[17] The reader will remember the mistake of Donna Julia,—
"Was it for this that General Count O'Reilly,
Who took Algiers, declares I used him vilely?"
Don Juan, Canto i.
On the summit of a rising ground, by the side of a brook in the parish of Loudon in Ayrshire, stand the ruins of the ancient Castle of Loudon, which was destroyed about three hundred and fifty years ago by the clan Kennedy, headed by their chief, the Earl of Cassilis. This old Scottish stronghold was the seat of a family from which sprung Gideon Ernest Baron Loudon, or de Laudohn, a distinguished general of the Continental wars.
Loudon of that ilk was one of the oldest families in the kingdom of Scotland.
Lambin was proprietor of the lands and barony of Loudon during the reign of David I., who succeeded to the throne in 1124. James of Loudon, dominus de eodem, or of that ilk, obtained a charter of the same barony from Richard de Morville, Constable of the Kingdom; Jacobo filio Lambin, &c., also obtained a charter from William de Morville, as Jacobo de Loudon, terrarum baroniæ de Loudon. Both these documents were granted during the reign of William the Lion, who succeeded to the throne in 1165, and are, says Sir Robert Douglas, a proof that he took his sirname from these lands, according to the custom of those early times; and his armorial bearings were, argent, three escutcheons sable. His daughter, Margaret of Loudon, was married to Sir Reginald Crawford, High Sheriff of Ayr, and became the grandmother of Sir William Wallace, the heroic defender of the liberties of his country.
In later times, a branch of this old family had left