dying this day, I was absent till his burial was over." Sir John was a second time married on the 26th of March, 1687, to Marion Anderson, daughter of Anderson of Balram, who survived him.
The domestic tranquillity of this excellent man was long harassed by ths machinations of a step-mother,—his father's third wife, of whose heteroclite proceedings we must give a slight sketch. This woman, Margaret Ramsay, daughter to George Ramsay of Iddington, to whom Sir John Lauder's father was united in 1670, at the ripe age of 86, prevailed on her husband to procure a baronet's title, which he obtained in July, 1688, and the lady, showing that she had more important designs than the gratification of female vanity, managed, by an artifice for which parental affection can scarcely form an excuse, to get the patent directed to her own son George, and the other heirs male of her body, without any reference to the children of the previous marriage.
A document among the papers of Sir John Lauder, being a draft of an indictment, or criminal libel, at the instance of the lord advocate, before the privy council, against the lady and her relations, gives us his own account of the transaction: it is dated 1690, and commences "Memorandum for Sir John Lauder, to raise ane libell at privy counsell at the instance of Sir J. D. (Sir John Dalrymple), his majesty's advocate, for his majesty's interest, and of Sir John Lauder, Mr William and Andrew Lauders, his brothers german, against Margaret Ramsay, &c." Neither the Medea of Euripides, nor the old ballad of "Lord Randal my Son," gives a more beau ideal picture of the proceedings of the "cruel step-dame," than this formidable document. It accuses her of having "weaned her husband by her excessive importunity and ambition to procure and accept ane knight baronet's patent;" that, having managed through her relations to direct the destination in the manner we have mentioned, the old gentleman immediately sent the patent to Mr Robert Lauder to be altered, and Mr Robert, certainly not having the fear of what are awfully termed consequences before his eyes, proceeded to his duty, when the enraged lady "with several others of her accomplices, intending by force to have taken the patent from him, threatened to see his heart's blood if he did not deliver it presently." Farther, "to fright her husband to comply with her unreasonable and unjust demands, she threatened that she would starve herself if that patent was not taken to her son, and that she would kill herself if she saw any of the complainers come near the house, and if he did not absolutely discharge them his presence;" and still more emphatically, "she tore the clothes off her body, and the hoods off her head, and sware fearful oaths, that she would drown herself and her children, and frequently cursed the complainers, and defamed and traduced them in all places, and threatened that she hoped to see them all rooted out, they and their posterity, off the face of the earth, and her children would succeed to all."[1] A decree appears to have been obtained against the defenders in the privy council; and the patent being reduced in the civil court, a new destination was obtained, by which Sir John Lauder succeeded to the family title and estates on the death of his father in 1692.
- ↑ Notwithstanding her ferocity, this woman seems to have managed to be regretted at her death. She is the only person to whom, from the date (April 18, 1713), we can apply a piece of doggrel. "In obitum piae ac generosissimæ Dominæ D.A. Fountainhall, Elegidium, ad usum et captum adolescentuli ejusdem filii Alexandri Lauder, ex industria accommodatum. It thus elegantly commences:
An quia matrona es, generoso stemmate nata
Fatorum rigido numine, sancta cadis."
Or as it is Englished,
"Fallen by the dismal stroke of harsher fate,
Because by birth, but more by virtue great.
Pamphlets Ad. Lib. M.S.S.
