For this cruel act, which was aggravated into sacrilege by the fact of two of the victims being Churchmen, Sir John had to fly from the country, while his estate was forfeited to the king. His near neighbour and friend, Sir Walter Somerville of Carnwarth, undertook to intercede for his pardon. He represented to the Abbot of Newbattle how scandalous the lives of the two monks had been, even before their acquaintance with that unhappy lady, and how their villainies had thrown the greatest reproach on the order to which they belonged. Finally, he prevailed upon the Abbot and the fraternity to listen to an accommodation, provided he could move the Bishop of St. Andrews to procure the absolution of the Church. In the meantime, Sir John, with his remaining daughter, Giles, a beautiful girl of eighteen, came secretly and dwelt at Sir Walter's castle of Cowthally. Sir Walter, who was a widower at the time, fell in love with Giles, and made a bargain with her father, that, if he procured his pardon from the king, he should marry her, and that half the lands of Gilmerton should be settled on him and his wife, and the heirs of the marriage, or any other marriage, past or to come, irredeemably for ever. The matter was arranged at last by Somerville's exertions in the following manner:-- "That Sir John should make over for him and his the merk land of the Grange, where the murder was committed, to, and in favour of the Abbey of Newbattle, claiming no right therein, neither in property, superiority, nor vassalage in all time coming; and, further, that the said Sir John should, bareheaded and bare-legged, in sackcloth, crave absolution at the Bishop and Abbot's hands, and stand in the same manner at the principal door of St. Catherine's Chapel every Sabbath and holy day for one year, and paying forty pennies at every time to the poor of the parish, and one hundred merks Scots to the monks of Newbattle to pray for the souls of those that died through his transgression." These conditions were accepted and performed by Sir John, whereupon he had his pardon from the king, was restored to his estate, and had absolution from the Church. These events happened in 1375, and it was owing to them that the house of Somerville first acquired lands in Midlothian. For years afterwards Cowthally in Lanarkshire remained their principal residence; and it was not till 1584 that Hugh, the eighth Lord Somerville, began the house of the Drum[24] (the gate of which we pass on the right on our way northwards to Gilmerton), from the design of John Milne, the king's master-mason. It was finished the following year; but the pleasure of Lord Somerville in his new home was sadly marred by the melancholy event which took place there four years later, on a hot July morning in 1589, and which is related as follows in _The Memorie of the Somervilles_:--