J. W. Buchan and Rev. H. Paton. Published 1925-7.
(I) THE BARONY OF STOBO
The manor of Stobo is said to have become the property of the Church in the lifetime of St. Mungo (St. Kentigern), who died in AD 603. The statement rests on the authority of the Inquisition held sometime between AD 1115 and 1124 by David, Prince of Cumbria, afterwards King and 'Sair Sanct,' for the purpose of ascertaining 'from perishable writings and the investigations of public officials' what lands belonged from of old to the Church of Glasgow. Stobo appears fourteenth on the list.
According to this, the earliest document in which Stobo is mentioned, after St. Mungo and several of his successors had been 'translated to God for their, steadfastness in holy religion,' insurrections arose everywhere, undoing the work of the saint, fidelis dispensator that he was, 'destroying the church and its possessions, wasting the whole country-side and supplanting the comparatively civilised inhabitants with tribes of savages.' Prince David with the Elders and Sages of Cumbria divined that these were the machinations of that fraudulentus exterminator, the Devil. From the clutches of the Evil One the whole diocese was formally delivered by the Inquisition, whose diligence does certainly mark the beginning of clearer days. By the end of the first quarter of the twelfth century the Church of Glasgow entered on a real tenure of lands, including Stobo, which had already pertained to it nominally for over five hundred years.
The diploma granted by Prince David's Inquisition was ratified and sanctioned by a whole quartet of Popes, Alexander III. (1170), Lucius III. (1181), Urban III. (1186) and Honorius III. (1216), all of them 'placed by divine ordinance on the lofty watch-tower of the Apostolic See,' and clearly able therefore from the pellucid air of Italy to discern the rights of ownership in distant Scotland and obscure Tweeddale. But the fraudulentus exterminator, Satan aforesaid, so darkened the minds of the natives that they could neither discern how their ownership had been superseded by Bulls and bits of vellum nor realise what a tremendous weight of authority was against them when trying to vindicate what they imagined to be their own. Three of their controversies, all recorded in the Registrum Episcopauis Glasguensis, may be related here.
(1) The Laird of Kirkurd, 'William, son of Geoffrey of Orde,' came over the hill, took possession of Stobo Hope, and might have held it to all time against a layman. But against a Bishop! In those days a Bishop could consign an offender to perdition. And the land was as sterile as any in Scotland. It might be only a risk; but was it worth while risking so much for so little? Besides, if he had transgressed, he had done so by warrant of his overlord - no less a person than Prince Robert, a son of the King. And now the King's son, conscience stricken, was urging him to withdraw 'for the deliverance of his soul and mine, lest for such a point we be lost, which God forbid.' The Laird of Kirkurd saw the land that it was poor and the danger that it was considerable. Wherefore 'unwilling that for such land our souls should be doomed to everlasting punishment, he restored the aforesaid land, namely, 'Stobhope,' as bounded by the hill top, to God and St. Kentigern and the Church of Glasgow' - but not without a consideration. Although the lie of the land, on the slope away from 'Orde' toward Stobo, is entirely against him, he must have had a colourable claim on it; for instead of being cleared out at once and fined for his usurpation, he was 'granted common pasturage in said land during his lifetime free of any manual service.' This was a common form of 'sweet reasonableness' on the part of the Church. Its mortmain is so long, the life of a tenant or two so brief, and an individual's interest so usually his chief interest that it was quite worth while for the Church to secure a smooth succession by mulcting itself in a frugal solatium until the assenting but resentful party 'ceased from troubling.'
In the charter Divise de Stobo - giving, probably as a sequel to this case, 'the right marches between Stobbo, Hopprewe and Orde,' amusing sidelights are thrown on the then life and character of the clergy. A couple of hermits in the neighbourhood let themselves loose from their hermitages for one glorious day perambulating the marches of Stobo; and by that day's outing they live in history: Cristin, Hermit of Kingledores, and Cospatric, Hermit of Kilbucho. A half-caste phase of clerical life is disclosed in the entry 'Matthew, James and John, sons of Cosmungo, priest at Eddleston.' The composure of the registry, as with no apology needed, indicates that priests in the early Scottish Church were allowed some slight relaxation of the strict rule of celibacy.
(2) In 1223 Jordan of Currokes produced title deeds purporting that he, and not the Bishop of Glasgow, was the lawful laird of Stobo. So serious did the case appear that it was submitted to His Holiness at Rome and by him remitted to three holy men, i.e. Churchmen - a couple of archdeacons and a bishop - without any layman assessor complicating their singleness of aim, to have the matter if possible settled out of Court. The dispute was settled by payment to Jordan of £100, a considerable sum in those days, showing that the claim was by no means groundless. Jordan surrendered his title deeds, and for himself and his heirs abjured the lands for ever. And to make matters quite certain it was provided that if any papers not restored should afterwards be discovered, they were to be considered invalid.
(3) Yet within ten years (1233) up started a certain Widow Marion, daughter of Samuel, who ignoring Jordan's renunciation, brought the venerable father, William, Lord Bishop of Glasgow, into plea before Sir Gilbert Fraser, Sheriff of Traquair, demanding from him the land of Stobo as hers by right. Was not this the fraudulentus exterminator back to his old tricks, covertly inciting Widow Marion to harry the Bishop? Religious influence, not legal reasoning, is the weapon against demonology. Marion, daughter of Samuel, was brought to see the errors of her ways. She repented of her sin, resiled from her plea, relinquished whatever heritable rights she might have had in Stobo, and instead of being punished for barratry, as she would have been if devoid of at least a prima facie case, she was granted an annuity of ten merks, first to herself as long as she lived, and next to her son, heir, or assignees during the whole of his or her lifetime. The annuity was made a burden not on Stobo but on 'the ferm of our Manor; Eddleston'- a wily undoing of one strand of attachment to the old place But if there were any more law plea provocation by any claimant whomsoever, Widow Marion and her son, heir, or assignee were bound to conduct the defence for the Bishop at their own charges and to preserve the Bishop and Chapter of Glasgow 'wholly skaithless.' Wherefore she saw to it that a claim by her nephew Eugenius, the son of Anabelle, went no further.
