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William Gibson, Dean of Restalrig Probably at least since about 1785 there has been a tradition among Archibald Gibson’s descendants that he was some kind of relation of the Gibsons of Durie and of noble ancestry. This was the most prominent branch of the Gibson family who played an unrivalled role in Scottish political life from about 1500 to the end of the eighteenth century. For most of that period the Gibsons of Durie were baronets, but also had the unparalleled distinction of using arms originally conferred by the pope on an earlier member of their family, the ecclesiastical politician William Gibson, Dean of Restalrig, who died on the 7th July 1542 The papal arms of William Gibson of Restalrig (as drawn by Colin Campbell Murray Gibson in 1925).
Like his predecessor at Restalrig, William Gibson subsequently became a highly successful diplomat in the reign of the Scottish king James V, who pursued pro-French and pro-Catholic policies in opposition to those urged upon him by his uncle Henry VIII of England. William was originally educated for the church at Glasgow, incorporated in 1503 and graduated in December 1507. After that he became pre-Reformation Vicar of Garrock, Kincardineshire. In 1518, approximately a year before Luther nailed his ninety five theses to the church door at Wittenburg (traditionally the first act marking the Reformation on the continent of Europe), he was designated rector of Inverarity, Forfifeshire. Restalrig, prior to the Reformation was a collegiate parish church, founded by James II in connection with the tomb and well of St. Triduana. It had its own dean and nine prebendaries. It was a popular place of pilgrimage, which was intentionally allowed to fall into decay later by the powerful forces of Protestant reaction and iconoclasm. It was only partially restored in modern times. By 17th April 1526, probably in his late thirties or early forties, William had evidently been already made Dean. When witnessing a document, he was described as "that venerable and circumspect man, Master William Gibson, Dean of Restalrig". William’s career was at its height in the 1530s and early 1540s, two decades before the Scottish reformation, which was a rapid development in 1560. He was a friend and close colleague of the Scottish Cardinal Beaton, whose pro-French policies with those of his Scottish monarchs resulted in English invasions of Scotland, and whose persecution of Protestants led to Beaton's assassination in 1546. Cardinal Beaton
On 27th August 1527 James V of Scotland added to William’s benefits as Dean of Restalrig, the rectory of Ellem. In 1532 he was appointed a Lord of Session. After that he was frequently used on embassies by the pope. In the late pre-Reformation period, William’s main achievement, for which he was recognised by both king and pope, was securing a mutually satisfactory agreement between the Scottish king and the church for payment of the expenses of the Scottish College of Justice. Prior to his diplomacy there had been a bitter dispute between James V and the Scottish prelates over the matter. Because he had much credit for the eventual amicable settlement, he earned high favour with the pope who bestowed on him an armorial bearing three keys with the motto "Caelestes Pandite Portae". In 1540 the new Cardinal archbishop David Beaton desired to associate William with himself as suffragen. It was agreed that he was to hold his other preferments and to receive a pension of 200 Scottish pounds a year from the Cardinal and his successors. To this arrangement the pope's agreement was necessary, and in letters dated 4th May 1540 Gibson's knowledge of law and theology and his high moral conduct was vouched for by Beaton. It was probably in connection with this appointment that the king added to his honours the title Custos Ecclesiae Scotticae - "keeper/preserver/guardian of the Scottish church". It is interesting also that the continuance of the institution in Scottish life, whereby clergymen could be simultaneously ecclesiastics and lawyers, owed much to the direct political activity of the earliest, and arguably most distinguished Gibson of Scotland, William Gibson of Restalrig. William Gibson’s ability to endear himself with "the powers that be" was inherited by relatives. A later nephew in his family produced a line of judges, who had the rare knack, in addition to their legal skills, of remaining for two centuries in favour with each successive head of state - despite the profound and violent divisions in national life then taking place. Thus the first Baronet supported Charles I; the second, Cromwell; the third, Charles II. Later baronets supported later monarchs. However we need to note that there were other eminent ecclesiastics, some of them also lawyers, who belonged to the same family. These clergymen/lawyers were often associated with Glasgow, both before and after the Reformation, and were not quite so prominent in the heady and dangerous world of national politics, though they played an very important role in local civic and ecclesiastical life. Such was the Revd. Archibald Gibson, Commissariat Clerk of Glasgow (died 6th December 1601). In Scotland a "Commissary" court was a sheriff or county court which appointed and confirmed executors and matters of probate. But in any case, even apart from exercising such a role, this earlier Archibald Gibson became a major landowner in his own right. Similarly prominent in both church and city were some of his uncles before him in Glasgow, and his sons after him.
Mary Queen of Scots and the Scottish Reformation It might seem strange to have a section in a family history on Mary Queen of Scots, but through later connections great grandfather John Gibson was in fact her third cousin ten generations removed! Mary Queen of Scots
It is no exaggeration to say that in Scotland the period between William Gibson’s death in 1542 and that of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587 was revolutionary. Queen Mary was born in 1542. She was the daughter of James V of Scotland and also the first cousin (one generation removed) of Elizabeth I of England. She became queen when she was only 6 days old and was crowned by Cardinal Beaton (just mentioned) at the age of 10 months. On her mother’s side, as the daughter of Mary of Guise, she was French, and so was sent to France for her education. In 1559 at the age of seventeen she was married to the Dauphin of France, and so became Queen of France. But by this time she seemed a threat, not only to the new Reformation in Scotland, but also to the throne of England and Ireland, since her claim seemed more legitimate in the eyes of many than that of her kinswoman, Elizabeth. After her husband’s death in 1560, she returned to Scotland the next year, and immediately fell out with the leading Reformer, John Knox. The following diagram shows the exact relationship between Mary and Elizabeth:- Henry VII ¦ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ¦ ¦ Margaret Tudor m. James IV of Scots HenryVIII ¦ ¦ James V of Scots married Mary of Guise Elisabeth I ¦ Mary Queen of Scots
Elizabeth I
Mary's first sponsor, her half-brother Lord James Stuart (whom she created Earl of Moray) turned out later to become a bitter enemy. Somewhat of a Romantic by nature, she then unwisely married the young and handsome Henry Stuart Lord Darnley, whose opportunism had led him to become a Roman Catholic. He was also her second cousin (both were great grandchildren of Henry VII of England), but they were also more remotely connected by both being issue of the Stuart/Lennox family. (We shall see later that our Gibsons are in part descended from this Lennox family - from Lord Darnley's grandfather John Stuart, the 3rd Earl of Lennox).
Left: Lord Darnley (when he was aged 17). Right James Hepburn Earl of Bothwell Except for producing an heir (James VI later James I of England) the marriage was disastrous. Then in 1567 the ambitious Darnley (no doubt, through Mary, hoping to become King in his own right) was killed after his house had been blown up. Because of the seeming advantage of disposing, not only of a husband whose personality had changed after marriage, but with an all too obvious rival, Mary was suspected (probably wrongly) of involvement in his murder. The probable master-mind of Darnley’s assassination was James Hepburn Earl of Bothwell, who then married her. In the strife which arose between them Protestant Lords, former allies of Bothwell, rose in revolt and defeated her in 1568. She fled to England. There after years of hesitation and searching for a pretext by her cousin Elizabeth, she was eventually beheaded in 1587. Elizabeth herself claimed never to have authorized the execution, but there can be little doubt that she tacitly sanctioned it. On the death of Elizabeth in 1603 James VI, the son of Mary and Darnley, brought up as a Protestant by Darnley’s Protestant father and others, became James I of England. This paved the way for the full parliamentary union of England and Scotland in 1707.
Gibsons of Durie and Goldingstones The Gibson family of William of Restalrig later derived its name "Gibsons of Durie" from the name of their estate of Durie in Fife, owned by the first Baronet. However, long before this in the early sixteenth century they were already well known to the monarchy as chief millers to the king. Although Fife was the county from which they originally came, their first distinguishing title before William of Restalrig was as Gibsons "of Goldingstones". This was, and still is, a district of the Burgh of Haddington, near Edinburgh, where some of the family became Burgesses. The county of Midlothian, in which both Edinburgh and Haddington are situated, faces Fife directly across the Firth of Forth, so connections by water between the two localities are easily understandable. William Gibson of Restalrig, as normal for a well-behaved pre-Reformation priest, was unmarried and had no children. The first baronet, Sir Alexander Gibson of Durie, was his great nephew and almost rivalled his achievement - but not so much as a diplomat, as a judge and a founding father of Scottish law. Sir Alexander Gibson of Durie (died at Durie on the 10th June 1644) was a Lord of Session, and so was also known as Lord Durie. His significant career began with his graduation at M.A. at Edinburgh in August 1588 (already after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots). On 14th December 1594 he was admitted third clerk of session. Mary’s son, James VI, then 28 years old but not yet also king of England, was present at his admission, and promised to reward the first and second clerks for their consent. Twenty seven years later on the 10th July 1621 (when James had been already been also king of England eighteen years), he was appointed a lord of session. [Session was the name given in Scottish law to the Court of Justice established in 1425, consisting of the Chancellor and other persons appointed by the sovereign. This sat three times a year to decide cases previously presented to the king and his Privy Council. The judges at this court were called "Lords" of Session] It was then that he took the title of Lord Durie, his clerkship being conferred on his son Alexander, to be held conjointly with himself. (In 1625, on the death of James, Charles I became king) In the early reign of the new monarch, Alexander was described in many charters before December 1628 as Alexander Gibson de Durie, Miles. In that year according to Douglas, the first authority on the Scottish peerage and baronetage, he was created a baronet of Novia Scotia, but he does not seem to have actually assumed the dignity. In 1633 he was named a Commissioner for reviewing the laws and collecting the local customs of the country. [We shall meet the term "Commissioner" frequently in relation to Gibson ancestors which follow. Usually the term refers to the representatives of Scottish towns to the Scottish parliament. But the same term was applied to particular persons charged by the Parliament for particular delegated responsibilities] In 1640 he was elected a member of the committee of Estates [The committee of Convention of Estates was an institution regularly mentioned from the reign of James V (1512-42) by which date it had superseded the earlier General Council. The latter was the meeting of lords and prelates, summoned to discuss the affairs of the kingdom, and possessing financial and legislative powers comparable to Parliament. In the early sixteenth century burgh representatives were included in its composition and this was what led to the change in nomenclature] On 13th November 1641 Sir Alexander's appointment as judge was continued under a new commission to the court. The office of president of the College of Justice continued to be an elected one, and while this remained the case Durie was twice chosen head of the court, namely for the summer session on 1st June 1642 and for the winter session of 1643 (Brunton and Haig, Senators of the College of Justice, p.264). When he died at his home in 1644, he had consistently preserved notes of the more important decisions in Scottish law from the 11th July 1621 until the 16th July 1642. They are the earliest digested legal collections of Scotland, and are often referred to as "Lord Durie's Practicks". They were published (with his portrait prefixed) by his grandson Sir Alexander Gibson (d.1693) folio, Edinburgh, 1690. William Forbes, in the preface of his Journal of the Session (1714) said that Durie "was a man of penetrating wit and clear judgment, polished and improved with much exercise". The preface written by Sir Thomas Craig in