Robert's elder brother, Gilbert Wauchope, was meanwhile Laird of Niddrie, acquiring more property, extending his borders, and getting himself involved in the local feuds peculiar to the time of James V.; that king on one occasion, April 1535, having to grant a letter of protection in favour of him 'and his wife and bairns' against Sir Patrick Hepburn of Wauchtonne and thirty-four others for 'umbesetting the highway for his slaughter.' In this quarrel, even the Pope was called upon to interfere in the interest of peace and safety. In 1539 Paul III. put forth a mandate to the Dean of the Church of Restalrig, stating that a beloved son, a noble man, Gilbert Wauchope, lord in temporals of the place of Niddriffmarschall, within the diocese of St. Andrews, had represented to the Pope that some sons of iniquity, whom he was altogether ignorant of, had wickedly brought many and heavy losses upon the said Gilbert Wauchope by concealing the boundaries and limits or marches of the piece of land or place called Quhitinche, feued to him by the Abbot and Convent of the Monastery of the Holy Cross (Holyrood).... Therefore the Pope intrusted to the discretion of the said Venerable Dean and Commissary to admonish publicly in churches, before the people, ... all holders, etc., and to discover and restore these to the said Gilbert Wauchope or to the Abbot of the Monastery, under a general sentence of excommunication against these persons, till suitable satisfaction was made. But the Reformation brought many changes, upsetting the laws, customs, and opinions held sacred for centuries. The sons no longer walked in the ways of their fathers, but began to think for themselves. And so we find that Gilbert, the son of the laird who had sought and obtained protection from the Pope, renounced the Pope and took {17} an active part in promoting the Reformation. He was present at Knox's first sermon at St. Andrews in 1547. And at the conference of notables that afterwards was held, where Knox and his preaching were fully discussed, and Wauchope was asked what he thought of the Reformer, 'this answer gave the Laird of Nydre--"a man fervent and uprycht in religioun."' This Gilbert Wauchope of Niddrie was a member of the famous Parliament, held at Edinburgh in August 1560, by which the Reformation was established. Later on we have a George Wauchope, a celebrated Professor of Civil Law at Caen, in Normandy, who was a grandson of Gilbert, and who in 1595, when he was about twenty-five years of age, wrote _A Treatise concerning the Ancient People of Rome_.