Probably, by this time, the reader will desire to know what is now to be known regarding Lady Wardlaw. Unfortunately, this is little, for, as she shrank from the honours of authorship in her lifetime, no one thought of chronicling anything about her. We learn that she was born Elizabeth Halket, being the second daughter of Sir Charles Halket of Pitfirran, Baronet, who was raised to that honour by Charles II., and took an active part, as a member of the Convention of 1689, in settling the crown upon William and Mary. Her eldest sister, Janet, marrying Sir Peter Wedderburn of Gosford, was the progenitress of the subsequent Halkets, baronets of Pitfirran, her son being Sir Peter Halket, colonel of the 44th regiment of foot, who died in General Braddock's unfortunate conflict at Monongahela in 1755. A younger sister married Sir John Hope Bruce of Kinross, baronet, who died, one of the oldest lieutenant-generals in the British service, in 1766. Elizabeth, the authoress of _Hardyknute_, born on the 15th of April 1677, became, in June 1696, the wife of Sir Henry Wardlaw of Pitreavie (third baronet of the title), to whom she bore a son, subsequently fourth baronet, and three daughters.[11] [11] Playfair's _Brit. Fam. Antiquity_, viii., 170, lxviii. The ballad of _Hardyknute_, though printed in a separate brochure by James Watson in 1719, had been previously talked of or quoted, for the curiosity of Lord Binning was excited about it, apparently in a conversation with Sir John Hope Bruce, the brother-in-law of Lady Wardlaw. Pinkerton received from Lord Hailes, and printed, an extract from a letter of Sir John to Lord Binning, as follows: 'To perform my promise, I send you a true copy of the manuscript I found a few weeks ago in a vault at Dunfermline. It is written on vellum, in a fair Gothic character, but so much defaced by time as you'll find the tenth part not legible.' Sir John, we are told by Pinkerton, transcribed in this letter 'the whole fragment first published, save one or two stanzas, marking several passages as having perished, from being illegible in the old manuscript.'[12] [12] _Ancient Scottish Poems_, 2 vols. (1786), i. p. cxxvii. Here is documentary evidence that _Hardyknute_ came out through the hands of Lady Wardlaw's brother-in-law, with a story about its discovery as an old manuscript, so transparently fictitious, that one wonders at people of sense having ever attempted to obtain credence for it--which consequently forms in itself a presumption as to an authorship being concealed. Pinkerton rashly assumed that Sir John Bruce was the author of the poem, and on the strength of that assumption, introduced his name among the Scottish poets. The first hint at the real author came out through Percy, who, in his second edition of the _Reliques_ (1767), gives the following statement: