Honest George

By Eileen Stewart

An account of one of the lesser-known but intriguing figures of the Eighteenth Century Edinburgh Enlightenment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483550190

Book preview

history.

Chapter 1

The Scottish Browns

George Brown was born in 1722 amongst the teeming, towering, architecturally anarchic, and stinking closes of the old town of Edinburgh. When he died in 1806 his home was in St Andrew’s Square, in the carefully planned, controlled and relatively sanitary new town. His personal history coincides neatly with Edinburgh’s own transformation. Moreover, he was a key player in that transformation. A square on the South Side still bears his name, George (‘s) Square, familiar to thousands of Edinburgh University students, who usually assume, if they think about it all, that it commemorates George IV. As they study and relax under the trees of the gardens I wonder how many of them are aware of the unique piece of European history in which they share, albeit severely modified by their own University. It is a story full of human interest as well as historical value.

Brown genealogy is fraught with problems since Brown/Broun is probably the most common surname in Scotland. What follows is, as a result, offered only as a tentative overview of the information available about the origins and early history of the name in Scotland in order to see George within a rather wider context and, so to appreciate more fully his part in the Edinburgh Enlightenment.

The Brouns who boast three fleurs de lis on their shields all claim descent from one of the Norman knights who, somewhat brutally, imposed the rule of William the Conqueror on the northern parts of England and southern Scotland. He was called Walter le Brun, probably a reference to his complexion or hair colour. Walterus le Brun was one of the barons who witnessed the inquisition of the possessions of the church of Glasgow made by Earl David in 1116, during the reign of his brother, Alexander I (1107-112). Burke’s Peerage of 1870 calls him 1st of Colstoun and Gamilshiels. There is a Gamilshiels shown on early maps just north of Nunraw. This would, therefore, identify him with the East Lothian Colstoun. The current genealogy of Colstoun in Burke’s Landed Gentry is much more cautious however and simply begins in the seventeenth century. The fleur de lis (the iris) is, traditionally, linked with the royal family of France who were believed to be descended from Clovis. The three major petals of its open flower were considered to be an image of the Holy Trinity thus pointing to the religious significance of the anointing of the French monarch. Some royal genealogists were keen not only to prove the divine approval of their monarchy but to extend their pedigree line right back to Adam, son of God, in order that their monarchs could claim their divine right to kingship. Since it was commonly believed that all human beings are descended from the same root stock, however, they rather destroyed their own argument.

Like the French royal genealogists, however, most Scottish family biographers, are willing to accept a combination of myth and history to emblazon their genetic identity and prove their worth. The Browns now have their own tartan, though the use of complex clan plaids and kilts amongst highlanders was not replicated in the lowlands until the Hanoverian monarch George IV turned it, by mistake and under the benign influence of Sir Walter Scott and David Stewart of Garth, into the dress-code for all Scots, including himself, as King of North Britain. The intention of the king’s mentors was to heal the wounds left by the risings of 1715 and 1745 not to make George IV look ridiculous, though that, if the portrait in the National Gallery of Scotland is accurate, was the end result.

The records are naturally scanty for the immediate post Norman period but seem to indicate that some Brouns came via the English Lake District and quickly spread through much of southern Scotland, into Fife, and on to Aberdeenshire and Morayshire.

Sir David le Brun, the second knight of the name to grace the chronicles of Scottish history, showed both his loyalty to the King, David 1, as well as his religious piety as one of those who endowed the foundation of Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh in 1128. He devised to that abbey lands and acres in territories de Colstoun, for prayers to be said for the soul of Alexander [King Alexander 1 who had died in 1124] and the health of his [King David’s] son. Henry, David’s only son, lived until 1152 but predeceased his father so never became King. Today the most important estate of Colstoun is not far from Haddington but there were also properties bearing the same name in Dumfriesshire and possibly in Fife. A Thomas de Broun is witness to a charter by Roger de Moubray, the predecessor of the lairds of Moncrieff, in the time of King Alexander the Second (1198-1249). Though this de Broun’s lands are not specified, he was likely to have been also of Colstoun.

The Brouns of Colstoun are probably best remembered in popular imagination not for their historical significance but because of a romantic legend and a family talisman reputedly dating from this period and believed to be the gift of the wizard, Hugh Gifford of Yester. Anyone who was interested in what we would now recognize as scientific studies or had extraordinary knowledge of any kind tended to be called a wizard at this time and to be suspected of using some contact with supernatural powers (often dubious ones). Sir Walter Scott made full use of the legend that the medieval philospher who shared his own surname, Michael Scott, was also a wizard in The Lay of the Last Minstrel.

