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An interesting picture of these gentler times (though
they also include the English Civil War and Scotland’s part in it) emerges from the AncramLothian correspondence
covering the period of over 30 years. The majority of the letters which
have survived are from William, later third Earl of Lothian, to his
father Sir Robert Kerr, later first Earl of Ancram. They contain
fatherly advice on the young man’s priorities at Cambridge and on how
Ancram House was to be rebuilt, as well as requests from Lothian to his
father for a horse, a sober barber-valet, and of course money — something all sons seem to want from their fathers
today, as they did 350 years ago!
One of the first letters from Sir Robert Kerr reminds
his son of what he should be doing as a 16-year old undergraduate:
"William, I would not let my friend Mr. Curwen
come to you without this remembrance, that he may see I value you as
you are to me. He must go away, I see, to leave the school to be a
married man —let
not that move you, for till your time of learning be out, you must be
content to follow your book, and take such company as you find,
whether it be here or
elsewhere — nor
must you set your heart on any man, for men are but sojourners in this
world; best friends never certainly stay together till they meet in
heaven; therefore every man must betake himself to love where his
present affairs lie. Your present business is your book, and the place
is Cambridge."
In another letter, ten years later, William writes to
his father that John Kerr is on his way with details of "the
breadth and length of the stone withe arms is Over Ancram gate and what
is carved and written on it" and
a few days later he tells his father about various financial problems:
"I wrote to you in my last that Sir Henry
Wardlaw had refused to pay your pension: but my Lord Traquair
yesternight gave me better answer, when I desired he would be pleased
to pay it, or else to satisfy the Town of Edinburgh for what is due to
them for this term. I hope tomorrow all creditors shall be for this
term satisfied."
Though the younger man wrote many more letters,
sometimes three or four within a few days, the longest by far was
written by his father in December 1632. Dated of the 20th, it must certainly have taken him a few days to write;
what follows only amounts to a few brief extracts.
"And because it begins with your receiving my advice
for building in Ancram, and what you would do about the parks,
so far as I can think on it for this time I
will set it down here, expecting that you will
either do it just as I chalk for you (because I would have it done to my fancy) or else you will before you go so far that
it cannot be altered, give better reason by your next letter....
But if I pay for it, take my counsel along
with you, and God bless and direct you in all you do."
(Sir Robert goes on to give detailed advice
about the reconstruction of the Tower: the room under the hall is
to be made into an "ordinary eating room", with the
partitions removed to give more light, but the walls not to be
weakened by "striking out" new windows.)
"Then smooth the stairs with lime and glaze
it all, enlarging the windows on the inside and sloping them
down to the bottom...
Of the room above it...
now
the dining room, make a fair chamber, taking away these oblong
tables and put a round table only in it, which is to be used square
most times, but may be let out round when you please to eat there
with some extraordinary friend...
The chamber above let
it be
as it is, but lay the boards better, and set but one bed in it with the head to the wall in the middle of the chambers.
By any means do not take away the battlement, as
some gave me counsel to do, as Dalhousie your neighbour did, for
that is the grace of the house and makes it look
like a castle, and hence so noblest, as the other would make it look
like a peel."
Sir Robert’s advice also covers the general
lay-out of the grounds:
"Now to come back to the orchard or garden,
you will have much ado to make them very fine, but the next best is
to have enough of them, and where fruit trees will grow, plant them,
but never plant a fruit tree where it will not
grow well. Never plant it where the north wind
comes to it: it is lost labour — plant other trees there."
The whole letter would have run to about 40 pages
of modern writing paper and covers 15 pages even in print. What is
most remarkable about it is Sir Robert Ken’s
photographic memory for even the minutest details of his house and
property, which he had not seen for some years, and his very clear
idea of just how he wanted everything to be and where. One wonders
whether anybody educated by modern methods, which lay far less
stress on memorisation, could have written down such thorough and
coherent instructions.
In an amusing letter of 18th February 1641, Lord
Lothian, then a colonel in the Scots Army occupying Newcastle,
writes to his father, who was politically on the other side:
"1 cannot out of our army furnish you with a
sober fiddler. There is a fellow here plays exceedingly well, but he
is intolerably given to drink, nor have we many of these people. Our
army has few or none that carry not arms. We are sadder (more
serious-minded) and graver than ordinary soldiers, only we are well
provided of pipers. I have one for every company in my regiment, and
think they are as good as drums."
(Lord Lothian also asks his father for a sober
valet, who is also a barber, preferably an English-speaking
Frenchman, if necessary one who only has French. A few days later he
asks for a horse suitable for a light skirmish or a reconaissance,
rather than for baffle.)
