The castle as it now stands—there is supposed to have been an older castle or keep—is believed to date from about 1397, the oldest tower extant having been built by Sir Henry Preston—of the family of Preston of Craigmillar—who fought at Otterburn, and who acquired the estate from Sir James de Lindsay, ‘Dominus de Crawfurd et Buchan.’ From the Prestons, the estate passed by marriage into a family called Meldrum; but the family most associated with the castle is the family named after it. In 1596, Fyvie was purchased from the Meldrums by Alexander Seton, third son of George, sixth Lord Seton, and brother of the first Earl of Winton. This Alexander Seton was first created Lord Fyvie, and then Earl of Dunfermline—the former title being apparently used by the family in the north. He was a lawyer-statesman of great ability and influence, and a favourite councillor of James I.’s. He held a number of state and judicial offices, being successively President of the Court of Session and Lord Chancellor of Scotland; and he was the King’s Commissioner to the Scotch parliament of 1612, which rescinded the Act of 1592 establishing the Presbyterian system of church government. The second Lord Fyvie took a prominent part, under Montrose, in the operations against the Covenanters, and afterwards lived abroad with Charles II., and shared in the honours distributed at the restoration of the Merry Monarch. The fourth and last peer fought at Killiecrankie on the royalist side, was outlawed, and died at St Germain. The estate, which had been forfeited to the Crown, was sold in 1726 to William, second Earl of Aberdeen, who settled it on his eldest son by his third wife, Lady Anne Gordon, sister of Lord Lewis Gordon—the ‘Lewie Gordon’ of the Jacobite ballad; and it has since descended through members of junior branches of the Gordon (Aberdeen) family. Its present proprietor is Sir Maurice Duff-Gordon, son of Lady Duff-Gordon, whose pleasant _Letters from Egypt_ have not yet escaped memory. It will thus be seen that a considerable historic interest attaches to the castle that was so recently in the market. The domain of Fyvie, indeed, is said to have been a royal chase at one time; and some would even have it that in the reign of Robert the Bruce it was a royal residence, and was visited in 1296 by Edward I. on his progress through the north of Scotland. There is a ‘Queen Mary Room’ in the castle, and some good specimens of the furniture of Mary’s period, though it is doubtful if Mary herself ever occupied the room. The great Marquis of Montrose, who certainly encamped once in the neighbourhood of the castle, is reported to have spent a night under its roof; and a century later, the Duke of Cumberland marched through the policies of Fyvie on his way to Culloden. Turning from the historical to the legendary, we have a prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer’s respecting Fyvie: