Ordnance gazetteer of Scotland

ROSLIN
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 Edin-
burgh and Glencorse branch, is close to the village and
the romantic glen that connects it with Hawthornden;
Rosslyn Castle, on the Edinburgh and Penicuik branch,
is distant about 1£ mile; and Rosslynlee, on the Edin-
burgh and Peebles line, about If mile. During the
summer months, also, omnibuses ply from Edinburgh.
By road the village is about 6-J miles S of Edinburgh ;
and from Polton 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 2^ 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 Scotland 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 King
Charles I. It afterwards declined and became merely
a small rural village, a condition from which the attrac-
tions of the chapel, the beauty of the surrounding dis-
trict, and the establishment of industries in the neigh-
bourhood have again raised it. It has a post office, with
money order, savings bank, and telegraph departments,
a hotel, a police station, a quoad sacra parish church,
a Free church, a public hall, and a public school, and
Episcopal services are held in the old chapel. In the
neighbourhood are a gunpowder manufactory and an
extensive carpet work. The parochial church was built
in 1827 as a chapel of ease. The Free church, to the
S of the village, was built in 1880-81 at a cost of £1600,
and contains over 500 sittings. One of the inns dates
from 1660, and is that where Dr Johnson 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 dedicated to St
Matthew, and of older date than the present chapel.
The old water supply having been found contaminated,
a water and drainage district was formed in 1883, and
a new supply got from the Moorfoot pipe of the Edin-
burgh 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 Independ-
ence, 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 subjec-
tion 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 then-
own vassals with the spoils of the slain; then putting
away their jaded horses, and taking stronger ones, they
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
* The scenery in the den is very pretty. * I never,' says Dorothy
Wordsworth, 'passed through a more delicious dell than the Glen
®f Roslin, though the water of the stream is dingy and muddy.'
88
ROSLIN
patriotio 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, (1871) 511, (1881) 611, (1891)
730, of whom 375 were males. Houses inhabited (1891)
138, vacant 2, building 6. 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. The minister's
stipend is £160 with manse. Pop. (1871) 1571, (1881)
1476, (1891) 1630.
The place gives the title of Earl of Rosslyn (1801) in
the peerage of the United Kingdom to the family of St
Clair- Erskine, and the present and fifth Earl succeeded
in 1890. He has his seat at Dvsart House, in Fife.
William de St Clair, son of Waldernus, Count de St
Clair, came to England with William the Conquoror,
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 William 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 Stratheme, 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 death 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 1805,
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
family till the appointment was surrendered to the
craft by the last heir male of line in 1736. Of the Sir
William who lived in Bruce's time, a legend is told
that he added Pentland to his lands by the fleetness of
two hounds. A white deer had often on the Pentland
Hills baulked the royal hounds, and on the king's ask-
ing one day whether any of his nobles had swifter dogs
than his own, Sir William St Clair offered to wager
1385