Later items in the correspondence include an
interesting letter from "T. Cunningham" to Lord Lothian (9
January 1650) giving details of his efforts to buy Linden frees,
apple (abeel) frees and cherry-frees as well as an expensive
collection of atlases and maps in Holland, and a memorandum on Scottish foreign policy by Lord Lothian exactly a year later. At this
date Scotland was a monarchy under Charles II while England was in
effect a military dictatorship under Cromwell, and Lothian’s
purpose was to send envoys to a number of European countries
(including his kinsman Sir William Kerr to Denmark and Sweden), to
obtain financial and military support for the King. The
"motives" calculated to induce these countries are worth
quoting in detail:
GERMANY. "A
Prince murdered by a faction of rebellious secretaries, like the
rebellion of the anabaptists at Munster, which their predecessors so
vigorously opposed and repressed, it is the interest of all
Princes.." (in other words, all rulers should stick together
against rebels everywhere).
SWEDEN "The services done by this nation to
her grandfather and father (up to 30,000 Scots, led by the Leslie
brothers, had fought for Gustavus Adolphus, Queen Christina’s
father), and the great inclination this nation has to maintain
strict friendship with that crown; the great respect they bear to
the glorious memory of the late invincible King; the great virtues
of her present Majesty who, as her royal Father, was the assertor of
the liberty of Germany and consequently of Europe upon the
Continent, her Majesty may perfect it, in delivering from oppression
this island, and to acknowledge her Majesty’s mediation which was 50
successful at Breda..
FRANCE "The ancient alliance and the near
relation of his Majesty, a nephew of France, and that they see a
daughter of France Queen Dowager, banished from England and her
jointure and interest there, after the murder of her Lord and
Husband, a King; which all Kings ought jealously to look upon"
HOLLAND "Letters to the general and
particular Estates of the provinces the ancient friendship betwixt
the Earls of Holland, Dukes of Gelder, the Dukes of Burgundy; and to
the Estates in the infancy and beginning, the Scots being the first
nation that gave them assistance (in the Dutch Wars of Independence
from 1570 onwards). The blood the Scots have lost in their
service.., upon many occasions they know so well themselves better
than we should put them in particular mind of them."
POLAND "The great interest Scotland has
these many ages in Poland, that kingdom and Scotland being as it were one people, such great numbers of
this nation inhabiting and naturalised in Poland".
A year later, Lord Ancram writes to his son, Lord
Lothian, complaining of the lack of letters from him (it may well
have been that some letters were stolen en route as the whole
correspondence mentions many which have "miscarried") and
telling him that the bearer, a refugee from the defeat at Worcester
(September 1651) will be able to give him more news "I see
nothing of him to make me think him unfit to tell you of my way of
living here which he has seen so long, and can tell you it as you
ask him. Your children are in good health, God be thanked, and I am
chained to this place, where I must stay a prisoner or a pawn for
myself, till I quit the score.
The master of our house, however he feels for it
as a merchant not very rich, he and his wife use me so civilly that
I am the more bound to leave them no losers". From a letter
written a few months later by Lady Ancram, who had remained in
London when her husband fled to Holland, it appears that he was
staying with a Scottish merchant in Amsterdam, Thomas Morton, whose
wife was getting increasingly restless about his inability to pay
for his keep, and was threatening legal action. ."if a course
be not taken to satisfy the charges she has been at all this while,
she must be forced to take a course that will be prejudicial to him
and all his... I think I shall not need to use many words to press
you to consider your Father’s condition, and fry what way may be
done with the man, that your father may not suffer starving nor
disgrace, which I know would be a great heartbreaking to him and a
means to make him go to the grave with shame and discomfort..."
In February 1653, Lord Ancram writes again to his
son... "I receive good words and hopes from my friends in
London, that the Parliament will call me home to my family there,
and give me means out of my own, duly gotten and not greedily, to
live and die among them, and be no longer a burden to you... I come
now from Leyden, where I have been to see your children, who are
very well in their health (God be thanked) and grow in stature and
comeliness, and great comfort to me if it please Him to let them live... I think in my
opinion they have lived long enough in this place, wherein I think
they can learn little more, and I see so many carried to the grave
every day, or else fall into this country disease of a cruel ague or
fever, or by whatever other term they please to call it.
But I would have you
send them to France, the best ayre of Europe, and country fittest for
them, when it is so unfit for them to be at home (evidently they had
been sent abroad for their own safety as well as for their
education).. If you wrote any letters with Mr. Morton which may
concern me or them, I wrote to you that he had flung them overboard,
as did his fellow passengers, for fear of an English ship which sailed
by them and came not near them..."
Ancram writes another
letter towards the end of 1653, carried by "Andro Rutherford, the
Provost of Jedburgh’s son, who having served out his apprenticeship
under mine host, Thomas Merton, is now coming home, as wind and
weather and other sea crosses (probably pirates and such) will give
him leave. He has carried himself very well, and parts fairly from his
master and mistress, and the rest of the house, wherein you will not
do amiss to give him a good countenance of approbation". He also
gives news of Michael Young and Lothian’s sons, then on their way to
France, sailing from Zeeland (the S.W. part of the present
Netherlands) along the Belgian and French coast to Dieppe, from which
they would continue to Saumur on the Loire5, and advises
the boys should be allowed to learn dancing, "with the best
masters in Paris, where they must spend some time". In the same
letter he informs his son that he has had a portrait of himself
painted, which is on its way home "I sent home by these goods
which come to Scotland a picture of mine for you, done by a good hand.
