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.
