Soon after this (in 1603) Bruntisfield passed away from the Lauders, being sold by Alexander Lauder to John Fairlie, probably a cadet of the family of Braid.[1] He apparently altered and added to the house, as it would seem from the date 1605, which with the initials I. F.—E. W., is over some of the windows. The original house was of much older date, as we have evidence that a mansion-house stood here in 1457.
In 1695 William Fairlie sold Bruntisfield to George Warrender, afterwards Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and created a baronet in 1715. His family was of French extraction,—his ancestor, a De Warende, having come from Picardy in the train of Mary of Guise. By degrees he acquired other lands lying contiguous to Bruntisfield, by purchase from Rigg of Riggsland, Biggar of Whitehouse, and Dick of Grange; and these form the property of Bruntisfield as it now stands.
Bruntisfield House.
The Lauders of Haltoun became extinct in the 17th century, and their representation devolved on the Maitland family by the marriage of Elizabeth Lauder, the heiress of Haltoun, with Charles, fourth Earl of Lauderdale. That descent we have inherited through my father's mother, Lady Julian Maitland; so that, after a lapse of nearly three hundred years, the descendants of the original possessors inhabit the old house again.
After the purchase of Bruntisfield by George Warrender, it remained for nearly a hundred years in possession of the younger branch of the family, which came to an end in 1820 by the death of Hugh Warrender, an old bachelor, who was Crown Agent for Scotland.[2] He was succeeded by his cousin, my grand-uncle, the Right Hon. Sir George Warrender, M.P., who on taking possession discovered the existence of a secret room. The house was then thickly covered with ivy. Lee, the Royal Academician, and an architect that Sir George had brought down from London with him, were the first to suspect its existence, from finding more windows outside than they could account for. The old woman who had charge of the house denied for a long time any knowledge of such a room; but, frightened by Sir George's threats, she at length showed them the narrow entrance, that was concealed behind a piece of tapestry. This was torn down, and the door forced open, and a room was found, just as it had been left by some former occupant,—the ashes still in the grate. Whether, as one story said, it had been used as a hiding-place in troubled times,—or whether, according to another legend, it had been the room of a dearly loved child of the house, after whose death it had been hurriedly shut up, never to be entered again by the broken-hearted parents,—there are now no means of knowing; but the blood-stains on the floor point to some darker tragedy, and a tradition still lingers that, not long after the discovery of the room, a skeleton was found buried below the windows. It is still known as the Ghost-room, though nothing has been seen, at any rate for many years.
The newly-built houses which now closely surround Bruntisfield have swept away two curious landmarks of the past. One was the mound of earth on which James IV. stood to review his army, preparatory to the expedition which ended so disastrously at Flodden.[3] The other was a flat, moss-grown stone which lay in the park, almost hidden by the grass and daisies growing round it. On it was carved a skull, surmounted by a winged hour-glass and a mutilated scroll; and below it a shield bearing a saltier, and the initials M. I. R. and the date 1645. "The M.," says Wilson in his Reminiscences of Old Edinburgh, "surmounted the shield, indicative of the standing of the deceased as a Master of Arts, and so telling of a scholar and a gentleman, who slept there apart from his kin, a victim to that last and most fatal visitation of the plague." When that part of the park was built over, the stone was carefully removed from its ancient site, and placed in safety against a wall in the garden of Bruntisfield, where, though much obliterated by weather, its carvings can still be traced.
Once outside the gate of Bruntisfield, we find ourselves on the Links, but there is little of their former country wildness left about them now. Houses hem them closely in on every side. The straight paths, formal rows of young trees, and stiff plots of shrubbery, give them the look of a suburban common. The occasional golf-player, a rare sight now, seems like a ghost of the past still lingering in his old haunts. Let us call back the past as it was two hundred and fifty years ago, and what a different scene is here! Before us lies an open, undulating muirland, covered with whin and broom, and in the more sheltered hollows grow thickets of thorn and natural oak. This is the great Boroughmuir, which stretches far away to the hills of Braid, and in more remote times formed part of the ancient forest of Drumselch. A long winding loch lies between us and the town, in the low ground which future generations were to call the Meadows. Its placid waters and reed-fringed shores are the haunts of innumerable wild-fowl. The moor is bare and desolate, but here and there rises a stern, grey tower, half fortress, half dwelling-house, with a few humble cottages clustering round it for protection and defence. Such is the Wryteshouse, the ancient home of the Napiers, its walls enriched with quaint carvings and inscriptions, which crowns the gently rising ground at the south-west corner of the loch. The evening breeze no longer brings us the sweet sound of St. Catherine's vesper bell, for long before the day whose story is unrolled before us the tide of the Reformation had swept wildly through the land; but the shattered walls still remain to bear witness to the piety of an elder generation. St. Roque's Chapel is in ruins, but the victims of the plague still find a last resting-place near the shrine of their patron saint.
Such, then, was the Boroughmuir two hundred and fifty years ago, the great gathering ground on which so many troops had assembled before marching against the Southron, and on which so many skirmishes had taken place in the civil wars that rent the country in Queen Mary's time; but it requires an effort of the imagination to realize it all now!