xlii ORMISTOUN'S LETTERS 



My obligations to Mr. John Hamilton I have already 

 acknowledged ; but I must add here that I have derived much 

 help from his professional skill and local knowledge. The 

 gardener, Mr. Bannerman, who takes an intelligent pride in 

 his interesting surroundings, drew out a plan of the estate and 

 garden, which has been of the greatest service to me in follow- 

 ing the topography of the correspondence. For useful informa- 

 tion about the Cockburn family I have to thank Mr. Robert 

 Cockburn, 17 Great King Street, Edinburgh, descended from 

 the Langton branch, and Mr. Harry A. Cockburn, of Lower 

 Grosvenor Place, London, a grandson of the well-known Lord 

 Cockburn of the delightful Memoii^s and Circuit Journeys^ and 

 tracing descent from the Ormistoun branch. He contributes a 

 new fact to John Cockburn's family history, to wit, that ' his 

 second wife was Arabella Rowe,^ daughter of a gentleman in 

 Oxfordshire. Her two sisters were respectively Viscountess 

 Hillsboro' and Charlotte, wife of George, Lord Forrester, so 

 that George Cockburn (John's only son) in marrying Baroness 

 (in her own right) Forrester married his first cousin.' Arabella 

 Rowe's father, Anthony Rowe, is described as of Muswell 

 Hill, now within the grounds of the Alexandra Palace ; which 

 gives plausibility to Mr. Cockburn's shrewd conjecture that 

 John Cockburn got to know the family while he resided at 

 Tottenham, in the neighbourhood. His first wife was Beatrice 

 Carmichael, daughter of the first Earl of Hyndford,^ by whom 

 he had no children. 



In the annotations I have endeavoured to deal with the 

 great variety of topics raised, and their relationship to the 

 social progress of the age. The difficulties of interpretation 

 at this distance of time, involved in the character and occa- 

 sion of the correspondence, may have led to errors both of 



1 This lady is the * My Wife ' of the Letters. 



2 His brother was Mr. Wm. Carmichael, one of the cronies of Foulis of 

 Ravelstoun, and 'the patron kind and frie ' who lent to Allan Ramsay the 

 Bannatyne Manuscripts for his Evergreen (1724). 



