32 Ormiston Hall: its Yeiv-Tree [Sess. 



I have spoken of the family of Cockburn as a " liistorical 

 family " ; and it was, in truth, bound up intimately with the 

 history of Scotland during centuries " big with fate " to our 

 native country. For many years the office of Lord Justice-Clerk 

 was retained in the family ; other members of it were Lords of 

 Session; while John Cockburn, best known as "the agricul- 

 turist," sat in the old Scots Parliament, took his share in the 

 negotiations regarding the Treaty of Union, and again repre- 

 sented his native county in the British Parliament, after the 

 Union had been effected. One of the family who held the office 

 of Justice-Clerk, Adam Cockburn, appointed to that honour in 

 1692, was rather a notable character in his day. In a profusely 

 illustrated work, publislied a few years ago in two quarto volumes, 

 entitled 'The Castles and Mansions of the Lothians,' the late 

 Mr John Small, Librarian of Edinburgh University, who wrote 

 the descriptive letterpress for the work, tells us, when dealing 

 with Ormiston Hall, that Adam Cockburn was very unpopular 

 from his zeal in suppressing the Piebellion of 1715. And he adds 

 the curious fact that when, at that time, " ladies at cards were 

 playing the nine of diamonds, commonly known as the curse of 

 Scotland, they called it the Justice-Clerk." But it is John 

 Cockburn, son of this Whig Lord Justice-Clerk, whom I would 

 more particularly speak of at present. This Laird of Ormiston, 

 born about 1685, was long resident in England, which circum- 

 stance explains the distinctively English character of the village 

 of Ormiston, From the ' New Statistical Account ' we gather 

 that about 1732 he "made great improvements in the village, 

 and laid out the fields contiguous to it upon a plan furnished 

 by Mr Lewis Gordon, a land-surveyoi', whom he brought fi-om 

 England for that purpose. They were all divided into small 

 portions, and enclosed with thorn-hedges and hedgerow trees. 

 This plan was extended over the whole barony of Ormiston, by 

 which it was, and still is, distinguished from all other parishes 

 in the neighbourhood." He also endeavoured, we are told, to 

 promote the growth of flax, founded a school for teaching the 

 spinning of linen yarn, and established a bleachfield — said to 

 have been at that time the second in Scotland — for the bleach- 

 ing and dressing of fine linens, which formerly had to be sent 

 to Haarlem for this purpose. (The first bleachfield in Scotland 

 was that of the British Linen Co., in the neighbouring parish 



