The removal of James
VI. and his court to London, and the long peace enjoyed by Scotland
during his reign, occasioned a great scarcity of military employment
at home, and compelled vast numbers of those brave spirits, whose
swords would otherwise have been drawn against their old hereditary
foe, to seek fame and fortune under the banners of the various
princes who were warring for supremacy in the great religious
struggle which then convulsed Europe — the long and desperate
contest between Protestantism and Catholicism.
Among these adventurers, the most eminent for his chivalry and
gallantry, his accomplishments as a gentleman, his personal prowess
and intrepidity as a soldier, for possessing a calm command of his
passions, the power of consulting his own mind, and acting with due
decision in the midst of great and sudden danger, was John Hepburn,
a Scottish soldier of fortune, whose name every historian of his
time has recorded with honour.
Descended from a long line of illustrious ancestors, the Hepburns of
Hailes and Bothwell, (who deduced their blood from Sir Adam Hepburn,
a distinguished warrior under Robert Bruce, from whom he obtained
the lands of North Hailes and Traprene,) he was the second son of
George Hepburn of Athelstaneford, a small property in East Lothian,
which was held feudally of their kinsmen, the Hepburns of Waughton.
The earliest notice of his family occurs on the 24th November 1569,
when George Hepburn of Athelstaneford was cited before an assize,
for slaying "vmq le Johnne Geddes, and hurting and wounding diverse
vtheris,” while besieging the Place and Fortalice of Waughton, in
January of that year, the said slaughter having been committed by
his son Andrew. Nearly all of his sirname in Haddingtonshire were
concerned in this tumult, under Robert Hepburn, younger of Waughton,
who was endeavouring to recapture his ancestral house from the
kingsmen; and broke into the barbican, from the stables of which he
took sixteen steeds; but the Laird of Carmichael, captain of the
Tower, sallied forth sword in hand, slew three of the assailants,
and drove off the rest. Lord Hunsdon, governor of Berwick, in
writing from that place to Cecil, says, he was "advertised that the
Hepburns and Hamiltons were besieging Waughton, and that the Lord
Home was going with all his forces to rescue it.”
George Hepburn was also acquitted of intercommuning with Harry
Hepburn of Fortune and Patrick Hepburn of Kirklandhill, then
denounced as rebels and traitors, for being, like himself, adherents
of their lord and chief, the outlawed Bothwell, duke of Orkney. He
was also found innocent of the charge of slaying three of the king’s
soldiers at the battle of Langside, where, in the preceding year, he
had fought under the banner of Queen Mary.
George Hepburn had five sons (including the Marshal) and several
daughters, whose names there are now no means of ascertaining. He
died before 1616, as in that year his eldest son, also named George
Hepburn, was retoured in the lands of Athelstaneford.
Two years afterwards, Isabella "sorori germane quond. Georgij
Hepburne portionerij de Ethilstanefurd,” obtained a gift of the
Abbeymill of Haddington.
Their kinsmen, the Hepburns of Waughton, since the days of the Earl
of Bothwell, had been under ban by the government for various
causes; and at the time when John Hepburn left his home for the
camp, his uncle, the knight, was at feud with Douglas, the powerful
baron of Whittinghame, a strong castle in the same county.
“Good honest Johnne,” says the Earl of Mar, in a quaint letter to
his friend Murray, a courtier of James VI., “I haive vryttin this
letter vnto zou, in regaird of the present straitt of our freind,
the laird of Vachtune stands, for he is so huntitt be the laird of
Quhittingham, as their is no mesur in itt.”
John Hepburn was born about the year 1598 or 1600, at his father’s
house, which is still standing in Athelstaneford, and by the old
inhabitants of that sequestered district is pointed out to strangers
as the birthplace of a marshal of France, for that is remembered,
though his name is forgotten there now. It is a plain old edifice,
situated at the east end of the village burying-ground, and not many
yards from the foundation of a ruined church, which belonged to the
Franciscans of Haddington.
