Lesmahagow

The King, whom Tytler describes as “an early adept in hypocrisy”, but who, in the instance, appears to have spoken truthfully, replied, “My Lord, I did never see you before, but you were a faithful servant of the Queen, my mother, and of all this company have been the most wronged; as for the rest of you, if you have been exiles, was it not you fault?”  After a personal remark to the Earl of Bothwell, the King continued, “To you all, who, I believe, meant no harm to my person, I am ready, remembering nothing that is past, to give my hand and heart; on one condition, however, that you carry yourselves henceforth as dutiful subjects"”  The upstart Arran was forthwith proclaimed a traitor at the Market-Place, an amnesty was resolved upon, and everything done by the party who had just obtained power, was acquiesced in by the King, and declared to be done for his service.

By an act of restitution, the estate of the Hamilton family, with the Castle of Draffen, were restored to them 1585, and Lord John Hamilton ever afterwards possessed a large share of the royal confidence.  He was created Marquis of Hamilton in 1599.

In 1592, James VI. Put the Laird of Niddrie, two Hepburns, and several others to the horn.   They were found asleep in a meadow near Lesmahagow by Lord Hamilton, and placed in Draffane, the captain whereof was Hamilton’s son, Sir John.  Lord Hamilton interceded for the lives of his prisoners, but without success, when his son generously set them at liberty, and fled for his own safety.  Two days afterwards the King demanded the attendance of Lord Hamilton in Edinburgh; and on approaching the place of meeting, the guard fired upon the party, and one of them was killed.  It was believed at the time that is was Lord Hamilton’s life which was intended to be taken, and the whole transaction deserves the most unmitigated censure.

In 1625, James, third Marquis of Hamilton, who was, in 1643, created first Duke of Hamilton, was served heir to his father in the lands of Draffane and Castle of Nethan.  He was served heir to his father in the lands of Draffane and Castle of Nethan.  He was a staunch adherents of Charles I., and in 1649 was beheaded by order of Cromwell.  He was succeeded by his brother William, the second Duke, who died from a wound received at the battle of Worcester in 1651.  To him succeeded Anne, Duchess of Hamilton, who married Lord William Douglas, created Earl of Selkirk in 1646, and Duke of Hamilton in 1660.  None of these parties repaired or inhabited the Castle of Draffane, probably because the chiefs of the family found a suitable residence at Hamilton.   The Castle of Craignethan was sold by Anne, Duchess of Hamilton, with a portion of the lands of Draffane, about 1661, to Mr Andrew Hay, who, to use the words of Hamilton of Wishaw, “built with the ruins of the castle a suitable dwelling-house in the corner of the garden;” and who, if one may judge from the chained deer as his arms still appearing above the entrance  to this mansion, was a cadet of the house of Tweeddale.   This dwelling-house has long been used as a farm-house, and the date it bears is 1665.  The motive of Duchess Anne, with consent of her husband, as given by Anderson (“House of Hamilton”), for disposing of this ancestral portion of the Hamilton estates, was, that at that period they were deeply sunk in debt, and were only retrieved by numerous sales of portions of them, and by Duke William’s good and skilful management.

Not long after the restoration of Charles II. (A.D. 1660), we find the name of Mr Hay amongst those who subscribed an address and supplication to the King at Edinburgh, wherein Prelacy was denounced, and the covenant warmly espoused and pled for.  All subscribers to this document were forthwith seized and committed to the Castle of Edinburgh, except Mr Hay, who happily escaped.  Thirteen years afterwards, his offences appear to have been passed over or forgiven by the Government, as he was appointed a Commissioner of Supply by Act of Parliament, in 1678 (Act Parl., ix. 70.)   In the same year, when the militia were called out in Lanarkshire and other parts south of the Tay, Hay, younger of Craignethan, was appointed cornet of the Nether Ward troop.

In 1704, the records of the kirk-session of Lesmahagow contain coy of a document relating to the erection of a gallery for Craignethan in the parish church, to the effect that Anne, Duchess of Hamilton, and other heritors of the parish, taking into their consideration that Andrew Hay of Craignethan was not provided with a seat in the parish church for accommodating himself and family; and there being no convenient room for a seat to him in the said church floor without encroaching upon others, therefore, they give their full consent, power and warrant to him to build a loft immediately before the common loft, reaching in length from the south wall to the middle of the church, and consisting   of two seats in breadth; and which loft should be a foot higher than the common loft, that it might not obstruct the sight of the minister from the common loft, with power and liberty to the said Andrew Hay to strike out a door through the said south wall, at the court hall stair-head, and a little window above the said door for giving  light to the said seat, that his entry to the said seat might be from the stair-head; and which loft, with the liberty aforesaid, should belong to him and his successors as their own proper seat in all time coming.  In witness whereof (written by George Kennedy, lawful son to Robert Kennedy of Auchtifardell), the Duchess Anne of Hamilton, Will.  Weir, Will G.Sommervell, George Weir, Robert Kennedy, and Gilb. Kennedy subsribed the document.  The session allowed the clerk to subscribe the principal warrant in their name.

About the year 1730, the property of Craignethan was acquired, by purchase, from the family of Hay, by the Duke of Douglas.  On the Duke’s decease it passed with his other unentailed lands to the family of Douglas, whose representative, the Countess of Home, now enjoys possession of it.

Craignethan Castle has acquired immense additional celebrity from the fact that it was universally fixed upon by the public as the prototype of Tillietudlem, in Sir Walter Scott’s novel of “Old Mortality.”  On the publication of the novel in 1816, the recognition was immediate.  Skene of Rubislaw, whose accuracy has been sometimes questioned, but who enjoyed uninterrupted intimacy with Sir Walter Scott for the period of forty years, writes in his work upon the “Waverly Novels:” – “The plate is offered not as the actual original of the imaginary Tillietudlem, the centre of so many of the more striking incidents of the tale, for that mansion was the pure creation of fancy, although, no doubt, founded on the intimate knowledge possessed by the author of the characteristic features which distinguished the baronial towers of the higher class of the Scottish nobility at the period which he describes.  While the principle prevailed in this country of selecting for the position of these towers (possessing alike the character of fortress and family mansion), such sites as naturally presented advantages of defence, with such variety in the adjustments of the different parts as was deemed indispensable for such buildings, nevertheless, so close a similarity of taste and resemblance in the general arrangements prevails among all of them, as to render a description of one not unsuitable to many.   There are few districts of the country in which prototypes  of Tillietudlem, as it is presented to us, might not be seen in ruins, forming the romantic feature of Scottish landscapes, but general consent seemed to have assigned to-the picturesque remains of Criagnethan, the honour of having suggested the ideal picture, as that ruin occupies a station adapted to the circumstances  of the tale, and possesses features in many respects analagous to the description given.  In reference, therefore, to that public award of resemblance, and with the author’s concurrence, it is presented as what might very well have been the mansion of Lady Margaret, and it has, in virtue of that adoption, been admitted into the present series of real localities.”

Sir Walter Scott visited Craignethan Castle in the autumn of 1799, while the guest of Lord and Lady Douglas at Bothwell Castle.  The occurrence is thus described in “Lockhart’s Life of Scott:” – “One morning during this visit was spent on an excursion to the ruins of Craignethan Castle, the seat, in former times, of the great Evandale branch of the house of Hamilton, but now the property of Lord Douglas, and the poet expressed such rapture with the scenery, that his host urged him to accept for his lifetime the use of a small habitable house, enclosed within the circuit of the ancient walls.  This offer was not at once declined, but circumstances occurred before the end of the year, which rendered it impossible for him to establish his summer residence in Lanarkshire.   The Castle of Craignethan is the original of his Tillietudlem.”  One cannot avoid remarking that this is high authority.  The passage in the novel itself is as follows:- “The tower of Tillietudlem stood, or perhaps yet stands, upon the angle of a very precipitous bank, formed by the junction of a considerable brook with the Clyde.” 

In his preface to the “Chronicles of the Canongate”  (which was the first novel which appeared after the avowal of the authorship of the “Waverly Novels”, made at the Theatrical Fund dinner in 1827), Sir Walter, after alluding to various  localities which had been affixed to the scenery of these novels, and which he pronounced to be “of that general kind which necessarily exists between scenery of the same character,” went on to state: “If castles like Tillietudlem, or mansions like the Baron indiscriminate destruction which has removed or ruined so many monuments of antiquity, when they were not protected by their inaccessible situation.”  In his notes to “Old Mortality,” he says: “The Castle of Tillietudlem is imaginary, but the ruins of Craignethan Castle, situated on the Nethan, about three miles (one) from the junction with the Clyde, have something of the character of the description in the text”.

When the lamentable state of Sir Walter’s health rendered foreign travel advisable, the following conversation with his son-in-law, Lockhart, took place at Naples in April 1832:- “In one of our drives,” says Lockhart, “the subject of Sir Walter’s perhaps most popular romance, in which Lady Margaret Bellenden defends the Castle of Tillietudlem, was mentioned as having been translated into Italian, under the title of the ‘Scottish Puritans’,  of which he highly approved.  I told him how strange the names of the places and personages appeared in their Italian garb, and remarked that the castle was so well described, and seemed so true a picture, that I had always imagined he must have had some real fortress in view.  He said it was very true, for the castle he had visited, and fallen so much in love with it that he wanted to live there.  He added a joke in regard to his having taken his hat off when he visited this favourite spot, remarking, that as the castle had been uncovered for many centuries, he himself might be uncovered for an hour !”  “It had,” said Sir Walter, “no roof, no windows, and not much wall.  I should have had to make three miles of road, so before the affair was settled I got wiser.”