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Talk:Sir Alexander Home of that Ilk, 1st Lord Home

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May I suggest that you redirect to a more intuitive article title? StoptheDatabaseState 21:16, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Contrary evidence from DNB

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From looking at Dictionary of National Biography, it would seem that there has been some mixing of the information of a father and son

There are a number of significant discrepancies that would seem to need to be checked against further references. -- billinghurst (talk) 14:35, 30 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Good catch. checkY Now fixed: the son is the actual Alexander Home, 1st Lord Home, article doesn't exist as I write this. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:30, 24 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Alexander Home, 1st Lord Home

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@Billinghurst and Charles Matthews: We have now got Sir Alexander Home of that ilk (succeeded 1424) and Alexander Home, 1st Lord Home (died c.1491) as two separate people. This is in line with the Old DNB (as noted above), the New DNB article on the Home family ([1]) and with the account in Volume IV of Paul's The Scots Peerage (1907), beginning on page 444 with Sir Alexander Home of Home and Dunglass (d. 1424).

However, by 1914 Paul had changed his mind, writing in Vol. IX 106, that:

"Recent investigation shows that previous writers on this pedigree... have been wrong in making the first Lord Home a separate personage from Sir Alexander. The mistake arose from the supposed necessity of finding a husband for Marion, heiress of Landells, and not perceiving that she was really identical with Marion Lauder."

The corrections suggest instead the following for Sir Alexander's family:

  • m.(1), before 1424, Marion daughter of John Lauder and his wife Katherine, daughter of William de Landells and his wife Jonet
  • m.(2) Margaret Montgomerie, only daughter of Alexander, Master of Montgomerie,
    • Thomas, Nicholas, David

This seems to me rather reasonable, disposing of the Marion/Mariota and George, John, and Patrick doublets. And it presumably becomes unavoidable if the Lauder/de Landells connection is established. It also solves the question of who died in 1456, if the original Sir Alexander was still alive in 1461. And the 1451 Hepburn marriage date also fits in very tidily (was this new research between 1907 and 1914?) -- whereas it would surely have to give, if it were Sir Alexander's grandson that Hepburn was marrying.

On the other hand, even if we stick with Sir Alexander and the 1st Lord being two different individuals, there are a couple of issues with the articles that still should be addressed:

  • Firstly, in this article, in the list of children "Alexander, Master of Home (d. 1491, v.p.)" cannot be right, as 1491 would not be in the vita of his parent. Instead, this Alexander would be the son of the 1st Lord, with the 1st Lord being the son of the original Sir Alexander. One would also need to look closely at the biographical details of the other children, and consider which of the details really belong here, and which belong to their supposed namesakes, the children of the 1st Lord. (FWIW, the text in Vol 4 of The Scots Peerage suggests Alexander must have been dead by 1468)
  • Secondly, the Alexander Home, 1st Lord Home article has a section about how active he was in the 1480s. But the new ODNB says that "the first lord, cannot be shown to have taken an active part in politics after 1479" and "it fell to Alexander Hume second Lord Hume (d. 1506), grandson of the first lord, to steer the family safely through the turbulent 1480s". (Which, if correct, would also seem to support the 2nd Lord being born presumably in the 1450s. Our article Alexander Home, 2nd Lord Home currently suggests he was born c.1468 which would make him very young to be taking a leading role in the 1480s).
  • Also, both articles currently claim their Alexander Homes married Marion Lauder.

As I said, I do suspect the original version of the article may well have got it right, and the reality may well be that there was only one man. But is the 1914 "correction" enough to go against the 2004 ODNB ?

There's also the question of what to do with the three Wikidata items: Alexander Home, 1st Lord Home (Q4719148), Alexander Home, 1st Lord Home (Q18670672) (separate) and Alexander Home, 1st Lord Home (Q76348701) (combined, following ThePeerage and WikiTree; also in line with the Carcroft peerage site [2]).

