Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, writing in the seventeenth century, commented thus: "Yet the conquest he made of the barony of Liddington [Lethington] from his brother's son, James Maitland, was not thought lawful nor conscientious."

When the 12th Lord Blantyre died in 1900 without male heirs, the property passed into the ownership of his daughter, Ellen Stewart, and her husband Sir David Baird, 3rd Baronet of Newbyth, Prestonkirk.

Their younger son, Major William Baird, commissioned the architect Sir Robert Lorimer to oversee extensive refurbishment of the house in 1912.

It also houses important pieces of furniture, porcelain and other fine artefacts, many of which came from the now demolished Hamilton Palace in Lanarkshire.

The collections include the Boulle cabinet given to the Duchess by King Charles II and a silver jewellery box that belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, that purportedly held the Casket letters showing her complicity in the murder of Lord Darnley, together with her death mask.

There is also the map and compass carried by Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler's deputy, who flew to Scotland in 1941 on a mission to involve the 14th Duke of Hamilton in helping negotiate peace between Britain and Nazi Germany.

She suggests that, as one of Sir Richard's younger children, Marie could still have been living at Lethington Castle, the family home, when it was confiscated in 1571 following her brother William's arraignment for treason, and that the poem is a response to that experience.

[9] Marie's brother Thomas Maitland wrote a poem in Latin in praise of Lethington, Domus Ledintona, published in Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (1637).