Glancing over their genealogy, one might almost say with truth that the Wauchopes have ever been a fighting race, holding opinions strongly, and as strongly asserting them by word or deed when occasion arose. The very name of their estate has a smack of the military in it, if it is true, as Celtic scholars say, that 'Niddrie' is derived from the Gaelic _Niadh_ and _Ri_--signifying, in the British form of Celtic, the king's champion. Then the addition to the word, as distinguishing it from several other Niddries in Scotland, of Marischal, Marishal, or Merschell appears to have been given to the {14} estate from the fact that the Wauchopes of Niddrie were in early times hereditary bailies to Keith Lords Marischal, and later, Marischal-Deputies in Midlothian, in the reign of James v. Whether it be true, as stated by Mackenzie in his _Lives of Eminent Scotsmen_, that the Wauchopes had their first rise in the reign of Malcolm Caenmore, and that they came from France, we shall not stay to discuss; but it is generally allowed that the name is a local patronymic, common in the south of Scotland, and that the Wauchopes of Niddrie Marischal belonged originally to Wauchopedale in Roxburghshire, where they were for long vassals of the Earls of Douglas. The records of the earlier generations of the family having been lost, one cannot with accuracy say who was its founder, or when he lived. In James the Second's reign, for making an inroad into England, and again in Queen Mary's time, for espousing the cause of that unfortunate sovereign, the estate of Niddrie was confiscated and passed for a time into the hands of others, while the feu-charters that remained were afterwards destroyed when the English under Oliver Cromwell came to Scotland. But notwithstanding these misfortunes, there are documents extant which go to show that as far back as the time of Robert III., who began to reign in 1390, there was one Gilbert Wauchope holding the lands of Niddrie from that king, who is supposed to be the grandson of _Thomas Wauchope in the county of Edinburgh_, mentioned in the Ragman Rolls of 1296.