METHVEN, Lord, a
title in the peerage of Scotland, conferred in 1528, by James
V., on Henry Stewart, second son of Andrew, Lord Evandale,
afterwards Lord Ochiltree, a descendant of Robert, duke of
Albany, son of King Robert II. He owed his peerage and success
in life to the favour of the queen-mother, Margaret, sister of
Henry VIII. of England, and widow of James IV. In 1524, previous
to her divorce from the earl of Angus, her second husband, she
raised Stewart first to the office of Treasurer, and afterwards
to that of chancellor, intrusting to his inexperienced hands the
chief guidance of public affairs. In the following year, on the
divorce being granted, she married him. The lordship of Methven,
in Perthshire, was part of the dowry lands usually appropriated
for the maintenance of the queen-dowager of Scotland, together
with the lordship and castle of Stirling and the lands of
Balquhidder, &c., and when Margaret procured the peerage for her
third husband, the barony of Methven was dissolved from the
crown, and erected into a lordship, in favour of Henry Stewart,
and his heirs male, on the queen’s resigning her jointure of the
lordship of Stirling.
Subsequently, when Angus held the
supreme power, an attempt on his part to obtain forcible
possession of the queen’s dowry lands, so alarmed Margaret and
Methven, that, in their terror, they took refuge in the castle
of Edinburgh. That fortress, however, was soon delivered up to
Angus, when he ordered Methven to a temporary imprisonment. The
queen afterwards endeavoured to obtain a divorce from Methven,
but her son, the young king, put a stop to the proceedings. By
Lord Methven the queen had a daughter, who died in infancy. Her
own death took place at the castle of Methven in 1540. Lord
Methven afterwards married Janet Stewart, daughter of the earl
of Athol, by whom he had a son, Henry, second Lord Methven.
The second Lord Methven married
Jean, daughter of Patrick Lord Ruthven, and was killed at
Broughton, in the vicinity of Edinburgh, by a cannon-ball shot
from the castle of that city during the siege thereof, 3d March
1572. He left a son, Henry, third Lord Methven, who died without
heirs male in 1584, when the title became extinct.
The lordship of Methven was
purchased in 1664, by Patrick Smythe of Braco, whose
great-grandson, David Smythe of Methven, was a lord of session
from 1793 to 1806, under the title of Lord Methven.