his legal work called Jus Feudale tells us that his habit was constantly to study civil law, and his abilities were further improved, according to the historian Duncan Forbes, by writing his own book and his constant election to the vice-presidency of the court of session ( to which no one else was appointed in his time). A further interesting point about his career is that he was once allegedly kidnapped by a suitor, the earl of Traquair, who, because he anticipated that he would be unfavourable in a court case, kept him for three months in a dark room in the country while the cause was being decided. On its completion he was returned to the place where he was seized. This story forms the subject of Scott's "Ballad of Christie's Will" in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. The son and grandson of the first Baronet were also distinguished lawyers. Sir Alexander Gibson, second baronet, died in June 1656. He also is referred to as Lord Durie, but is distinguished from his father by his further title the Second Baronet Durie. As we saw earlier he was made a clerk of session conjointly with his father upon the latter's promotion to the bench in 1621. King James I of England [VI of Scotland] had introduced bishops into the Church of Scotland without too much opposition, but Charles I's attempts to strengthen their position met with much resentment. Suspicious of his marriage to the French Roman Catholic Henrietta Maria, and his insistence on an Anglican form of worship during his short coronation visit, the Scottish Presbyterians viewed Charles' efforts to impose a new Prayer Book as an attempt to revive what they saw as 'popery' in Scotland. The introduction of the Prayer Book provoked a riot in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. In February 1638 his opponents drew up a National Covenant, professing loyalty to the crown but refusing to have anything to do with his ecclesiastical changes, until they had been approved by a free General Assembly and by Parliament. So with many others Sir Alexander second baronet, opposed Charles I's policy of trying to impose the Prayer Book on the church in Scotland, protested with others against certain royal proclamations of 8th July and 22nd September 1638 at the market cross of Edinburgh, and petitioned the presbytery of Edinburgh against bishops in November 1638. Charles remained determined to press ahead with his plans, and so when the General Assembly, the governing body of the Church of Scotland, met in Glasgow in November 1638, the delegates abolished Episcopal government. The bishops fled, and Charles decided to use force. The Bishops' Wars then broke out. However the 'Short' Parliament in England, which was sympathetic to Scottish religious demands and shared the Scots' suspicions of Charles' aims, declined to pay for the campaign in Scotland. Charles capitulated in the end and peace was concluded with the Treaty of Ripon, 1640. Later the second baronet was commissary-general (supreme commander) of the Scottish forces raised to resist Charles I in 1640, but somehow despite this was came to be knighted 15th March 1641, and was made lord clerk register on the 13th November 1641. He was made a Commissioner of the Exchequer on the 1st February 1645 and sat on the Committee of Estates (1645-8) authorized by Charles to govern Scotland in return for a promise to permit the Scots to return to Presbyterianism. He became Lord of Session in 1646, which was when he took the title of Lord Durie, like his father before him. After the success of the Puritans in the Civil War and Cromwell’s victories against pro-Royal forces in Scotland, Charles was beheaded in 1649. Sir Alexander was subsequently deprived of his offices in 1649 by the Act of Classes after joining the so-called "Engagement". This was the contemporary term for the brief alliance which had taken place between the king and some influential Scottish Presbyterians in the struggles between Charles I other potentially republican Puritans. In August 1652 he was again one of the commissioners chosen for Scotland to attend the parliament of England; and he again went as commissioner to England in January 1654. The contemporary Scottish diarist Lamont wrote in 1650, "Both Durie and his lady was debarred from the table because of their malignancie". Here "Malignancy" is to be interpreted as a reference to their Episcopalianism, since all Scotsmen who supported the royal plan to impose bishops on the Scottish church were abusively styled by those who opposed them "Malignants" Sir Alexander Gibson, third baronet Durie was christened on the 11th July 1628 at Edinburgh Parish. His effective career coincided with the ascendancy of Oliver Cromwell who was Lord Protector 1653-8. He was in sympathy with the new status quo, and became Commissioner to Parliament in England for Fife and Kinross 1656-9 and for Fife 1659. He died 6th August 1661 at Durie, and was buried on the 16th at the local parish Church in Scoonie. When the monarchy was restored there was no son to succeed to the title and the estate of Durie, other than the baronet’s brother John. After him (the fourth baronet) another Sir Alexander Gibson, fifth baronet of Durie, signed most of the persecuting royal decrees against the Covenanters - i.e. against those who opposed Charles II’s and James II’s anti-Presbyterian policies. When he died without an heir, his estates were inherited after 1693 by the grandson of Sir John Gibson of Pentland. Then Alexander Gibson of Adistoun II subsequently purchased Durie from his brother John. This review, mainly of the biographies of the first five baronets, concludes all that needs to be said, for the time being, in order to explain the significance in sixteenth and seventeenth century Scotland of the Gibsons of Durie, from whom my great grandfather John Gibson and his Scottish relatives believed and hoped our family was derived.
