Anniversary Address. 13 



improved by his son the Duke, who died 1683. It was pro- 

 bably about this time that the Lauderdale family removed their 

 permanent residence from their old family seat at Thirlstane, 

 and transferred it together with the name to the castle, which 

 was then greatly enlarged and assumed its present form. 

 Descending from the back of the house the party proceeded 

 along a picturesque walk, shaded by fine trees, to the 

 banks of the Lauder, where Mr. Romanes pointed out the 

 ruins of the bridge, over the paiapet of which the minions of 

 James III. were hanged in 1442. The bridge no longer spans 

 the stream, which has left its bed and now flows in another 

 channel. The parapet at the end next the town alone 

 remains, from which an old way, now obliterated, ran 

 directly up to the Kirk Wynd, in which stood the old 

 kirk, not far from the present site of the castle. It was 

 in this sacred building, removed in 1617,* that the conspira- 

 tors were plotting the seizure of the King, when Cochrane, 

 his principal favourite, lately raised to the dignity of Earl 

 of Mar, inopportunely for himself, ventured among them. 

 He was instantly seized by Archibald Bell-the-Cat, stript 

 of his finery, and hurried off to the bridge. At the 

 same time his companions, Roger, Hommill, Torphichen, 

 Preston, Leonard, Andrews, and Ramsay, " musroomes 

 sprung upe out of the drege of the comons," were seized in the 

 King's tent, and all except the last, who was spared on 

 account of his youth,f shared the same fate. Tradition states 

 the bridge to have been near the castle, and in the old Statis- 

 tical account of Lauder Parish, it is said that the house in 

 which the King lodged was still pointed out, but this version, if 

 it ever existed, has perished. All the cotemporary accounts 



* A ct of Parliament, 28th June. Cha'mers II , 379. 



t He is said to have clasped the King round the waist in the extremity of his 

 f:ar. James afterwards knighted him. and conferred on him the Castle and 

 Barony of Crichton, and he was summoned to Parliament by the title of Lord 

 Bothwell, On the death of the King at the Batt'e of t-aucheiburn, in 1488, he 

 was proscribed and forfeited, and his estates and title assumed by Patiick Hep- 

 burn, Lord Hales, the leader of the ii surgent lords, and grandfather of the 

 notorious James, Earl of Bothwell. Ramsay died in obscurity in 1513. 



