of the family, JAMES, third titulal Duke of Perth, true to the principles of his family, joined Prince Charles Stewart in the rebellion of 1745, at the head of his tenantry, and shared in all the perils and privations of that unfortunate adventurer. He was a young man of an amiable disposition and dauntless courage, but his abilities were very moderate, his constitution was weak, and he was quite inexperienced both in politics and in war. ‘In spite of a very delicate constitution,’ says Douglas, ‘he underwent the greatest fatigues, and was the first on every occasion of duty where his head or his hands could be of use.’ He commanded the right wing of the Highlanders at the battle of Prestonpans, directed the siege of Carlisle, and of the castle of Stirling, and was at the head of the left wing at the final conflict of Culloden. After that disastrous battle, though tracked and pursued by the English troops, he made his escape to Moidart, and embarked in a French vessel lying off that coast. But his constitution was quite worn out by the privations he had undergone, and he died on his passage to France, 11th May, 1746, at the age of thirty-three. His brother and heir, Lord John Drummond, a colonel in the French service, commanded the left wing of the Highlanders at the battle of Falkirk. On the suppression of the rebellion, he made his escape to France, served with distinction in Flanders under Marshal Saxe, and attained the rank of major-general shortly before his death, in 1747. Previous to his death, the Duke of Perth had been attainted by the British Parliament, and his estates were forfeited to the Crown. His two uncles successively assumed the title of Duke of Perth, and on the death of Lord Edward Drummond, the younger of the two, at Paris, in 1760, the main line of the family became extinct.

The succession fell to the descendants of the Earl of Melfort, younger brother of the Chancellor, and Secretary of State for Scotland under James VII. He too, as we have seen, became a pervert to the Romish Church, and in his zeal for his new faith obtained from the King the exclusion of his family by his first wife from the right to inherit his estates and titles, because their mother’s relations had frustrated his attempts to convert them to Romanism. At the Revolution he fled to France, and was attainted by Act of Parliament in 1695. He was created Duke de Melfort in 1701, and for a number of years had the chief administration of the affairs of the exiled monarch. He died in 1714. His second wife, daughter of Sir Thomas Wallace of Craigie, lived to be above ninety years of age, and in her latter years supported herself by keeping a faro-table. His descendants remained in their adopted country, and identified themselves with its faith, its interests, and its manners. Most of them embraced the military profession and attained high rank in the French, German, and Polish services. Some of them entered the Church, and one was elevated to the rank of cardinal. GEORGE, Sixth Duke of Melfort, renounced the Romish faith, conformed to the Protestant Church, entered the British army, and became a captain in the 98th Highlanders. Having petitioned the Queen for the restoration of the Scottish attainted honours, he proved his descent, in 1848, before the Committee for Privileges of the House of Lords, was restored in blood by an Act of Parliament in 1853, and was reinstated in the earldom of Perth and the other Scottish honours of his illustrious house.

Meanwhile, the Drummond estates, which had been forfeited to the Crown in 1746, remained for nearly forty years under the charge of Commissioners. In 1784, however, they were conferred by George III., under the authority of an Act of Parliament, on a Captain JAMES DRUMMOND, who claimed to be heir male of Lord John Drummond, brother of the duke who fought at Culloden. The fortunate recipient of these fine estates was, in addition, created a British peer by the title of Baron Perth. At his death, in the year 1800, his landed property descended to his daughter, Clementina Drummond, who married the twelfth Lord Willoughby de Eresby. At her death the Drummond estates devolved upon her eldest daughter, Lady Aviland.

Repeated but unsuccessful efforts have been made by the Earl of Perth to obtain the restitution of the hereditary possessions of the family. He pleaded that he is now the nearest lawful heir male of James, third Duke of Perth, and that he is the first of his house who could sue for the family inheritance, as his predecessors were all French subjects and Papists, and incapable of taking up any heritable estate in Scotland. He also alleged that when the forfeited possessions of the Drummond family were restored, they ought legally to have been conferred on the nearest heir in the direct line of the entail of 1713. An adverse decision, however, was given both by the Court of Session and the House of Lords, mainly on the ground that the attainder vested the estates absolutely in the Crown, that they might, therefore, be conferred at will by the sovereign or Parliament, and that their gift to Captain Drummond cannot be reduced.

