History of the Johnstones, 1191-1909, with ... - Electric Scotland

THE YOUNG EARL OF ANNANDALE 143
Warrieston might be lenient to his Chief. He may have been more so than his
colleagues.
Besides the above sums, it was pleaded that Johnstoun was forced to pay
,£7000 towards arming Dumfriesshire, and by order of Parliament, £4000 to
Sir William Dick as his share of a war tax. The loss of his rents and damage
to his property by troops being constantly quartered there was at least
£40,000, so the Committee humbly recommended him to his Majesty.
Charles II. thereupon restored the Chief of Johnstoun to his father's honours
and estates, adding to the previous titles those of James Murray, Earl of
Annandale, who had died without male heirs in 1658. The only son of the
first Earl, he had retired to England, lest as owner of the Graitney estate he
should be further involved in the Civil War.
Imprisonment in Scotland seems to have been as severe in Cromwell's time
as a century earlier, and Lord Hartfell never recovered from the effect, but died
in 1653—seven years before the Restoration. He had been first married to
Lady Margaret Douglas, by whom he had James and William ;
secondly, to a
daughter of Johnstoun of Elphinstone, who had no family. An item in the
Newbie accounts, kept by Hew Sinclair, the factor or chamberlain, refers to
this younger son, Jan. 26, 1657 : " Forty-eight torches sent to Newbie to Lieut.-
Colonel Johnstoun's burial at twelve shillings a piece, is ,£28, 16. o., only brother
to Lord Annandale."
Lord Hartfell left the life rent of Newbie, valued at 8000 marks Scots, as a
provision for his widow. The eldest son, James, created Lord Annandale,
married at twenty to his cousin, Lady Henrietta Douglas, who was thirteen,
died in 1679. Of eleven children two sons, William and John, and several
daughters survived. The boys were educated at Glasgow, and boarded there with
a connection, Margaret Hamilton, married to Mr Banantyne, related to Westraw.
The young Earl came with his brother to Newbie in 1680, when he sent his
Family Bible to be rebound. He had taken his degree, and was married to a
girl of fourteen, his cousin, Sophia Fairholm, by the time he was eighteen. In
that year— 1685—Newbie Castle was burnt. The catastrophe is described in
a letter from the young bride, who was sitting with the wife of the minister of
Cummertrees, Lady Apilgirth, and Sophia Johnstoun, her mother (?), when the
smell of burning timbers first alarmed them. The Laird of Westraw was with
the Earl, and helped to try and extinguish it, but the furniture and their clothes
were destroyed, and the Countess rode three miles in the night to take refuge
at Kelhead with her husband's relatives, the Douglases.
In a letter to her father, John Fairholm, from Kelhead, Dec. 28, 1685, Lady
Annandale wrote: "If there had been any drinking with us at Christmas I
should have thought it God's judgement on us for so great a sin, but there was
nobody with us but two or three neighbours, and my lord was receiving rents
the most part of the afternoon, neither was anybody drunk, and my lord both
then and ever since he came from Edinburgh I can bear witness has never
drunk any. God pity us, for we are left without any, and make me to bear
this patiently, which I willingly do for my loss if I were not afraid of something