Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/275

 After this disaster he fled southwards, and shut himself in Loudoun Castle, Ayrshire, but it was captured by the English, and, being taken prisoner, he was carried to London, where he was hanged and quartered as a traitor. On learning his sad fate Bruce, who was then passing near Dumfries, caused to be founded, on the spot where he learned the tidings, a chapel to the Virgin, in remembrance of his fellow-in-arms and preserver of his life.

[Barbour's Bruce; Fordun's Chronicle; Cal. of Doc. relating to Scotland, vol. ii.; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), ii. 640–1.]

 SETON, GEORGE, first (d. 1478), was, according to Sir Richard Maitland, the son of ‘Lord John Seton’ (Sir John Seton of Seton), but according to Douglas (Peerage, ed. Wood, ii. 642), his grandson, and the son of Sir William Seton, killed in the lifetime of his father, Sir John Seton, at the battle of Verneuil in Normandy on 17 Aug. 1424. The latter version of his parentage is corroborated by the register of the great seal, where George, lord Seton, is referred to as the grandchild of Sir John (Reg. Mag. Sig. vol. i. No. 332). According to Sir Richard Maitland, the first Lord Seton, when nine years of age, fell into the hands of Lord-chancellor Crichton, who for a time kept him a prisoner in the castle of Edinburgh, from which he was, however, delivered by the laird of Johnstone. In 1448 he accompanied Crichton on an embassy to France and Burgundy, to arrange for a marriage between James II and the daughter of the French king (, Fœdera, xi. 213). The same year he was created a peer of parliament by the title of Baron Seton. In March 1451 he conceded to Crichton the lands of Winton in the barony of Seton (Reg. Mag. Sig. vol. i. No. 432). In 1472 and 1473 he was sent on embassies to England (, xi. 749, 755). He died on 14 July 1478. Maitland describes him as ‘a good householder, and all given to nobleness.’ By his first wife, Lady Margaret Stewart, only daughter and heiress of John, earl of Buchan, he had a son John, who predeceased him, leaving a son George, second Lord Seton; and, according to Maitland, he had also another son, Dougal. By his second wife, Christian Murray of the house of Tullibardine, he had a daughter Christian.

[Maitland's Genealogy of the House of Seton; Reg. Mag. Sig. Scot. vol. i.; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), ii. 642–3.]

 SETON, GEORGE, fourth (d. 1549), was son of George, third lord Seton (killed at Flodden on 13 Sept. 1513), was grandson of George, second lord (d 1507), and was great-grandson of George, first lord [q. v.] His mother was Lady Janet Hepburn, eldest daughter of the first Earl of Bothwell. In 1484 he was appointed a commissioner for settling certain border difficulties, and in 1497 he was named a conservator of a treaty with the English. Such was his love of learning that after his marriage he continued his studies at the university of St. Andrews and also at Paris; and he is said to have acquired great skill in surgery and other sciences, including music, theology, and astrology. During a voyage to France his ship was captured by some Dunkirkers and plundered; and in revenge he bought a large vessel, named the Eagle, with which he endeavoured to make reprisals by plundering the ships of the Flemings.

The fourth Lord Seton was in 1526 appointed a member of the parliamentary committee ‘pro judicibus,’ and on 12 Nov. 1533 an extraordinary lord of session. In January 1542–3 he was entrusted by the governor, Arran, with the custody of Cardinal Beaton in Blackness Castle. Knox affirms (Works, i. 97) that by buddis (i.e. offers or bribes) given to Seton, the cardinal was permitted to return to St. Andrews. The ‘buddis,’ according to Arran's account, were large sums of money from the cardinal (, State Papers, i. 37), but, according to another account, an arrangement for an advantageous marriage of two of his daughters (Hamilton Papers, ii. 40). Nominally, the cardinal, though he had returned, was supposed to be still in custody. He went on the bonds of four lords (ib.); and Sir George Douglas assured Sadler that Seton was bound to the governor in ‘life and lands’ for his custody (, State Papers, i. 107), and that at St. Andrews he was ‘in as sure and strong prison and as strongly kept in his own house’ as if he were detained in the strongest fortress in all Scotland (ib.) But all this was almost self-evident pretence. His removal to St. Andrews was inexplicable if it was intended that he should be kept in custody; and whether Seton were bribed or not, he was well aware that the governor—who probably accused Seton of having received bribes mainly to hide his own pusillanimity—had come to shrink from the responsibility of detaining the cardinal in custody, and that, the cardinal once freed, the governor might be safely defied.

Seton was one of those who took the field against Hertford in May 1544, and during his retreat Hertford, no doubt by special instructions from Henry VIII, took revenge, not merely for this, but for Seton's conni-