of pages, etc." This was in the household of Sir Patrick Houston IV, and his wife, Ann Hamilton.

Marriages in those days among the landed gentry and nobility were not always for love. Parents sometimes arranged marriages to keep an estate in the family name, to cement afliances or, one blushes to suggest, even to acquire property. The old estate of Balglas or Houston’s Glen became the property of the Houston barons and the historian remarks, "but how they acquired it does not appear." Then the writer adds in the next sentence that John Houston had married Margaret Sterling of the Keir family. 2 The property had been owned by the Sterlings in the 15th century. Later this land of Balglas went to William Lennox who had married Katherine Houstoun in 1660.

It was customary for the baron to include a dowry when he gave his daughter in marriage. It is conceivable that the men who married the homelier daughters might have received the most liberal dowries, though the records show nothing of the relative beauty of the Houston girls. The only figures available as to the actual amount of cash received by a son-in-law was in the marriage of Sarah Houstoun, youngest daughter of Sir Patrick III, to one Walter Denniston. The husband received "a tocher of 6,000 marks" and was later remembered in his mother-in-law’s will.

One of the strangest marriages in which the Houstouns were involved was with their neighbors, the Maxwells of Pollock. Elizabeth, daughter of Patrick Houston III, married John Maxwell, 10th lord of Pollock, while John was still a minor. A daughter of this marriage, Elizabeth Maxwell, inherited the estate of Pollock when one year old there being no male heir. This Elizabeth Maxwell, daughter of Elizabeth Houstoun, married her cousin, John Maxwell, age 12, the bride being about 13. This was a Catholic marriage and because of the close blood relationship of the couple (not because of age), it was necessary to obtain a special dispensation from the Pope at Rome. 3 The strange marriage was arranged by relatives to keep the Pollock estate in the Maxwell name. 2 John Guthrie Smith, Strathendrick and Its Inhabitants from Early Times (James Maclehose and Sons, 1896), p. 245. 3 William Fraser, Memoirs of the Maxwells of Pollock (Edinburgh, 1863), Vol. 1, pp. 24-26.