For those who caricature the Scots as a dour elect eager to suppress and reject all mystery and ritual as superstition and to see anything that human beings actually enjoy as being of the devil, it is easy to blame Sir Walter Scott for casting a false spell of glamour over the Scottish past and mythologising his country’s history. Yet Scott was merely using the same mirror that the majority of his fellow countrymen used to look over their shoulders at the past, though transmitting his reflections in a more literate and, indeed, often more accurate historical mode. The wizards of Scottish lore were certainly not invented by Scott. In Canto III of Marmion, Scott did, however, dress Hugh Gifford in a garb to suit nineteenth century Gothic fancy when he described him emerging from that part of his castle still known as the Goblin Ha’,

His mantle lined with fox-skins white;

His high and wrinkled forehead bore

A pointed cap, such as of yore

Pharoah’s magi wore;

His shoes were marked with cross and spell,

Upon his breast a pentangle.

However, Sir Hugh is also acknowledged in the same poem as a brave and loyal servant of the King and a man of high intelligence. Hugh was caught up in what, in fact, did bedevil much of Scottish history, namely, the demise of one monarch and the accession of a child to the throne who needed a group of tutors and mentors to rule for him/her until he/she came of age. Such accessions and the coteries of power they required were often in bitter dispute, as in this case. Sir Hugh belonged to one faction and Bishop Gamelin to another. The Bishop, to his shame, used his spiritual power to persuade the Pope to excommunicate his rivals, blackening Sir Hugh’s reputation in the public imagination along the way. However, popular history had its revenge since it forgot Gamelin and remembered Sir Hugh as a man of mighty power. It is that power that was believed to have been transmitted to the Colstoun Pear.

The story goes that when Sir Hugh’s daughter, Margaret (in another account, Marion) was on her way to marry a George Broun of Colstoun, her father plucked a fine pear from a tree and handed it to her spouse as her tocher or dowry. Whilst the pear remained intact the Broun family would prosper but any damage to it would spell disaster. The pear was duly encased in a silver casket which remained safe, as did the family fortunes, until Lady Elizabeth MacKenzie/Broun daughter of the 1st Earl of Cromartie during her pregnancy made the mistake of trying to taste it. At once the relic shrivelled and became as hard as stone, though the bite-mark is said to remain as evidence of the violation. According to J.G.A.Baird writing in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1907 there is no mention of the pear in the Colstoun papers until the end of the 17th century when Robert Broun, second son of Sir Patrick 1st Bart, aged seven, tried to immortalise it in verse. The verse may not be great but the mysterious pear has certainly stuck to the Colstoun name ever since and was thought to be Robert’s own undoing.

Come hither my friends and hair you shall sie

A relique rare of old antiquitie.

If fame be trow I’ll say no more.

It has endured these twelvescore yeires and more.

This truth I write my friend to thee

Being one of siven in siventie thrie.

This is glossed below with the information that the verse was made when he [Robert] first saw the pear in the yeir of God one thousand, six hundred and seventy thrie, being then about seven yeirs of age and then presented by him to his father. Whatever the truth of the legend the story of the composition of this verse offers us a pleasing insight into a family life in which a son can call his father his friend. Baird describes the pear as follows. It is about the size of a walnut, of a dark mahogony colour, and looks harder than it probably is. A portion of it is certainly missing.

If it was a George Broun who first received the talisman it was to be a George Broun who was really to blame for losing its beneficent influence. George was Patrick’s oldest son and inherited the title and estates in 1688. His father had also been created Baronet of Nova Scotia two years earlier so that George inherited that title too. The new laird of Colstoun was, however, an addicted gambler and eventually had to sell, first the lands of Dalgowrie to a bond-holder and later, the whole of the rest of the estate to his younger brother, Robert, author of the poem. By this time Robert had married Margaret Bannatyne, heiress of Newhall. In order for Robert to retrieve the Colstoun estates her inheritance had to be sold. This was not all that Margaret was to lose, however. About four years after the sale of Newhall tragedy struck and was inevitably attributed to the pear. According to the diary of a contemporary (unfortunately not specified by Baird) the family were returning from Edinburgh by coach on a stormy night when the coachman tried to cross the swollen burn on their estate; missed the ford; and completely lost control. Robert and both his sons were drowned. No-one mentions what happened to the coachman or the horses (who should hardly have been subject to the pear’s revenge), but Margaret, herself, and a daughter in one version were miraculously preserved. The bill for the three family funerals came to £27.10s.6d which sounds quite frugal. The widowed Margaret took her four daughters away from the scene of the tragedy ostensibly to have them educated in Edinburgh. It was there that she died in 1704. Her sister in law, (the much maligned Elizabeth (MacKenzie) had predeceased Margaret on 5th May 1703. Undeterred by all the mayhem and suffering he had caused, Elizabeth’s husband, George Broun, continued to gamble away all the money he had got from the sale of the estate and lived on until 1718, by which time he was almost destitute. To a modern mind the whole story of the pear looks like a very deliberate attempt to shift blame and responsibility for a gambling obsession and a family tragedy on to a soft female target and an inanimate curio from the past. The pear, nevertheless, remains as a memento of human frailty and life’s unpredictable mystery.

