REPORT OF THE MEETINGS FOR 1898 269 



Hermitage was built early in the thirteenth century, and its 

 erection was formally alleged as a reason for assembling an 

 English army in 1243. The lordship of Liddesdale was then 

 held by the Norman family, de Soulis. In 1291, Nicolas de 

 Soulis was one of the claimants to the throne of Scotland, 

 through his descent from a natural daughter of Alexander II. 

 His grandson, William de Soulis, was the last of the line : he 

 conspired against Robert the Bruce, and was confined in 

 Dunbarton Castle till he died. Tradition, however, tells that 

 this William de Soulis was a man of extraordinary wickedness 

 and cruelty, and skilled in the arts of magic. Such a man 

 could never in popular opinion have died an ordinary death, 

 and tradition goes on to give a quite different account of it. 

 So many complaints of outrage and atrocious deed had been 

 brought against him to the king that the king, in a fit of 

 impatience one day, said — " Go, boil Lord Soulis an ye list, 

 but let me hear no more of him." Another version is that 

 Lord Soulis had a charm against all ordinary means of 

 destruction. At any rate, when at last he fell into the power 

 of his enemies, he was put to death in the following fashion 

 at the Ninestane Rig, the hill to the north of Hermitage : — 



" On a circle of stones they placed the pot, 

 On a circle of stones but barely nine ; 

 They heated it red and fiery hot. 



Till the barnished brass did glimmer and shine. 



They rolled him up in a sheet of lead, 



A sheet of lead for a funeral pall ; 

 They plunged him in the caldron red, 



And melted him, lead and bones and all." 



Leyden's " Lord Soulis." 



In 1338, Sir William Douglas, who thenceforward was known 

 as the Knight of Liddisdale and the Flower of Chivalry, took 

 Hermitage Castle when driving back an English foray. He 

 received a grant of the Dale and the Castle. Sir Alexander 

 Ramsay of Dalhousie, who had been his former companion in 

 arms, became his rival by surprising Roxburgh Castle in 1342, 

 and receiving the sheriffdom of Teviotdale, which the Douglas 

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