We now find ourselves on the steep ridge known as Edmonstone Edge, on which the Scots pitched their camp before the battle of Pinkie in 1547. To our right lies Woolmet, now only a farm, but once the property of the Edmonstones of Woolmet, cadets of the Edmonstones of that Ilk. After descending the hill we see to our left one of the oldest and most interesting places in Midlothian. The old house of Niddrie Marischal is hidden among the trees, and beyond it stretches a wilderness of shady walks, high holly hedges, and velvety bowling-greens, through which wanders the Burdiehouse burn, here full of trout, which have been the sport and amusement of many generations. The Wauchopes are undoubtedly the oldest family in the county. It is not known when they acquired Niddrie, and the difficulty of tracing their origin is aggravated by the loss of their more ancient muniments. "The family of Niddrie Marischal," say the MS. notes written by William Wauchope in 1700, "was forfaulted in James II.'s time, for making an inroad into England, so that by that means most of the old charters and evidents were lost." The house was burnt in Queen Mary's time, and the few charters that survived that disaster were mostly destroyed when the English came to Scotland in Cromwell's time. The tradition in the family is that Niddrie[37] was granted to the Wauchopes by Malcolm Canmore. Mackenzie, in his Lives of Eminent Scotsmen, says they came from France in his reign about the year 1062. The first to whom a charter appears is Gilbert Wauchope, who had a charter of "the lands of Niddery" from Robert III. (1390-1406). From him the present laird, Colonel Wauchope of the Black Watch, is the seventeenth in direct succession.
Always a true and loyal race, the Wauchopes remained faithful to the old religion, and supported Queen Mary's cause to the end. The sad fate of young Niddrie, and the circumstances which led to the destruction of the ancient castle in 1596 by the Edmonstones, hereditary enemies of the Wauchopes, are well-known.[38] Nearly a hundred years later, the adherence of the family to the cause of James VII. proved the ruin of the chapel, which had been founded by Archibald Wauchope in 1502, and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, and, as we have elsewhere said, was subordinate to the church of Liberton. A mob from Edinburgh first wrecked the Chapel-Royal of Holyrood, and then came out to Niddrie, and demolished this chapel also.
When the year 1745 brought Prince Charles to this country to make his gallant attempt to win back his father's throne, the Laird of Niddrie collected a considerable sum of money for the royal cause. The prince was encamped at Duddingston, but, as some of the enemy's troops lay between that village and Niddrie, it was difficult to convey the money to him. The plan the laird adopted was this: he sent his son (my great-great-grandfather), a boy about six years old, in charge of his tutor, with a large basket of fruit as a present to the prince. The money was carefully concealed at the bottom of the basket. The boy passed through the enemy's lines in safety, they suspecting nothing, and reached the royal camp, where he delivered the money into the prince's own hands. A few days afterwards, as the prince was marching out with his troops, he perceived the boy walking with his tutor on the farther side of a hedge. He stopped and said, "Is that the young Laird of Niddrie?" and, desiring the tutor to lift him over the hedge, he took him up in his arms and gave him his blessing.
This was not the only time that the Laird of Niddrie sent supplies to his royal master, for, on another occasion, the money was successfully taken to the prince by one of the Yetholm tenants, a man named Thomson, who packed the coins in a load of hay, and succeeded in crossing the country undiscovered. As a reward for his courage and loyalty, the laird gave him his farm rent free from that time. The laird's own family were of divided opinions. His wife, a Hume, Lord Kimmerghame's daughter, was a Whig, like all her family. She had a cousin, a Sandilands, in the Hanoverian army. He was wounded at Prestonpans. She went out secretly and brought him back from the field of battle; and, unknown to her husband, lodged him in some safe place, and attended him till he was better.
When all hope of the royal cause was lost, the Wauchopes appear to have reconciled themselves to the reigning family, and the young Laird fought at Minden in the British army. It is to this that Sir Walter Scott alludes:
Come, stately Niddrie, auld and true, Girt with the sword that Minden knew. We have o'er few such lairds as you.
He was a singularly handsome man, and there is a fine portrait of him in his old age, by Raeburn, at Niddrie.
Another link with the old Jacobite days lasted well into this century, in the person of Lucky Brown, who lived at one of the lodges. She had been Mrs. Wauchope's nurse, and was a Cumberland woman by birth. In the '45, she was living near Carlisle with her father, and when Prince Charles passed their house on his march south, they had breakfast laid out for him on the "louping-on stane." He stopped and breakfasted there. A few months later, when the Hanoverians fastened the heads of the executed Jacobites over the gates of Carlisle, Lucky Brown and another young woman got a ladder, and went in the dead of the night, and took down every head, carried them away in their aprons, and buried them. My aunt, Lady John Scott, remembers Lucky Brown quite well, and she has often heard her grandfather tell the story of his expedition to the prince's camp.
It is a curious thing that when that laird of Niddrie succeeded to the property in the last century, the workers in the coal-mines were still in a state of slavery. They were bought and sold with the pits, and they and their families were in bondage for ever. Mrs. Wauchope's aunt, Miss Johnstone of Hilton, "Aunt Soph," who was always a great deal at Niddrie, used to sing "The Coalbearer's Lamentation," a song sung by these people.
When I was engaged a coal-bearer to be, When I was engaged a coal-bearer to be, Through all the coal-pits, I maun wear the dron brats.[39] If my heart it should break, I can never won free!