BURNET. — FLETCHER. — LORD MILTON. 71 



but from which he returned with the new sovereign, at the revolution — 

 recovered his station in the Church — and died bishop of Salisbury in 1714.* 



Andrew Fletcher, of Salton, a pupil of Burnet, distinguished himself about 

 the same period, by his strenuous opposition to the arbitrary and despotic 

 government of Charles and James, and his ardour in the cause of liberty. 

 He was the confident of Lord Russell, a principal leader in Monmouth's 

 expedition, and distinguished in the Scottish parliament as an able orator on 

 the great question of the Un^on.f 



Lord Milton, a nephew of this patriot, and latterly elevated to the high official 

 dignity of Lord-justice-clerk, has thrown additional lustre on the same place 

 of nativity. His exemplary moderation, dispassionate exposition of the law, 

 and patient investigation of the cases brought before him, at a time of great 

 public excitement, made him justly venerated as one of the best of men in the 

 worst of times. Uninfluenced by party feeling — unbiassed by the prejudices 

 of the day — and labouring to dispense equal justice to all, he drew those delicate 

 discriminations between absolute crime and party accusations, wliich spared 

 the misled, and acquitted the misrepresented, while they detected the real 

 culprit, and exposed the sanguinary motives of those who would have degraded 

 the tribunal of public justice by sanctioning acts of private revenge. With 

 nearly the whole weight of Scottish affairs upon his mind, he seems never to 

 have lost sight of humble individuals ; and to have had the happy talent of 

 reconciling the high functions of office with the claims of friendship, and the 

 duties of a private citizen. 



Of the many fine manorial mansions and villas with which the resident nobility 

 and other opulent families of the county are identified, our notice must be 

 brief, and necessarily imperfect. The subject would of itself form a volume ; 

 and the variegated lore with which history and superstition have invested them, 

 must be left for materials more immediately on our route. Seton House, ;]; the 

 once princely residence of the earls of Winton, has been long superseded in 



• In 1711, he presented twenty thousand merks, Scotch, to the parish of Sahon, for the education and 

 clothing of thirty children, and payment of their apprentice fees — for the relief of the indigent — and to 

 make an annual purchase of hooks for the minister's library. 



t His character of the Highland clans is rather frankly, tlian fairly, pronounced. " They are all gentle- 

 men," says he, " only because they will not work ; and in every thing are more contemptible than the vilest 

 slaves, except that they always carry arms, because for the most part they live upon robbery." — Strutherf' 

 Hist. vol. 1. p. 120. 



I The state apartments were on the ground floor, very spacious, nearly forty feet hifjli, superbly fur- 

 nished, and covered with crimson velvet, laced with gold. When James VI. revisited his paternal domi- 

 nions, inlG17, he spent his second night in Scotland, at Seton. Charles I. and his court also reposed 

 here during a royal progress through Scotland. — Clmmbers. 



