by the English court, he endeavoured in vain to move Charles II to grant him a provision out of the Buccleuch estates. Towards the end of Charles's reign he took part in the plots concocted for the exclusion of the Duke of York from the throne, and being arrested was, on his own confession, found guilty of treason and condemned to death on 5 Jan. 1685. Owing, however, to his confession he obtained a remission, and was reinstated in his honours and lands by letters of rehabilitation on 28 June 1687. He died in April 1693. He married as his second wife, on 31 Dec. 1677, Helen, daughter of Thomas Hepburn of Humbie in East Lothian, and left by her five sons and five daughters.
[The Scotts of Buccleuch, by Sir William Fraser, i. 320–400 (with portraits of Tarras and his first wife).]
SCOTT, WALTER, of Satchells (1614?–1694?), captain and genealogist, born about 1614, was son of Robert Scott of Satchells, who was a grandson of Walter Scott of Sinton, by his second marriage with Margaret, daughter of James Riddell of that ilk. The captain's mother was Jean, daughter of Sir Robert Scott of Thirlestane. He spent his youth in herding cattle, but, running away in his sixteenth year, joined the regiment which his chief, Walter, first earl of Bucleuch, raised and transported to Holland in 1629. From that time he was, according to his own account, in active military service at home and abroad for fifty-seven years. He is said to have married and had a daughter, whom he named Gustava in honour of the famous king of Sweden. But what is more certain is that at the advanced age of seventy-five he began his rude metrical ‘True History of several honourable families of the right honourable name of Scot, in the shires of Roxburgh, Selkirk, and others adjacent, gathered out of ancient chronicles, histories, and traditions of our fathers.’ He describes himself on the title-page as
An old souldier and no scholler,
And one that could write nane,
But just the letters of his name.
He hired schoolboys to write to his dictation. His work was originally printed in 1688, and later editions appeared in 1776, 1786, 1892, and 1894.
[Preface to the 1894 edition of the ‘True History,’ by John G. Winning.]
SCOTT, Sir WALTER (1771–1832), author of the ‘Waverley Novels,’ son of Walter Scott by his wife Anne Rutherford, was born on 15 Aug. 1771 in a house in the College Wynd at Edinburgh, since demolished. The ‘True History of several honourable Families of the Right Honourable Name of Scot’ (1688), by Walter Scott of Satchells [q. v.], was a favourite of the later Walter from his earliest years. He learnt from it the history of many of the heroes of his writings. Among them were John Scott of Harden, called ‘the Lamiter,’ a younger son of a duke of Buccleuch in the fourteenth century; and John's son, William the ‘Boltfoot,’ a famous border knight. A later Scott called ‘Auld Wat,’ the Harden of the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ married Mary Scott, the ‘Flower of Yarrow,’ in 1567, and was the hero of many legends [see Scott, Walter, (1550?–1629?)]. His son, William Scott of Harden, was made prisoner by Gideon Murray of Elibank, and preferred a marriage with Murray's ugliest daughter to the gallows. William's third son, Walter, laird of Raeburn, became a quaker, and suffered persecutions described in a note to the ‘Heart of Midlothian.’ Raeburn's second son, also Walter, became a Jacobite, and was known as ‘Beardie,’ because he gave up shaving in token of mourning for the Stuarts. He died in 1729. ‘Beardie’ and his son Robert are described in the introductory ‘Epistles’ to ‘Marmion.’ Robert quarrelled with his father, became a whig, and set up as a farmer at Sandy Knowe. He was a keen sportsman and a ‘general referee in all matters of dispute in the neighbourhood.’ In 1728 he married Barbara, daughter of Thomas Haliburton of New Mains, by whom he had a numerous family. One of them, Thomas, died on 27 Jan. 1823, in his ninetieth year. Another, Robert, was in the navy, and, after retiring, settled at Rosebank, near Kelso. Walter Scott, the eldest son of Robert of Sandy Knowe, born 1729, was the first of the family to adopt a town life. He acquired a fair practice as writer to the signet. His son says (Autobiographical Fragment) that he delighted in the antiquarian part of his profession, but had too much simplicity to make money, and often rather lost than profited by his zeal for his clients. He was a strict Calvinist; his favourite study was church history; and he was rather formal in manners and staunch to old Scottish prejudices. He is the original of the elder Fairford in ‘Redgauntlet.’ In April 1758 he married Anne, eldest daughter of John Rutherford, professor of medicine in the university of Edinburgh [q. v.] Her mother was a daughter of Sir John Swinton [q. v.], a descendant of many famous warriors, and through her her son traced a descent
