the Author of Waverley. He appears to have become a convert to the
doctrine of the Quakers, or Friends, and a great assertor of their peculiar
tenets. This was probably at the time when George Fox, the celebrated apostle of
the sect, made an expedition into the south of Scotland about 1657, on which
occasion, he boasts, that »as he first set his horse's feet upon Scottish
ground, he felt the seed of grace to sparkle about him like innumerable sparks
of fire.« Upon the same occasion, probably, Sir Gideon Scott of Highchester,
second son of Sir William, immediate elder brother of Walter, and ancestor of
the author's friend and kinsman, the present representative of the family of
Harden, also embraced the tenets of Quakerism. This last convert, Gideon,
entered into a controversy with the Rev. James Kirkton, author of the Secret and
True History of the Church of Scotland, which is noticed by my ingenious friend
Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in his valuable and curious edition of that
work, 4to, 1817. Sir William Scott, eldest of the brothers, remained, amid the
defection of his two younger brethren, an orthodox member of the Presbyterian
Church, and used such means for reclaiming Walter of Raeburn from his heresy, as
savoured far more of persecution than persuasion. In this he was assisted by
MacDougal of Makerston, brother to Isabella MacDougal, the wife of the said
Walter, and who, like her husband, had conformed to the Quaker tenets.
The interest possessed by Sir William Scott and Makerston was powerful enough to
procure the two following acts of the Privy Council of Scotland, directed
against Walter of Raeburn as an heretic and convert to Quakerism, appointing him
to be imprisoned first in Edinburgh jail, and then in that of Jedburgh; and his
children to be taken by force from the society and direction of their parents,
and educated at a distance from them, besides the assignment of a sum for their
maintenance, sufficient in those times to be burdensome to a moderate Scottish
estate.
 
»Apud Edin., vigesimo Junii 1665.
The Lords of his Magesty's Privy Council having receaved information that Scott
of Raeburn, and Isobel Mackdougall, his wife, being infected with the error of
Quakerism, doe endeavour to breid and traine up William, Walter, and Isobel
Scotts, their children, in the same profession, doe therefore give order and
command to Sir William Scott of Harden, the said Raeburn's brother, to seperat
and take away the saids children from the custody and society of the saids
parents, and to