APPENDIX. 435
of Auchinleck ; but a passage in Father Hay’s MS. History of the Holpodhonse F d y , seem to confirm the
tradition beyond the possibility of doubt. Recording the children of Bishop Bothwell, who died 1593, he tells
us-‘ He had also a daughter named Anna, who fell with child to a sone of the Earle of Mar.’ Colonel
Alexander’s portrait, which belonged to his mother is exceedingly handsome, with much vivacity of corntenance,
dark blue eyes, a peaked beard, and moustaches :-
‘ Ay me ! I fell-and yet no queetion make
What I should do again for auch a sake.”’
Father Hay has thus recorded the seduction of Anna Bothwell, in hia Diplomatuna CoZZectiO (MS. Advoc.
Lib. vide Liber Cart. Sancte h c i s , p. xxxviii.) :-‘‘ Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, became Abbot of Holyrudehouse
after Robert Steward, base son to King Jam= the Fift by Euphem Elphinstone ; who was created
Earle of Orkney and Lord Shetland by King Jamea the Sixth, 1581. This Adam was a younger brother to Sir
Richard Bothwell, Provost of Edinburgh in Queen Maries time, and a second sone to Sir Francis Bothwell, lord
of the Session in King James the Fifta time, and was begotten upon Anna Livingstone, daughter to the Lord
Livingstone. He married Margaret Murray, and begote upon her John, Francis, WiUiam, and George Bothwells,
and a daughter Anna, who by her nurse’s deceit, fell with child to a sone of the Earle of Mar.”
Both the face and figure of Colonel Sir Alexander Erskine are very peculiar, as represented in his portrait.
He is dressed in armour, with a rich scarf across his right shoulder, and a broad vandyke collar round his
neck The head is unusually small for the body; and the features of the face, though handsome, are sharp, and
the face tapering nearly to a point at the chin. The effect of this is considerably heightened by ths length of
his moustaches, and hb peaked beard, or rather imperial, as the tuft below the under lip, which leaves the
contour of the chin exposed, is generally termed. The whole combines to convey a singularly sly and catclike
expression, which-unless we were deceived when examining it by our knowledge of the leading incidents of
his history-seem very characteristic of the “ dear deceiver.”
The orignal portrait, by Jamieson, beam the date and age of Colonel Erskine-1628, aged 29. Two stanzas
of the ballad, somewhat varied, occur in Brome’s Play of the Northern Lass, printed in 1632-not 1606 as
‘erroneously stated before. From this we may infer, not only that the ballad must have been written very
shortly after the event that gave rise to itpossibly by Anna Bothwell herself-but also that the seducer must
himself have been very young, so that the nurse is probably not unfairly blamed by Father Hay as an active
agent in poor Anna’s mongs.
I.
VIII. ARMORIAL BEARINGS.
BLYTH’BC LosE.-The armorial bearings in Blyth’s Close, with the +initialsA . A., and the date 1557 (page
148), may possibly mark the house of Alexander Achison, burgess of Edinburgh, the ancestor of the Viscounts *
Gosford of Ireland, and of Sir Archibald Achiaon, the host of Dean Swift at Market Hill, who, with hb particularly
lean lady, became the frequent butt of the witty Dean’s humour, both in prose and verse. The old burgeea
acquired the estate of Glosford in East Lothian by a charter of Queen Mary, dated 1561. Nisbet says, “The
name of Aitchison carries, argent, an eagle with two heads displayed, sable j on a chief, vert, two mullek,
or.”
QOSFORD’S CLose.-Since the printing of the text (page MO), we have discovered the ancient lintel
formerly in Qosford’s Close bearing a representation of the Crucihion, and have succeeded in getting it removed
to the Antiquarian Museum. It has three-shields on it, boldly cut, and in good preservation. On the centre