Step by step the Church, with patient, conciliatory relentlessness, 'ever straining after peace and quiet' - pacem et quietem affectantes, as the Bishop has it in the records - meekly forgoing years of income for centuries of possession, ousted the rustic owners from a heritage handed down to them by ancestors who probably had acquired it by knocking former proprietors on the head. The natives, like South Sea Islanders brought under the sway of an unknown monarch by an adventurer planting a flag on their shores, were sadly nonplussed by all these papal investitures, and courtly grants, and intricate conveyancings away from them. But there was nothing for it except growth in resignation to the will of God. By the middle of the thirteenth century the whole 'Manor of Stobo with its pertinents' had passed 'to God, and the Blessed Kentigern, and the Church of Glasgow, and to the Venerable Father William, Lord Bishop of Glasgow, and his successors for ever.' For ever! Eheu! Into how short periods is the fondness of every mortal 'forever' abridged!
Here My Lord built himself a palace or, as it is called in the Diocesan Register, a chemysse - defined in Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary as 'the manor house of a landed proprietor or the palace of a prince,' The traditional site is on the Harrow burn, the first knoll on the right some half-mile up from the market road. Among visitors entertained here the records mention that Bishop of St. Andrews who was one of the guardians of the realm in succession to Sir William Wallace. He came up from Peebles on the 20th August, 1299, after a meeting there at which among other courtesies two knights gave one another the lie and drew their knives; one knight took an earl by the throat, and a bishop was assaulted by an earl. From such a scene it was good to retire to this secluded little glen and partake of the hospitality which doubtless here regaled many a lordly and many a lowly guest.
The revenue stated in modern currency sounds absurdly small. The total rent paid to Edward 1. for the two years, 1302-1304, of his confiscation of the parish was £12 6s. 8d., viz. '£10 from the farm of the vills of Stubho and Draych (Dreva) which were the rebel Bishop of Glasgow's, and £2 6s. 8d. from the farm of said Bishop's mill of Stobo.' Paltry in terms of money although such rents seem, really they were of great value. So valuable in course of time did they become that besides upkeep of the church and maintenance of the priest in charge, besides dues for the Bishop, and other dues for other officials at home and abroad, the Rector's tithes were such that he could afford to maintain in the Drygait of Glasgow a manse more luxurious in all its appointments than the mansion of many a merchant prince.
Clerical luxury alone might not have annulled the splendid chance which the Church, with its double ban against the marriage of the clergy and their acquisition of personal wealth, had of proving a model landlord, But clerical luxury bred and advertised clerical immorality. In Stobo Manse in the Drygait of Glasgow, along, with its Roman Catholic priest, Mr. Adam Colquhoun (1513), resided Jane Boyd and the two sons borne by her to him, James and Adam, who after a case in the law-courts inherited the whole of the parson's wealth. The Church was aware of the danger of that kind of thing, and, making a frank effort to obviate the danger, did in 1549 - note the date: eleven years before the Reformation - pass this statute: 'Item: That neither prelates nor their subordinate clergy keep their offspring born of concubinage in their company, nor suffer them directly or indirectly to be promoted in their churches, nor under colour of any pretext to marry their daughters to Barons, or to make their sons barons out of the patrimony of the Church.'
Dowry enough to make their daughters eligible for barons, wealth enough to raise their sons to the baronage, had to be pillaged not merely in a single lifetime but in the few years near the end when elderly men in numerous succession were promoted to the dignities which allowed unchecked rapacity. Maladministration of its estates by the Church did perhaps as much as anything to precipitate the Reformation.
At the Reformation much of the property wrested from the Church simply disappeared. John Knox says, 'twa pairtis were freely given to the devill and the third mon be devyded betwixt God and the devill.' Stobo, surely too good for the one but apparently not quite good enough for the other, came along with other Church domains in the neighbourhood into the hands of the nobleman who began to build Drochil Castle and was not able to finish it, the Regent Earl of Morton. His was a short-lived possession. Four years later (1581) he was condemned as 'airt and part in the murder of Darnley,' and beheaded in the Grassmarket, Edinburgh, on the Maiden - which he himself had introduced into Scotland as an engine likely to prove serviceable among the nobility and gentry, and which to this day is shown in the Edinburgh Museum of Antiquities.
Morton's estates being forfeit to the Crown seem to have been intended by the Crown for the Church again. After a tentative allocation to the Archbishop of Glasgow, James VI. assigned Stobo in 1587 first to his Chancellor, Sir John Maitland of Thirlstane, for the moderate rent of 40 bolls of barley at 40s. a boll and 172 head of poultry at 6d. rent a head; next in 1603 to his kinsman Ludovick, Duke of Lennox, on like reasonable terms, and then, accomplishing his pious intention of nearly thirty years before, made it over in 1608 as a free gift to the reformed Archbishop of Glasgow 'for services rendered in public and private affairs.'
But the Church in its Episcopal form was just then having such a bad time with her disowned and disowning sister Presbytery that the cautious Archbishop, lest worse should befall, granted a charter in 1613 of the lands and barony of Stobo, including the superiority of the lands of Dreva, to that trusty layman James Tweedie of Dreva and to his son John. To this charter Sir James Douglas of Spot gave his consent.
[He was also proprietor of Winkston in the parish of Peebles , and gave it to his brother, Mr. John Tweedie, in 1617 (R.M.S. No. 1705). About the same time he and his son John (who had married Margaret Douglas) gave 13 bovates of the lands of Stobo, of three of which John was himself in possession, to James Tweedie of Drumelzier. John Tweedie also wadset 2 oxgates in the Harrow to his brother Walter for £100.]
TWEEDIE OF STOBO
The Tweedies had been among the notables of the Scottish Border from time immemorial, and nearly their whole record had been that of a turbulent law-defying race. But on this wild buckthorn stock there had somehow been grafted a finer strain. The family sprang into good repute. To Adam Tweedie of Dreva, Sir Thomas Nelson, curate of Stobo, at the Reformation delivered for safe keeping the Church vessels. This transaction took place on 14th July, 1560, in the choir of the church before the high altar, and among the witnesses were Mr. John Colquhoun, the rector of Stobo, John Black burn, John Noble in Happrew, and James Tweedie in Hillhouse. Among the articles was a silver chalice gilt, 16 oz. in weight, and 24 merks in value, which Adam Tweedie pledged himself and his heirs to restore for the service of the altar of St. Mary in Stobo, should service in the old manner be resumed, and failing that, to pay towards the fabric of the church 24 merks when required by the parishioners. Of these vessels nothing further is known.
