Home

A Borders family of immense power, the Homes are said to have been the descendants of the Saxon Princes of Northumberland through Cospatrick, Earl of Dunbar. Prior to 1266, William de Home appears in land grants to the Monastery at Coldstream. Geoffrey de Home submitted to Edward I of England in 1296. His son, Sir Thomas, married the heiress to the Pepdie estate of Dunglass.

Sir Alexander Home of Dunglass was captured at the Battle of Homildon in 1402. He later followed the Earl of Douglas to France, where he was killed in battle in 1424. He left three sons, from whom most of the principal branches of the family were to descend. His eldest grandson was created a Lord of Parliament, taking the title ‘Lord Home’ in 1473. He joined in the rebellion against James III, which ended in the death of the king. His son, the second Lord Home, became joint administrator of the Lothians and Berwickshire during the minority of James IV, and Great Chamberlain of Scotland in 1488. Lord Home and his followers formed part of the army levied by James IV for his invasion of England in 1513. At Flodden, Lord Home led the vanguard of Scots knights, and although he personally escaped the slaughter, many of his family and supporters were not so fortunate. Home was appointed one of the counsellors to the Queen Regent. When the regency was transferred to the Duke of Albany, the fortunes of the Homes suffered. Lord Home was accused of conspiring with the English and was arrested for treason, and he and his brother were executed in October 1516, after which their heads were displayed on the Tolbooth of Edinburgh. The title and estates were, however, restored to another brother, George Home, who on several occasions led his Border spearmen against the English. On the eve of the Battle of Pinkie in 1547 he was thrown from his horse and died of the injuries that he sustained. The Home lands were occupied by the English invaders and it fell to Lord Home’s son, Alexander, the fifth Lord, to retake them in 1549. He supported the Reformation and sat in the Parliament which passed the Protestant Confession of Faith in 1560.

The politics of the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots were complex, and the Homes, along with many others, shifted their allegiance more than once. Lord Home, supported the marriage of Mary to Bothwell, but later led his men against the queen at the Battle of Langside. Fortunes shifted again, and in 1573 he was arrested and later convicted of treason against the young James VI. He was only released from Edinburgh Castle when his health had failed and he died a few days later. Despite his father’s chequered political history, Alexander, the sixth Lord Home, was unswerving in his devotion to James VI, and was a royal favourite throughout his life. In 1603, when James travelled to England to take possession of his new kingdom, he stopped at Dunglass, and Lord Home then accompanied him to London. In March 1605 he was raised to the title of Earl of Home.

The third Earl was a staunch supporter of Charles I, and in 1648 was colonel of the Berwickshire Regiment of Foot. When Cromwell invaded Scotland in 1650 he made particular point of seizing Home’s castle, which was garrisoned by Parliament’s troops.

The Home allegiances were again inconstant during the Jacobite risings. The seventh Earl was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle during the rising of 1715, and his brother, James Home of Ayton, had his estates confiscated for his part in the rebellion. When the ‘Young Pretender’ asserted his father’s claim in 1745, the eighth Earl joined the government forces under Sir John Cope at Dunbar and later fought at the Battle of Preston. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant General and was appointed Governor of Gibraltar where he died in 1761.

Henry Home was a distinguished eighteenth-century lawyer who, on being elevated to the Supreme Court Bench in 1752, took the title of ‘Lord Kames’ after his family estate in Berwickshire. He was a noted author, and published several important works on Scots Law which are still highly regarded to this day. David Hume, born in 1711, has become perhaps the most highly regarded British philosopher of the eighteenth century.

The family came to public prominence in the twentieth century, when the fourteenth Earl disclaimed his hereditary peerage to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom as Sir Alec Douglas Home. The title was only disclaimed for his lifetime, and it has now been revived by his heir, the 15th Earl. The family seat is the splendid Border estate of the Hirsel, from which the former Prime Minister named the life peerage which was bestowed upon him for service to the nation, as Lord Home of the Hirsel.