"[43]
The young lady seems to have been well-favoured, though it is not easy
to learn much from the female portraits of those days, which are all
very much of a piece. What else she may have been it is impossible to
say. She is a name in her husband's history and nothing more, and in the
few stormy years that were yet to run for him she could not well have
been much more. However, she seems to have been well pleased with her
handsome lover; and, in spite of her mother's opposition, the marriage
was pushed briskly forward. The contract was signed at Paisley on June
10th, and on the following day the marriage was celebrated at the same
place. Lady Catherine's is not among the signatures; but there is to be
seen the almost illegible scrawl of the old grandfather and of Euphrame
his wife, a daughter of Sir William Scott of Ardross. The bride's eldest
brother, whose own marriage with the Lady Susannah Hamilton was soon to
follow, and her cousin John, son of the outlaw of Ochiltree, were also
among the witnesses; and for the bridegroom, his brother-in-arms Lord
Ross[44] and Colin Mackenzie, brother of the Lord Advocate, Sir George
of Rosehaugh. The lady's jointure was fixed at five thousand merks Scots
(something over two hundred and seventy pounds of English money),
secured on certain property in Forfarshire and Perthshire; while she on
her side brought her husband what in those days was reckoned a very
comfortable fortune for a younger child.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133