[265] Supposed to be a kind of sweetmeats.
[266] To hold stob and stake in a place, is an old periphrasis for making it one’s permanent residence.
[267] The flet was the inside of a house.
[268] A neighbouring hamlet.
[269] January 12, 1591-2, the king repossessed David Hamilton of Bothwell-haugh, Isobel Sinclair and Alison Sinclair, heretrices-portioners of the lands of Woodhouselee, of ‘their lands, houses, tacks, steadings, and possessions, wherefra they were dispossest upon occasion of the late troubles.’—P. C. R.
[270] Miss Gordon having married Mr Byron without any ‘settlement,’ her property was seized by his creditors, and sold for £18,500, while she and her son, the future poet, were left to penury.
[271] The name has been changed to Formartin—a proceeding against which every person interested in the verity of history, not to speak of considerations of taste, must protest.
[272] Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, ii. 429. See also vol. iii. 409.
[273] See the ballad of Christie’s Will, with the notes, in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, iii. 151. This ballad was composed by the editor on the traditionary story, in which the Earl of Traquair is introduced as a litigant for whose benefit the capture of the judge was made, the object being to prevent an adverse judgment in the Court of Session.
[274] Alexander Gibson of Durie, commonly called Lord Durie, and author of a well-known work called Durie’s Practicks, died June 10, 1614. The story of his kidnapping was related a century after, as follows: ‘Some party in a considerable action before the Session, finding that the Lord Durie could not be persuaded to find his plea good, fell upon a stratagem to prevent the influence and weight which his lordship might have to his prejudice, by causing some strong masked men kidnap him, in the links of Leith, at his diversion on a Saturday afternoon, and transport him to some blind and obscure room in the country, where he was detained captive, without the benefit of daylight, a matter of three months (though otherwise civilly and well entertained); during which time his lady and children went in mourning for him as dead. But after the cause aforesaid was decided, the Lord Durie was carried back by incognitos, and dropt in the same place where he had been taken up.’—Forbes’s Journal of the Session, Edin. 1714.