Among applications for borbrieffs was one in June 1670, from ‘Thomas Kirkpatrick, secretary to the king of France and Councillor Lord Duplosse in Dunua, in France, son lawful of Thomas Kirkpatrick, a Scotsman and sometime one of the twenty-five Scots gentlemen soldiers of the life-guard of the king of France.’ Another, in 1686, was from the celebrated Colbert, minister of Louis XIV. of France, in whose behalf an act of parliament was passed, authorising the required document. It stated the descent of the Sieur Colbert, Marquis of Seignelay, at seven removes from Edward Culbert, a son of Culbert or Cuthbert of Castlehill, near Inverness, a family of king’s barons who often represented their county in parliament, and whose connections spread through the best branches of the peerage.—S. Acts.
Aug. 24.
The marriage-day of the unfortunate Bride of Baldoon. The story of this lady has been related with all the graces of fiction in the tale of the Bride of Lammermuir; but in its actual circumstances it is sufficiently impressive. She was the Honourable Janet Dalrymple, daughter of the first Lord Stair, so distinguished as a lawyer and by the part he took in the politics of his day. While still in girlish years, the young lady contracted a passionate attachment to Lord Rutherford, the distant relative and heir of that noble champion, Andrew Rutherford, Earl of Teviot, who is alluded to so respectfully in this chronicle under 1663. The young nobleman returned this affection, and the pair plighted their troth in the usual manner, by parting a coin between them, and imprecating dismal evils upon whoever should withdraw from or violate the compact. But this alliance did not suit the views of the parents, whether from deficient fortune in the young lord, or from contrarious politics, does not appear. They favoured a new suitor who appeared in the person of David Dunbar, younger of Baldoon in Wigtonshire.
1669.
On learning that Dunbar was advancing in his suit, Lord Rutherford wrote to his mistress to remind her of her engagement, but received an answer from her mother, to the effect that she was now sensible of the error she had committed in entering into an engagement unsanctioned by the parental authority; and this engagement it was not her intention to fulfil. The lover refused to take an answer which did not come directly from his mistress, and insisted on an interview. It took place, but in presence of the mother, a woman whom public report represented as master of her husband and whole family, and indebted for this influence to witchcraft, though for no reason that can be discerned beyond her uncommon talents and force of character. It may readily be supposed that even the resources of love would be of poor avail against the skill and resolution of such a person. When Rutherford was introduced, he found her ready to meet his arguments with what was then an unanswerable defence, a text of Scripture (Numbers xxx., 2, 3, 4, 5), clearly absolving a woman from a bond entered into in her youth, if her father shall disallow her fulfilment of it, and promising that, in that case, ‘the Lord shall forgive her.’ The poor girl herself sat mute and overwhelmed, while the lover vainly pleaded against the application of this text; and the scene ended with her surrender of her portion of the broken coin, and his flying distracted from the house, after telling her that she would be a world’s wonder from what she had done and was yet to do.
The union with young Baldoon went on, but entirely under the management of the mother, for it is inconceivable that the young man could have pressed his suit, if he had known the extent to which the bride was under constraint. The wedding was celebrated, as was customary in those days, in the presence of the relatives of both parties, and with great festivity; but the bride remained like one lost in a reverie, and who only moves and acts mechanically. A younger brother lived long enough to state to a lady who communicated the fact to Sir Walter Scott, that he had the duty of carrying her on horseback behind him to church, and he remembered that the hand with which she clasped his waist was ‘cold and damp as marble.’ ‘Full of his new dress, and the part he acted in the procession, the circumstance, which he long afterwards remembered with bitter sorrow and compunction, made no impression on him at the time.’
1669.
In the evening, the newly wedded pair retired to their chamber, while the merry-making still proceeded in the hall. The room had been locked, and the key taken possession of by the brideman, to prevent any of the unseemly frolics which, it would seem, were sometimes played off on such occasions. But, suddenly there was heard to proceed from the bridal-chamber a loud and piercing outcry, followed by dismal groans. On its being opened, the alarmed company found the bridegroom weltering in his blood on the threshold, and the bride cowering in a corner of the chimney, with no covering but her shift, and that dabbled in gore. She told them ‘to take up their bonny bridegroom.’ It was evident she was insane, and the general belief was that she had franticly stabbed her husband. From that moment, she made no other rational communications, but pined away and died in less than three weeks. Young Baldoon recovered, but would never enter into explanations regarding the tragic occurrence. Perhaps it is this mystery alone which has given rise to the favourite belief of the many descendants of Lord Stair,[219] that the wound was not inflicted by their unhappy relative, but by Lord Rutherford, who, they say, secreted himself in the chamber beforehand, and escaped afterwards by a window. This notion seems to us contrary to all probability, not merely because the conception of such an act was too gross for a man of rank even in that day, but because, had it been acted on, something must have come of it, either in the way of private revenge or of procedure before a criminal court. The idea was prevalent at the time; but it may be classed, we think, with another recorded by the credulous Law, that the poor bride was taken from her bed and harled through the house by spirits.
David Dunbar is described in an elegy by Mr Andro Simpson, as a most respectable country gentleman, an agricultural improver,[220] and yet of studious habits. He died by a fall from his horse while riding between Leith and Edinburgh in 1682, and was interred in Holyrood Chapel. Andrew Lord Rutherford is stated in the Peerage to have died childless in 1685.