William Renton, The Rentons of Renton

(This edition is a flimsy eight-page pamphlet, featuring on its front a photograph of William Renton, an elderly man with moustache and a heavy overcoat, and a red squirrel stood eating on his head.

It includes four pages of outer matter advertising various of William Renton’s books, Oils and Water-Colours: Nature Poems, Greening and Co; Songs: Lyrics, Sonnets, Roundels, Fisher Unwin, Songs in Sun and Shade, Frederick C. Nicholls, Bishopspool, Chapman Hall, Gustav Doré, Hardwicke and Bogue, Outlines of English Literature, John Murray, The Logic of Style, Longmans, and ‘nearly ready’, The Arithmetic of the Calculus.)

The Barony of Renton in Berwickshire, known at the date of its foundation in the early part of the twelfth century as Reguinton and during the reign of William the Lion (1198-1210) as Renington, was one of those granted by the Scottish Crown to English settlers of distinction, chiefly of Norman descent, soon after the Conquest. The original name of the family, like those of Lamberton, Mordington, Ayton, Edington, Lumsdean and Quixwood, has not been preserved: the name Reguin – which is Scandinavian and signifies Friend of the Storm – pointing as probably to the previous invasion of that coast by Norse rovers in the ninth century, as do the Saxon names of Lambert and Mordyn to the still earlier invasion under the son and nephew of the Saxon Hengist in the sixth.

The lands, villages and peel (or castle) of Renton – remains of the foundations of which castle and village are still extant behind the manor house of Renton, fourteen miles from the English border – were situated in the parish of Coldingham, over which, with other contiguous lands forming the district known as Coldinghamshire, the Prior of Coldingham exercised ecclesiastical jurisdiction, in addition to certain rights of taxation and military service. Although Coldingham itself, or Colaunham – the ham or town of the Meeting of the Waters – the Colania of Ptolemy’s map of Britain, the urbs Coludi of Bede, is of much greater antiquity than Berwick, the monastery dates only from the year 1098, when it was founded by King Edgar as a dependency of Durham – to be annexed in 1504 to the Abbey of Dunfermline; and not very long after its foundation it entered into official connection with the Renton family, as Foresters, or Rangers, over the lands of the Priory.

By Prior AErnald (1202-1208) this office was made hereditary, in the person of Richard of Rennington, who in consequence, and, it may be, others of the family, designated himself as Forester – see the Charters of Edward de Auldcambus and David de Quixwood, attested by him respectively as Ricardus Forestarius and Ricardus de Reningtona – and was confirmed by Prior William Drax (1418-1431) in the person of another Richard of Renton in 1421.

Before the close of the fifteenth century, and for want of male issue in the direct line, the barony, carrying with it the office of forester, merged in that of Ellem of Ellemford; during whose tenure it was, of title and estate, that the Castle of Renton – a stronghold of importance, as will presently be seen – was twice, viz. In 1515 and 1548, razed to the ground: the first time in consequence of the owner espousing the cause of the Earl of Home, Warden of the Eastern Marches, against the Regent Albany; the second, during one of the invasions of the English under Hertford, in revenge for the miscarriage of Henry VIII’s plan to seize young Mary of Scots – whom he deigned to marry to his son Edward – when Coldingham Priory, fortified and garrisoned by the invaders, resisted the attack of the Regent Arran at the head of eight thousand troops, and the granges of Renton, Auldcambus, Swinewood, Whitfield, Ayton and Mordington were dismantled or burnt – ‘Ranton Pyle’ as the author of the Expedicion into Scotlande designates the peel, being destroyed, as too fierce and dangerous a neighbour for the lamb-like garrison of Berwick.

In 1558, again for want of a male heir, the family and estate of Renton merged in that if the now extensive clan of Home, or Hume – itself an offshoot in the fourteenth century of the Earls of March – when Janet, heiress of David Ellem of Renton, married Patrick, son of Sir Alexander Home of Manderston; her son, Sir Alexander Home of Renton, succeeding the Earl as Sheriff of Berwickshire in 1616; her grandson, Sir John Home, Bart., of Renton, being the last to hold office as Clerk of the Court of Judiciary under that title; while from the youngest of her three great-grandsons, Sir Alexander Home, Bart., of Coldingham, Sir Patrick Home, Bart., of Renton, Henry Home of Kames, was descended a more famous Henry Home, the philosopher and jurist Lord Kames (1696-1782), author of Essays on the Principles of Morality, The Principles of Equity, and The Elements of Criticism.

The last of this branch, and lineal descendant of Lord Kames’ great-uncle Patrick, was Sir James Home, Bart., of Renton, at whose death in 1783, the family merged in that of the Stirlings of Glorat, the estate passing by marriage into the hands of Sir John Stirling, Bart., of Glorat and Renton.

The oldest and most important offshoot of the Renton family were the Rentons of Lamberton, who acquired the property from the Hepburns of Hailes in the early part if the sixteenth century, in the person of David Renton, whose daughter Susan in 1543 married Andrew Haig, twelfth Baron of Bemersyde, and in favour of whose son, John Renton, the lands of Billy Castle – the ruins of which are still to be seen – appertaining to the Priory of St. Bathan’s, were conveyed by the Prioress in 1557. From him were descended the two Miss Rentons of Billy, celebrated by Smolett, one of whom married the first Earl of Leven, dying in 1651; the other marrying a landowner in Dumbartonshire, who, calling the group of buildings he had erected for his workpeople by his wife’s maiden name, gave origin to the now flourishing town of Renton. Before the end of the eighteenth century, the Rentons of Lamberton had extended their holdings to the lands of Northfield, Blackadder, Fishwick and Mordington; and are still represented by one of the oldest families in Europe, the Campbell-Rentons of Mordington and Lamberton.             

Another branch of the family, from whom are descended the Rentons of Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, were those of Birsley, East Lothian; an account of whose pedigree from 1678, when they had for several generations been settled in Birsley was drawn up by the late John Thomson Renton, JP of Bradstone Brook, Surrey