To return to the twelfth century supposed origins of the myth, there is, certainly, no historical evidence for a marriage between a Broun of Colstoun and Margaret or Marion Gifford, daughter of Sir Hugh. Indeed the historical evidence seems to point to an alliance for her with the house of Seton. However, later in their history, the male succession of the Giffords of Yester failed and all their property passed, through the marriage of Joanna Gifford, to Sir Thomas de Hay of Locherworth. This branch of the Hays, thereafter, became known as the Hays of Yester. Early in the sixteenth century, a Marion Hay of Yester is definitely known to have married a George Broun of Colstoun and it is possible that the famous magic pear came into the family with that marriage, if it had not done so before.

Interestingly the very conflict in which Hugh Gifford was involved takes us from East Lothian back to the South West of Scotland because the origins of the conflict between the Balliol, Soulis and Bruce factions (which would eventually turn into the Wars of Scottish Independence) are to be found there. In December 1308 Godfrey Broun of Colston in Dumfriesshire, in the company of Sir Robert Keith, the Scottish marischal, joined forces with Bruce. J.G.A.Baird says that Godfrey was escheated by Edward II and his lands given to Robert Hasting though they were later restored. A Richard de Broun, who was styled esquire and keeper of the king’s peace, fought on the other side and fared rather worse. He was forfeited and beheaded by decree of the Black Parliament in 1320 as one of the conspirators who had tried to put William de Soulis (of Hermitage) on the throne instead of Bruce. The Scots Brouns were to be diverse in their political and religious allegiances as well as their geographical spread.

As early as 1261 we also find a Richard Broun acting as a magistrate in Elgin Morayshire. According to R.R.Stodart who, when working in the office of the Lord Lyon, researched this family, Richard Broun was closely connected with the Erskines who were Earls of Mar. This was certainly to their political advantage. The king’s preference for hunting in this area was part of the reason for constructing a castle on Ladyhill and holding courts there. The decision to site the Cathedral for the Moray diocese in Elgin, however, gave the city its real importance and also its finest monument, impressive even in ruin. As a royal burgh it was a trading centre even though it had to use Findhorn or Lossiemouth as its ports. It is probably a son of this Richard, named Adam Brown, who is described as being in Fordel. He also held lands in Aberdeenshire and acted as the king’s agent on business in Ireland. He was killed at the battle of Falkirk in 1298. A son, named after his father, Adam, also owned lands as far south west as Ayrshire which were forfeited to Bruce when he became Robert I so that it looks as though he had also supported what had, by then, become the English cause. Sir John Broun of the next generation, concentrated his efforts on his Aberdeenshire properties and held the title of Thane of Formatine (not far from Ellon) whilst farming close by at Fyvie. He achieved political influence in the area as sheriff of Aberdeen in 1328 and became foreman of the Aberdeen Assizes, even though one of his sons had also been hanged for treason in 1320. Another son followed in his father’s footsteps and became sheriff of Aberdeen but he lost half his lands to the Earl of Douglas. The sixth son of Thane John, John Broun of Midmar, was also to lose some of his lands about 1368 to Alexander Ogilvy, sheriff of Angus.

When King David the Second, came to the throne in 1329, the family of Colstoun received a charter applying to Johanni Broun filio David Broun de Colstoun. William Broun witnesses a document at Blantrodocis (i.e. Temple) in 1354 along with Robert Scot. This is the first instance of the two family names, which are to be so important for honest George, coming together. The history of the Knights Templar is still haunted by vested interests which vie for the truth of their accounts but all agree that the power and wide-spread influence of these Knights was backed by great wealth and martial discipline.

Amy Broun of Colstoun married one of the heroes of the Battle of Otterburn (1388), Henry de Winton. Through this alliance Henry was able to continue his family name after his brother, Alan, had assumed his wife’s name of Seton. The story here is yet another of those Scottish tropes that begin in vicious feuds and end in romance. Alan had abducted Margaret Seton and forcibly married her. Margaret was eventually rescued by her family, though much blood was spilt in the process. However, when Margaret was given either a ring or a dagger and told to choose between love or death for Alan she chose to uphold their marriage. Patrick Broun, eldest son of the then Laird of Colstoun was killed at Flodden and another of the Colstouns was taken prisoner at the battle of Solway Moss.

It is also towards the end of this century that a Colston in Fife appears on the records though not in association with the name of Broun. However, a William Broun of Otterstoun is a witness to a charter in 1486. Otterston is now the name of small loch near Dalgety Bay. Couston (is this a version of Colstoun?) Castle lies on its eastern shore and Fordell Castle is located 1 mile (2 km) to the west. Adam Broun had been described as in Fordel and not of Fordel. Quite when it was actually obtained by the Brouns is not clear. The estate has a magnificent castle. It dates from 1210 when a Flemish family called de Camera were granted the lands for fighting in the Fourth Crusade. In 2009 the estate agents responsible for the sale of the Castle claimed that some features of the building harked back to the experiences of the de Cameras, most notably, the stars and half moon mouldings on the ceiling in the dining room, master bedroom and bathroom reflecting the crusaders’ encounter with Islam on their travels. The present version of the castle dates from 1580 when the Hendersons were installed there which makes the story of the de Camera decorations sound rather improbable, though not impossible and certainly romantic. In the last century it was the home of one of the most flambouyant of British politicians, Sir Nicolas Fairburn.

One of the sons of John Broun of Midmar, called George, continued the family tradition of civic service and also exhibited yet another trait which was to be a characteristic of the Brouns/Browns, including honest George: an interest in managing finances. This earlier George Broun was to become the treasurer of Dundee. A son of Treasurer George and his wife Johanna Balbirny, also called George, born in 1438 was to become a leading figure in national rather than civic politics by entering the church. He was educated at St Andrew’s and Paris, a quite usual progression for Scots who were destined for high office in the church at that time. He was ordained in 1464 and made Chancellor of Aberdeen and rector of Tyningham in East Lothian. In 1483 James III (1460-88), whose younger brother was Robert Erskine of Mar, sent Broun on a mission to Rome. Broun made the most of his time there and became a friend of the Spanish Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, who reigned as Pope Alexander VI from 1492. An able politician and diplomat, Borgia, used his wealth and position to make and keep supporters. It is not surprising then to find his friend, George Broun, appointed by him, Bishop of Dunkeld. There was a problem, however, since the diocese already had a bishop-elect in the person of Alexander Inglis. Broun seems to have learned a great deal about political manipulation in Rome and by the usual combination of bribery and pressure he was eventually consecrated as Bishop of Dunkeld on June 13th 1484 with the, legally necessary, recognition of James III. Like his Spanish friend in Peter’s chair, Broun proved himself to be an able administrator and he and his family did much to structure the diocese and give it new impetus. A near relative, also called George Broun, the Chancellor of the Cathedral, set up a grammar school in the church of St George and endowed a scholastic chaplain and headmaster in honour of Our Lady of Consolation. This school is thought to have thrived right up to the destruction of the chapel and the Cathedral by the reformers.

In 1501 a group of lairds signed over the lands of Cluny into the king’s hands for infeftment to Bishop George Broun. Amongst the witnesses to that deed is another relative of the Bishop’s called Walter Broun who was grandly titled Official General of Dunkeld. George was ensuring his family’s promotion as well as those of his diocese. In return for the Cluny lands the bishop endowed a chaplaincy on the island in the middle of the loch of Cluny for two men. His strictures are interesting in that he stipulates that these chaplains, as the guardians of the island and the loch, must not be absent from it for more than fifteen days, nor may they keep a public concubine or receive any woman of whatever condition to residence on the island, or retain her there for one night. Broun was a reformer of some of the clergy mores as well as extending educational opportunities. Whether Bishop George did anything for Tyningham is more problematical.