The interests at stake in this suit were very valuable. Though Drymen, the original seat of the Drummond family, and their other Dumbartonshire property, passed into the hands of the Grahams centuries ago, and the whole of their Stirlingshire estates, along with Auchterarder and other ancient possessions of the family in Perth-shire, have also passed away from them, there yet remain the antique castle of Drummond with its quaint and beautiful gardens, Stobhall and Cargill, which four hundred years ago were bestowed upon Malcolm Drummond by Queen Margaret, his aunt, and the Trossachs, Loch Katrine, and Glenartney, immortalised by Sir Walter Scott, yielding in all nearly £30,000 a year.

There can be no doubt that both on political and social grounds, it would have been better that these fine estates should have devolved on a resident proprietor, the representative of their ancient owners, than that they should be held by a non-resident family already possessed of vast estates in another part of the island, strangers to the country and to the tenantry, and who never see or are seen by them, except during a few weeks in autumn.

As showing the grandeur of the Drummond family, Mr. Henry Drummond says that they have furnished Dukes of Roxburgh, Perth, and Melfort; a Marquis of Forth; Earls of Mar, Perth, and Ker; Viscounts Strathallan ; Barons Drummond, Inchaffray, Madderty, Cromlix, and Stobhall; Knights of the Garter, St. Louis, Golden Fleece, and Thistle; Ambassadors, Queens of Scotland, Duchesses of Albany and Athole; Countesses of Monteith, Montrose, Eglinton, Mar, Rothes, Tullibardine, Dunfermline, Roxburgh, Winton, Sutherland, Balcarres, Crawford, Arran, Errol, Marischal, Kinnoul, Hyndford, Effingham; Macquary in France, and Castle Blanche in Spain; Baronesses Fleming, Elphinstone, Livingstone, Willoughby, Hervey, Oliphant, Rollo, and Kinclaven.

‘To this long list of distinguished names,’ says Mr. Fraser, ‘the author might have added Margaret Drummond, sometime Logie, the second queen of King David Bruce.’

Mr. Henry Drummond might also have mentioned the various minor branches of the family, such as the Drummonds of Carnock; of Hawthornden, to whom William Drummond, the celebrated poet, belonged; of Logie Almond, who produced the distinguished scholar and antiquary, Sir William Drummond; the Drummonds of Blair Drummond, whose heiress married Henry Home, the celebrated Lord Kames, lawyer, judge, and philosopher; and others.

The present Earl of Perth, who was born in 1807, had an only son, Malcolm, Viscount Forth, who died in 1861, in very melancholy circumstances. He left a son, George Essex Montifex, born in 1856. It is stated in Debrett’s Peerage that in 1874 the young lord married a daughter of the late Mr. Harrison, lead merchant, of London. According to the Quebec Mercury the youth, who was only eighteen years of age, immediately after his marriage, which displeased his family, emigrated with his wife to the United States. He landed at New York without means, and engaged himself as a shipping clerk to a firm in that town. He somehow lost his situation, however, and left New York and settled at Brookhaven, a fishing village on the south shore of Long Island. He lived there for several years in a picturesque old farmhouse, supporting himself and his wife very comfortably by fishing and shooting. In appearance, dress, manners, and language, he differed little from the fishermen of the, village, who knew him only as George. Last year he quitted Brookhaven, and bringing his wife and one child—a son—to New York, he became a porter to a dry goods firm. When he was a shipping clerk he was visited by Lord Walter Campbell, who unsuccessfully tried to persuade the runaway to return home. He has now, however, gone back to his native country, and it is understood that a reconciliation has been effected between him and the old Earl, his grandfather.