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DAVID ERSKINE, his eldest son, fourth Lord Cardross, succeeded to the title of Earl of Buchan on the death, in 1695, of William Erskine, the eighth Earl. There appears to have been some question respecting the succession, but ultimately, in 1598, an Act was passed by the Estates allowing him to be called in Parliament, with the title [p.123] of Earl of Buchan. He married Frances Fairfax, daughter and heiress of Henry Fairfax of Hurst, Berkshire, and grand-daughter of Lord Fairfax. She was also grand-daughter of the celebrated Sir Thomas Brown, author of the 'Religio Medici,' her mother, Anne Brown, being his eldest daughter. In a supplementary chapter to Sir Thomas Brown's biography there is this singular statement: 'Itis very remarkable that although Sir Thomas Brown had forty children and grandchildren, yet in the second generation, within thirty years of his decease, the male line became extinct; in the third generation none survived their infancy, excepting in the family of the eldest daughter, Anne, of whose eight children none left any descendants but the third daughter, Frances Fairfax, married to the Earl of Buchan.'* Lady Frances Erskine, their second daughter, married the celebrated Colonel Gardiner, 'a gallant soldier and high-minded Christian gentleman.' Of his wife the Colonel said 'that the greatest imperfection he knew in her character was that she valued and loved him much more than he deserved.' She was the friend of her neighbour, the Rev. Robert Blair, minister of Athelstaneford, and author of the well-known poem entitled 'The Grave.'

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