More noted for craft than for courage, and blighted with the fate of the dynasty whose name they bore, were the Stewarts of Traquair. Sir John Stewart of Traquair was made a peer by Charles I. in 1628, and took a leading part in the Covenanting "troubles." He refused to risk his life at Philiphaugh; but, commanding a troop of horse in the Civil War (1648), he was captured. Four years afterwards he was released to find that his son had seized his estates. His remaining years were spent in poverty and disgrace. Dying in 1659, he was buried like a pauper, a shoemaker in pity lending his apron for a pall.

George Pringle of Torwoodlee, a scion of the Pringles of Selkirkshire, a well-known Border family, was appointed sheriff of Selkirk by Richard Cromwell in 1659. On the Restoration he was pardoned but heavily fined. He afforded succour to the Covenanters, assisted the Earl of Argyll to escape to Holland (1681) and, being himself charged with complicity in the Rye-house Plot, fled with Patrick Hume. Iri Holland Pringle was one of the council of twelve for the recovery of the rights and liberties of Scotland, and one of the committee of seven who planned Argyll’s invasion. In 1689 he, along with Scott of Harden, represented Selkirkshire in the Scottish Convention which offered the crown to William and Mary. His estates were restored ; but, worn out with his hardships, he died the same year.

With a taste for natural science, Mungo Park (1771—1806), son of a Foulshiels firmer, inherited the Borderer’s love of adventure. Educated at Selkirk Grammar School, he studied medicine, and sailed as surgeon to Sumatra. In 1795 he went to explore the Niger region. This made him famous, and his Travels in the Interior of Africa is still a classic. He settled in Peebles as a medical practitioner, but tired of the life and returned to the Niger, where he was drowned.

Though Michael Scott the Wizard (1175—1235) has only a supposed connexion with Selkirkshire, his name and fame are wedded with its history and literature. As a student of science and magic he had a European reputation:

"When, in Salamanca’s cave,
Him listed his magic wand to wave
The bells would ring in Notre Dame."

He was tutor to the Emperor Frederick II, and court physician and astrologer at Palermo. Returning to Scotland in 1230, he died about five years afterwards, and is buried, says tradition, in Melrose Abbey. His reputed abode was Oakwood Tower; but this Border keep was not built till 300 years after the wizard’s death. Dante has figured him in Purgatory with his head turned round looking backward because in life he had been a diviner.

The writers of the numerous old ballads are all unnamed save Nicol Burne, author of Leader Haughs and Yarrow. He is supposed to have been the foundling whom Mary Scott discovered forgotten amongst the baggage after the return of her husband, Wat o’ Harden, from a raid in Northumberland.

"He nameless as the race from which he sprung
Saved other names and left his own unsung."

But, known or unknown, the succession of poets has never failed. Robert Crawford (1695—1732) was author of Tweedside and of The Bush aboon Traquair. Hamilton of Bangour (1704—1754) wrote the Braes o’ Yarrow, the measure of which was imitated by Wordsworth in the Yarrow poems. Willie Laidlaw (1780-1845), born at Blackhouse in Selkirkshire, was the author of the pathetic lyric Lucy’s Flittin. Alison Rutherford (Mrs Cockburn), born at Fairnilee in 1712 and educated in Edinburgh, where she soon became renowned for her wit and beauty, was in very truth a nymph of the "Forest" and a "Maid of Athens." She was the authoress of the immortal Flowers of the Forest.

Sir Walter Scott, greatest of the Border minstrels and best of men, was, though born in Edinburgh, closely associated with Selkirkshire, by descent on the father’s side from Wat o’ Harden and on the mother’s from the Rev. John Rutherford of Yarrow, by his official position as sheriff of the county, and by residence at Ashiesteel. The scenery, the people, the life, the history, the traditions of Selkirk and Peebles—all influenced Scott and Scott’s work. "If no country ever owed so much for its fame to one man as Scotland to Sir Walter Scott, no part of it has so earned distinction through his notice as Selkirkshire." The Minstrelsy is full of Selkirk influences, Marmion was written and Waverley was begun at Ashiesteel. Scott’s pictorial power is finely displayed in local scenes as: "Tweedside in November" (Marmion, introduction to canto i); "Yarrow" (introduction to cantos iv and v); "A Snowstorm amongst the Hills" (canto iv); and, one of the best, "St Mary’s Loch in Calm" (introduction to canto ii). His novels are full of allusions to places and persons in the shires, and two of them, St Ronan’s Well and The Black Dwarf, deal especially with the district.

