HEPORT OF THE MEETINGS FOB 1898 271 



tative of the family was compelled to give up to the Crown his 

 possessions in Liddesdale. This Earl died in 1556. The fourth 

 Earl, James Hepburn, was the Bothwell whose name is so 

 tragically associated with that of Queen Mary. In 1559, this 

 Earl was appointed one of three Commissioners for settling affairs 

 of the Border, and in this connection must have received, if not 

 a new grant, at least some authority over Hermitage. He was 

 there, residing as Warden of the Border, and endeavouring to 

 reduce the turbulent clansmen of the district, in the latter part 

 of 1665 when Queen Mary made her famous journey to hold an 

 assize at Jedburgh. In au encounter with one John Elliot of 

 Park,"*^ who seems to have been "the little Jock Elliot" of 

 the ballad, Bothwell was severely wounded. Queen Mary, 

 hearing that the Warden was in a dangerous condition eight 

 days after, rode from Jedburgh to visit him. The distance is 

 about 23 miles as the crow flies. The exact route can only be 

 conjectured — there is a choice of three, for each of which good 

 reasons have been advanced. But whether the route was the 

 most direct possible, by Rule Water and Stobs and the Braidlee 

 Burn, or the most circuitous by Hawick, it was an extraordinary 

 undertaking in times when roads, if they existed at all, were 

 bad, and at a period when the district was unsettled and 

 dangerous. 



Eeturning that same day, Queen Mary, whose son had been 

 born only three months before, must have ridden 50 miles, and 

 may have ridden more. Whatever her purpose, and on that point 

 also there will always be variety of conjecture — the immediate 

 result to herself was a dangerous illness. For the sake of her 

 after career, one may be permitted to wish that "little Jock 

 Elliot's " sword had gone deeper. The murder of Darnley that 

 same winter, Mary's seizure by Bothwell after her escape from 

 Borthwick Castle, her marriage, and the fateful fight at Carberry 

 Hill, were all steps in the tragic sequence of events which made 

 her a prisoner among her own subjects, drove Bothwell into the 

 exile in which he died miserably, and caused the forfeiture of 

 Hermitage Castle to the Crown. 



* The site of the peel-tower of Park is now occapied by the railway- 

 station at Newcastleton. 



