present name thus: Colonel Charteris, infamed (in the phrase of Arbuthnot's famous epitaph) for the "undeviating pravity of his manners" (hence lashed by Pope in many a stinging line), purchased it early in the last century and renamed it from the seat of his family in Nithsdale. Through him it passed by descent to the house of Wemyss, still its present owners. Amongst its trees and its waters the place lies away from the beaten track, and is now as charmingly peaceful a spot as you shall anywhere discover. Name gone and aspect changed, local tradition has but a vague memory of the two-centuries-old tragedy whereof it was the centre.
Sir James Standsfield, an Englishman by birth, had married a Scots lady and spent most of his life in Scotland. After the Restoration he had established a successful cloth factory at the place called New Mills, and there lived, a prosperous gentleman. But he had much domestic trouble, chiefly from the conduct of his eldest son Philip, who, though well brought up, led a wild life. Serving abroad in the Scots regiment, he had been condemned to death at Treves, but had escaped by flight. Certain notorious villainies had also made him familiar with the interior of the Marshalsea, and the prisons of Brussels, Antwerp and Orleans. Sir James at last was moved to disinherit him in favour of his second son John. Partly cause and partly effect of this, Philip was given to cursing his father in most extravagant terms (of itself a capital offence according to old Scots law); he affirmed his parent "girned upon him like a sheep's head in a tongs;" on several occasions he had even attempted that parent's life: all which is set forth at great length in the "ditty" or indictment upon which he was tried. No doubt Sir James went in considerable fear of his unnatural son. A certain Mr. Roderick Mackenzie, advocate, testifies that eight days before the end he met the old gentlemen in the Parliament Close, Edinburgh, whereupon "the