I would have it hung up in Ancram on the wall of the hall, just
against the door as you come in. .it may be a monument of my so long
being there and note to show which of the bairns is Iikest their
grandfather".
The correspondence also
includes poems by Lord Ancram, his adaptations of the Psalms to be
sung to French Protestant tunes, which he considered as better than
those used in Scotland, and a remarkable list of the books bought in
France by Lord Lothian while he was there on behalf of the Scottish
Government, i.e. the leaders of the Covenant, of whom he was one. How
he was able to carry them all home is not clear, but men of substance
did not travel light in those days.
FOOTNOTES
1.During much of the period
covered by this correspondence. Sir Robert Kerr (later Earl of Ancram) was in
or near London, in the service of Charles I. while Sir William Kerr (later
Earl of Lothian) was generally in Scotland. occasionally in England or France.
At the outset, however, Sir Robert was in Scotland and Sir William at
Cambridge. From 1650 onwards, Lord Ancram was in Holland and Lord Lothian
generally in Scotland, at Newbattle Abbey (now an Adult Education College).
As will be seen on p.59 these
letters took a considerable time to reach their destination, typically nine or
ten days between Scotland and London, or vice versa, and three weeks to a
month between Scotland and Holland. They were generally carried by family
friends, merchants and others who had occasion to travel along those routes
and would then be left in a shop or an inn, to be collected when the intended
recipient or one of his servants happened to call there.
Since these letters were
exchanged between a father and son who might not meet for years on end, and
the invention of the telephone was still about 250 years away, they tended to
be far longer and to carry more news and views than the letters close
relatives might write to each other in our own time. Some of the information
tended to be repetitive, because many letters were lost on the way or never
collected (the shopkeeper or publican with whom they were left might forget
all about them, or the intended recipient might have taken his custom
elsewhere).
The "Ancram-Lothian"
correspondence also includes many interesting letters exchanged between Lord
Lothian and other people, in particular his wife.
2.Scots were particularly
numerous in the vicinity of Danzig (Gdansk) where many Poles of Scottish
descent remain; thus it is probable that Lech Walesa, the Solidarity leader,
is distantly related to Sir William Wallace. In the 19th century and again
following on the Second World War, there was a considerable Polish immigration
into Scotland.
3.There were two serious
financial problems. In the first place Lord Ancram’s pension, previously
paid to him by Charles I, had been cut off, leaving him with considerable
debts at home; for this reason, and because he did not care to live under the
Cromwell régime, even though he was not being personally molested by the
Republican authorities, he had taken refuge in Holland. Secondly, again
because his pension had been cut off, and because Lord Lothian himself was
heavily in debt as a result of his part in the Covenant and the Civil Wars,
Ancram was unable to pay for his board and lodging in Amsterdam, and owed the
Mortons for about 18 months as a paying guest.
4.Probably rheumatic fever,
possibly malaria (from which Cromwell also died). The boys’ tutor, Michael
Young, had been seriously ill with it, and Lord Ancram had gone to Leyden
"to see in what plight they were".
5.This may seem a strange route
to us, but what is now Belgium was then Spanish territory, and as such unsafe
for the sons of Presbyterian noblemen. Saumur, about 150 miles SW. of Paris,
was one of a number of towns where, under the Edict of Nantes, Protestants had
full freedom of worship and other guarantees, which they retained until 1685
when the Edict was revoked. The boys were sent there mainly for that reason,
but there were also traditional links between the Loire Valley and Scotland,
going back to the later stages of the Hundred Years’ War, when thousands of
Scots fought in the service of the Dauphin, later Charles VII, and many of
those who survived settled locally. Thus Orleans was defended by its Scottish
Bishop, Carmichael, in 1428-29, and St. Joan of Arc’s force, which relieved
it on 8 May, was about half Scottish: it entered the city to the marching tune
which later became "Scots Wha’ Hae".
The letters which passed
between Ancram and Lothian, and their correspondence with others, were
generally carried by friends, acquaintances, etc. who happened to be
travelling that way at the time. Very often they were delivered to a pub or a
grocer’s shop, frequently used by the intended recipient or by his servants.
The postal service as we know it today did not exist, though there were some
(very expensive) private postal operators, sometimes described as
"trumpeters". They were not always reliable, and complaints of
letters not arriving are very frequent. Even if they were not stolen or thrown
overboard, letters could take a considerable time to reach their destination,
typically ten days between Scotland and London, and three weeks between
Scotland and Holland.
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