Much of Bishop Broun’s own time was spent away from his see and at his Episcopal residence in Edinburgh in Robertson’s Close or on Government business. This was normal because Bishops played a crucial role at national level. They were usually the most educated men in the realm after all. Broun also travelled abroad as James III’s representative, notably at the coronation of Henry VII in England. Pitscottie has an amusing story to tell of this visit which, though almost certainly a myth, offers an insight into the way the Scots probably perceived the Wars of the Roses. On the eve of the fatal battle of Boswell, Broun (who must have been in England, therefore, before the coronation) came to call on the king. Richard III demanded that his crown be brought to him and told the bishop that he would wear it in battle and either live or die as crowned king of England. When the king was called from his tent temporarily, one of Broun’s servants, a MacGregor, stole the Crown. The thief’s defence was that, as a McGregor, he knew he would end up on the gallows so he might as well die for a crown rather than a sheep. After all, the king himself had just offered to die for the same rich crown of England. The combination of a McGregor and the Bishop is also interesting as a social commentary on the times. More prosaically Bishop Broun attended the Edinburgh Parliament from October 1487 to March 1504 usually listed alongside Bishop Elphinstone of Aberdeen. He may have been too ill to be with the army at Flodden as he died in January 1515, aged 76, of gallstones.

Meanwhile the Brouns whose family seats were south of the Forth had also been thriving. In the reign of James the First (1406-1437) William Broun, baron of Colstoun, married Margaret de Annand, co-heiress of the barony of Sauchie who was descended from the ancient lords of Annandale. The marriage associates the Brouns with that important corridor between North and South via the headwaters of the Tweed and the Annan which is transected by, historically, a major East-West route running through the Biggar Gap. It is in this area that we meet a family of Browns who are also to be important in our search to understand the Brown relationships across Scotland. These are the Browns of Hartree, Culter, Edmistoun and Biggar. The spelling of the name still varies on documents but from this point on I have chosen to use the spelling of Brown for all families except for Colstoun who definitely retain the older spelling in Scotland.

On the 26 Aug 1438 a precept of sasine was granted by James Douglas, Lord Dalkeith, to John Brown of Hartree, for infefting him in the lands of Hartree as son and heir to Richard Brown, his father. Two years later, in 1440 James, Earl of Douglas, conveyed to Roger Brown, son of the late Richard Brown of Hartree the lands of Cultermanys. In consideration of this, on the 27th January in the same year, Brown executed a back-bond at Edinburgh, wherein he states that the powerful Lord James, Earl of Douglas had granted to him and his heirs a sasine and charter, without reservation of his mesne lands terra suas dominicas of Cultermanys…to reconvey the same whenever the said Earl, his heirs or assigns without fraud or dole, in one day between the rising and setting of the sun make payment to them of the sum of 100 merks of the usual money of the kingdom of Scotland on the altar of St Michael in the church: Cultirt Ecclesia Proli de Cultir. In 1525, over a century later, this deed was finally recorded in Parliament.

During the next fifty years these Browns consolidated and extended their territory. William Brown, son and heir of John Brown of Hartree added to his estates Mossfenan and Logan in the parish of Glenholm in June 1449 and Thriepland near Kilbucho on 12th March 1450. Johns and Williams seem to alternate and be found in each generation according to the charters which are all under the patronage of a Douglas either of Dalkeith or as Earl of Morton. It was a Robert Brown, however, who inherited the estates in the 1480s whilst a John was in Cultermains according to charters in the 1490s.

The Brouns in Colstoun were also steadily extending their social and political influence at this time. Trabroun was resigned by Simon Heriot into the hands of John Broun of Comercolston (Colstoun) in 1471. Trabroun near Haddington is most famously associated with the George Heriot who was known as Jingling Geordie - that Edinburgh merchant jeweller who endowed the magnificent Heriot’s Hospital for the education of the children of merchants. Whatever the significance of the contract between Simon Heriot and John Broun, Heriots continued to be known as of Trabroun until at least 1620. Anna Heriot of Trabroun married James Broun of Colstoun in 1625. Anna’s mother was a Dundas; Elizabeth, daughter of John Dundas of Newliston.

