Broun baronets

[1] He was one of the barons who witnessed the inquisition of the possessions of the church of Glasgow made by Earl David in 1116, in the reign of his brother, Alexander I of Scotland.

He devised to that abbey certain "lands and acres in territories de Colstoun" for prayers to be said for "the soul of (King) Alexander, and the health of his son."

Possibly the most well-known thing about this family is not their glorious history of service to Scotland, but the famous Colstoun Pear, which Hugo de Gifford of Yester (died 1267), famed for his necromantic powers, described in Marmion, was supposed to have invested with the extraordinary virtue of conferring unfailing prosperity on the family which possessed it.

Lord Yester, in handing over the pear told his new son-in-law that as long as it was preserved the family would flourish until the end of time.

Fountainhall's descendant, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, refers to the story of the pear as something "which we cannot pass over" and mentions that "one of the ladies of the family took a longing for the forbidden fruit while pregnant and inflicted upon it a deadly bite", following which a period of dire financial crisises affected the family and the pear turned rock hard, the teeth-marks still preserved.