Terry Foreman on 15 May 2012  •  Link

Alexander Seton Montgomerie (6th Earl of Eglintoun) (1588-1661 ), Scottish Royalist soldier; called "pious Montgomerie" for his penance for fornication.

"Bishop Burnet in the ' History of his own Time,' gives a graphic account of the strictness of the clergy and people of Scotland in 1662. For certain moral delinquencies, mentions the usual reproving before the Kirk Session the ' high place in the church, called the stool or pillar of 'repentance, where they sat at the times of worship for three Lord's days, receiving admonitions, and making profession of repentance on all those days; which some did with many tears, and serious exhortations to all the rest, to take warning by their fall. On this passage, the Earl of Dartmouth has made the following note: This puts me in mind of a ridiculous story Duke Hamilton told me of the old Earl of Eglinton, who had done penance for fornication, and the fourth Lord's day came, and set there again, which the minister perceiving, called to him to come down, for his penance was over. 'It may be so,' said the Earl, 'but I shall always set here for the future, because it is the best seat in the kirk, and I do not see a better man to take it from me.'" [Burnet's History, Oxford University Press, 1833, vol. i. p. 281.

*Memorials of the Montgomeries, earls of Eglinton *, edited by Sir William Fraser, p. 71, n. 1. http://books.google.com/books?id=…