HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE NOTES. 75
Pinkie, was the same who got built for himself the even more stately and
beautiful Castle of Fyvie.”
A good many years ago, the Society of Scottish Antiquaries memorialised
the Earl ‘of Wemyss, the proprietor of Seton Church, to restore the venerable
fane; and although the proposal has not been carried into effect, every effort ,
has been made to preserve the building from decay. In Lord Winton’s
answer to his impeachment in the year 1716 (State TrtizZs, xv. 805)~af ter
referring to the insults which he had experienced from those acting in the
name of the Government, he states that the most sacred places did not
escape their fury and resentment ; they broke into his chapel, defaced the
monuments of his ancestors, took up the stones of their sepulchres, thrust
irons through their bodies, and treated them in a most barbarous, inhuman,
and unchristian-like manner.’ Notwithstanding this outrageous sacrilege, a
number of interesting slabs and other monuments stiil exist in tolerably good
BELL OF SETON CHURCH.
condition. The curious bell, forged in Holland, which originally belonged to
the church, was long used in the parish kirk of Tranent, from which it was
removed, a few years ago, to Gosford House. It bears the following Dutch
inscription, of which only a portion appears in the annexed engraving, from a
careful drawing executed in 1851 :-Iacop eis mynen naem ghegoten van
Adriaen Steylaert int iaer MCCCCCLXXVII.’
Not the least interesting portion of the old walls and abutments ’ already
referred to, is the Roundle at the south-west corner of the old garden wall of
1 Billings’ Anfiguities ofScofZuRd, vol. iv.-Seton Church and Pinkie House. ‘The House
of Seton or Winton, on account of its great connections and ramifications, besides the antiquity
of its descent, would Seem now to be the noblest in Scotland. They were a fine specimen in many
respects of a high baronial family, from the magnificence and state they maintained at their
+p‘a lace of Seton “-expressly so called in royal grants under the Sign-manual, and identifted with
the memory of Queen Mary,-their consistency, loyalty, and superior advancement to their
countrymen in the arts and civilised habits of society.’-Riddell‘s Peemgc h,i. 4 9.
EDINBURGH PAST AND PRESENT.
Seton, in which James the Sixth was ' graciously pleased to rest himselfe,' the
day on which he journeyed from Holyrood to London, to take possession of
the English Crown.' With the following allusion to that touching incident
Tytler concludes his Hidory of ScotZand:--' As the monarch passed the
House of Seton, near Musselburgh, he was met by the funeral of the Earl of
Winton, a nobleman of high rank; which, with its. solemn movement and
sable trappings, occupied the road, and contrasted strangely and gloomily
with the brilliant pageantry of the royal cavalcade. The Setons were one
of the oldest and proudest families of Scotland; and (the father of) that
Lord whose mortal remains now passed by, had been a faithful adherent of
the King's mother: whose banner he had never deserted, and in whose
cause he had suffered exile and proscription, The meeting was thought
ominous by the people. It appeared, to their excited imagination, as if the
moment had amved when the aristocracy of Scotland was about to merge in
that of Great Britain j as if the Scottish nobles had finished their career of
national glory, and this last representative of their race had been arrested on
THE ROUNDLE.
his road to the grave, to bid farewell to the last of Scotland's kings. As the
mourners moved slowly onward, the monarch himself, participating in these
melancholy feelings, sat down by the wayside, on a stone still pointed out to
the historical pilgrim ; nor did he resume his progress till the gloomy procession
had completely disappeared.'
While Seton Church and Winton House are both about three miles beyond
the eastern border of Midlothian, Niddry Castle, in Linlithgowshireanother
possession of the Seton famiIy-is within a still shorter distance of its
western boundary. Prettily situated on a tributary of the Almond Water, a
The cut of the Roundle in
the text is from a sketch made in 1824. Both the Roundle and the adjoining road were slightly
altered when the North British Railway was constructed in 1845.
1 Si Richard Maitland's Hisfmy of firc Uosrsc of Sqtoun, p. 60.