Suggestions about the Durie ancestry of Archibald Gibson minister of Lady Yester’s
Was he the son of Alexander Gibson of Adistoun II? As implied already from about 1662 to 1689 the church in Scotland suffered tremendous external pressure from Charles II and James II to give up its Presbyterian character. This was the period of the Scottish Covenanters, but by the birth of Archibald in 1692/3 the problem had been largely resolved by Protestant victory and the welcome accorded by in both England and Scotland to a rival to the succession, Mary daughter of James II and her Dutch husband William of Orange. One theory trying to establish that the Rev. Archibald Gibson was of the Durie family at the period immediately after the take-over of William of Orange (William III) and Queen Mary, is based on the suggestion that he was a son of Alexander Gibson of Adistoun II, the first cousin (one generation removed) of the third Baronet, who purchased the estate of Durie from his brother John about 1699. Like his father before him this Alexander Gibson was a principal Clerk of Session and seems to have been still alive in 1707. This Alexander Gibson of Adistoun (the second) did indeed have a second son Archibald born at about the right time, but Douglas, the near contemporary and prime authority on the subject of the Baronets of Scotland, wrote shortly after the relevant period that this Archibald became a merchant in Danzig. Moreover in the Journal of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations preserved in the Public Record Office published by H.M. Stationery Office pp. 348f. and cf. p.258 a Mr. Gibson, H.M. agent in Danzig is mentioned in about 1740 as the writer of various important business and political letters. This was well after the death of ancestor Archibald Gibson 1692-32, Minister of Lady Yesters, Edinburgh. Edinburgh
This suggests that this Archibald Gibson of Danzig could not have become the clergyman who was namesake and contemporary, who had already died in 1732. A number of other business letters from Danzig clarify that this crown officer’s activity in Poland (sometimes called Dr. Gibson) continued long after 1732. (Cf. GD69/297 in the Scottish Record Office, which is a letter to him from the King of Poland in the year 1764). In fact a direct connection of this kind with the Gibsons of Durie on the part of the Church minister Archibald would seem most unlikely, since when the latter was selected as a fit person to be a Burgess of Edinburgh, the grounds stated was that his father-in-law Robert Tod had been a burgess. If Archibald had been a direct offspring of the Durie family there would have been no need to mention his wife and his father-in-law. So, if there had been some connection with the Gibsons of Durie, it seems likely that it would have been more remote, and in some previous generation. We see this from the fact that, in contrast to the clergyman Archibald, the son of the other Archibald Gibson merchant of Danzig was also in the next generation chosen as a burgess of Edinburgh. But the grounds stated were simply his well-established filial relation to his aristocratic (Gibson of Durie) father.
Was he the grandson of Archibald Gibson, brother of the first baronet Durie? In typewritten papers dated 1925, great grandfather John Robert Gibson’s younger cousin, Dr. Colin Campbell Murray Gibson, wrote some notes on his family which I was fortunate to find about 1997 deposited in the Society of Genealogists, London. These put forward another possibility for the Durie ancestry of Archibald Gibson, minister of Lady Yester’s. He suggested that he was perhaps a grandson of the already mentioned Archibald Gibson (c.1550-1601), brother of the first baronet, Lord Gibson of Durie. Glasgow's ancient cathedral
Royal records of Scotland also clarify that this Archibald’s heir was Henry, like him a clergyman and lawyer, who in his time became the town clerk. Henry left no surviving male heirs. Henry’s younger brother (similarly a clergyman and lawyer) also had like his father the Christian name Archibald. He may well be the lawyer clergyman, Archibald Gibson of Dunscore and Langholm and Notary Public (died 1657), who was probably identical with the Archibald Gibson, Notary Public, who acted as lawyer of George Gibson of Balhousie in Fife, nephew of the first Baronet when he resigned lands in Balhousie according to instruments taken in hand on the 28th December 1653. (Reg. Mag. Sig. Reg. Scot 1652-9 p.110 paragraph 224 cf. p.80 paragraph 160). Unfortunately no will of this Archibald survives, and there are no extant records of his offspring - or indeed of those of any further brother. So although it remains theoretically possible that Archibald Gibson, minister of Lady Yester’s, was a grandson (or more probably, in view of the time-scale, great grandson) of Archibald Gibson Commissariat Clerk of Glasgow (which would make him unimpeachably a member of the Durie family), there is no direct evidence of this (and probably cannot be) - a fact which I am sure would have disappointed the originator of the theory.
My recent discovery of the correct ancestry for Archibald Gibson of Lady Yester’s I have spent much time since about 1996 trying to check out the theories set out above - a task not made any easier by the gradual discovery that there were no less than 26 Archibald Gibsons (most of them not Gibsons of Durie) mentioned in state and ecclesiastical records in the relevant period! Any of these might theoretically have been earlier relatives of Archibald, minister, our ancestor. However, it was about 1996 that I discovered a reference in the baptismal records of Eddleston, near Peebles in the Scottish Borders, to a child Archibald Gibson, son of a John Gibson merchant, "of Athelstoun" (i.e. Eddleston) christened 28th August 1692. The question naturally raised itself in my mind: Could this infant be identical with the Archibald who was at that time our first known ancestor? One of the characteristics of the direct descendants of the latter was that the names of father and eldest son, in typical Scottish fashion, alternated. Thus Archibald’s son was John, John’s son was Archibald, then the next Archibald’s son was John and so on, right up to the present day. The baptismal record of the child Archibald at Eddleston clarified that his father’s name, significantly, was John. Moreover, in such old parochial registers at that period, no indication was normally provided of the profession or status of the father, unless it was in some way unusual or significant. This child Archibald’s father was not only a John Gibson, but a merchant, in other contexts described merely as John Gibson of Eddleston or more precisely John Gibson of Borland or Bordland. This was an area within Eddleston formerly attached in pre-reformation times to the so-called "Whitebarony" of the Diocese of Glasgow. John Gibson, merchant of Eddleston, christened at Eddleston, I discovered, on the 11th October 1658, later became the most active and leading elder in the church there, and lived almost a decade after Archibald, minister of Lady Yester’s, up to the 6th June in the year 1742 when he died about 84, and was buried in Eddleston the following day. The statement that someone was a merchant in Scotland at that time should not be too lightly dismissed. The Scottish parliament had not long previously explicitly encouraged membership from merchants, because the expenses of the institution exceeded what merely titled and landed members had been able to raise for its expenses. So in the light of this single baptismal entry at Eddleston, at the same time as I was compiling as much information as I could about the Gibsons of Durie (including several later baronets up to the nineteenth century, and all their lesser relations!), I also took time to establish as much data as I could from all the relevant church registers about John Gibson merchant of Eddleston, who his wife was, and the lists of both sets of their forbears. I shall set out the results, which are important for my findings, as clearly as I can next:-