Some time in the early 1500s some Browns had arrived in the Dumfriesshire territory of the Maxwells. Where they came from is, as usual, not clear. Thomas, the elder son, became a tenant of Sweetheart Abbey whilst his brother, Richard, married Elizabeth Lindsay the heiress of Carsluith. This pair were to head yet another line of Browns including at least one figure of national significance. Gilbert, their second son, became Abbot of Sweetheart Abbey and his career straddled the turbulent period of reform in the church. Gilbert was professed as a Cistercian under his cousin, Abbot John Brown of New Abbey who signed various documents between July 1559 and March 1560 ensuring that several members of his family were given lands - a useful device since what remained of the abbey lands were later confiscated by the reformers. When the controversial Reformation Parliament of that year put an end to open monasticism in Scotland and prevented any further recruiting, Brown seems to have decided to go along with at least some aspects of reform and prepare himself for a new life. He matriculated at St Andrew’s in 1562 and graduated in arts in 1565. He even participated in the Protestant communion whilst at the University. However, in May 1565 the lands of his cousin John which had been resigned to the Crown were given back to Gilbert, though his cousin retained the revenues until his death in 1576. Gilbert tested the will of Parliament for this benefice by signing a bond in support of Queen Mary in March 1568 and was duly forfeited. Yet he still attended Parliament in 1571 and 1573 when he regained the rights to the old Abbey lands once more. When in 1576, after the death of John, he also succeeded to the Abbey’s revenues he must have felt sufficiently secure to begin openly opposing the Protestant reform. Perhaps, also, he had begun to see what he would consider fatal flaws in that reform. It is difficult for us today to recognise how complex were the decisions that individuals had to make then. Later biased histories have so simplified the issues as to make it well nigh impossible to get inside the minds and hearts of those who lived through all the turbulence. Gilbert Brown is no exception. Many within the existing church establishment had recognised an urgent need for various reforms. Once Parliaments or Kings seemed to have the power to effect such changes (when Rome seemed so powerless or unwilling to do so) churchmen and nobles often backed them. The positions of all, however, hardened for varying political, social and theological reasons and the stage was set for the conflicts that were to rend the fabric of community and families for several generations. It was perhaps during this period that Gilbert fathered three illegitimate children. If he were sincere about his Protestantism it seems odd that he did not take advantage of this to marry but perhaps he was beginning to have doubts about his position. It is hard not to censure his apparent lack of concern for his family responsibilities but we simply don’t know how he saw that or what provision he made for his wife and offspring.

Already in 1578 he was suspected of influencing Lord Herries’s son to needle the new regime and the following year the General Assembly (by this time a political force to be reckoned with) censured the former abbot for his apostasy and for enticing the people around Dumfries to popery whilst retaining the high altar at Sweetheart abbey (implying, of course, its use to offer Mass). Six years later Brown was denounced by the Privy Council for not appearing to answer charges against him. Dom Mark Dilworth, in his brief life of the Abbot for The Dictionary of National Biography, assumed that these charges must have been to do with the activities of Jesuits in the area. Whatever the charges, Brown wisely refused to answer the summons. He was nevertheless deprived of his living. He seems to have found refuge, perhaps through the Jesuits, in the Scots College in Lorraine (later at Douai) and on the 28th March 1587 he was finally ordained a priest at Paris. It seems strange perhaps that this had not happened before but monks do not have to become priests and there was no obligation for an abbot to be in priestly orders. Indeed, some abbots by this time were appointed as secular commendators. Brown visited Rome after this but, by November 1587 he was back in Scotland. The next few years are summed up by Dom Dilworth. From 1588 on Brown was frequently denounced for his recusant activities and for a time he was outlawed. The English warden of the West Marches, alarmed by his harbouring of Englishmen and his suspected dealings with Spain and Ireland, planned a raid to capture him. Brown’s fortunes prospered, however. His successor at Sweetheart sold him the abbey, and his reputation was enhanced by his reported casting out of a devil from a young girl. The authorities considered he had corrupted the whole district with Roman Catholicism.

This was not all achieved peaceably, however. Neighbours of the Carsluiths, the McCullochs at Barholm Castle, were ardent Protestants and, indeed, embraced the Covenanting cause later. In 1579 the differences between the two families erupted into a brawl. As a result, John Brown of Carsluith was implicated in the murder of a McCulloch of Barholm.

In 1605 Abbot Brown was eventually imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle (an indication of his social status and prestige perhaps). The hard-liners of the Kirk were outraged, but the king paid Gilbert’s expenses, ensured that his religious possessions were restored and allowed him, after saying a Mass (in the Castle itself?), to leave for France. Soon after Brown’s return to Galloway, however, in 1608 the future archbishop John Spotiswoode was officially thanked for forcing entry into the home of Mr Gilbert Brown. Andrew McCulloch in his Galloway: A Land Apart describes what happened. then. Having found a ‘grite nomber of bookis, copes, imageis and uther popische trasche’ he proceeded ‘most worthelie and dewtiffulie’ to burn them in the presence of a ‘grite confluence of people in the hie street of the Burgh of Dumfries’. What treasures were destroyed as trasche cannot now be told. Gilbert Brown was not to recover from this last assault. He was back in Paris by October 1609 old, sick and near destitute. He died there in May 1612.

George Broun of Colstoun a former member of the Scottish Parliament was also summoned for treason in 1567 by the Lord Regent and Lords of the Secret Council. He was ordered to pas and entir his persoune in ward within the Castle of Blackness, thair to remaine upon his awin expenssis ay and quhill he be relevat. He was, Baird points out, soon relieved from his prison by a higher authority through death. Patrick, who succeeded to the title also signed the bond of Queen Mary’s adherents and was present at the battle of Langside in May 1568, but he changed sides in August of the same year and obtained letters of remission from James VI in 1573. However a George Broun who could have been either a brother or son of this Patrick was a signatory of the bond which resulted in the abortive raid of Ruthven.

Other priests and religious who share the name of Brown and who are known from various charters include Andrew, chaplain at Biggar, Sirs John and Robert, chaplains at Culross and Sir James at Kilwinning. Sir was a courtesy title often given to priests until the Reformation. A number of early readers in the Church of Scotland were also probably former priests who stayed on to minister to their people. The name of John Brown is conspicuous amongst them by its frequency, too, and it is also confusingly common amongst the most memorable of the later Presbyterian clergy.

In the struggles for power over lands, and minds, all sides made great use of the new printing presses. It is not surprising that some of the Browns from all these families made their way to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen to become involved in such a trade. They joined quite a number of Browns who were already settled there or who had town houses there anyway. It is not easy to work out any relationships for the earliest known Edinburgh Browns though a few stories and characters do emerge out of the Old Town’s crowded jostle. Not all merchants immediately made good. On 9th February 1484/5 Alan Broune, burgess of Edinburgh found himself unable to give his daughter Katerine a tocher of any moveables and so offered half of the forehouse of the tenement of Broun to John Dee her spouse instead. Alan and Katerine do not seem to belong to the Browns whose pedigree from 1435-1701 is to be found amongst the Papers of the Rattrays of Craighall. This document was apparently put together by a James Brown who married Margaret Barbour in 1636. It is little more than a list of names and marriages: John Browne and Agnes Abyninz (this surname looks like a misreading of handwriting but a better has not yet been suggested), 1435; yet another John Browne and Agnes Achiesone, 1470; George Browne and Beatrix Andersone, 1499; John Brown and Katherine Batie, 1517; John Brown and Eliz: Fisher, 1536; Hew Brown and Helen Litle, 1563; Hew Brown and Marion Tod, 1594; Mr James Brown and Margaret Barbour, 1636; Hew Broun and Helen Skeen, 1666; James Brown and Elizabeth Amcotts, 1701. One the Hugh Browns of Edinburgh was appointed His Majesty’s chief chirugeon and principal apothecary and druggist in 1688. In 1596 a Hugh Brown was named as one of the burgh commissioners for Edinburgh along with George Heriot. A Hugh Brown, mason, also seems to have owned several tenements in the city as his name occurs in relation to a number of property transactions there. These Edinburgh Browns were certainly people of social standing in the city and may well have been kin with the Browns of Biggar and eased the latter’s entry into burgess’ status in the capital.

One John Brown rose to prominence in Edinburgh during the years when Parliament and the Assembly were so concerned to bring the country into line with their reforms. He acts as witness, notary, messenger and enforcer of some of the Acts of Parliament. By 1581 he is listed as a pursuivant (of arms) along with Thomas Scott, Stephen Alexander and Alexander Stobo. Stobo and Brown are also named as two sheriffs who set out to post summonses throughout the country against the very long lists of those who are charged with treason, in other words who are resisting the reforms.

Yet another John, son of James Brown and Elizabeth Tod who may have been a relative of Marion Tod above, left for the continent to become Principal Regent at the College of Lesquille in Toulouse. His situation there, too, was dangerous as the religious struggles in France had turned into open civil war so he asked his parents for two Scots pistols in 1594. He also ran short of money and in time-honoured fashion wrote home to ask his parents for financial help. When Toulouse was under siege the next year he escaped to Carpentras where he heard of the death of his uncle, John Tod, at Nimes. Probably his parents had queried the wisdom of his actions because in 1601 he defends his Catholic faith and his renunciation of the world and encourages his mother by telling her of his academic eminence now in Spain. The young Sir John Lauder of Fountainhall also visited another exile whilst in France a half-century later, in 1656, a Jesuit, Pere Brune whom he identifies as a fellow countryman and of whom he speaks with some respect and admiration.