Later, the parishioners, or at least a majority of them, 'sive majoris partis eorundem' - some evidently 'had their doots' elected one Tweedie after another as Parish Clerk on the ground of distinguished clerical character and general fitness for the office. 'clericali charactere insignitum et alias ydoneum.' This was the strain in the nature of the Tweedies which dictated the family motto: Thole and Think.
MURRAY OF STOBO AND STANHOPE.
[Though they thus ceased to be Lairds of the barony the Tweedies were still to be found in Stobo. On a precept of clare constat by John Murray of Halmyre, dated at Edinburgh, 5th December, 1623, John Tweedie, son of Mr. John Tweedie of Winkston (who was immediate younger brother of the late Adam Tweedie, apothecary), was infeft as his uncle's heir in 5 bovates of the Easter Knowe of Stobo, and in other bovates in Stobo, one of which was named Bourrisland, and of which the tenant was James Bour (Part. Reg. Sas.).]
Six years later (27th August, 1619) the Tweedies alienated the whole barony of Stobo by sale to John Murray of Halmyre. Almost at once enacting vicarious penance for their profligacy they began to torment the new laird. They not only threatened that if he did not 'buy their kindness they would haif his life or els lay his landis waist,' but they did actually attack him in his 'awne house.' 'They drew thair swordis and gaif him ane grite strake upon his left leg by the quilk he fell to the ground and being lyand they gaif him a number of deidle straiks and left him as a deid man.' But not dead. Murray recovered, set off to Edinburgh, lodged a complaint before the Privy Council, obtained sentence of imprisonment against the tholing and thoughtful Tweedies, and thus became laird of Stobo. How his estate became merged in that of Murray of Stanhope is told in the chapters on Newlands and Drumelzier.
The lands of Stobo were again erected into a free barony by charter to Sir David Murray of Stanhope dated 23rd February, 1698. The family resided at the principal farm - Hill House - where now the Castle stands. One of them, Sir Alexander Murray, a gentleman whose bad temper was credited to a bee in his bonnet, published in 1740 a treatise in folio. The style of it exposed him fairly to the quip that it was of the same origin as his temper. But his first proposition :
'That Ireland and all the colonies should be, on the same basis as Scotland had been, united with England,' was of statesmanlike concern. And the second: 'That the whole country should be provided with a system of greater and lesser canals,' although cancelled by the unforeseen arrival of steam traction, would have been - bar this - a solution of the growing difficulty of transport. It was but a thin partition that divided his eccentricity from genius. The estate, vastly improved in fences, drains, forestry, and buildings, was transmitted in 1743 to his nephew, Sir David, the fourth baronet, who forthwith set about losing it all. Right honourably. Although at the time but a youth of twenty, he went out in the '45, taking with him, it is said to subsidise Prince Charlie's impecunious war-chest, the post-Reformation silver communion plate, of which nothing later is known. He fought at Culloden. He escaped from the carnage on the Moor and from the merciless first phase of the pursuit. His safety was cared for by that much-maligned relative of his, Mr. Secretary Murray, who with a chivalry worthy of that chivalrous time gave his own most trusted servant, John M'Naughton, to be if possible the youth's pathfinder to safety. Guided by M'Naughton, who knew the language and all the ways of the Highlands, Sir David lurked through Lochaber, Appin, and Lorne, but was captured at length, carried prisoner to York, tried, and condemned to death. He was not, however, one of the eighty executed. He was so young, and Lord Hopetoun's advocacy so prevailing, that his sentence was commuted to banishment for life. He found refuge in France; and when the number of his years reached the name of his luckless adventure, forty-five, he died (1770).
After Sir David's expulsion from the realm, his heir presumptive, Uncle Charles, a custom-house officer, presuming, apparently, that perpetual exile was as good as a death, issued 'A Map of the Barony of Stobbo now belonging to Charles Murray, Esq.' In this he reckoned without the King in Council and 'the Senators of the College of Justice' The estates were confiscated. Twenty-one years after Culloden - so long it took to settle matters after even so puny a war as the final Stuart rising - the forfeited properties were put up for sale by order of the Court of Session, and Stanhope, Menzion, and Stobo were purchased by the then Lord Advocate, James Montgomery, for the adequate price of £40,500.
James Montgomery was 'the most remarkable man in Peeblesshire during the eighteenth century.' He was the younger son of William Montgomery, advocate, the laird of Coldcoat then newly named Macbiehill.
James, born at Macbiehill in October, 1721, received all his early education at West Linton parish school. He studied law in Edinburgh, was called to the Scottish Bar at the age of twenty-two, and at twenty-seven was appointed the first Sheriff of Peeblesshire with a salary of £150 a year. After representing Dumfriesshire in Parliament for two years, he was for seven years member of Parliament for his native county - his sole contribution to the Statute Book being an amendment to the law of entail. The lever of promotion came to him in the friendship of Lord President Dundas, who had him appointed Solicitor General at the age of thirty nine. Six years later (1766) he became Lord Advocate.
Instinctively obeying Scott's favourite mot, that as soon as a Scots man gets his head above water he makes. for land, Montgomery purchased a cheap piece of around which was in process of being converted out of a dismal swamp cal1ed Blairbog into a comfortably appointed and humorously renamed estate The Whim. To complete the whimsical transformation was just the sort of work he loved. Soon after he bought the small property of Nether Falla.
At the age of forty-six he became, by the purchase of the Stobo estates, one of the most considerable landowners in his native county. Then by appointment as Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer (1775) he took precedence as one of the most dignified and best paid Government officials in the county.
The success of his career was due in the first instance of course to his being a great lawyer - 'soond and siccar.' This was profitably seconded by a genius as eminent and diligent for dealing with land as Sir Walter Scott's for romance. Perhaps Scotland never had a keener farmer. Even when Sheriff of the County he rented and lived at a farm in Newlands. He was the first to grow turnips in Tweeddale - 1754; the first in the county to utilise that agricultural triumph, the two-horse plough.
(Georgics, ii. 458.)
Montgomery had the Virgilian good fortune to know, and thereby to augment, his fortune. He married well, his wife being Margaret Scott, daughter and heiress of Robert Scott of Killearn. He had a rare gift of friendship. Among his intimate friends he numbered many of the best men of his day and even such a questionable character as 'Old Q,' the reprobate, cock-fighting Duke of Queensberry, who liked him, trusted him and appointed him his commissioner. He had also the indefinable art of luck. When he bought his first parcel of land 'with the house furnished just as it stood he found on taking possession as much wine in the cellar as was worth all he had paid for the estate.'
He was not without his foibles. He succumbed to the then fashionable vulgarity of keeping a negro man-servant - one of the 'handsome boys for the market: fancy articles entirely: sell for waiters and so on to rich uns' of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Hannibal they called the poor alien, who died here in 1770.
By a natural contrariness the Lord Chief Baron, noted for economical habits, had a penchant for display. 'I wish,' writes Lord Cockburn, 'the Canongate could be refreshed again by the habitual sight of the Lord Chief Baron's family, and company, and the gorgeous carriage, and the tall and well dressed figure in the old style of his Lordship himself.' His stately progress had something of a triumph at the county town end of the journey when he 'came thundering down the road from Venlaw to Peebles in his four-horse carriage.'
But the road down which one comes thundering means on the return journey crawling up. Three miles an hour was the best that even he could do on the old Peebles to Edinburgh turnpike. At Montgomery's instance the present well-graded road was built. So many other local improvements were effected by him, so ready was he with sound counsel and financial assistance for schemes of county development, so pleased to help Peeblesshire boys to a fair start and a lift up when deserving, so sure himself to pay the fine which he imposed on poachers, smugglers, and so forth rather than let their families suffer, that he was styled the Father of the County.
Not but that a sough of mistrust might ruffle the robe even of this 'most excellent and venerable old gentleman.' The disposition of Easter Happrew to him in 1801 by Old Q gave great offence to Old Q's successor, the Earl of Wemyss and March, who averred that the Duke had maliciously sold the farm out of 'the exuberance of his disregard for the interests of his heirs of entail.' Seeing that Chief Baron Montgomery had acted at the sale as the Duke's commissioner, and his son, James Montgomery counsel for the Duke, had been the actual purchaser, it did seem as if there had been room at least for collusion. An action was raised in the House of Lords. But the whole proceedings were found to have been in order; the price paid, £3,720 ample; and the transfer stood.
From the Exchequer he retired in his eightieth year with a baronetcy. He died on 2nd April, 1803, aged 82, and was buried in Stobo churchyard.
There are two great portraits of him by Raeburn; also a drawing by John Brown in Chambers' History of Peeblesshire. The severe pity of his countenance and the resemblance of the legal robes and bands of the day to the clerical, suggest less a shrewd man of the world than an old Puritan divine.
He was succeeded by his second son - the eldest having died in 1800 - James, who was laird of Stobo from 1803 to 1839. He inherited from his father an intimacy with Old Q and from Old Q himself a legacy, it is said, of £20,000, which was quoted against him when his purchase of Easter Happrew was challenged in the House of Lords. He at once set about building a new mansion on the site of the old Hill House. The architects were Messrs. J. & A. Elliot, Edinburgh. It took six years, 1805 to 1811, to build; but when built with its turrets and battlements all in right baronial style it deserved and received the name of Stobo Castle.
He was twice married - in 1804 to Elizabeth (daughter of Dunbar, fourth Earl of Selkirk), who died in 1814; and in 1816 to Helen daughter and heiress of Thomas Graham of Kinross. Like his father he was an elder of the Kirk, and for many years the Presbytery's Commissioner to the General Assembly. He represented Peeblesshire in parliament for thirty-one years (1800-31), yet, so far as known, never made a single speech. He was appointed Lord Advocate (1804), avowedly because there was 'no leading member of the Scottish Bar in Parliament,' and even so only for fifteen months. In later life, although a strict accountant of his wealth, he was shadowed by a fear of poverty overtaking him. By the purchase of Drumelzier he restored Stobo to its primeval dimensions from Menzion to Lyne Water, but only for a few days. Scared at parting with the purchase price, he sold it again for the same money, £25,000, although presently it proved to be worth almost double. Perhaps like the interval who transmitted kingly qualities from Edward I. to Edward III., the second Montgomery's chief titles to remembrance are that he was the son of his father and the father of his son. Sir James Montgomery died in 1839.
The distinction of his successor, Sir Graham Graham-Montgomery (eldest son by the second marriage), consisted not so much in any particular services rendered to his country as in his gracious bearing, his unfailing courtesy, and admirably ordered life. Born in Edinburgh, 9th July, 1823, he was educated at the Edinburgh Academy and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his degrees and became a member of the Church of England. His mother had died when he was five years old, his father when he was sixteen, so that whenever he came of age he was master not only of the wide Montgomery domains in Peeblesshire but also of the historic house and estate of Kinross, comprising Loch Leven and its Castle, which he inherited from his mother, and for whose sake his surname was enlarge to Graham-Montgomery. At the age of twenty he married Alice, youngest daughter of John James Hope-Johnstone of Annandale, by whom he had four sons and four daughters. One daughter became Lady Dundas of Arniston: another Countess Temple, and a third the Duchess of Buckingham and Chandos.
He was elected member of Parliament - Conservative - for Peeblesshire in 1852 and continued to represent the county for twenty-eight years. He was junior Lord of the Treasury from 1866-1868 and again in 1880, and there were hopes of his being raised to the peerage. But somehow or other he was overlooked by the Prime Minister, Mr. Disraeli, for whom Sir Graham seldom expressed any great admiration. The election of 1868, which he won by a narrow majority of three votes, was distinguished by 'a certain liveliness.' The windows of the Tontine Hotel, Peebles, Sir Graham's headquarters, were smashed, his 'faggot-voters' mobbed and his coachman - getting what Sir Graham would have got if he hadn't kept out of the way - had reason to grudge how slowly his fleet horses escaped from the town. At the next contest twelve years later he lost the seat, which had been held by Montgomerys in the Conservative interest for sixty-nine years, to Sir Charles Tennant of Glen, Liberal. Party feeling was tart. Sir Graham, of course, took his defeat like a sportsman, and continued on friendly terms with his opponent; but the Stobo Castle ladies let the Glen ladies know their distance.
