General Notes

He succeeded his good father, and was knighted by King Robert Bruce. He
was employed both in civil and in military affairs, for in January, 1302,
he had asafe conduct into England, and three years later the Scottish
king applied for another one for him to treat of a peace with the
English. In 1306 there was a mutual indenture made between Sir Gilbert
Hay of Erroll, Sir Niel Campbell of Lochaw, and Sir Alexander Seton of
Seton, knights, at the Abbey of Lindores, to defend King Robert Bruce and
his crown to the last of their blood andfortune. "Upon sealing the said
indenture they solemnly took the Sacrament at Saint Mary's altar in the
said abbey church" (Balfour, Annals). "Seton," says Alexander Laing
(History of Lindores Abbey, p. 93), "came of a race that fought bravely
and suffered much for the independence of Scotland." On the 9thof
September, 1308, he again bound himself in the most public manner, in the
same company, on the high altar of the Abbey Church of Cambuskenneth,
nearStirling, "to defend till the last period of their lives the
liberties of their country and right of Robert Bruce, their king, against
all mortals, French, English, and Scots."( Collins's Peerage, VII., 419).
Sir Alexander Seton shared in the glorious victory of Bannockburn, June
24, 1314. Sir Thomas Gray,on the testimony of his father, who was then a
prisoner in the Scotch camp,tells us that Sir Alexander Seton rode to
Bruce's tent in the wood the evening before the battle with important
information, and advised him to take the offensive, and attack the
English next morning with vigor. A rare and curiouslittle book, an
English poem on King Robert, by Patrick Gordon, first published at Dort,
in Holland, in 1615, and reprinted at Edinburgh in 1718, in describing
the gathering of the Scottish hosts from every quarter of the kingdom for
the crowning effort of Bannockburn, exclaims:
Three thousand more came forth of Lothian fair.
All Princes, Lords, and Knights, and men of Fame,
Where Seton's Lord, e'en Winton's Earl, did bear
Not meanest Rule, with others of great Name.
--Ch. XV., 172.
Sir Alexander got from his royal uncle important grants of land for
services rendered by his father, and also certain honorable and uncommon
additions to his paternal coat-of-arms. A little later hereceived
another grant--this time of the Barony of Barnes, in East Lothian, for
his own services, particularly in Ireland, whither he had accompanied the
king's brother, Edward Bruce. The appeal of the Irish chieftains for
deliverance from their English conquerors, the Scottish expedition to
Ireland, thecrowning of Edward Bruce as King of Ireland (1316), his
victorious march at the head of a small army of Scotchmen, with very
little native assistance, from Carrickfergus to Limerick, his
unsuccessful siege of Dublin, his retreat northward, and his final defeat
and death with nearly all his followers at thebattle of Dundalk, on
October 5, 1318, is one of the most chivalrous episodes, as it was one of
the most ill-advised measures, in the history of Scotland.
The best of these grants was that of Tranent, on the highroad between
Edinburgh and Berwick-on-Tweed, because it was one of the oldest towns in
East Lothian. It remained for four hundred years in the family and gave
it a secondary title--Lord Tranent--which even now figures among those of
the Earl of Eglinton and Winton. There were many barons attached to the
English Court who had possessed vast estates in Scotland, a state of
affairs causing oscillationsin allegiance sadly calamitous to the weaker
kingdom; but Scottish independence being now an assured fact, there was,
fortunately, at the crown's disposal the property of these disinherited
barons to equalize things in some measure, and compensate loyal Scots for
the losses of their own English estates. Robert de Quincy, a
Northamptonshire baron, acqui