Old family; or, The Setons of Scotland and America

56 AN OLD FAMILY. [a.d.
astrology, music, and theology. He was so devoted to study
that even after his marriage he went to the University of Saint
Andrew's, and after a while to that of Paris to prosecute his
researches." A nobleman in that age who made physical
experiments and spent money in such things, who travelled
only to become acquainted with learned people, and strove to
increase his knowledge in spheres not affected, but rather dis-
dained by men of rank, was generally suspected of dealing in
the black art, and consequently we are not surprised or
ashamed that, appended to the name of this Lord Seton in
a curious pedigree of Scotch families compiled in 1604, we
find the damning words, J'ocatus Necromanticus. Shortly after
his accession to the title he entered (July 3, 1480) into what
was called a Band of Friendship, for mutual support, encour-
agement, and counsel with his neighbor, Sir Oliver St. Clair
of Rosslyn. Between 1484 and 1503 he was engaged in the
public affairs of the kingdom, while at the same time de-
voting considerable attention to his patrimonial estates, with a
fine eye to architecture and to the dignity of Religion. In
this line he built Winton House, and laid out the garden and
park around it; but his more enduring memorial is the Col-
legiate Church of Seton. A Church of Seton, Ecclesia de
Seethun, is mentioned as early as 1242, and the Rev. Joseph
Stevenson, S.J., discovered " a presentation of the church
of Seyton, in the year 1296." It must have been a consider-
able church even before it was made collegiate by papal
authority, because a Brief of Pope Paul II., in 1465, which
is preserved among the treasures of the Society of Antiquaries
at Edinburgh, mentions the " Provost of Seton " — Propositus de
Seton. Schools of elementary instruction were almost always
attached to these old Scottish churches. The learned Belle-
sheim, author of the History of the Catholic Church of Scotland
(translated by Dom Oswald Hunter Blair, O.S.B.), gives
a list of forty collegiate churches in the kingdom, and says: