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.
