EGLESHEIM,
a surname derived from the parish of Eaglesham in Renfrewshire, (the
original property of the earls of Eglinton, and the birthplace of Robert
Pollok, author of ‘The Course of Time,’) which received its name from the
Norman French eglise, (which is again a corruption of Latin
ecclesia,) a church or place of worship, and ham, the Saxon
word for a village. To the latter must also be referred the surname of
Eccles, from a parish of that name in Berwickshire, in which there was
once a nunnery, as also the corruption Kil.
In 1626, a Scots
physician of the name of George Eglisheim, one of the physicians of King
James the Sixth, who had fled to Flanders on the king’s death, published a
book, wherein he offered to prove that the marquis of Hamilton and several
othere noblemen, as well as King James himself, had been poisoned by the
king’s favourite, George Villiers, duke of Buckingham. This curious work
is entitled ‘The Fore-runner of Revenge upon the Duke of Buckingham, for
the Poysoning of the Most Potent King, James, of happie memorie, King of
Great Britaine, and the Lord Marquis of Hamilton, and others of the
nobilitie; discovered by Mr. George Eglesheme, one of King James his
Physicians for his Majestie’s persoun above the space of ten yeeres.’ An
account of Eglesheim’s book, and a minute description of the ‘poisoning’
of the king by Buckingham and his mother, will be found inserted in
Calderwood’s History of the Church of Scotland, vol. vii. p. 634 to the
end. |