Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 6

ROSHK, LOCH
to quoad sacra status in 1874. Pop. of village (1SC1)
390, (1871) 790, (1881) 1394 ; of q. s. parish (1881)
2129.— Ord. Stir., sh. 32, 1857.
Eoshk, Loch. See Rosqtje.
Eosie. See Gleneosie.
Koslin (Brit, ross, 'a point,' and lynn, 'a waterfall,'
the name often and perhaps more correctly spelled
Kosslyn), a quoad sacra parish containing a village,
chapel, and castle of the same name, in the civil parish
of Lasswade, in the county of Edinburgh. The village,
which stands on high ground near the NW bank of the
river North Esk, has in its neighbourhood three railway
stations on different sections of the North British rail-
way system, and each of them distant about 10 miles
from Edinburgh. The nearest, Roslin, on the Edinburgh
and Glencorse branch, is close to the village. Eosslyu
Castle, on the Edinburgh and Penicuik branch, is
distant about 1J mile, and Rosslynlee, on the Edinburgh
and Peebles line, about If mile. By road the village is
about 6 J miles S of Edinburgh ; and from Pol ton station,
7 miles SSE of Edinburgh, a public footpath winds
through the beautifully wooded glen * of the North Esk
to the village, the distance being about 2J miles. About
1440, under the fostering protection of William St Clair,
Prince of Orkney, Duke of Oldenburg, and having a
string of other titles that it would weary even a Spaniard
to repeat, the place is said to have stood third in Scot-
land for importance. In 1456 it received from James
II. a charter, erecting it into a burgh of barony, with
right to a market cross, a weekly market, and an annual
fair, and in 1622 its rights were confirmed by James
VI., and again by Xing Charles I. It afterwards
declined and became merely a small rural village, a
condition from which the attractions of the chapel, the
beauty of the surrounding district, and the establish-
ment of industries in the neighbourhood have again
raised it. It has a post office under Edinburgh, two
hotels, a police station, a quoad sacra parish church,
a Free church, and a public school, and Episcopal
services are held in the old chapel. In the neighbour-
hood are a gunpowder manufactory, where an explosion,
causing loss of life, occurred in 1872 ; a bleachfield, and
paper-mills. The parochial church was built in 1827
as a chapel of ease, and has 444 sittings. The Free
church, to the S of the village, was built in 18S0-81 at
a cost of £1600, and contains over 500 sittings. One
of the inns dates from 1660, and is that where Dr John-
son and Boswell ' dined and drank tea ' on their way to
Penicuik House. The bridge over the North Esk, to
the SW of the village, with malleable iron lattice girders
in two spans each 64 feet wide, was constructed in 1871.
To the WSW of the chapel is an old burying-ground,
and near it a well, called St Matthew's Well. There
seems to have been in this churchyard a chapel dedi-
cated to St Matthew, and of older date than the present
chapel. The old water supply having been found con-
taminated, a water and drainage district was formed in
1883, and a new supply got from the Moorfoot pipe of
the Edinburgh Water Trust near Rosslynlee station.
The total cost of operations was about £1600, and the
maximum supply is 20,000 gallons per day. Roslin
gives name to one of the battles of the Scottish War of
Independence, in which, 24 Feb. 1303, an English army
under Sir Ralph de Manton encamped on the moor of
Roslin, to the N, in three divisions, was surprised and
defeated by a Scottish force mustered in the uplands of
Peebles and Lanark. Fordun tells how John Comyn
and Simon Fraser 'with their abettors came briskly
through from Biggar to Roslyn in one night with some
chosen men, who chose rather death before unworthy
subjection to the English nation,' and defeated the first
line, but that while they were dividing the spoil, 'another
line straightway appeared in battle array ; so the Scots,
on seeing it, slaughtered their prisoners and armed their
own vassals with the spoils of the slain ; then putting
away their jaded horses, and taking stronger ones, they
* The scenery in the den is very pretty. ' I never,' says Dorothy
Wordsworth, ' passed through a more delicious dell than the Glen
of Roslin, though the water of the stream is dingy and muddy.'
