Memorials of the families of Lumsdaine, Lumisden, or Lumsden

30 FAMILY OF LUMSDEN.
rege tunc temporis in suo burgo de Aberdoniis existen. &c,
and was sentenced to be hanged and quartered, but, says
Balfour, " by the mediation of friends, had the favour to be
beheaded and quartered"! He was executed in July, 1537,
but his father and brother, and probably Robert Lumsden,
remained in prison till the following April. 1
Robert had a good deal of trouble in his old age. Nineteen
children were by no means an unmixed blessing, and he seems
to have been freely plundered by his family, especially by his
second and third sons, Matthew Lumsden of Tillycairn and
Robert Lumsden of Clova, a Bailie of Aberdeen. The Cushnie
MS., which speaks very bitterly of these two worthies, states
that they misconducted themselves as tutors and guardians of
their nephews ; but a comparison of dates, and the documents
in the Cushnie charter chest, show that they robbed their
father as well as his descendants. On the 31st December,
1548, they made the old man, who must then have been on
his death bed, give them a nineteen years' lease of Medlar, and
all his lands in Cushnie, the west half to Matthew and the east
to Robert. Nay, they were even suspected of having forged
the seal to this document, but its genuineness seems to have
been acknowledged before the Sheriff, as appears from the
endorsement on the parchment. And again, they got, says
1 See Burton's History of Scotland, Vol. III., p. 168, and Pitcairn's Criminal
Trials, Vol. I., p. 183. The "favour" of being beheaded was very great — e.g., a
man convicted of forging and uttering false bawbees was " beheaded, ex gratia
Regine Dotarie," 17th November, 1556 (Pitcairn, Vol. I., p. 392). Even more curious
is the entry of a case in the following December, where a man convicted of stealing
is sentenced to be drowned (the ordinary capital punishment of women — hanging
was thought indelicate), ex speciali gratia Regine. lb., p. 394.