This ancient mansion, the old steps of which young Hepburn helped to
hollow, stands about a hundred paces back from the main-street of
the hamlet, and is principally distinguished by a great projecting
chimney, or ingle lum. It consists of two stories, and occupies a
prominent situation on rising ground, overlooking a fertile
district, with the Peffer wandering through it to the German sea,
which is visible in the distance; the cone of Berwick Law rises on
the north-east, and the rocky hills of Dirleton start up abruptly on
the west. Before it lie the deep hollow and the ford, where the
Scots defeated and slew Athelstan, the Saxon king; and near it is
the village kirk, with a few old moss-grown trees, where the gled
and the crow build their nests.
Young Hepburn is said to have been tall, active, powerful, and
handsome in figure and face. His manner and bearing, when clad in
the rich half-armour of the period, were deemed eminently noble and
commanding, bespeaking the decision of the soldier, mingled with the
politeness of the courtier. From his earliest childhood he was
remarkable for his high spirit, quick courage, and invincible
resolution.
He was of that constitution of mind which, of all others, was most
likely to lead him to eminence; for, to the strongest powers of
perception, he added the talent of fortunate decision. "With such
minds,” says Lacon, "to resolve and act is instantaneous; they seem
to precede the march of time, to foresee events in the very
chrysalis of their causes, and to seize that moment for action,
which others waste in deliberation.”
Such was Sir John Hepburn.
That presence of mind which enabled him during his military career
to avail himself with facility of latent natural resources, amid
those sudden and dangerous emergencies incident to the wars of his
time, bespoke that courage d'esprit for which this brave cavalier
was pre-eminent. He rode with skill and grace, and excelled in the
use of the sword—a science at that time sedulously cultivated among
the Scottish gentry, for it was the weapon by which all disputes
were settled, and to which all men of honour appealed. Colonel
Robert Munro, his friend and class-fellow, in his scarce and
valuable work, The Expedition, ever speaks of Hepburn with the
highest praise. Being "comerades in danger together,” says the
colonel, "so being long acquainted, we were comerades in love: first
at college, next in our travells in France.” Hepburn left school in
1614; but at what university he studied cannot be stated with
certainty, unless he is identified with a Joannes Hepbume, who in
the beginning of the following year was matriculated at St Leonard’s
College, St Andrews. If so, he must have studied but a short time,
as in the close of 1615 he made a continental tour, and visited
Paris and Poictiers with Munro, studying the manners and languages
of the countries through which they passed, and rendering himself
familiar with their history and military institutions.
It is a popular fallacy in Scotland that all the great Scottish
generals of the Thirty Years’ War were unlettered soldiers of
fortune; but we are assured, says Lord Hailes, that "Sir Robert
Munro and Sir John Hepburn joined the more important advantages of
academical study in foreign parts, as well as at home.”
It is extremely probable that he was the John Hepburn who studied at
St Leonard’s, as that university was founded by one of his family,
John Hepbume, prior of the Augustinian Monastery, and son of Adam,
second Lord Hailes. Many students of his name were studying there
during the first twenty years of the seventeenth century; and one of
these, James Hepburn, died at Rome, keeper of the Vatican Library;
but, after a search through the MSS. records of the universities of
both Edinburgh and St Andrews, the name of Robert Munro could not be
found among those who had matriculated.
We are told that the rising fame of Gustavus Adolphus, of whose
character young Hepburn “heard frequent commendations, gave birth to
a spark of military ardour within his breast, which was never
extinguished till his death;” and that, soon after his return home
from the Continent, a path was opened to the military emulation of
the Scots, by the spirited attempt which was made, in the year 1620,
to rescue the kingdom of Bohemia from the grasp of the house of
Hapsburg.
The drums of Sir Andrew Gray, a brave soldier of fortune, were then
beating up for recruits, to follow him to the Bohemian wars; and
with the forces he had mustered, in the spring of 1620, he formed a
camp on the Monkrig, a property of the Hepburns in East Lothian, and
not far from the rural village of Athelstaneford.
The name of Sir Andrew Gray appears frequently in the histories of
James the Sixth’s time; and being a Catholic, he was eminently
obnoxious to the Scottish churchmen. In 1594, as a friend of the
Lord Home, “Captaine Andro Gray” was classed among papists and
traitors by the General Assembly and at the battle of Glenlivat,
where, on the 3d October that year, Argyle was defeated with such
slaughter by the Gordons, Colonel Andrew Gray, Knight, commanded the
Earl of Huntly’s artillery, which consisted of three culverins. |