able estates.
and settled those of Eilrig and Raeburn, together with valuable
possessions around Lessuden, upon Walter, his third son, who is ancestor
of the Scotts of Raeburn, and of the Author of Waverley. He appears to
have become a convert to the doctrine of the Quakers, or Friends, and a
great assertor of their peculiar tenets. This was probably at the time
when George Fox, the celebrated apostle of the sect, made an expedition
into the south of Scotland about 1657, on which occasion, he boasts, that
"as he first set his horse's feet upon Scottish ground, he felt the seed
of grace to sparkle about him like innumerable sparks of fire." Upon the
same occasion, probably, Sir Gideon Scott of Highchester, second son of
Sir William, immediate elder brother of Walter, and ancestor of the
author's friend and kinsman, the present representative of the family of
Harden, also embraced the tenets of Quakerism. This last convert, Gideon,
entered into a controversy with the Rev. James Kirkton, author of the
_Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland,_ which is noticed by
my ingenious friend Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in his valuable and
curious edition of that work, 4to, 1817. Sir William Scott, eldest of the
brothers, remained, amid the defection of his two younger brethren, an
orthodox member of the Presbyterian Church, and used such means for
reclaiming Walter of Raeburn from his heresy, as savoured far more of
persecution than persuasion. In this he was assisted by MacDougal of
Makerston, brother to Isabella MacDougal, the wife of the said Walter,
and who, like her husband, had conformed to the Quaker tenets.

The interest possessed by Sir William Scott and Makerston was powerful
enough to procure the two following acts of the Privy Council of
Scotland, directed against Walter of Raeburn as an heretic and convert to
Quakerism, appointing him to be imprisoned first in Edinburgh jail, and
then in that of Jedburgh; and his children to be taken by force from the
society and direction of their parents, and educated at a distance from
them, besides the assignment of a sum for their maintenance, sufficient
in those times to be burdensome to a moderate Scottish estate.

"Apud Edin., vigesimo Junii 1665.

"The Lords of his Magesty's Privy Council having receaved information
that Scott of Raeburn, and Isobel Mackdougall, his wife, being infected
with the error of Quakerism, doe endeavour to breid and trains up
William,