The Scotts, in the reign of James I, already owned the wild upland pastoral region of Buccleuch between Teviot and Ettrick, and Eckford in Teviotdale; also Murdiestone on the lower Clyde, a place now too near the hideous industrial towns and villages near Glasgow. Meanwhile a pacific gentleman named Inglis was laird of Branksome. He grumbled, it is said, to Sir Walter Scott of Murdiestone about the inconveniences caused by English raiders; though, as they had a long way to ride, Inglis probably suffered more at Branksome from the Kers, Douglases, and ferocious Turnbulls. Scott was not a nervous man, and he offered to barter Murdiestone for half of Branksome, which came into his pastoral holdings at Buccleuch. Inglis gladly made the exchange, and Scott's son obtained the remaining half of the barony of Branksome, in reward of his loyalty to James II, during his struggle with the Black Douglases, (during which he dirked his guest, the Earl, at the hospitable table.) The Scott lands, carved out of those of the fallen Douglases, extended from Lanarkshire to Langholm; and as they were loyal to their country, (at least till the reign of Charles I,) and withal were fighting men of the best, they throve to Earl's estate, the dukedom coming in with the ill {196}fated marriage of the heiress to James, son of Charles II, Duke of Monmouth. Of course if Charles II really married Lucy Walters, (as Monmouth's pious Whiggish adherents asserted,) the Duke of Buccleuch would be our rightful king. [Illustration: 0216] But the good king, Charles II, firmly denied the marriage, fond as he was of his handsome son by Lucy Walters; and the good House of Buccleuch has never believed in the Whig fable of the black box which contained the marriage lines of Lucy Walters and Charles II. The marriage of Monmouth with the heiress of Buccleuch was made in their extreme youth and was unhappy. Monmouth was in love, like Lord Ailesbury, with Lady Henrietta Wentworth, whom he (according to Ailesbury,) spoke of as "his wife in the sight of God," which means that she was not his wife at all. The house of Branksome makes a picturesque object in the middle distance of the landscape; but is not otherwise {197}interesting. In front of the door lies, or used to lie, a rusty iron breach-loading culverin of the fourteenth century; of old, no doubt, part of the artillery of the castle, when it was a castle. [Illustration: 0217]