What can we find out about this elder Thomas Gibson, Portioner in Bordland? Apparently he was a tenant of Sir Archibald Murray of Darnehill, twice mentioned in a Confirmation charter (20th December 1621, Reg. Great Seal, No. 248), but only in order to clarify parts of the geographical areas legally defined in the charter. Some of the relevant land was resigned by Sir William Hay of Linplum, master of Yester, with the consent of his wife Anne Murray (no doubt related to Sir Archibald Murray) and the consents also of his mother, Lady Yester, and step-father. Before the Reformation other Gibson forbears had been previous tenants, but then it was not to secular persons but to the bishop of Glasgow. In the relevant sources they were termed "kindly rentallers". In old Scots "kindly" means not "benevolent", but related by kinship. This meant that the rental rights of lands were passed normally from father to son or nearest heir. In view of the eminence of some Gibson of Durie ancestors in Glasgow at the end of the fifteenth century, it would have been quite likely that some of their less prominent relatives had benefited by being made such rentallers because they seemed worthy persons who supported the mediaeval church. In the Eddleston parochial registers Thomas Gibson’s heir, also named Thomas is termed Thomas Gibson Younger (abbreviated "yor"). At least from the time of Robert, the eldest son of the younger Thomas, the local mill near the church had somehow passed into Gibson hands and the family was recognized as having local political prominence. (pp. 654 Reg. Privy Council Sc. 3rd Series v.5). Thomas Gibson the elder, first Gibson "Portioner" in Borland after the secular appropriation of ecclesiastical land was clearly, in local terms a person of some significance. In 1616 he was chosen as a witness to the sale of 4/10 of adjoining North Schields and lands in Skiprig in the barony of Eddleston and the Sheriffdom of Peebles. According to volume V of the Manuscripts of Col. Mordaunt Hay of Duns Castle (GRH 5/55 v. V. in the National Library of Scotland) he was a main witness to the sale of these lands to James Lawson of Lawson and Elizabeth Scott, his spouse. A charter was granted on the same date and was confirmed by James Archbishop of Glasgow. Sassine (i.e. in Scottish law the legal document by which the rightful possession of feudal property was proved) was taken thereon on 12th May 1617. Earlier still, someone whom I shall soon identify as his grandfather, Patrick Gibson (rentaller ) witnessed a Sassine to the effect that there existed on the 18th February 1547 a precept and a charter whereby lands in the Whitebarony of Eddleston were already before the Scottish reformation sold to a Robert Horsbruk in Horsbruk.
Confirmation of the identity of Rev. Archibald Gibson, minister of Lady Yester’s Edinburgh with the eldest son of John Gibson, merchant of Eddleston.
In September of 1999 in the Scottish Records Office, Edinburgh, I was delighted for the first time to find twelve letters actually penned by our earliest then known ancestor, Archibald Gibson minister, to Sir John Clerk of Penicuik with whom Archibald had become acquainted through being employed as his young son Robert's tutor and spiritual advisor. At that stage I was unaware that Penicuik was a parish to the north directly adjacent to Eddleston, where the ancestral seat of the Clerks is still located. Within a day or two, in a state of high euphoria after tracing what had been for so long a missing link to ancestors earlier than Archibald, I would pass through Penecuik by bus from Edinburgh to Eddleston. Sir John Clerk of Penicuik was one of the most prominent Scots of the day. He is not to be confused with his son the second baronet, who (like Sir Alexander Gibson third baronet Durie) was one of the principle Commissioners of the Scottish parliament which negotiated the relationship between Scotland and England in the union of 1707. This John did not succeed to the title until 1722. But a great deal is known about the father through the celebrated memoirs of his son. Sir John, first Baronet of Penecuik was Commissioner to Parliament for Edinburghshire 1609-1702. He was born about 1650 and was heir to John Clerk of Penecuik, whom he succeeded 1674. He was created a baronet on the 24th March 1679 . He is said in the Memoirs of his son to have served the shire as a J.P. and Lt. Col. of the Militia, but never solicited for public office. He managed his affairs "with great frugality" and added the barony of Lasswade to his estates. He was Commissioner of Supply 1685, 1689, 1695 and 1704 and signed the Association in defence of King William 1696 . In 1674 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Henry Henderson of Elvingston, by whom he had seven children. After the death of his first wife he married Christian, daughter of Mr. James Kilpatrick, minister of Carrington. She was clearly born after 1691 (Fasti i.305) and was of roughly the same age as Archibald. By her Sir John had eight more children and one of them must have been the Robert mentored by Archibald. Sir John died in 1722 at the age of 72. One of the briefer letters of Archibald to Sir John. Note the extremely deferential tone. Click on the thumbnail to see the large version of the picture and then use your web browser to return to this page
The letters from our ancestor Archibald to Sir John Clerk are interesting in their own right, in careful and beautifully legible handwriting painstakingly cultivated by him. From these letters it becomes clear that Archibald, as I have just mentioned, had been chosen even before graduation and ordination as the chaplain - salaried academic tutor and religious mentor - of one the sons of Sir John’s second marriage, Robert. This was in the period 1711-1714 while Archibald was, in relation to his later clerical vocation, a probationer and still a student at the University of Edinburgh. According to one of Archibald's letters, this youngster was also taught by a Mr. Humphrey, a private Latin tutor selected by him in the morning, but in the afternoon Archibald himself taught him Euclid (!) and would also go through a chapter of the Greek New Testament with him (!). From time to time he was also taken also to public classes in Divinity attended somewhere in Edinburgh by Archibald (probably at the University), though he felt doubtful whether the boy would ever fall in love with the subject. This was in spite of Archibald’s efforts to represent Divinity to him "in an agreeable and entertaining manner". Nevertheless the young Robert seemed "grave and sober beyond what could be expected from one of his years" and was "not in the least inclined to any sort of vice" Archibald wrote with great courtesy and deference to Sir John, and the tone of the letters clarifies that, far from adopting a tone as would befit one emerging directly from a family of the status of the Gibsons of Durie, he felt himself only in some narrow educational respects on a par with the Baronet. Even in these matters he was exceedingly deferential.
