Sir Robert Grierson, 1st Baronet: Difference between revisions

{{Use dmy dates|date=AugustJune 20212023}}

|caption = Cruel Lag's'' memorial at the [[Dunscore Old Kirk|Old Kirk of Dunscore]] burial ground, erected in 1897 by his descendant Sir Alexander Grierson.

|birth_date = 16551657

|death_date = {{death date and age|1733|12|3129|16551657|df=y}}

|title = 1st Baronet, of Lag and [[Rockhall Tower|Rockhall]]

'''Sir Robert Grierson, 1st Baronet''', of Lag (1655/56 – 31 December 1733) was a Scottish [[baronet]] from Dumfriesshire.

He is best remembered as a notorious persecutor of the [[Covenanters]], particularly among the people of [[Galloway]], and is still referred to asby ''nickname, "Cruel Lag''. The character of Sir Robert Redgauntlet of ''Wandering Willie's tale'' in [[Walter Scott|Sir Walter Scott's]] ''[[Redgauntlet]]'' is based on Grierson".

Subsequent to the 1688 [[Glorious Revolution]], Lag was arrested in May 1689 as a supporter of the old Stuart regime. Although he obtained his release on a substantial bail, and continued to receive his pension from [[William III of England|William III]], he remained under suspicion as a potential [[Jacobitism|Jacobite]] rebel and was imprisoned again several times during the 1690s.<ref name=dnb/> In 1696 he was charged with being involved with the coining of false money at his mansion, [[Rockhall Tower]], but it was eventually discovered that the house was merely being used for experiments in stamping [[linen]] with decorative patterns.<ref name=dnb/> For much of the remainder of his life Lag's fortunes were seriously impacted by fines, and he took no further part in the politics of the period. He continued to serve as a [[Justice of the peace]] and permitted his sons to become involved in the 1715 Jacobite Rising.<ref name=dnb/> However, the family's status never came under real threat as their connections with the influential [[Duke of Queensberry]], both by blood and by marriage, probably served to protect them to some extent.<ref name=hpo>[http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1690-1715/member/grierson-(grier)-william-1688-1760 GRIERSON (GRIER), William (bef.1688-1760), of Rockhall, Lag, Dumfries], ''The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1690-1715''</ref> Although Lag lived on unmolested in semi-retirement he remained feared and reviled by Covenanters: the writer Patrick Walker (c.1666-1745) in his ''Remarkable Passages of the Life and Death of Mr. [[Alexander Peden]]'', described him as "''a great persecutor, a great swearer, a great whorer, blasphemer, drunkard, liar and cheat, and yet out of hell''".<ref name=walker239>Walker, ''Some remarkable passages of the life and death of Mr. Alexander Peden'', 1815, p. 239</ref>

In 1713 Lag handed over his estates to his eldest son, William, in return for a life rent. The two subsequently fell out over Lag's request to sell some of the property, though the resulting legal cases had the unintended effect of protecting the estates from forfeiture after William became involved in the 1715 rebellion. It was noted that father and son had been "''thoroughly reunited by the common cause of retrieving their property''",<ref name=hpo/> and Lag was eventually able to transfer the estates back to William in 1725.

Grierson of Lag was a byword for evil among the common Presbyterian folk in Annandale, who gravely asserted that he, like the other persecutors of the Covenanters, had intimate dealings with the devil, and that he was "''partly in hell''" before his death, in evidence of which they told that his saliva burnt holes where it fell, and his feet put into cold water made it boil.<ref name=cks4>Allardyce (ed.) ''Letters from and to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esq'', vol 1, Edinburgh: Blackwood, p. 4</ref> Lag died, aged 77, at his town house in Dumfries on 31 December 1733. He was buried two days later in the Grierson family burial plot in [[Dunscore Old Kirk|Old Dunscore Churchyard]], the cost of the funeral being £240 Scots. A story was told that on the night he died a chariot surrounded by thunder clouds swept his soul away to hell. Another described how the horses pulling his hearse to Dunscore churchyard died of exhaustion on the way and a black raven flew down and settled on the coffin, flying away only at the moment of burial. The antiquary [[Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe]] claimed that the story regarding the horses was in fact true, and that his grand-uncle Sir Thomas Kirkpatrick, a nephew of Lag's, had both attended the funeral and supplied the horses which subsequently died.<ref name="cks4"/> Whereas the Presbyterian martyrologists had listed the names of those shot at the hands of Lag's men, the tales that grew up after his death became more lurid, and in later years locals pointed out a spot on Halliday Hill, near Lag Tower, where the Laird was said to have rolled Covenanters downhill in a barrel filled with spikes.<ref name=fergusson139>Fergusson, A. ''The Laird of Lag'', Edinburgh: D. Douglas, 1886, p. 139</ref>

Such stories may not be the stuff of scholarly history, but they vividly demonstrate the loathing and fear in which this man was held by those who were loyal to the National Covenant (1638) and the Solemn League and Covenant (1643) and who hoped, sometimes schemed and even at times took up arms against the Stuart monarchy to achieve religious freedom.<ref>cf. e.g. Dane Love, "Scottish Covenanter Stories: Tales from the Killing Times",(Castle Douglas: Neil Wilson Publishing, 2000), ch.28, [Kindle DX version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com</ref> A satirical [[chapbook]] poem known as ''"Lag's Elegy''", in which the Devil lamented the death of Lag, his "''champion brave''",<ref name=fergusson165>Fergusson, 1886, p. 167</ref> was extremely popular in southern Scotland for around fifty years after his death.

Grierson eventually entered folk memory, and was the subject of a strange custom recorded in Galloway and Dumfriesshire in the 19th century. Alexander Fergusson, who published a biographical sketch of him in 1886, recalled that as late as the 1840s some families, including Fergusson's own, used to commemorate Lag's deeds yearly in November by getting someone to dress as the "Laird of Lag", a "''beast as hideous as the ingenuity of the performer intrusted with the part could make it''"<ref name=fergusson7>Fergusson, 1886, p. 7</ref> and which was used to frighten the children of the household.<ref name=fergusson11>Fergusson, 1886, p. 11</ref> The conventional "''beast''" walked on all fours and had a long snout made from a large wooden kitchen [[pestle]], with which the performer would "''smell out Covenanters under the sideboard and other likely places''": Fergusson said that anything "''more striking, not to say appalling, to young minds can hardly be imagined''".<ref name=fergusson11/>

{{s-ttl| title=[[Grierson Baronets|Baronet]]<br>'''(of Lag) | years='''1685–1733}}