Butler Name in History

The Butler Name
in History

Butlers of Scotland

Harsh and imposing, Hermitage Castle seems to reflect the more chilling legends with which it is associated.

Hermitage Castle is mentioned in records from the 14th century onwards.  It stands within old earthworks later adapted tor artillery and is surrounded on either side by the burns of Castle Sike and Lady's Sike. These run down into the Hermitage Water. Starting as a rectangular keep, the castle had towers added to its corners and later, a projecting gallery supported by huge arches from which beseigers were harried.  Upstream lie the foundations of a chapel probably built during the latter years of the 12th century.

One of the earliest-mentioned families in the history of Hermitage Castle is that of de Soulis, whose leaders were hereditary King's Butlers of Scotland, Probably their most fearsome member was the wicked Lord Soulis, about whom there are numerous stories telling of his final downfall at the hands of the magician Thomas of Ercledoune, Thomas the Rhymer. Soulis had invited a young laird of Mangerton to a banquet, and then murdered him. He also gave orders for the drowning in the Hermitage Water of a Tyneside baron, the Cout of Kielder. When people complained to the then king about the atrocities committed by Soulis, he replied in a fit of irritation, "'Go, boil Lord Soulis an ye list, but let me have no more of him". Soulis was then, at the direction of the magician, wrapped in a sheet of lead and dumped into a boiling cauldron until he melted lead, and bones and all'.  A later incident of note occured in 1338 when the castle was wrested from the English by Sir William Douglas, known as the Black Knight of Liddesdale. Enraged by the fact that his rival, Sir Alexander Ramsay of Dalhousie, had been appointed sheriff of Teviotdale ahead of him, he seized Ramsay and dropped him into the Hermitage dungeon, leaving him there to starve to death. However the most famous tale connected with the chill fortress is that of the ride of Mary Queen of Scots from Jedburgh in 1566.  The queen covered nearly fifty miles there and back in a day in order to visit Bothwell. Officially they were meeting to confer about the rounding up of the valley's notorious troublemakers, but malicious tongues spread the tale that Mary was more concerned with Bothwell as lover than as lieutenant, a rumour that seemed to be confirmed when she married him with unseemly haste after the murder of her husband Darnley. During her journey she was thrown by her horse, in the process losing a watch that was only recovered in the 19th century from the Queen's Mire.