The Power of Patronage then in Scotland After Archibald had established, with evident success, a good pastoral and educational relationship with his son Robert, Sir John became in effect Archibald’s patron and helped greatly to secure his first ministerial appointment at Dunblane. The aging nobleman in fact obviously greatly liked Archibald and had felt much disappointment on his behalf, when he had not apparently succeeded some months earlier in helping him to obtain what seemed to Sir John be a better appointment. This was to Currie, a parish in Edinburgh. On the 7th April 1714 Archibald wrote another letter to thank him for his efforts, even though they not been successful. A very interesting document is a long letter dated 31st August 1719 in which Archibald endeavoured to secure Sir John’s legal intervention which apparently arose in relation to small piece of ground allocated to the minister for the pasturage of his horse, which had been with doubtful legality expropriated by a local Jacobite "Writer" (solicitor) during the vacancy between parsons there. In a further letter to Sir John from the same year Archibald makes it clear that he also endeavoured to secure a successor for himself as his son’s tutor. In another letter 1721 he apologizes for not visiting the Baronet on account of the distance of Dunblane from Edinburgh (and even more from Penecuik). Most of the space in the remaining letters is devoted to discussion of various appointments and patronage matters in which Sir John looked to the younger pastor and scholar for his views and advice. In two of the letters and in an additional brief explanatory note of Sir John himself on the outside of one of them, it becomes clear that they were in the habit of using one of the local baileys as the virtual postman between them! The outside of the letter shown above. Notice the reference to "Baillie Wallace"
"Bailey" in Old Scots means a Scottish municipal officer and magistrate. It would thus be a very surprising arrangement, unless the bailey himself had special reasons such as kinship to be well-disposed to the young clergyman on whose behalf he was acting. But if the bailey and Sir John Clerk were close neighbours - liable to meet in any case in their joint civic life - and if the bailey was in fact the uncle or the grandfather of the young clergyman, then the arrangement becomes easier to understand. In fact the surname of the bailey is clearly provided on four occasions in the letters, and it is Wallace. This detail, and the geographical proximity of Eddleston to Penecuik, together with the Christian name of his father and the general character of his family, to my mind confirms beyond doubt the identity of the Gospel minister Archibald Gibson with the baby son Archibald of John Gibson merchant of Eddleston, christened in August 1692, whose maternal uncle was just such a Bailey Wallace. Later on I have discovered in the church records of Eddleston the following entry which helps to explain why Archibald as a young minister born in Eddleston could have become known to the Stewarts of Tillicoultry to whom he was family chaplain while incumbent at Dunblane:
Cringlety was (and still is) a mansion in Eddleston and the Murrays there were relatives of the Murrays of Blackbarony, the local nobility and secular landowners at Eddleston. The Stewarts of Tillicoultrie was the family to which Archibald in about 1714-1718 became tutor !
Two explanations of the Gibsons of Durie Tradition
There are two possible explanations of the tradition widespread in our family that Archibald, minister at Dunblane, St. Ninian’s Stirling and Lady Yester’s Edinburgh stemmed from the Gibsons of Durie family. The first would rests on, what I would suggest, is a mistaken attempt to associate him directly with the Gibsons of Durie, the second, more modestly, tries to associate his ancestors with same family at a much earlier period , when they were already known as principle millers of the King. On the assumption that I am indeed correct in seeing Archibald as the son of John Gibson merchant in Eddleston the tradition can be explained as simply a mistake made by Archibald Gibson of Ladhope, W.S. about whom we shall lately discover as his grandson. As we shall see later this grandson’s first cousin on his mother’s side and close neighbour in the country around Galashiels was James Pringle Laird of Torwoodlee. There had been earlier marital connections between Gibsons of Durie and the same family of Pringles which would have fostered the idea of such a possibility in the mind of Pringle himself, especially in view of his close friendship with his cousin. In the seventeenth century an earlier Laird of Torwoodlee, George Pringle had been similarly a cousin through his mother Janet Craig of the second Baronet Durie, who was the son of the first baronet and his wife Margaret Craig, daughter of Sir Thomas Craig of Riccarton. The third Baronet of Durie had become indebted to this George Pringle and his debts paid by (yet another!) Archibald Gibson, his brother . According to Lamont the Scottish diarist (p.193) this same Archibald, a wine-merchant, contributed to war against the Dutch in 1666. He eventually died of gout and palsy at Durie on the 26th May 1670 and was buried the next day at Scoonie. Moreover, it so happens that prior to the ministry of the grandfather at Dunblane an Alexander Gibson had also served there, who was without any doubt whatsoever a member of the Durie family. This Alexander Gibson’s parents were John Gibson, Writer of Edinburgh (solicitor) and Jean Pringle (or Hop-Pringle) who were married on or about the 5th June 1608 at Edinburgh Parish. Alexander had an older sister, Jean, who was christened on the 15th October 1609 and Alexander himself was christened on the 15th March 1612 (both at Edinburgh). He himself married a Jean Meiklejohn on the 9th April 1646 at Edinburgh. He died in October 1652 with an only child Jean (christened 20th April 1647 at South Leith), who eventually married Hugh McCulloch on the 2nd January 1666. But long before that, in his will, this Alexander had nominated, among others, his kinsman Sir Alexander Gibson of Durie as one of her tutors (i.e. protector and mentor).
