This family, long so powerful in Perthshire, claim to be descended from an Hungarian chief, settled in Scotland under the civilising patronage of Malcolm Canmore. So well did his line thrive here that a daughter of the house of Drummond sat to watch that North Inch combat as Robert III.’s queen, Anabella, mother of the unfortunate Duke of Rothesay, who comes to such a tragic end in Scott’s romance. A century later, when the family had moved their main seat to Drummond Castle, another connection with royalty again brought about a mysterious crime. James IV., all his life much misled by Cupid, took for his mistress or left-handed wife Bonnie Margaret Drummond; it is said that he proposed to marry her openly as soon as a dispensation from the Pope unloosed their bonds of kindred. Be that as it may, other Scottish nobles looked askance on the growth of the Drummonds, while politic statesmen may well have sought to clear the way to peace with England by the King’s marriage to Margaret Tudor; there is also a suspicion of jealousy on the part of another royal lady love. By unknown hands, Margaret Drummond and her two sisters were poisoned at Drummond Castle, and they lie beneath three slabs of blue marble in Dunblane Cathedral. A daughter of this doubtful union was married successively to the Earl of Huntly, the Duke of Albany, and to a kinsman of her own; then her infusion of Stuart blood has passed into at least a score of Scottish noble families.
The strain of royal descent was reinforced when the head of the Drummond house married a daughter of this lady by the Stuart Duke of Albany. By James VI. Lord Drummond was made Earl of Perth, a title augmented by the French dukedom of Melfort. The Perth earldom was blown out into an empty dukedom by the Pretender,
whose fortunes its holder followed into France, leaving his possessions to be confiscated, and his honours attainted. The peerage was restored to a Drummond under George III., but died out for want of heirs male; then through marriage of a daughter the property passed to Lord Gwydir of Wales, and through the Willoughby d’Eresbys to the English Earl of Ancaster. I fear to make the reader’s head ache in the labyrinth of Drummond genealogy. Enough to say that the earldom of Perth and Melfort was restored in Victoria’s reign to a Drummond who held a French title. Supported by a pension from a more fortunate kinsman, he lived latterly in seclusion at Kew, and was buried there a few years ago, his life shadowed by a painful tragedy that left his house without a direct heir to its pride and its poverty. His home was literally a cottage, a striking contrast to the glories of Drummond Castle; but to friendly neighbours, who respected his misfortunes, he could humorously boast of being by rights a duke in two countries.