Erskine Halcro genealogy

took instruments and required his brother's performance, April 4, An. 1559,
at Driburgh.'
' After this, Elizabeth Haliburton was taken away by the Abbot and married
at Stirling to Alexander Erskine, a brother, as 'tis said, of Balgownie, at that
time a servant to the said Abbot.
'Alexander Erskine got by this marriage with Elizabeth, daughter to
Walter Haliburton of Shielfield, all and haill the lands of Nether Shielfield, as
appears by a precept by David, Commendator of Dryburgh, for infefting the
foresaid Alexander in these lands, proceeding upon a Charter of Resignation
by the said Walter, to whom these lands did appertain, dated 27 th September
I559-'
Unfortunately, Sir Walter Scott, in commenting on the foregoing narrative,
not only in the Annals themselves, but also in his Introduction to the
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, published in 1821, concluded that the
Abbot who took away Elizabeth Haliburton and married her to Alexander
Erskine was Abbot James Stewart, the grandfather of the bride, which seems
manifestly now to have been an erroneous assumption, as will be explained
below.
The original manuscript of the Haliburton family records, forming the
subject of Sir Walter Scott's Annals of the Haliburtons, is, it is believed, from
the Catalogue published by the Maitland Club in 1838, p. 13, still in the
library at Abbotsford.
The Liber Sancte Marie de Dryburgh, a publication of the Bannatyne Club,
Edinburgh, was issued in the year 1847.
It contains an extensive account of all histories and documents referring
to the Abbacy of Dryburgh which were available to the editor, and among
others it embodies the whole of the narrative above quoted from the
Annals of the Haliburtons, and unfortunately adopts Sir Walter Scott's
interpretation as to the Abbot, grandfather of Elizabeth Haliburton, already
explained.
At page 287 of this book there is a copy of a grant by Thomas Erskine,
Commendator of Dryburgh, dated 1 8th November 1546. In this, reference
is made to a dispute in which Abbot James Stewart had before that time