to France in 1524, Scott was imprisoned in the castle of Edinburgh under the pretext that he fomented disorder and misrule on the borders. He soon escaped from ward and joined the Earls of Angus and Lennox in continued opposition to Queen Margaret and her government. In 1526, in obedience to a letter from James V, then a boy, requesting his aid against the power of Angus and the Douglases, Scott assembled his kin and men, but was completely defeated by Angus, who had the king in custody, in a skirmish near Melrose on 25 July 1526. He was obliged to take refuge in France; but after the overthrow of the Douglases in 1528 he was openly received into the royal favour.
In 1530 various attempts were made to reconcile the feud which had fallen out between the Scotts and the kinsfolk of Ker of Cessford who had been slain in the skirmish at Melrose. Formal agreements were entered into with a view to a pacification, but the result was not permanent (Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, vol. i. p. clvi, ed. 1812). Owing to the influence of the Douglases, who had taken refuge in England, the borders between England and Scotland were at the time more than usually disturbed. Scott's lands suffered severely from the attacks of the English wardens and others, and he retaliated with great effect (State Papers Henry VIII, iv. 625). In 1535 James V, with a view to peace, committed Sir Walter and other border chieftains to ward.
On the death of King James in 1542 Scott joined the party which opposed the marriage of the infant Queen Mary to an English prince, and, though constant overtures were made to him by the English wardens, and he was at one time credited with an intention of delivering the young queen into the hands of King Henry (Hamilton Papers, i. 447), he scornfully refused all offers of amity with the English (ib. p. 467), and at the battle of Ancrum, 27 Feb. 1545, he took a prominent part in defeating the English forces. Scott fought, too, at the battle of Pinkie on 10 Sept. 1547, where the Scots suffered a severe overthrow. As a result his lands lay at the mercy of the invaders, and during the next two or three years he suffered severely at the hands of the English wardens. In 1551 he was directed to aid in repressing the violence which prevailed on the borders, but in 1552 he begged an exemption from some of his official duties on the ground of advancing years. The old feud with the Kers of Cessford still continued, and on the night of 4 Oct. 1552 he was attacked and killed by partisans of that house.
Sir Walter Scott was thrice married: first, to Elizabeth Carmichael (of Carmichael), with issue two sons; secondly, to Janet Ker (of Fernihierst), from whom he was apparently divorced; and, thirdly, to Janet Betoun or Beaton, whose name is well known as the heroine of the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel,’ and by whom he had two sons and three daughters. She was given to Sir Walter ‘in mariag by the Cardinall [Beaton], his other wif being yet on lif’ (Hamilton Papers, i. 740). Sir Walter Scott's eldest son died unmarried, while his second son, Sir William Scott, predeceased him, leaving a son Walter, afterwards Sir Walter (d. 1574), who was father of Walter Scott, first Lord Scott of Buccleuch [q. v.]
[William Fraser's The Scotts of Buccleuch, 2 vols. 1878; Captain Walter Scott's A True History of several Honourable Families of the Right Honourable Name of Scott, &c. ed. 1786; Letters and Papers Henry VIII, Foreign and Dom., vols. i. ii.]
SCOTT, WALTER, first Lord Scott of Buccleugh (1565–1611), born in 1565, was the only son of Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch (d. 1574), by his wife, Lady Margaret Douglas, eldest daughter of David, seventh earl of Angus, who afterwards married Francis Stewart Hepburn, fifth earl of Bothwell. The father, who latterly became a devoted adherent of Mary Queen of Scots, was privy to the design for the assassination of the regent Moray, and, counting on its occurrence, set out the day before with Ker of Ferniehirst on a devastating raid into England. In revenge his lands were laid waste by the Earl of Sussex and Lord Scrope, and his castle of Branxholm blown up with gunpowder. He was a principal leader of the raid to Stirling on 4 Sept. 1571, when an attempt was made to seize the regent Lennox, who was slain by one of the Hamiltons during the mêlée. Buccleuch, who had interposed to save the regent Morton, his kinsman, whom the Hamiltons intended also to have slain, was during the retreat taken prisoner by Morton (Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 248), and was for some time confined in the castle of Doune in Menteith (Reg. P. C. Scotl. ii. 156).
The son succeeded his father on 17 April 1574, and on 21 June was infeft in the baronies of Branxholm as heir to David Scott, his grandfather's brother. Being a minor, the Earl of Morton—failing whom, the Earl of Angus—was appointed his guardian. On account of a feud between Scott and Lord Hay, both were on 19 Aug. 1586 ordered to find caution of 10,000l. each for their good behaviour (ib. iv. 98). On 2 June