My preference would be to merge everything back into the one article, leaving it to a footnote that some sources (such as the ODNB) present two distinct individuals. But are there other thoughts as to what may be the right path? Jheald (talk) 18:19, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Jheald: We don't need to rush to a conclusion here. I just want to comment about User:David Lauder, the original author, that I was involved in a lengthy sockpuppet investigation of them. Which means I know a bit more than is comfortable. I'm not going to rule out the possible correctness of the original article, anyway. Charles Matthews (talk) 18:26, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Following up some more, Vol.9 of The Scots Peerage p. 40 also has a parallel correction on the Hepburn family tree, against pp. 141 and 150 of Vol 2.
Originally Vol 2 had Alexander, Master of Home marrying his cousin Elizabeth, daughter of Adam Hepburn, Master of Hailes (c. 1432-1479), whose mother was Helen, daughter of Sir Alexander of Home. But then the earliest Elizabeth could have been born c.1450, so Alexander second Lord of Home could not be born before about 1468 at the earliest.
The correction has Alexander, Master of Home marrying Annes (Agnes), daughter of Sir Adam Hepburn of Hailes (Q75263813), who was the grandfather of the Adam Hepburn above. Crucially, there is actually evidence for this marriage, in the form of a papal dispensation issued in 1451 (N.S.) to allow to stand a marriage which had already been undertaken. With this early date, the Master of Home really has to be the son of the original Sir Alexander.
The relevant entry from Vatican Regesta was published by HMSO in 1915 (see here at fol. 122d), so this may indeed have been "new information" in 1914.
It's also interesting that the new ODNB article ([3]) on Patrick Hepburn, 1st Earl of Bothwell who was the son of Adam Hepburn, Master of Hailes says that Adam married "Ellen, younger daughter of Sir Alexander Hume, first Lord Hume". On whatever theory of the Home family, this has to be Sir Alexander Home of that ilk. Thus even though Norman Macdougall, the author of the article, was saying in the article on the Home family that the two were different, here he is saying that they were the same. So the ODNB is at best not at one voice on the issue. Jheald (talk) 20:02, 25 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Also FWIW, the 1914 edition of Burke's Peerage presented Sir Alexander and the 1st Lord as separate people [4]; but by 1949 they had been combined [5] (as then followed by the entries at ThePeerage and WikiTree).
Similarly, in Cockayne's The Complete Peerage in the first edition the two are treated as separate (Vol. 4, p. [6] (1892)), but they are presented as a single person in the second edition. (Vol 6, p.563 (1926) - LDS copy (login required), frame 563 for selector at bottom-right). The editors remark in a footnote that "Great confusion has been caused in earlier accounts by the fact that Alexander Home who married Marion Lauder has been reagrded as the father of the 1st Lord Home, whereas, as is clearly shown in the Corrigienda to Scots Peerage, vol ix, pp 106-7 they were, in fact, one and the same person, as were Marion Lauder and Marion Landells."
The other angle here is the Lauder/de Landells marriage. Per the Scots Peerage p.107, quoted by Cockayne (2e) continuing, there is documentary evidence supporting this in that "in 1425 [Marion Lauder] got sasine of the lands of Swynset as heir of her mother Katherine, who must have succeeded to them through her father [(de Landells)], who along with his wife had a royal charter of these and other lands 4 Jan 1390/1".
The 1907 edition of the Scots Peerage had noted that Lauder was a co-heiress of "Swinside" (p. 447). Recognition that this had previously been granted to de Landells may have been helped by the 1912 publication of a new edition of the first volume of Registrum magni sigilli regum Scotorum - The Register of the Great Seal of Scotland where it appears as number 813 on page 341.
Before identification of her parentage, it seems Katherine de Landells had been recognised merely "Katrina, heiress of the Barony of Howman and Swynset, near Jedburgh, and of Crailing, near Kelso" -- see eg [7] quoting from The Grange of St Giles ..., by Mrs. J. Stewart Smith, Edinburgh, 1898, p. 167.
The Retour of Inquest referred to is number 113 in The manuscripts of the Duke of Athole, K. T., and of the Earl of Home (1891), p. 120, in which Katherine is described as "Katherine Lauder, whose identity has not been ascertained" (p. 78).
The Sasine of Swynset is given at number 271 in the same volume (p. 165). Interestingly, it is immediately preceded there by the 1391 charter to William of Laundels; but as of 1891 it seems this was not being taken as evidence of Katherine's ancestry.
The place itself appears to correspond to the present Swineside Hall (NT724164), apparently a corruption of "Swine's Head" [8] Jheald (talk) 13:33, 28 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Given all of this, I think we can reasonably conclude that the presentation of Sir Alexander and the 1st Lord as separate individuals in the new ODNB appears most likely to have been a slip, that we do not need to follow. Jheald (talk) 11:21, 26 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I did a very quick Google search to see if I could find academic papers discussing the 1st Lord Home. Unfortunately I didn't turn up much (maybe not a good enough search). But he does appear in R.B. Dobson (1967), "The Last English Monks on Scottish Soil: The Severance of Coldingham Priory from the Monastery of Durham 1461-78" JSTOR 25528677, where the author accepts Balfour Paul's revision:

    "Although he founded the economic and political fortunes of his family after the death of his father at Verneuil in 1424, Alexander Home, first Lord Home from 1473, still awaits a biographer: see, however, Scots Peerage, iv, 444-51, and the important correction ibid., ix, 106-7." (p.13, n.4).

    He thus represents Sir Alexander as a single person in the paper, who had had "the extremely valuable control of the temporal assets of the cell which he had enjoyed since 14 May 1442 as bailie of Coldingham, an office for which he had been prepared to fight his uncle David Home of Wedderburn at great length in the early 1440s" (p.13), and in connection with which he had "triumphantly" fought to protect the possessions of Coldingham at consistory court in St Andrews in January 1442.(p. 7) Sir Alexander was written to by the Prior of Durham on 1 December 1461 for his help to try to avert Patrick Home's proposed take-over of Coldingham. (p.7). By late 1464 he had "dramatically" intervened at Rome in the interest of his own son John. (pp. 13-14). The rest of the article discusses how the three-way contest then unfolded, including the intervention of James III in 1472 to claim the long-term future of Coldingham for himself -- something which, when renewed in 1484-8 in continued opposition to the Homes, "was largely responsible for the revolt which led to his murder after 'Sauchieburn'." (p.21). Jheald (talk) 11:21, 30 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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