John Hamilton, second son of Sir Walter Hambledon of Cadzow, ancestor of the Dukes of Hamilton, married the heiress of Innerwick,[37] in East Lothian, in the reign of King Robert Bruce, and was the progenitor of “a race of powerful barons,” who flourished for about three hundred years, and “intermarried with the Douglasses, Homes,” etc. They possessed a great many lands on the coast of East Lothian, betwixt Dunbar and the borders of Berwickshire, and also about Dirleton and North Berwick. They had their residence at the Castle of Innerwick, now in ruins. Wolff’s Crag is supposed to be the Castle of Dunglas; and this supposition is strengthened by the retour[38] of a person of the name of Wolff, in the year 1647, of some parts of the Barony of Innerwick, being on record, and the castle having been blown up by gunpowder in 1640, a circumstance slightly noticed in the Tale, but too obvious to be mistaken.[39] Of this family the Earls of Haddington are descended. They began to decline about the beginning of the 17th century, when they seem to have lost the title of Innerwick[40] and began to take their designation from other parts of the family inheritance, such as Fenton, Lawfield, etc. The last of them was a Colonel Alexander Hamilton, who was in life in 1670, and had been _abroad_ for some time—thus agreeing with the Story in one particular which had a material influence on the fortunes of the family. In him the direct male line became extinct, and, according to the prophecy, his name was “lost for evermore.” The circumstances of this family, and the period of their decline, agree so exactly with the Tale, that, unless the _local_ scene of it be altogether a fiction, it appears, at first view, scarcely possible to doubt that the Lords of Ravenswood and the Hamiltons of Innerwick were the same. Taking this supposition to be correct, a conjecture might be hazarded, in the absence of any authentic information on the subject, from the present possessors of the domains of the family of Innerwick, who Sir William Ashton was. Sir John Nisbet of Dirleton was Lord Advocate in the reign of King Charles II., and afterwards a Lord of Session, at the very time when Colonel Hamilton above mentioned was abroad. He seems to have been the founder of his family; and in this respect, as well as his having been a great lawyer, bears a remarkable resemblance to Sir William Ashton. He died without male issue, (another coincidence,) and in possession of the very estate which belonged to the Hamiltons of Innerwick, which his posterity still enjoy. From the want, however, of written memoirs of the family at Dirleton, or a knowledge of the manner in which they acquired their estates, any conjecture which can be founded on these circumstances must be entirely hypothetical.