It is an established rule, that all biographical attempts of considerable length, shall contain some genealogical inquiry regarding the family of their subject. The present writer is relieved both of the labour of such an investigation, and the responsibility of adjusting it to the appropriate bounds, by being able to print a letter in which the philosopher has himself exhibited the results of an inquiry into the subject.
David Hume to Alexander Home of Whitfield.
"Edinburgh, 12th April, 1758.
"Dear Sir,—I was told by Mrs. Home, when she was in town, that you intended to make some researches into our family, in order to give them to Mr. Douglas, who must insert them, or the substance of them, into his account of the Scottish nobility.[2:1] I think that your purpose is very laudable, and is very obliging to us all; and for this reason I shall inform you of what I know of the matter. These hints will at least serve to point out to you more authentic documents.
"My brother has no very ancient charters: the oldest he has, are some charters of the lands of Horndean. There he is designated Home, or Hume, of Ninewells.
The oldest charters of Ninewells are lost. It was always a tradition in our family, that we were descended from Lord Home, in this manner. Lord Home gave to his younger son the lands of Tinningham, East Lothian. This gentleman proved a spendthrift and dissipated his estate, upon which Lord Home provided his grandchild, or nephew, in the lands of Ninewells as a patrimony. This, probably, is the reason why, in all the books of heraldry, we are styled to be cadets of Tinningham; and Tinningham was undoubtedly a cadet of Home. I was told by my grand-aunt, Mrs. Sinclair of Hermiston, that Charles earl of Home told her, that he had been looking over some old papers of the family, where the Lord Home designs Home of Ninewells either his grandson or nephew, I do not precisely remember which.
"The late Sir James Home of Blackadder showed me a paper, which he himself had copied a few days before from a gravestone in the churchyard of Hutton: the words were these—'Here lies John Home of Bell, son of John Home of Ninewells, son of John Home of Tinningham, son of John Lord Home, founder of Dunglas.'
"I find that this Lord Home, founder of Dunglas, was the very person whom Godscroft says went over to France with the Douglas, and was father to Tinningham: so thus the two stories tally exactly. He was killed either in the battle of Crevant or Verneuil, gained by the Duke of Bedford, the regent, against the French. Douglas fell in the same battle. I think it was the battle of Verneuil. All the French and English histories, as well as the Scotch, contain this fact. This Lord Home was your ancestor, and ours, lived in the time of James the First and Second of Scotland, Henrys the Fifth and Sixth of England.
"I have asked old Bell the descent of his family. He said he was really sprung from Ninewells, but that the lands fell to an heiress who married a brother of Polwarth's.
"By Godscroft's account, Tinningham was the third son of Home in the same generation that Wedderburn was the second, so that the difference of antiquity is nothing, or very inconsiderable.