Hope Park.1 LORD- DOUGLAS. 351
?My dear little ones, Archy and Sholto, are, I
bless God, in very good health. I beg your
prayers for them and me, which I set a high value
on, Mrs. Hewitt (her faithful attendant) sends you
her best compliments and good wishes. My
address is at Hope Park, near Edinburgh, to the
care of Mr. Walter Colville, at his house at the
foot of Niddry?s Wynd.?
She returned to London in the summer of 1753,
leaving the children in the care of their faithful
nurse ; but, notwithstanding all the care of the latter,
Sholto Thomas Stewart, the younger of the twins,
who had always been feeble and sickly, died at
Hope Park, ? near the Meadow.? This child was
said to be the image of his mother. She hurried
to Edinburgh, worn out by ?hardship, fatigue, starvation,
and, as Dr. Pringle of the Guards alleged,
dying of a broken heart. She expired on the zznd
of November, 1753.
Four hours before her death she desired Archibald,
the future Lord Douglas, to be brought before her,
and laying her hands on the weeping boy?s head,
she said-
?God bless you, my child ! God make you a
good and honest man, for riches I despise.? Then,
as the old Douglas spirit glowed within her, she
added: ?Take a sword in your hand, and you may
one day be as great a hero as some of your
ancestors.?
Archibald, though barbarously expelled from the
carriages at his mother?s funeral, found friends, who
educated and supported hiin as befitted his rank ;
and his father having succeeded to the baronetcy
and estates of Grantully, though he married a
daughter of Lord Elibank, executed a bond of provision
in his favour for upwards of Az,500, and
therein acknowledged him as his son by Lady
Jane Douglas. Still the duke, more rancorous
than ever, repudiated him as his nephew, and in
the hopeof having heirs of his own body, in 1758
he married Miss Douglas of Mains, who, to his
increased indignation, became so warm an adherent
of the alleged foundling, that His Grace separated
from her for a considerable time.
In 1761 a fatal illness fell upon tbe duke, and as
death came nigh, he repented of all his conduct to
his dead sister, and as reparation he executed a
deed of entail of his entire estates in favour of the
heirs of his father, James, Marquis of Douglas,
with remainder to Lord Douglas Hamilton, brother
of the Duke of Hamilton, ?and supplemented it
by another deed, which set firth that, as in the
event of his death without heirs of his body, Archibald
Douglas, ahas Stewart, a minor, and son of the
deceased Lady Jane Douglas, his sister, would
succeed him, he appointed the Duchess of Douglas,
the Duke of Queensbeny, and certain others whom
he named: the lad?s tutors and guardians.?
Thus the penniless waif of Hope Park End became
the heir of a peerage and a long yent-roll;
but the house of Hamilton repudiated his claims,
while his guardians resolved to enforce them. It
was suggested by the former that the whole story
of the birth of twins was a fabrication, and all Paris
was ransacked in support of this allegation, and
that the two children had been stolen from their
French parents. The Etz?kburgir Advertiser for
June, 1764, records the death of Sir John Stewart
of Grantully, at Murthly. Prior to! this, he affirmed
on oath before competent witnesses, ?as one slip
ping into eternity, that the defendant (Archibald
Stewart) and his deceased twin-brother were both
born of the body of Lady Jane Douglas, his lawful
spouse, in the year 1748.? In 1767 the case came
before the whole fifteen judges; seven voted for
the claimant, and seven ?against him. The Lord
President, who had no vote save in such a dilemma,
voted for the Hamilton or illegitimacy side, and
thus deprived Archibald Douglas-Stewart of fortune
and rank; but this decision was reversed in 1769
by the House of Lords, and the son of Lady Jane
succeeded to the princely estate of his uncle, the
Duke of Douglas, whose name he assumed, and was
created a peer of the United Kingdom as Baron
Douglas of Douglas Castle, in Lanarkshire, in:^ 790.
He died in 1827. ?
Another waif of the nobility was resident at
Hope Park End in the early years of this century
-at least, before 1811. This was Hugh, thirteenth
Lord Semple, who had lost his estates and come
signally down in the world in many ways. He was
born in 1758, and succeeded his father in 1782.
He was a lieutenant of the Scots? Guards in 1778,
and a captain in 1781, and was said to have been
obliged to leave the regiment through having incurred
the displeasure of George 111. by his political
opinions. He died in very indifferent circumstances
in 1830, in his seventy-second year.
In ?? The Hermit in Edinburgh,? 1S24, a writer,
who sketched with fidelity the real characters of his
own time, tells us of a recluse, or mysterious old
gentleman, who dwelt at Hope Park End, and was
known as ?? the Chevalier.? He was pensive and
sweet in manner, and wore a garb of other years,
with a foreign military order; his locks were white,
but his face was Scottish ; he had the bearing of a
soldier, and, like the Baron of Bradwardine, used
French phrases. He had lost nearly his all in the
French Funds at the Revolution in 1789.
His lodgings cansisted of one room in a flat;
