AYTOUN--"Bothwell." His son Archibald (the young Niddrie of William Wauchope's notes) was a friend and companion of Francis, Lord Bothwell, and was concerned in the attack on the palace of Holyrood, December 27, 1591. (See _History and Genealogy of the Family of Wauchope of Niddrie-Merschell_, by James Paterson, 1858. Privately printed.) When the year 1745 brought Prince Charles to this country to make his gallant attempt to win back his father's throne, the Laird of Niddrie collected a considerable sum of money for the royal cause. The prince was encamped at Duddingston, but, as some of the enemy's troops lay between that village and Niddrie, it was difficult to convey the money to him. The plan the laird adopted was this: he sent his son (my great-great-grandfather), a boy about six years old, in charge of his tutor, with a large basket of fruit as a present to the prince. The money was carefully concealed at the bottom of the basket. The boy passed through the enemy's lines in safety, they suspecting nothing, and reached the royal camp, where he delivered the money into the prince's own hands. A few days afterwards, as the prince was marching out with his troops, he perceived the boy walking with his tutor on the farther side of a hedge. He stopped and said, "Is that the young Laird of Niddrie?" and, desiring the tutor to lift him over the hedge, he took him up in his arms and gave him his blessing. This was not the only time that the Laird of Niddrie sent supplies to his royal master, for, on another occasion, the money was successfully taken to the prince by one of the Yetholm tenants, a man named Thomson, who packed the coins in a load of hay, and succeeded in crossing the country undiscovered. As a reward for his courage and loyalty, the laird gave him his farm rent free from that time. The laird's own family were of divided opinions. His wife, a Hume, Lord Kimmerghame's daughter, was a Whig, like all her family. She had a cousin, a Sandilands, in the Hanoverian army. He was wounded at Prestonpans. She went out secretly and brought him back from the field of battle; and, unknown to her husband, lodged him in some safe place, and attended him till he was better. When all hope of the royal cause was lost, the Wauchopes appear to have reconciled themselves to the reigning family, and the young Laird fought at Minden in the British army. It is to this that Sir Walter Scott alludes: Come, stately Niddrie, auld and true, Girt with the sword that Minden knew. We have o'er few such lairds as you. He was a singularly handsome man, and there is a fine portrait of him in his old age, by Raeburn, at Niddrie.