Sir Graham was Lord Lieutenant of Kinross, Vice-Lieutenant of Peeblesshire, chairman of the County Council, and as unfailing in attendance at Parish Council and School Board as though he had had nothing else to do. When Sir Graham was in the chair business knew how to get itself transacted smoothly.
He managed his estates with a wise combination of economy and generosity. No man keener than he for good crops and top prices: no man better pleased to do such work as restoring Stobo Kirk (1863) at his own expense, founding the new school (1887) or building a fine new farm-house like Easter Happrew. He was on the curling pond as sure as the ice was bearing, and notwithstanding the loss of his left eye by a shooting accident in his youth he was a capital shot. To conversations with him I am indebted for many traditions of the parish.
There are two portraits of him by Mr. Lorimer - in Peebles and in Kinross - and another by Sir George Reid in the board-room of the British Linen Bank, of which he was a director. On the occasion of the Lorimer painting being presented to Peebles, Lord Napier and Ettrick said:
'The condition of a country gentleman in England or in Scotland at the present time is perhaps the happiest condition of human existence in the whole of society. This position Sir Graham Montgomery has occupied during a long life extending to the limits of our personal recollection; and he has occupied and exercised that position in every particular as a sacred trust. In presenting to you this portrait, I present to you the image of a gentleman, a landowner, a magistrate, and a Member of Parliament in whose pure and perfect record there is no reproach, no shadow of regret, no stain, no blame.'
'He never yet no vileyne ne sayde
In al his lyf unto no maner wight.
He was a verray parfit, gentil knyght.'
Sir Graham died in London, 2nd June, 1901, aged 77.
Next year, on the 7th November, 1902, his eldest son, Sir James Gordon Henry Graham-Montgomery, fourth baronet, formerly Lt.-Colonel, Coldstream Guards, fell from a night express train to London and was instantaneously killed.
Three years later the estate, overtaxed by two death duties in so quick succession, was sold by the fifth baronet, Sir Graham's second son, Basil Templer, to Mr. Hylton Philipson for £90,000.
PHILIPSON OP STOBO
Mr. Philipson, born in 1866, was educated at Eton and at New College, Oxford, where he graduated M.A. in 1889. He won the Amateur Championship of Rackets, and he was one of the best cricketers in England, playing for Eton, for Oxford, for Gentlemen versus Players, and for England versus Australia both in 1891-92 and 1894-95.
In the business world his interests were chiefly with coal and marine engineering. In 1896 he married the Hon. Nina, fourth daughter of the tenth Lord Elibank, by whom he has two sons and a daughter. In 1920 he bought the adjoining property of Brownsland and Wester Happrew from the Earl of Wemyss and March, and in 1921 Glenbreck for his son Mr. Hylton Ralph Philipson, from the trustees of the late Sir Walter Thorburn.
His gifts to the folk on the estate of a bowling green, tennis lawn and recreation hall with electric light are highly appreciated. Other improvements by him include the modernising of the interior of the castle, the extension of the terraces, and the construction on Stobo burn of two beautiful lakes teeming with Loch Leven trout. From the lower lake, where swans and various water fowl are at home, a water fall, twenty-two feet high, descends to a rock and water garden with numerous cascades recalling Captain Armstrong's description of Stobo demesne a hundred and fifty years ago 'inimitably picturesque.' Replete with rare years ago and lovely plants, shrubs and trees, it is to the eye a delight - see it for choice in early June - and to the attentive ear, approaching or receding or motionless to listen, a pervasive source of soothing, care-dispelling harmonies.
In 1924 Mr. Philipson conveyed Stobo estate to his son who, by the inclusion of the name of his mother's family, is now Mr. Hylton Ralph Murray-Philipson. He married (1923) Monica Beasley-Robinson, and has one daughter, Althea.
The present rental of the whole Stobo estate is £3317 13s. 6d.
DREVA
At Dreva - the name is said to mean building or homestead - stood a Prehistoric fort on a rocky eminence commanding the opening of five glens. In 1302-4 the property is referred to as 'Draych,' and belonging to the Bishopric of Glasgow: it has always formed a part of the barony, of Stobo. The Tweedies - a branch of the Tweedies of Drumelzier - were vassals there, from an early date.
Their tower has completely disappeared; but along with its brother stronghold of Tinnies, on the other side of the river, it so effectually dominated the pass of Tweed; that only by rare good fortune did the Gaberlunzie man (James V.) - according to a tale of the Borders - evade capture by, and payment of a mighty ransom to, the free-booting lairds of Drumelzier and Dreva.
Through blinks of good report and long tracts of ill the Tweedies lorded it at Dreva during the over-lordship of the Church. Their family history resembles Stevenson's 'Strange Case': moss-troopers, lawless, and heartless in one phase, yet in another good churchmen alike under the Roman and the Scottish Episcopal rule. In the one guise, they were mixed up in all sorts of criminal cases, from a renowned State trial like that for the slaying of Rizzio, down to 'waylaying a John Russell between the Harrow and the Kirk at night and attacking him with drawn swords whereby they cut off two fingers of his right hand and left him for dead.' In the other, they were at the Reformation entrusted by the Roman Catholic Church with the custody of the Sacramental vessels - a trust which, so far as known, they betrayed. By and by, in 1613, they were enriched by the (Reformed) Archbishop of Glasgow with the whole barony of Stobo, including the superiority of the lands of Dreva. Before seven years were out they had, for their debts, to sell the entire property, which ever since has been combined with the Stobo estate. Lacklands by their own default, all the more they cherished with pathetic persistence such a love for the old place that nearly a century later it was still their desire; to get back to the homestead of their family, were it only as tenant farmers.
[James Tweedie was in trouble in 1616, and the incident is interesting because of the reference to golf. Mr. James Easton complained to the Privy Council that while he was returning to Edinburgh from the links of Leith, 'quhair he had been recreating himself at the gowff,' Tweedie attacked him with a drawn sword, and although he defended himself with 'his cloob,' he received many blows and would have been killed had not people interfered, Tweedie did not appear, and was ordered to enter himself in ward within the Tolbooth, an order which he would doubtless disobey.
In 1622 James Paterson, in 'Myreburn,' was accused by John Tweedie of Winkston, a son of the laird of Dreva, of driving his cattle 'into the close of Dreva, and thair with swords and knyves cutting the tails and rumples of ten or twelfe of the poor beasts ... shamefully mangling them.' He denied the charge and was acquitted. (Reg. Priv. Con.)]
[The present representative of the Dreva Tweedies is Robert Waugh Tweedie of Coats]
Even for this modest ambition they had not sufficient capital. Boxing the compass of ecclesiastical trust, they applied for and obtained a loan of £40 from the Presbyterian Kirk Session of Stobo, which by a poor-despoiled freak of church accountancy was then acting as banker to the neighbourhood. With the repayment of this loan they disappear from our records.
During the later part of the seventeenth century and at the beginning of the eighteenth Dreva was occupied by a branch of the Russells of Kingseat, a small estate (now Slipperfield) in the parish of West Linton. Two lairds of Kingseat, both named William Russell - the second William was a 'holy terror' - were ministers of Stobo about the same time (1688-1733). Wealth and culture are indicated by the beautiful monument of the Dreva Russells built into the east outer wall of Stobo kirk (1692). After the Russells came Alexander Stevenson, who, about 1739, acquired the estate of Smithfield or Venlaw. 'Aye bien farmers in Dreva.'
The present rent is £341.
(3) ALTARSTONE (Part of the Barony of Stobo)
Altarstone owes its present name to a large stone near the farm-house on the north side of and close to the road. This stone, being flat on the top, was, it is averred, a Druidical altar. But the name is a recent invention. In 1620 there was an Alterhous which, however, was not the farm: the Itinerary by Dr. Pennecuik, 1715, enumerates 'Drevach and Drevach-Shiels and upon the hill above, the famous skailly-quarry' - not a hint of Altarstone farm on which the quarry stands. The farm of Drevach-Shiels on the marshy level was moved up hill; and the new farm was designated with a new name not AItarstone but, as shown in Mr. Charles Murray's Map of the Barony of Stobo about 1747, Arthur's Stane. Thus a connection was feigned with King Arthur, with Merlindale a little further up Tweed, and with other nominally Arthurian places in the vicinity. The local pronunciation was and is A'terstane. The great flat-topped boulder, a delinquent from the quarry, which is within a stone-throw of it, suggested an altar to amateur archaeologists in the same way as certain marks on its upper surface corroborated the superstition that a witch, being hunted in the shape of a hare out of Manor, leapt from the brow of Scrape clear over the valley, and alighting on the monolith made with her claws - that kind of hare has claws - those dents which are visible to this day.
The tenant of the farm in 1780 was Adam Hunter, 'a poor and illiterate man' whose belief, perhaps not ill-founded, that he was the rightful heir to Polmood was hardly beaten out of him by a litigation which extended over forty years.
The present rent is £240.
(4) THE SLATE QUARRY
The slate quarry of Stobo was once reckoned 'an inexhaustible fund of wealth to its proprietor' (Armstrong). Its slate was 'as good' as the kingdom affords (Pennecuik), and 'inferior to no slate whatever' (first Statistical Account). The best known houses in Edinburgh were roofed with it, and the Town Council of Peebles supplied 'sklaitts from Stobo' to the President of the Court of Session for the building of Craigmillar House.
The quarry was costly to work, for the slate was only found in 'pockets' the rubbish even yet looks nearly enough to fill the hollow. The only access was by a steep narrow track, and the slates had to be carried away on pack-horses bearing not more than two cwts. at a time. When carts became available they could not load up direct, but had to wait in the valley till their cargo was brought down to the 'alter-hous.' As soon, therefore, as the fine light Welsh slate found its way north by steam traction, the expensive, heavy Stobo slate went out of use, and the 'inexhaustible fund of wealth' was exhausted. The quarry is still worth a visit: sheer rugged cliffs, vast accumulation of debris, and over all a pathetic sense of the silenced toiling and moiling of vanished generations. Here the father of the Black Dwarf earned his meagre living.
A long building of two storeys and attics provided accommodation for quarrymen and their families. Sheltered from the cast wind and from the north, with a fine declivity for drainage, and a supply of pure water, it is the healthiest nook in Stobo. Sometimes it is jocularly called Cheat-the-Beggars or Cheats, because seen from the main road it looks like a mansion.
(5) THE KIRKLANDS OF STOBO
These lands would lie in the vicinity of the parish church, but there is very little information about them. There is record of a contract in 1556 between James Baird, son of the deceased Alexander Baird of Hallmanor, and James Tweedie of Fruid, whereby Baird renounced his right to the Kirklands, which were then in the occupation of James Stewart. The previous occupier was Robert Crichton, tacksman of the vicar, and after him the said Alexander Baird. James Stewart continued to occupy the lands, along with Margaret Weir, wife of the said James Tweedie of Fruid, and in 1562, her husband being then dead, she assigned her right to her natural son John Tweedie. Thereafter, in 1580, Robert Douglas, the vicar of Stobo, with consent of the Archbishop of Glasgow, granted a charter of the Kirklands, for a feu duty of 40s. to John Tweedie, tutor of Drumelzier, from whom they passed to his daughter Marion in 1606. In 1635, they were granted by Crown charter to Sir David Murray of Stanhope and his son John, and are there described as the 'terras vicarie de Stobo' with the pasturage of 24 soums, lying on the east of the lands of Stobo, in the parish of Stobo. They appear again in 1654 in the service of William Murray of Stanhope, and they have since then remained a part of the Stobo estate.
(6) HAPPREW
The estate of Happrew extended from the lands of Ladyurd (parish of Kirkurd), along the right bank of the Water of Lyne to the Tweed, and from early times was a property distinct from the barony of Stobo; in 1214 pains were taken to define it from the adjoining lands of Stobo and Orde (Kirkurd). It belonged to Sir Simon Fraser of Oliver and Neidpath, who by a charter (1291-1306) granted to the monks of Melrose free passage for their waggons and carts through 'my land of Hoprew.' From him it passed in 1306, along with the Neidpath estate to the Hays of Locherworth (afterwards of Yester) and they took Happrew as an additional designation. 'Baron of Hoprew' was the title of the eldest son and heir of the lords of Yester for many generations. In the fifteenth century, perhaps earlier, the property was divided into two parts, Wester and Easter.
(7) WESTER HAPPREW
This was a £20 land (1040 acres). It adjoined the lands of Ladyurd, and in 1435 there was a dispute between Davy the Hay, Lord of Yester, and William Geddes of Ladyurd who had encroached on Wester Happrew to the extent of two merks thereof (about 35 acres). This ground must have been taken to satisfy some claim he had, for it was agreed that if Geddes could acquire ground elsewhere, of similar value, Hay would pay 40 merks or even £40 Scots towards the price, and that Geddes would then restore the piece of Wester Happrew of which he had taken possession.
There were Browns, as tenants, in Wester Happrew during the sixteenth century and later, related no doubt to the Browns of Brownsland, and connected apparently with friar Gilbert Brown, minister of the Cross Kirk, who about 1540 gave the lands of Floors in Peebles to Robert Brown, son of the deceased John Brown in Wester Happrew.
Wester Happrew was wadset in 1653 to William Douglas of Over Drochil for 7000 merks, and redeemed by the Earl of Tweeddale in 1668. The property remained a part of the Neidpath estate till 1920 when it was acquired, along with Brownsland, by Mr. Hylton Philipson of Stobo for £9000.
The present rental is £370.
(8) THE KIRKLANDS OF WESTER HAPPREW
The Yester family, who, as we have seen, were the proprietors of Happrew, founded in the fourteenth century a chapel dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, and mortified for its support the adjacent lands. The site of the chapel is not known, but it was probably near the Wester Happrew burn. In 1433, in order to determine the tenure of the lands, an inquest was held at Stobo by Sir Thomas de Tudai (Tweedie), vicar of the parish churches of Innerleithen and Eddleston, Mr. William Foulis, keeper of the Privy Seal, who was also rector of Stobo, and a jury of twenty-two. Their finding was that these lands were held in return for the performing of two masses every week in the chapel, one on Wednesday and the other on Friday. But as time went on little regard was paid to the ordinance, and one morning, on 20th March, 1503-4, at half-past nine o'clock, John, Lord Hay of Yester, appeared in the churchyard of Stobo. There he accosted the chaplain, Sir Andrew Young, and asked if he were the Commissary of Stobo. He replied that he was. Then said Lord Hay - 'My ancestors, the Lords of Yester, founded a chapel in Wester Haprew of St. Michael, and mortified to it certain lands and the manse, for service there twice weekly for their souls, for which service the vicar of Stobo holds these lands, and yet neither the vicar himself nor any other celebrates that service' - and asked for an explanation. Sir Andrew acknowledged that for the past seven years no service had been held. The only excuse he could suggest was that when the vicar officiated in the chapel there would be no divine service in the parish church of Stobo And that is all we know about the chapel.
But there is further record of the lands. In accordance with the Act of Parliament requiring churchmen to feu their possessions, Ninian Douglas, vicar of Stobo, on 15th January, 1536-7, granted, with consent of Gavin, Archbishop of Glasgow, two charters, apportioning the kirklands of Wester Happrew.
One of these dealt with Brownsland - of which presently - the other assigned a 20s. land to Thomas Alexander, son of John Alexander, for a feu-duty of £4 Scots, on condition that Thomas and his heirs resided there, built houses and planted nine plantations of trees. He was succeeded in 1565 by his brother Robert, in whose precept for infeftment the property is described as the 40s. Kirkland of Wester Happrew, showing that additional ground had been acquired. He sold it in 1575 to William Veitch of Kingside. There is no further trace, and it may be assumed that the property became merged in the lands of Wester Happrew.
The other charter was to Nichol Brown, for a feu-duty of £4 Scots, of ground lying alongside the Wester Happrew burn. This possession became known as Brownsland.
(9) BROWNSLAND
(Part of Wester Happrew)
This was a 40s. land, and the Brown family continued in possession for over two hundred years. To Nichol succeeded his son William in 1554, who was followed in 1616 by his son John, who in turn was succeeded in 1673 by his son James, and James in 1756 was succeeded by his son George. Apparently a strong healthy stock, for each laird, on an average, held the lands for over fifty years.
But the almost incredible right of Runrig, i.e. to crop every alternate ridge of the adjacent fields, must always have exasperated neighbour farmers. Infraction of the unity of the surrounding ducal estate at length roused old Ahab in the coming Duke of Queensberry, 'Old Q' who, it is said, by cutting off access to the land coerced George Brown into selling it to him.
'Old Q' was really more intent on ready money than on leaving a compact estate to his heir-at-law. He sold it (1797) to Craufurd Tait, W.S., Edinburgh, the father of Archbishop Tait, who named one of his sons after the laird of Brownsland. But the Archbishop's father 'ruined himself by unremunerative agricultural experiments and had to sell his estates' - Brownsland in 1806 to Alexander Gray, tacksman of Lyne, for £990. From Mr. Gray it was acquired in 1849 for £3800 by the seventh Earl of Wemyss and March, and from the trustees of the eighth Earl in 1920 by Mr. Hylton Philipson of Stobo.
(10) EASTER HAPPREW
These lands, as extensive as Wester Happrew, lie between Brownsland and the Tweed. They remained a part of the Neidpath estate till 1801, when 'Old Q' sold them to Sir James Montgomery. Since then they have been part of the estate of Stobo.
On the farm of Easter Happrew is the prehistoric fort called Hoghill, 'one of the most remarkable forts in Peeblesshire.' Mungo's Well, which gives its name to one of the fields on the farm, is a spring, now covered over and draining unnoticed into the Cloy burn, but still paying a never frozen tribute to the memory of Stobo and Glasgow's patron Saint. The name may be a mediaeval attribution. But in view of the fact that a well, as at Sychar, may be as constant as anything that earth can show, it may have come down direct from Mungo's personal use.
When the Presbyteries of Peebles and Biggar used to meet as one, the meeting-place was the old farm-house of Easter Happrew. Here, in 1688, after the interval of Stuart Episcopacy, the ministers constituted themselves into the first Presbytery under the Revolution Settlement. In the 'ben,' of the old farm-house Mr. William Russell (1689-1699) was ordained.
The farm-house is as good a specimen of the modern farmer's dwelling as there is in the county. The old farm-house, still tenanted by the farm-grieve, is a typical survival of the old style. With the regular five windows and a door to the front and occupying the higher ground, it formed with its dairy the north side of the square; the adjoining stables, byres, and cart-sheds made up the other sides and the midden occupied the middle. For convenience of working there was nothing to beat this and health neither did nor does suffer by the arrangement, although in comparison with modern plans it is odorous.
The present rent of Easter Happrew is £422 7s. 6d.
SHERIFFMUIR
(Part of Easter Happrew)
Sheriffmuir derives its name from its having been the parade ground where the County Militia used to be inspected by the Sheriff of the county. The neighbouring ford through Tweed is called The Sheriff's Ford. The convenience of the moor for such a purpose made it again, during the late war, the meeting place of the local volunteers on Sunday afternoons for company drill.
After the kirk, the moor contains Stobo's most important trace of antiquity. The first Statistical Account describes at great length how it looked in 1792. Since then it has passed from open heath, through a period of arable cultivation, to its present condition of enclosed pasture. There remain only two Standing Stones - one 4 ft. 4 ins. high, the other 3 ft. 10 and 1/2 in., 6 ft. 11in. apart at the base and the Pinkie's Hole, 108 yards in circumference, in the plantation between the road and the railway: a line connecting the stones and extended south touches it at 84 yards.
Tradition, which 'is as frequently an inventor of fiction as a preserver of truth,' asserts that the standing stones are the sole remains of a Druid temple, and that Pinkie's Hole was the sacristy where the sacrificial procession was marshalled.
At a later period - so it is claimed 'undoubtedly' by Armstrong and 'probably' by Ker - the stones marked the site of a grave, perhaps of a Border Chief fallen here in battle; and Pinkie's Hole was 'the general repository of those who deserved not particular interment.' It may be so. But careful digging by three men (18th July, 1921) brought nothing to light.
Sheriffmuir, however, does offer too fair a field for battle to have been wholly neglected through all the centuries of Border warfare. Here or hereabout was fought at least one memorable, although minor, engagement in which one of the captains was Sir William Wallace. In the accounts of Edward 1. for the year 1303-4 a payment is recorded of forty shillings to a 'messenger who brought news of a defeat wrought by Sirs William le Latyner, John of Segrave, and Robert of Clifford over Sirs Simon Fraser and William le Waleys at Hopperewe.' Easter Happrew is the farm which comprises Sheriffmuir, and on a site which to this day is called the Castle Knowe, within a bow-shot of the battle-field, the Frasers of Oliver and Neidpath had a tower.
In this tower Wallace, still under the disablement of his defeat at Falkirk, deserted by his Papal and French allies, hemmed within a surely contracting circle of English troops, and specially excluded - the one single exclusion - from all hope of amnesty, found a friend not only to allow him shelter, but when the hostile bands were closing in on their prey to fight for him. It was for a forlorn hope, and an apparently lost cause under a proscribed chief, that ten years before Bannockburn the Laird of Happrew and his retainers faced the southrons on or about Sheriffmuir. The same spirit inspired them as in a later century prevailed with the Laird of Stobo to fight for and lose his land for Prince Charlie. At Happrew the battle was lost. The Scots were cut down: but not before they had cut a way out for their hero. Call it a skirmish; it was nothing more. In the late war it would hardly have been mentioned as 'a scrap.' But for us it is of this memorable interest: that among the Scots 'wha hae wi' Wallace bled' were Stobo men.
The scene of the encounter is a very small plain with nothing of the spacious gorse-lit glory of Coldingham Moor, nothing of the spacious desolation of the Moor of Rannoch, little even of the prominent historic interest of its namesake near Dunblane. Motorists are past the road-men's dwelling and over and beyond the plateau or even they are aware. But its poor hundred acres enshrine vestiges, for ever now inscrutable, of
'Old unhappy far-off things
And battles long ago.'
(12) DAWYCK
(EASTER DAWYCK AND DAWYCK MILL FARMS)
Stobo south of Tweed consists of the farm of Easter Dawyck (rental £260 19s. 2d.) and part of the farm of Dawyck Mill (rental £190 15s.). An account is given of the estate of Dawyck in the chapter on Drumelzier.
Toward the end, of the eighteenth century the factor was Walter Scott, W.S., Sir Walter Scott's father, by whose orders the old peel tower at Easter Dawyck was used as a quarry for building the present farm-house; and at Dawyck Mill an almost perfect specimen of the cromleeh (crom curved, leach stone) or dolmen (daul table, maen stone), 'a sepulchral construction of the stone age' called Arthur's Oven, consisting of 'two or more upright stones and one flat stone laid across as a roof, all of remarkable size,' was broken into pieces to form a culvert for the stream. This utilitarianism in the father - even if due to his own sentiment suppressed in favour of his employer's profit - is a curious contrast to his son's romance.
Concealed in the plantation east of Dawyck Mill are extensive ruins of a mansion, known to schoolboys as Bats' Castle, which was never completed. An old laird of Dawyck in his old age, so it is said, married for reason showing, one of his domestic servants. Intent on making amends to the woman of whom he had taken advantage, and forecasting that she would surely survive him, he set with uxorious speed about building a dowager-house for her and her boy born some three months after the marriage. The derision of the neighbourhood changed into something like sympathy for the old gentleman when next spring his young wife died, and he ordered the masons to desist. 'Pendent opera interrupter minaeque murorum.'
Besides the large estates and farms there were among 'the nineteen towns of Stobo' several small holdings which appear from time to time in the records. Of some of these the names still survive in hamlet or cottage - Harrow (originally Halraw), Hopehead, Muirburn. Of others, the very names have in the ups and downs of life passed out of use: Hillhouse is now Stobo Castle, and Frost Hole (a smithy and smithy land on Wester Happrew by Tarth Water) has been wholly thawed away.
This information is reproduced from A History of Peeblesshire by J. W. Buchan and Rev. H. Paton, published in three volumes between 1925-7 by Jackson, Wylie and Co. of Glasgow. The original book includes many refences to the sources of the information, pedigrees and plates.
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