CHAP. I.] MAXWELLS "OF MIDDLEBIE. 23 



found it considerably burdened. He made a great effort to 

 liberate the estate from encumbrances, and in 1722 was able to 

 entail his landed property, and make it inseparable from the 

 name of Maxwell. But he was by no means ultimately freed 

 from debts, and he transmitted these, together with the estate, 

 to his daughter Agnes, who married William Clerk. (See p. 17.) 

 Their daughter, Dorothea, was left an orphan at the age of seven, 

 and became the ward of Baron Clerk of Penicuik, who (in accord- 

 ance, as he declares, with her mother's wish), betrothed her 

 to his second son George. They were married, privately at 

 first, in 1735 ; and, in order to simplify their affairs, the Baron 

 obtained a decree of the Court of Session, followed by an Act of 

 Parliament, by which (notwithstanding the entail of 1722) 

 Middlebie proper was sold to liquidate the Maxwell debts, and 

 was bought in for George Clerk, whose title was thus freed from 

 burdens, and, so far, from the conditions of the entail. At the 

 same time it was arranged that Middlebie should not be held 

 together with Penicuik. Whatever crafty views the Baron may 

 have had in this curious transaction were frustrated by the im- 

 prudence of George Clerk Maxwell. His mining and manu- 

 facturing speculations involved him so deeply that Middlebie 

 proper, which, by his father's act, was now at his individual 

 disposal, was sold in lots to various purchasers (of whom the 

 Duke of Queensberry was chief), and the hereditary estate was 

 reduced to something like its present limited area. This accounts 

 for the fact that Glenlair, the present seat of this branch of the 

 Maxwell family, is so far distant from the well-known town of 

 Middlebie, in Dumfriesshire. 