James Hogg, "the Ettrick Shepherd," was born in 1770, and with few and short migrations, lived in Selkirkshire all his life of sixty-five years as a shepherd and as a sheep farmer. He said he preferred a Border fair to a King’s coronation. His first important work was The Mountain Bard. His masterpiece is The Queen’s Wake, but his exquisite song, When the kye comes hame must not be forgotten. Though far below Burns as a poet, "there is a marked individuality in the shepherd’s songs and poems; he was a singer by genuine impulse, and there was an open-air freshness in his note." James Nicol (1769—1819), minister of Traquair, wrote Where Quair rins sweet amang the Flouirs ; and Thomas Smibert (1810—1834), a doctor and a native of Peebles, the Scottish Widow’s Lament. Professor John Wilson, "Christopher North" (1785—1854), was author of 39 out of 70 of the Noctes, and the friend of Wordsworth and of Hogg. Thomas Tod Stoddart (1810—1880) in his fishing songs praises Lyne, Manor, Yarrow, Gala, Tweed. Thomas Pringle (1789—1834) wrote his Autumnal Excursion, inspired by a visit to St Mary’s Loch. Another and finer Bush aboon Traquair was written by Principal Shairp (1819—1885). The Rev. Dr Russell in his Reminiscences and the Rev. Dr Borland in his Anthologies have carried on the literary tradition of Yarrow. John Veitch, a disciple of Scott and Wordsworth, was born in Peebles, 1829, and died there, 1894. He was professor of Logic at St Andrews and at Glasgow. Among his writings associated with his native district are Tweed and other Poems and his History and Poetry of the Scottish Border—the standard book on the subject. James Brown (1852—1904), a Selkirk manufacturer, under the nom de plume of J. B. Selkirk, wrote Selkirk after Flodden and O Yarrow garlanded with rhyme. As a poet and a man of letters, Andrew Lang (1844—1912), is the most distinguished son of Selkirkshire in modern times. Born at Selkirk, where he spent his childhood, he early displayed a bent towards literary pursuits. In range and productiveness he has had no rivals in Great Britain, and has even been seriously regarded as a society of authors. History, poetry, biography, belles—lettres, and comparative religion he treated with learning, liveliness and interest. His love for his native district has been beautifully expressed in Twilight on Tweed and Sunset on Yarrow.

The brothers William and Robert Chambers, the publishers, are the most eminent men of letters of modern times belonging to Peeblesshire. They were born at Peebles, William in 1800, Robert in 1802. In 1832 William started Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal. In 1859 he founded the Chambers Institute in Peebles. He was Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and carried out at his own cost the restoration of St Giles’ Cathedral. He died in 1883. His History of Peeblesshire is the standard book on the subject. Robert’s Vestiges of Creation was an anticipation of Darwin’s Origin of Species. His numerous other volumes include History of the Rebellions in Scotland, Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, The Life and Works of Robert Burns. Henry Calderwood (1830—1899), minister in Edinburgh and professor of Moral Philosophy, wrote Philosophy of the Infinite and Mind and Brain. James Nicol, professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Aberdeen, was the first discoverer of graptolites in the greywacke of the district. James Wilson, editor of the Border Advertiser, contributed to the elucidation of Professor Lapworth’s theory regarding the Silurian formation of the Southern Uplands.

In law and politics there are also eminent names. Andrew Pringle (Lord Alemoor), the son of John Pringle of the Haining, a senator of the College of Justice, was successively Sheriff of Selkirk, Solicitor-General for Scotland and a judge of the Court of Session. Sir James Montgomery’s name is honourably associated with land reform in the eighteenth century. The second son of William Montgomery of Macbie Hill, he was successively Sheriff of Peeblesshire, Solicitor-General, Lord Advocate, and Baron of the Exchequer of Scotland. In 1745 he purchased the estate of Stanhope and became an "Improver." Later he bought the Whim from the Duke of Argyll, and found as much wine in the cellar as paid for the estate. He was the author of the Entail Act, so advantageous to agricultural progress in Scotland. Montgomery also took an active part in the Parliamentary abolition of serfdom in Scotland. Macqueen of Braxfield was of a different type. A ferocious partisan in politics, he acted as a sort of Judge Jeffreys for the reactionary government of the period, circa 1793, in its efforts to repress the movement for political reform. Forbes Mackenzie of Portmore was M.P. for the county in 1830, and was responsible for the Forbes Mackenzie Act, the first important measure of licensing reform, which would have been unnecessary had every Scottish hostess followed the precepts and practice of "Meg Dods" of the Cleikum Inn at Peebles, who—according to Scott in St Ronan’s Well—discouraged late hours and deep potations.