HALYBURTON,
a surname derived from lands of that name in Berwickshire. These
lands, Meikle and Little Halyburton, almost contiguous to each other,
were at first called only Burton, or Burghton, but a chapel (a
pendicle of the church of Greenlaw) being afterwards built at one of
them, it was thence called Holy or Hally Burton. Nisbet (System of
Heraldry, vol. i. p. 102) thinks that it was from a holy man named
Burton that it had its name.
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HALYBURTON, of
Dirleton, Lord,
a title (forfeited in 1600) in the peerage of Scotland, conferred in
1440, on Sir Walter Halyburton of Dirleton, a descendant of the first
person who assumed the name of Halyburton from his lands. This was
Walter, son of David, son of Tracte, who, under the designation of
Walterus de Halyburton, confirmed a donation of his father made in
1176, of his church of Halyburton to the abbacy of Kelso. Walter’s
great-grandson, Sir Henry Halyburton, swore allegiance to King Edward
the First, in 1296, for his lands in Berwickshire, and on 23d May
1308, he was one of the sureties for the liberation of Lamberton
bishop of St. Andrews, then a prisoner in Windsor castle. His son, Sir
Adam, had three sons: Sir Walter, Sir John, and Alexander. Sir Walter,
the eldest son, was taken prisoner at the battle of Durham in 1346. He
was first confined in the Tower of London, whence he was conveyed to
the castle of Windsor, and had ten merks sterling allowed him to bear
his charges on the journey, by King Edward the Third. He obtained his
liberty with King David the Second in 1357, and the following year had
a safe-conduct to go to England, to negociate affairs of state. In
1364 he was high sheriff of Berwickshire, and one of the Scottish
commissioners at Muirhouselaw, 1st September 1367. He died
about 1385.
The second
son, Sir John Halyburton, a valiant warrior against the English, was
killed at the battle of Nisbet, in 1355. He married the daughter and
coheiress of William de Vaux or Vallibus, lord of Dirleton, with whom
he got that estate, and in consequence quartered the arms of Vaux with
his own. His son, Sir John Halyburton of Dirleton, died in 1392. He
married Margaret, daughter of Sir John Cameron of Bellegarno,
coheiress with her sister, Jean, (the wife of Sir Nicol Erskine of
Kinnoul,) of their father, whose great estates in the counties of
Perth and Haddington were divided between them. He had, with a
daughter, two sons: Sir Walter; and George Halyburton of Gogar, of
which lands he had a charter from his brother, 8th June
1409.
The eldest
son, Sir Walter Halyburton of Dirleton, was one of the hostages for
King James the First, on his liberation in 1424, when his annual
revenue was estimated at eight hundred merks, and he obtained liberty
to return t Scotland in 1425. In 1430 he was appointed one of the
ambassadors extraordinary to the court of England, and one of the
wardens of the marches. In 1439 he was constituted high treasurer of
Scotland, and in the following year he was created a peer of
parliament. In 1444 he founded at Dirleton a collegiate church. He
died in 1449. By his wife, Lady Isabel Stewart, eldest daughter of the
regent Albany, and relict of the earl of Ross, he had, with a
daughter, four sons, namely, John, second Lord Halyburton of Dirleton,
Walter, Robert, and William.
Walter, the
second son, married Catherine, daughter and coheiress of Alexander de
Chisholm, with whom he got the barony of Pitcur, in the parish of
Kettins, Forfarshire, of which he had a charter in 1432. The
Halyburtons of Pitcur, of whom afterwards, acted a distinguished part
in support of the Reformation in Scotland, in the sixteenth century.
John, second
Lord Halyburton, married Janet, daughter of Sir William Seton of
Seton, by whom he had two sons; Patrick and George, who both bore the
title.
Patrick,
third lord, married Margaret, eldest daughter of Patrick, first Lord
Hales, but died without issue. George, fourth lord, had three sons:
Archibald, Patrick, and Andrew. The eldest son, Archibald, predeceased
his father, but having married Helen, daughter of Shaw of Sauchie, he
had a son, James, fifth lord, on whose decease, his uncle, Patrick,
became sixth Lord Halyburton of Dirleton. The latter died in 1506,
leaving three daughters, coheiresses; namely, Janet, married to
William, Lord Ruthven; Marion, to George, Lord Hone; and Margaret, to
George Ker of Fawdonside, Roxburghshire. The sixth lord had a natural
son, David Halyburton, in whose favour a legitimation passed the great
seal, 19th April 1543. The title descended to the eldest
daughter, Lady Ruthven, and remained in Patrick, her son. Her
grandson, William, Lord Ruthven and Dirleton, was in 1581 created earl
of Gowrie, and her great-grandson, John, third earl of Gowrie,
forfeited it in 1600, (see GOWRIE, Earl of), and thus the title of
Lord Halyburton of Dirleton reverted to the crown.
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The most
celebrated of the Halyburtons of Pitcur, was James Halyburton, provost
of Dundee at the era of the Reformation in Scotland, and uncle and
tutor (or guardian) of Sir George Halyburton of Pitcur. In 1558, he
was one of the commissioners sent by the Estates of Scotland to France
to negociate the marriage of the infant Queen Mary to the dauphin. He
early joined the lords of the Congregation, and in 1559, when the
queen regent began to persecute the preachers of the reformed
doctrines, she desired him to apprehend Paul Methven, one of the
leading reformers, but, instead of doing so, he sent the latter a
secret message to that effect, that he might escape in time. [Calderwood’s
Hist. Vol. i. p. 439.] He was among the barons who went to St.