ROSLIN
fearlessly hastened to the fray,' and overcame the new
force. Hardly, however, had this been done when
' there appeared a third, mightier than the former, and
more choice in their harness. The Scots were thunder-
struck at the sight of them ; and being both fagged out
in manifold ways — by the fatigues of travelling, watch-
ing, and want of food — and also sore distressed by the
endless toil of fighting, began to be weary and to quail
in spirit,' but plucking up courage, and cheered by the
patriotic words of their leaders, they killed their fresh
prisoners, and ' by the power not of man but of God
subdued their foes, and gained a happy and gladsome
victory.' How far the great slaughter of prisoners is
true may be doubted, but the English chroniclers admit
the battle, and that a disaster befel the English arms.
Pop. of village (1861) 467, (1S71) 511, (1881) 611, of
whom 307 were males. Houses (1881) 121. The quoad
sacra parish, comprising the district round the village,
and originally constituted in 1835, is in the presbytery
of Dalkeith and synod of Lothian and Tweeddale. Pop.
(1871) 1571, (1881) 1476.
The place gives the title of Earl of Eosslyn (1801) in the
peerage of the United Kingdom to the family of St Clair-
Erskine, and the present and fourth Earl succeeded
in 1866. He has his seat at Dysaet House, in Fife ;
and he holds in Midlothian only 99 acres, of £737 annual
value. AVilliam de St Clair, son of Waldernus, Count de
St Clair, came to England with William the Conqueror,
and either he or one of his descendants is said to have
settled here as early as 1100, but though this is doubt-
ful, certainly a AVilliam de St Clair possessed the barony
of Rosslyn in the time of David I. , and his descendants
added Cousland, Pentland, Cardaine, and other lands
to their original domains, and in the 13th century stood
at the head of the baronage of Midlothian. By the
marriage of the eighth baron from King David's time,
with Isabel, one of the daughters and co-heiresses of
Malise, Earl of Stratherne, Caithness, and Orkney, his
son Henry became Earl of Orkney, and in 1379
obtained a recognition of his title from Hakon VI.,
King of Norway. The connection of the family with
the Orkney Islands has been noticed in the article deal-
ing with them. The third Earl of Orkney, as has been
there noticed, was created Earl of Caithness in 1455,
and resigned the title of Orkney in 1470. He had
three sons, of whom William, the eldest, by his first wife
— Lady Margaret Douglas, eldest daughter of Archibald,
fourth Earl of Douglas — inherited the title of Baron
Sinclair, and was, through an heiress who in 1659
married John Sinclair of Herdmanston, in Haddington-
shire, the ancestor of the St Clairs, Lords Sinclair of
Herdmanston. In favour of the second son — the
eldest by a second marriage, in 1476, with Marjory,
daughter of Alexander Sutherland of Dunbeath — his
father resigned the title of Earl of Caithness ; and the
third, Oliver, continued the line of the St Clairs of
Roslin. Sir Oliver's right was disputed by the eldest
son, Sir William, who, however, resigned all claim to
Roslin in 1482, on receiving Cousland, Ravenscraig
Castle, Dubbo, Carberry, and Wilston. The last heir
male of the Roslin branch died in 1778, but he had
previously, in 1736, sold the estate to the Hon. James
St Clair — better known as General St Clair — second son
of Lord St Clair of Herdmanston. The General was
succeeded by his nephew, Colonel James Paterson, on
whose deatli without issue, in 1789, the property
devolved on Sir James Erskine, Bart., second Earl of
Rosslyn, grandson of the Hon. Catherine St Clair,
General St Clair's second eldest sister, who married
Sir John Erskine, Bart, of Alva. The present title
was granted in 1801 to Alexander Wedderburn, Baron
Loughborough of Loughborough (1795), Lord Chan-
cellor from 1793 to 1801 ; and on his death in 1S05,
without issue, the titles passed to his nephew, Sir
James St Clair-Erskine, who represented a collateral
branch of the old family, and founded the present line.
The third Earl of Orkney had conferred on him by
King James II., in 1455, the office of Grand Master
Mason of Scotland, which remained hereditary in the
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