Ireland.

Even from Gaul, Alcuin, the counsellor of Charlemagne, sent epistles to the brethren at Whithorn, while in later times the ancient shrine continued renowned as a pilgrimage whither princes, churchmen, and warriors came from distant parts by sea and land to pay their devotions. In days nearer our own, and for another form of piety, a second shrine was found at Anwoth, in the church of the "Godly Rutherford." "Blessed birds" he described the sparrows and swallows to be who built their nests there. On removing to St. Andrews, and when known to be on his death-bed, he was summoned with impotent malice to appear before the Privy Council. "Tell them," he said, "I have got a summons already before a superior judge and judicatory, and it behoves me to answer that summons first. Ere your day arrives I will be where few kings and great folks come." When the messengers returned to the Council and intimated that the author of "Lex Rex" was dying, Parliament, with a few dissenting voices, voted that he should not be allowed to die in the College. "Yes," remarked Lord Burleigh, "you have voted the honest man out of his College, but you cannot vote him out of heaven." Crocketford, near Dalbeattie, has an interest of a different kind-an interest centering not in piety but in delusion-possibly fraud. Here Luckie Buchan and her crazed followers set up their camp on being removed from Closeburn parish, and here the cunning old prophetess died (1791), and so late as 1846 was buried in the same grave with the last of her followers. In expectation of her direct translation to heaven, the body had for many years been secretly kept above ground among her own people. She described herself, as most readers know, to be the Woman clothed with the Sun mentioned in the Revelation, and blasphemously pretended to have brought forth, in the person of the Rev. Hugh White, the manchild who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. "I never heard (wrote Scott in St. Ronan's Well'), of alewife that turned preacher except Luckie Buchan in the West." According to Mr. Harper, their fame as wheelwrights and spinners extended all over the South of Scotland. The Buchanite women introduced into Galloway the two-handed spinning-wheel,

and found employment in preparing linen yarn for families in the neighbourhood. They possessed a community of goods, and appeared to live comfortably and peaceably together, each in turn, as they paid the debt of nature, being interred within a small plot of ground behind their dwelling-house in the village of Crocketford. On visiting the spot, fourteen graves were pointed out to our author by an old woman now occupying the premises, still owned, he was given to understand, by a descendant of this strange sect of Buchanites. Among the old ecclesiastical foundations within the Stewartry, Mr. Harper gives short but appreciative notices of Dundrennan, the last resting-place in Scotland of Queen Mary after her flight from Langside; of Sweetheart, or New Abbey, the burialplace of the munificent Devorgilla, daughter of Alan, Lord of Galloway, and mother of John Balliol, for a short time King of Scotland; and of Lincluden, now more emphatically than even in Burns' time a "roofless tower, where the wa'flower scents the dewy air." Here the rambler may recall scenes associated with the most stirring periods of Scottish history; and here, too, he is brought in presence of the last resting-place of Lady Margaret, eldest daughter of Robert III., Countess of Douglass and Lady of Galloway and Annandale. She died at Threave Castle about 1440, and was interred in a magnificent tomb built into the north wall of the choir, near the altar, when that part of Lincluden Abbey was erected by Archibald the Grim. The fabric, with lands around, has for generations formed part of the patrimonial inheritance of the old Catholic house of Terregles, but munificent supporters, as they have always been, of the new foundation of St. Andrews, at Dumfries, only little was laid out, and that at distant intervals, to keep up a ruin so intimately associated with the ancient faith as the Abbey of Lincluden. Drawings, however, are now (1876) being made with the view of something being done to prevent the fine choir at least from crumbling to dust. Mr. Harper, our readers may be informed, does not enlarge unduly upon, far less confine himself in rambling to what is old or ecclesiastical. Threave and Bombie, Maxwells and MacLellans, Kircudbright Castle and Town, Black Morrow Wood and Buchan Forest-from Nith to Dee, from Dee to

Portpatrick-all places, families, and customs, are made to render up their quota of entertaining matter. About things new and industrial he has also much pleasant gossip. At Arbigland, the birth-place of Paul Jones, and at St. Mary's Isle, which he plundered, the rover of the Solway naturally turns up in the character of an American privateer. In his own neighbourhood of Dalbeattie, again, the author has many fresh and informing notes to set down about the granite works carried on there, and the important part such industry has played in the erection of docks at Liverpool and embankments on the Thames. We could have wished even more about that wandering minstrel, William or "Wull" Nicholson. M'Diarmid's edition of his pieces is not very widely known nowadays; and when insipid watery versifiers are so rife it is not desirable, however odd or thriftless he may have been, to let writers like the author of "The Brownie of Blednoch" slip into forgetfulness.

THE HERRIES PEERAGE.

ONE of the three noblemen recently (April, 1884) called to the Upper House as a Peer of the United Kingdom is Marmaduke Constable-Maxwell, known in the Peerage of Scotland as Baron Herries of Terregles. The new Peer, who was born in 1837, is eldest son of that William Constable-Maxwell of Everingham, Yorkshire, declared by the House of Lords, in 1858, entitled to the Barony of Herries of Terregles (Kirkcudbrightshire) as lineal heir of the body of Agnes Lady Herries, daughter and co-heir of William Lord Herries, son of Andrew, who sat as a Lord of Parliament in Scotland, 1505-6, and was slain at Flodden 9th September, 1513. Agnes, Lady Herries, became the wife of Sir John Maxwell, afterwards called of Terregles, second son of Robert, fifth Lord Maxwell. Judged to have claimed the dignity of a Peeress in her own right,

by this marriage the Herries barony passed into that powerful branch of the Maxwell family so prominently mixed up in their day with all the events which have become historically associated with Nithsdale, Annandale, and the southern counties generally. The formidable fortresses of Caerlaverock and Threave indicate but partly the baronial splendour of the Maxwells. In quite recent times at least two other interesting properties have fallen into the Herries branch of the Maxwell family. Through the marriage of William Maxwell, only son of the attainted or fifth Earl of Nithsdale, with Catherine, daughter of Charles, fourth Earl of Traquair, their descendant, Henry Constable-Maxwell of Scarthingwell Park, Yorkshire, uncle of the new Peer, succeeded to the Traquair property in 1875 on the death of the venerable Lady Louisa Stuart, whose name he assumed. By his marriage with Mary Monica, only daughter of Hope-Scott, Q.C., Joseph Constable-Maxwell, younger brother of the present Lord Herries, succeeded to the romantic Tweedside property of Abbotsford, and adopted, like his fatherin-law, the name of Scott. The Galloway property of Terregles has been kept in the family by the succession of Alfred Constable-Maxwell, second surviving son of Peter, another brother of the late Peer, and nephew of Marmaduke Constable-Maxwell, so long distinguished for the refined hospitality with which he kept up the fame of a beautiful property, naturally looked upon in some respects as the cradle of the race from which he sprung. Constable-Maxwell died July, 1872, and is fittingly commemorated by an exquisite memorial chapel within the walls of that Roman Catholic Church in Dumfries which during life he had supported with princely munificence. The recently erected convent crowning the eminence known as Corbelly Hill, on the opposite side of the Nith, and the establishment of the Marian Brothers in a fabric long occupied as the Royal Infirmary, may serve to indicate the zeal with which the Herries Maxwells supported the ancient faith, from which they never swerved.

The earliest Maxwell of Caerlaverock mentioned in history is Sir John, Great Chamberlain of Scotland, 1231, whose son, Aylmer or Emereus, also Great Chamberlain, acquired the barony and castle of Mearns by his marriage

with Mary, only daughter and heiress of Roland, feudal possessor of the barony. A younger son of this marriage acquired from his father the barony of NetherPollock, and founded the family now represented by the young Stirling-Maxwells. The eldest, Sir Herbert de Maxwell, was grandfather of that Sir Eustace who defended Caerlaverock against Edward I., as described in the curious contemporary Norman-French poem, edited during the present century by Sir Harris Nicolas. From this point the Caerlaverock Maxwells divide themselves into two distinct and well-defined branches-the Maxwells, Lords Herries of Terregles, and the Maxwells, Earls of Nithsdale. By the line last mentioned the Herries honours were carried into the Yorkshire family of Constable, Lady Winifred Maxwell, daughter of the attainted Lord Nithsdale, marrying in 1758 Haggerston Constable of Everingham. Their grandson, Marmaduke-William Constable, was father of that William who established his right to the Herries honours, which are now about to receive an augmentation in the person of his son Marmaduke, the present Peer. The latter, as mentioned above, was born in 1837, and educated at Stonyhurst Roman Catholic College. In 1875 he married the Hon. Angela Mary Charlotte Fitzalan Howard, second daughter of Lord Howard of Glossip, and has issue two daughters, Gwendoline and Angela Mary, both born in 1877.

Herbert of the But a still earlier

It is uncertain when the Herries barony was created. name is known to have sat as a Lord of Parliament in 1489. reference to the family, if not to the dignity, occurs in the person of a certain William de Heriz, who witnesses various charters in the reign of William the Lion. The first described as of Terregles (or Church lands of Lincluden) is Sir John "Herice," who obtained a charter of the lands from resignation of the same by Thomas, Earl of Mar, in 1359. this same Sir John would appear to have received a grant of the lands of Kirkgunzeon, within the Stewartry, which had previously belonged to the Abbey of Holmculteram, in Cumberland. The most prominent of his descendants was John Maxwell (Lord Herries), the friend and adviser of Queen Mary,

David II. on the

Nine years later