Life and Death of Habbie Simson, Piper of Kilbarchan.’ The intrinsic merits of the piece, as well as its graphically humorous picture of the amusements of the olden time, would alone entitle its author to a high place among Scottish poets, but it is specially notable besides for its stave, a revival of an ancient one which had passed into desuetude. Through the popularity of the poem the stave became the standard one for Scots elegiac verse long before Burns gave it his special imprimatur. The elegy is supposed to date from about 1640, and had achieved wide popularity as a broadside before it was included in Watson's ‘Choice Collection,’ 1706–1709. Sempill is also credited with the authorship of the epitaph on ‘Sawny Briggs, nephew to Habbie Simson and brother to the Laird of Kilbarchan,’ in the same stanza; and he no doubt was the author of other poems—it may even be of some attributed to his son Francis [q. v.] Robert Sempill died between 1660 and 1669. By his wife, Marie Lyon, daughter of Lyon of Auldbar, he had a son Francis, and a daughter Elizabeth, married to Sir George Maxwell of New Wark.
[James Melville's Diary in the Wodrow Society; m'Crie's Life of Andrew Melville; Reg. P. C. Scotl. vol. vi.; Calderwood's Hist. of the Kirk of Scotland; Paterson's Poems of the Sempills of Beltrees, 1849.]
SEMPHILL or SEMPLE, ROBERT, third Lord Sempill (d. 1572), commonly called the great Lord Sempill, was the elder son of William, second lord Sempill, by his first wife, Lady Margaret Montgomery, eldest daughter of Hugh, first earl of Eglinton. The family from the thirteenth century were heritable bailiffs of the regality of Paisley, and sheriffs of Renfrewshire, under the lord high steward of Scotland. They frequently distinguished themselves in the English wars, and were employed in important duties of state. Sir Thomas Sempill, father of John, first lord Sempill, was killed at the battle of Sauchieburn on 11 June 1488, fighting in support of James III, and the first lord (created by James IV about 1489), fell at Flodden on 9 Sept. 1513.
The third lord, while master of Sempill, obtained, on 20 Oct. 1533, a charter of the office of governor and constable of the king's castle of Douglas. He succeeded his father in 1548. Being a steadfast supporter of the queen regent against the lords of the congregation, he is described by Knox as ‘a man sold under sin, an enemy to God and to all godliness’ (Works, i. p. 339). On account of an attack he had made on Arran, the lords of the west resolved to take his house of Castle Semple, and laid siege to it in December 1559 (Cal. State Papers, For. 1559–60, No. 395). Leaving his son at Castle Semple, he took refuge in the stronghold of Dunbar, then under the command of a French captain, M. Sarlabois. The latter was in August 1560 asked to give him up (ib. 1560–1, No. 428), but declined to do so until he received the command of the king and queen (ib. No. 538). Randolph shortly afterwards reported that Sempill had conveyed himself secretly out (ib. No. 550), then that he had retired to his own castle with twenty arquebusiers lent him by Sarlabois (ib. No. 571), and, finally, that he had gone to France (ib. No. 661); but when his castle was taken in November (ib. No. 717), he was still at Dunbar. He was ‘relaxed from the horn’ in March 1561 (ib. 1561–2, No. 15).
Sempill was one of the ‘nobles and barons of the west country’ who on 5 Sept. signed a band in support of Mary and Darnley, in opposition to the Earl of Moray and other rebels (Reg. P. C. Scotl. i. 363), and in the army raised against them held a command in the vanguard of the battle (ib. p. 379); but though a catholic, he, after the murder of Darnley, joined the association for the ‘defences of the young prince’ in opposition to Bothwell and the queen. At Carberry Hill on 14 June 1567 he commanded in the vanguard of the army which opposed the queen; and he was also one of those who signed the documents authorising William Douglas of Lochleven to take the queen under his charge in his fortalice of Lochleven. In Morton's declaration regarding the discovery and custody of the ‘casket letters,’ he is mentioned as having been present at the opening of the casket. After the queen's escape from Lochleven he assembled his dependents against her at Langside on 13 May 1568; and on the 19th he was, with the Earl of Glencairn, appointed lieutenant of the western parts, with special instructions to watch the castle of Dumbarton, and prevent the entrance into it of provisions or reinforcements or fugitives (ib. i. 614–15). For his special services he obtained a gift of the abbey of Paisley. Notwithstanding the utmost efforts of Glencairn and Sempill, the castle of Dumbarton continued to hold out, until, on 1 April 1571, its rock was scaled by Thomas Crawford [q. v.] of Jordanhill. Previous to this Sempill, while returning one evening in May 1570 from the army which had demolished the castle of the Hamiltons, was seized by some of the Hamiltons' dependents, and carried a prisoner to Draffen, whence he was shortly
