336 The Swintons of that Ilk, by A. Campbell Swinton. 



' ' The actions of thy first and tender yeares 

 Astonished Holland yett for strange admeirs 

 When Julliers saw thy forduard youth advance 

 "Where leaders failld and f eard the hurt of chance 

 Bohemia 1 s battles saw thee bathed in blood 

 Outfare all feare where death and horror stood." 

 and after references to " The Russian warres and fierce Polonian 

 fightes," and " Beseeged Stade where C Cesar's Eagles spred There 

 conquering wings ;" the conclusion is drawn — 

 ' ' These were bot pressages of greatter deeds 

 Though none more glorious in Times Annals reads." 

 While it is assumed that the "truelie noble and generous" indi- 

 vidual thus bewailed may have been the great grandson of the 

 14th Baron of Swinton, it has been noticed that the Eegister of 

 the Great Seal contains a charter of date 17th June, 1605, in 

 favour of Mark ,-winton, Provost of Inverkeithing, and John 

 Swinton, his son and heir. These worthies have no place in the 

 existing writs of the family. But the "Evander" of Lauder's 

 muse may as probably have been the son of the Provost as of 

 the Parson. Katharine Lauder, the wife of John Swinton of 

 Swinton, died in -1515, " bequeathing her soul to Almighty God 

 and the Blessed Virgin and all the saints of Paradise, and her 

 body to be buried before the Altar of St. Ninian, in the Parish 

 Church of Cranshaws." "Within four years afterwards Swinton 

 married as his second wife, Elizabeth Cunninghame, of whose 

 family or history nothing is known. 



XV. John Swinton, his eldest son received from his father in 

 1514, the fee of the lands of Little Swinton. In 1518, he ob- 

 tained a dispensation from Pope Leo X., for his marriage to a 

 relation within the third or fourth degree of consanguinity. The 

 lady was Marion, daughter of David Home of Wedderburn, who 

 with his eldest son, one of the celebrated " Seven Spears," fell 

 at Elodden. The dispensation was produced by the parties in 

 the church of Polwarth, on the 26th October, 1520, with a view 

 to the proclamation of the intended marriage. But the marriage 

 was not actually celebrated till at least two years afterwards, as 

 on the 21st October, 1522, Swinton grants to "the prudent 

 damsel whom he proposed, God willing, to take to wife," a life- 

 rent charter of the lands of Elbauk.* Of this marriage, contracted 



* In some of the family writs this is the name given to the Mansion House 

 of Swinton. 