The monument in Dunblane cathedral which mentions both Alexander and Archibald Gibson. Click to see full-size. I have super-imposed asterisks to help you find the two Gibsons discussed.
The later Writer for the Signet, Archibald Gibson of Ladhope, seems to have simply assumed that the two ministers of Dunblane were related in the same way, when public information on computer derived from the Old Parochial Registers easily available now shows that such a connection is impossible. There is an interesting and tantalizing pre-Reformation connection between Eddleston and the Gibsons of Durie family which make such a suggestion more likely than it at first seems. The brother of the first Baronet of the Gibsons of Durie was, as I pointed out earlier, another clergyman Archibald Gibson (died 1602) who was Commissariat Clerk of Glasgow. His wife was Susanna Hay. Her father was a distinguished cleric, but more important for the connection with Eddleston was that she was niece of George Hay, first post-Reformation minister of Eddleston, who was already parson there prior to the Scottish Reformation in 1560. He died in 1588. George Hay was no non-entity but one of the most prominent of the Scottish reformers. He was son of William Hay of Tala and Linplum and brother of Andrew Hay rector of Glasgow University, Susanna’s father. He had been, as mentioned already, parson of Eddleston prior to the Reformation, but he was also minister of distant Ruthven in the Presbytery of Meigle, in the Synod of Angus and Mearns, which he held by a dispensation of the Pope. Nevertheless about 1560 he rapidly conformed with Protestantism, and in 1562 was appointed (as superintendent of Glasgow) to preach alternately with another preacher in the unplanted kirks of Carrick till the ensuing Assembly. So great was his influence nationally that he was called "the minister of the Court". His full self- identification with Protestantism is shown by the fact that when appointed to argue against John Knox on the obedience due to magistrates, he refused, because he in fact substantially agreed with him. Despite his national prominence and wider ecclesiastical responsibilities, on a complaint in 1568 to the general Assembly by the local nobleman Andrew Murray of Blackbarony, in the name of his parishioners, that he "neither preached the Word there nor ministered the Sacrament", he was sharply rebuked. After this he appears to have withdrawn to his other benefice, Ruthven, where he died in 1588. Especially interesting for what we would now see as the high-handedness and nepotism of ecclesiastics in this period is the fact that on the 19th January 1560 the same George Hay minister of Eddleston granted to his brother William Hay of Tala certain parochial lands in Eddleston in return for a sum of money to repair the church there. So although the Gibson of Goldingstones felt entitled to use the arms bestowed on William Gibson of Restalrig by the pope, their relative prominence in national life was already established in the fifteenth century long before the period when he is generally held to have flourished in the 1540s. Perhaps indeed there was a long-standing connection with earlier generations of what became the Durie family, which led some Gibsons of Eddleston to regard themselves as of the same family. Some dim awareness of this may have been handed down through the Rev. John Gibson to his son Archibald Gibson of Ladhope, W.S., who (owing to his grandfather’s early death and with limited knowledge of the partial facts then available) jumped to the conclusion that there must have been some family relationship between the earlier Alexander Gibson minister of Dunblane and the later Archibald Gibson minister of Dunblane. The later Gibsons of Durie (and their close relations the Gibsons of Pentland) eventually had their arms ratified by the Lord Lyon, heraldic authority for Scotland. But there may well have been a branch of the family at Eddleston (and also at Glencrosh, Dumfries, where the evidence for this is stronger) who by some relation to William of Restalrig felt entitled to trace connection with the Gibsons of Goldingstones. Since William Gibson Dean of Restalrig was originally educated for the church at Glasgow, incorporated in 1503 and graduated in December 1507, it is even possible that in his early career which began in fact at Glasgow he "pulled some strings" as it were on behalf of members of his family, which led them to being chosen as rentallers by the See in the first two decades of the sixteenth century 1500-20. Moreover there is quite a lot of evidence (associated with a prebend which Archibald Commissary Clerk of Glasgow held) that a number of earlier relatives had been conspicuous clerics in Glasgow at about the time when the Gibsons of Bordland became rentallers in Eddleston of the see of Glasgow.
The Whitebarony of Eddleston and Borland Farm The lands on the east side of the stream at Eddleston partially occupied by these Gibsons throughout the sixteenth century were already in the possession of the See of Glasgow in 1116. This appears from the "Inquisition" which King David made in that year. From time to time tenants tried to appropriate the land ignoring the ancient title deeds, but were compelled by ecclesiastical sanctions to allow the lands to revert to the church. The lands themselves must have become a Barony, later known as the Whitebarony, at least some time before 1369. (Land to the west of the water in secular hands was known as the Blackbarony). It was then that the bishop of Glasgow is recorded to have collected a tax everywhere demanded by the Scottish Parliament to meet the expenses of two envoys to the English court. The Whitebarony was again mentioned in a charter granted by the Scottish king James IV to the bishop of Glasgow dated 4th January 1489-90. This provided that if certain baronies were convicted in the King’s courts, their forfeited estates and goods should fall to the bishop. No sources exist which explain why a family of Gibsons were favoured at least from about 1500 by the pre-reformation see of Glasgow with land rights in Bordland and in the neighbouring area - all parts of the Whitebarony. However, it is far from impossible, and certainly as likely as not, that this had something to do with kinship with the existing status of the Goldingstones family. I have learned that in relation to such rentallers recognized by the pre-Reformation Church the rents were not subject to variation and the tenancy normally descended to the holder’s heirs, who on payment of a sum of money called grassum had their titles completed by entry of their names in Rental Book of the see. By an extraordinary providence one of these rental books covering the period 1509-1570 has come down to posterity. At the Reformation, the Catholic archbishop James Beaton of Glasgow (nephew of William Gibson’s contemporary, Cardinal Beaton) though he fled to France, did not give up church property, but took with him, among other important documents, the rental book of his baronies, and continued for about ten years from France to enrol new tenants whenever changes of ownership took place. James Beaton in fact remained in royal favour and there was some hope, despite his Catholicism of restoration. This hope was, however, never realized. On his death in 1603 the relevant documents were deposited partly in the Scots College and partly in the Chartreuse of Paris, where they remained until the French Revolution. Although the revolutionaries destroyed many documents associated in their mind with monarchy, some of Beaton’s survived to be brought back to Scotland in 1798. Among them was a rental book relating to Eddleston, subsequently translated from Latin and published as an appendix by the Grampian Club to a two volume work known as Liber Protocollorum M. Cuthberti Simoni Publici et Scribae Capituli Glasguensis. An appendix to this work provides among many other names the Christian names of the ancestors of Thomas Gibson, Portioner of Eddleston, back as far as 1521, and implies an unnamed Gibson predecessor even before that! From this source we deduce that Thomas Gibson’s rentaller father was named John. His father in turn was Patrick; his father Thomas; and his father in turn the unnamed Gibson prior to that. In some cases when one of the rentallers died the names of widows are provided as well. The earliest reference to Gibsons is thus for 3rd May 1521: "the same day, Thomas Gibson is rentalled in 25s of the lands of Bordland, with consent of his mother, she enjoying for life". A similar reference to Patrick in 1542 names his mother, wife of Thomas, by the now unused female Christian name Kyrk. (Of course Kirk endures as a surname, as in "Captain Kirk, of the Star Ship Enterprise"). Patrick’s wife, John Gibson’s mother, was said to have been a certain Elin Wylson (Helen Wilson), and this is stated in a reference dated March 1563. Here are some pictures of Bordland (now Borland Farm) in Eddleston (late afternoon September 1999) Click each thumbnail to see the full-size picture, then use your Web browser's Back button to return to this page.
In another legal document in Latin - fortuitously preserved in the archives of the adjoining secular (Black) Barony - William Paterson with consent of the archbishop transferred to William Gibson, his son in law, land in adjacent North Schield. This William Gibson was probably Patrick’s younger brother, but we can tell from later sources already mentioned that the tenancy of North Schield somehow passed back to the line of the first-born early in the next century. Returning to Protestant sources we find that in 1572 Episcopacy was restored in Scotland, so on the 31st May 1577 James Boyd, Protestant archbishop granted in feu to James, Earl of Morton, Regent of Scotland the lands of the Whitebarony, namely the lands of North Schield, Skitrig or Skiprig, Bordland, Adamsland and the mill at Eddleston. Morton, whose name is highly politically significant in Scottish history, was, however, executed in 1581, so his estates, including those in Eddleston, were forfeited to the crown. Eventually, after some possible brief changes in ownership, the King disposed it (with patronage of the church at Eddleston) to Sir John Maitland of Thirlestane, his chancellor. In the early years of the seventeenth century the secular Barony on the West side of the stream at Eddleston known as the Blackbarony was extended by the addition of lands formerly belonging to the Whitebarony on the other side of the water. By a charter dated 29th January 1621 "James, archbishop of Glasgow, with the consent of the dean and chapter of Glasgow" granted to Sir Archibald Murray of Darnehill… the mill and the mill lands of Eddleston, the half of the lands of Bordland, with the half quarter of the other half occupied by the said Archibald and by various persons his tenants. These included as a main tenant and feu holder, as we have seen, Thomas Gibson. Other land specified in the charter is two tenths of North Schield occupied by other named persons, including once again Thomas Gibson. This is the Thomas Gibson, Portioner of Eddleston or Bordland, mentioned in the parochial registers of Eddleston whom I have previously identified as, the great grandfather of our ancestor Archibald Gibson of Lady Yester’s, Edinburgh. Modern Blackbarony "Castle" - now a hotel and Conference centre
Another head of the family, after Robert Gibson, the merchant John’s brother, was another Thomas Gibson whose testament has survived. Some time after this it would seem that the farm at Borland (or Bordland) somehow became the straightforward property of the Gibson family, which they retained until the 1850s. A later heir after Thomas was George. After him the next heir, another Thomas Gibson, was ordained, and became the minister of nearby Kirkurd and chaplain of the Gibson of Durie estate which by this period had become sited there. This same Rev. Thomas Gibson was mentioned earlier in a memorandum preserved in the Scottish Record Office (GD18/45) dated 1739 to the effect that Thomas Gibson, eldest son of George Gibson of Borland be presented as minister of Manor by "the friends of the family of March" on the grounds that his father had a vote in the shire of Peebles for the election of M.Ps. to the British parliament. After his ministry at Kirkurd he died on the 27th January 1787 and was buried there without any indication of the Durie arms on his grave memorial. So if the two families of Gibsons had been related in pre-Reformation times, sight of this fact had by that time been lost or considered very doubtful. In 1801 the Borland farm passed to the daughter of Thomas, Christine Gibson, who in 1820 married Captain William Cochrane Anderson. In 1849 it was sold by the marriage contract trustees to William Forbes Mackenzie. This effectively brought an end to the history of the Gibsons in Borland, which had covered a period of at least three and a half centuries.
The pedigree of Archibald Gibson 1692-1732 The pedigree of Archibald Gibson, until 1999 our earliest know ancestor is therefore as follows:-
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However,
the real reason why I introduce her at this point is that it would be difficult
to understand much of the information I introduce without some knowledge of her
and of Scotland in her times. 