The Browns who became involved in the world of printing and bookselling in Edinburgh fit into this narrative more logically a little later. First it is necessary to look at the claim that George Brown of George Square was a cousin of George Broun of Colstoun. There are discrepencies in Burke’s Peerage for the first part of the chart of the Colstoun Brouns between that which was published in 1870 and what was seen as more correct in 1935. However, the official Colstoun pedigree is distinctly sparse in all accounts except for the main claimants for the title. Many other families believe they descend from Brouns of Colstoun who do not appear at all. Some of these pedigrees are rather dubious in the connections they make between their known histories and that of the official lines but most have some historical foundation beyond mere family tradition. There is a similar problem for the George under consideration here though this study offers what seems to be the most plausible solution.

Patrick Broun who married firstly, Alison Sinclair and then, Jean Ramsay had three children who survived to adulthood. The eldest was George who married Elizabeth Mackenzie and who gambled away his heritage, and the second was the Robert who bought the estate using his wife’s (Margaret Bannatyne’s), inheritance and the third was Ann who married Sir Henry Cathcart. Robert’s sons, Patrick and George, as has been seen were drowned along with their father in 1703 but their surviving sisters all made advantageous marriages. The youngest, Mary, married Robert Waddell of Muirhouse, Elizabeth married firstly John Hamilton of Udston and then in 1732 John Williamson the minister of Inveresk. The next oldest sister married Colonel David Kyle. It was the eldest sister however, Jean, who inherited the estate of Colstoun. She chose for her husband one who only had to change the spelling of his name to slot into the family tree, Charles Brown of Gleghornie. It is this marriage which give us the link between the two later Georges. Jean and George of Gleghornie produced George Broun who became Lord Colstoun and who married Elizabeth Dalrymple, daughter of Sir Hew Dalrymple of Drummore. Charles of Gleghornie who became of Colstoun by marriage to Jean Broun belonged to the same family as George Brown of Elliston, the subject of this particular study, who was to marry first, Helen Scott of Harden and, after her death, to marry as his second wife, Dorothea Dundas of Dundas. This relationship becomes clearer in the following chapters.

The current head of the Colstoun Brouns lives in Australia and descends from the Reverend Richard Broun, minister of Kingarth and later of Lochmaben who never actually used the title himself. His descendants moved first to Guernsey and then on to Australia. Other Australian Brouns claim to descend from the two sons of George Broun and Euphemia Hoppringle. This insertion point looks more difficult to prove but offers some fascinating connections which are, indeed valid. Some claim that, like the Browns of Carsluith who in 1748 took their name to India, their Colstoun ancestors had to flee from Scotland after the Battle of Culloden. Such Jacobite Broun/Browns are not easy to trace as the records are, understandably, lacking. A number of Scottish clergy by the name of Brown do seem to have been deprived of their living for being pro-Royalist and episcopalian. From a Catholic point of view there is an interesting portrait in the Scottish National Gallery which shows the wedding of James VII and Maria Clementina Sobieska. Behind Maria, in profile, and with his eyes raised to heaven, is the Dominican who was the king’s confessor, - yet another John Brown. However, it is important to remember that not all Jacobites were either Episcoplian or Catholic. Some members of the Kirk in Scotland also had to go into exile. Amongst these were some of the Colstoun Brouns who carried their name first to Denmark and France.

A history of the Danish family produced by the distinguished Danish genealogist Thomas Hauch-Fausboll is careful not to go beyond the historical proofs which show the first ancestor as being called James. The family identify this James as the one who married Anna Heriot and the connection certainly seems likely judging by the subsequent treasured memories of the Colstoun connection. William Broun, a son of James, born about 1697 became Gentleman to the Marquess of Tweeddale whose estate was at Yester. It is believed that William was killed at the Battle of Culloden 16th April 1746 in which case he must have left Tweeddale’s service because this laird took no part in the last Jacobite rising. The last trace of William in documentation was in 1736 in Edinburgh where his daughter was baptised. William’s wife was Margaret Huet (Hewitt). She long outlived her husband and must have remained in Edinburgh as this was where her Danish grandsons John and William came to stay with her when they were sent back to Scotland to get some commercial training in 1777. She may have been known, therefore, to George and Dorothea Brown of George’s Square.

John Brown, the eldest son of William, certainly arrived in Copenhagen in October 1746 but may have moved on at once to Elsinore where he obtained a post with a broker for English firms in the country. He also made friends with C.F. Godenius head of one of the leading firms in Elsinore and later Royal Agent. By 1750 he got permission to set himself up in independent business.