Andrews on the 4th June of the same year, summoned there by
the earl of Argyle and Lord James Stewart, afterwards the regent
Moray, in consequence of the perfidious conduct of the queen regent
towards the reformers. He had the command of the troops of the
Congregation stationed on the high ground called Cupar moor, to oppose
the army which the queen regent had marched from Falkland on the 13th
of the same month, and he had so skilfully posted their ordnance as
completely to command the surrounding country. To avoid bloodshed,
however, a negociation was entered into, which led to a temporary
truce. At the burning of Scone, soon after, he and his brother,
Captain Alexander Halyburton, hastened with Knox and other leaders of
the reformation to prevent acts of violence by the mob, but without
effect, as the palace and abbey were entirely destroyed. Captain
Alexander Halyburton was killed in a skirmish with the French soldiers
at Leith in the following November. In 1560 the provost of Dundee was
one of the leading reformers who met at Cupar for the purpose of
electing commissioners to meet the duke of Norfolk at Berwick, to
arrange the conditions on which Queen Elizabeth was to send an English
army to their assistance. The instructions given them, signed, among
others, by James Halyburton, are inserted in full in Calderwood’s
History. In 1564 he was one of the commissioners appointed by the
General Assembly to present certain articles against popery to the
lords of secret council. In 1565, after “the Round-about Raid,” with
the earls of Murray, Glencairn, and other leaders of the Reformed
party, he took refuge in England, the queen and Lord Darnley being
then too powerful for them. He afterwards fought at Langside on the
side of the regent Moray. In 1570 he assisted the regent Lennox in
dispersing the troops of the earl of Huntly at Brechin, when he
appeared in arms on behalf of Queen Mary. In the subsequent skirmishes
with “the queen’s men,” between Edinburgh and Leith, he was also
actively engaged. He was with the earl of Morton, the leader of the
king’s army, when he attacked the lords of the queen’s faction near
Restalrig, on 16th June 1571. At this time he held the rank
of colonel, and at a skirmish which took place on the evening of the
last da of August of that year, he was taken prisoner by a party fro
Leith, who had driven back to the Netherbow gate of Edinburgh a strong
force of the opposite faction that had gone out to give them battle,
but appears soon to have regained his liberty. In 1578 he was one of
the commissioners who were directed by the king to hold a conference
at Stirling castle, on 22d December, to settle the policy of the
church, and in 1582, he and Captain William Stewart, brother of the
notorious favourite, Colonel James Stewart, temporary earl of Arran,
were commissioners from the king to the General Assembly which met on
9th October of that year. He was also one of the king’s
commissioners in the Assembly which met 24th April 1583. He
seems for a time to have lost the king’s favour, probably in
consequence of having joined in the Raid of Ruthven, as, according to
Calderwood, he was deprived of the provostship of Dundee, after he had
held it for thirty-three consecutive years, when it was conferred on
the earl of Crawford. In the Assembly of February 1588, he was again
one of the king’s commissioners, and in this and the next Assembly, in
August following, he was nominated one of the assessors to the
moderator. He died the same year, aged 70, and was interred in the
South church, Dundee, receiving a public funeral, at the expense of
the corporation. His monument remained under the floor of the
lateran (the clerk’s or precentor’s desk) on the north side of the
pulpit, till the churches of Dundee were destroyed by fire in 1841.
Pitcur was
inherited by Agatha Halyburton, wife of the fourteenth earl of Morton,
whose second son, the Hon. Hamilton Douglas, became possessed of it,
and according to the entail, assumed the name of Halyburton. On his
death in 1784, it went to his aunt, Mary, countess of Aboyne, whose
second son, Colonel the Hon. Douglas Gordon, afterwards Lord Douglas
Gordon Halyburton, succeeded to it, and on his death in 1841, his
nephew, Lord Frederick Gordon, became the proprietor, also taking the
name of Halyburton, being the lineal male heir and representative of
that ancient family.
HALYBURTON, THOMAS,
an eminent divine and theological writer, was born in December 1674,
at Dupplin, near Perth. His father had been for many years minister of
the parish of Aberdalgy, but was ejected at the Restoration, and died
in 1682. He afterwards went with his mother to Holland, from whence he
returned to Scotland in 1687, and, after attending the usual classes
at the university, he entered himself a student of divinity. He was
licensed in 1699, and in 1700 was ordained minister of the parish of
Ceres in Fifeshire. In 1710, upon the recommendation of the Synod of
Fife, he was appointed professor of divinity in St. Leonard’s college,
St. Andrews, by patent from Queen Anne. In his inaugural discourse he
chose for his subject, a work of the celebrated Dr. Pitcairn of
Edinburgh, which contained an attack on revealed religion, under the
title of ‘Epistola Archimedis ad Regem Gelonem albae Graecae reperta,
anno aerae Christianae, 1688, A. Pitcairno, M.D. ut vulgo creditur,
auctore.” Professor Halyburton died in September 1712, in his 38th
year. He distinguished himself by his writings against the Deists, but
his writings were all posthumous. They are:
Natural
Religion Insufficient; and Revealed, necessary to Man’s Happiness.
Edin. 1714, 4to. This able and elaborate performance was written on
confutation of the Deism of Lord Herbert and Mr. Blount.
Memoirs of
his Life, continued by James Watson. Edin. 1715, 8vo. With a
Recommendatory Epistle by Isaac Watts. London, 1718, 8vo.
The Great
Concern of Salvation. In three parts. With a Recommendatory Preface by
I. Watts. Edin. 1722, 8vo.
Ten Sermons,
preached before and after the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, Edin.
1722, 8vo.
A complete
edition of his Works, in one volume 8vo, appeared in 1836 in Glasgow.
