Clan Baillie People
Charles Baillie (1542–1625)
Charles Baillie was a Fleming of Scots descent. He was a papal agent and member of the household of Mary, Queen of Scots, following the murder of her husband.
In 1571 Baillie was caught in possession of documents describing a plan for a Spanish landing on Mary’s behalf in the eastern counties of England. He was arrested but somehow the documents were substituted for less incriminating ones. Unfortunately a spy who had been incarcerated alongside him in an attempt to gain information was about to expose the plot but was exposed himself.
Baillie was taken to the tower of London and tortured on the rack. An inscription scratched by him on the walls of the tower is still visible today and reads: “L. H. S. 1571 die 10 Aprilis. Wise men ought to se what they do, to examine before they speake; to prove before they take in hand; to beware whose company they use; and, above all things, to whom they truste. |— Charles Bailly.”
He was released from the tower around 1574 and died in 1625. He was interred in the town of La Hulpe near Brussels.
Lady Grizel Baillie (1665–1746)
Lady Baillie was a Scottish songwriter. She was born Grizel Hume at Redbraes Castle, Berwickshire to Sir Patrick Hume. At the age of 12 she was implicated in a conspiracy involving Robert Baillie of Jerviswood, who was then in prison. As a result her father had to hide in the crypt of Polwarth church where Grizzle smuggled food to him. Jerviswood was executed and in 1992 Lady Grizel married George Baillie his son.
The most famous of Lady Grizel’s Scots songs, “And werena my heart light I wad dee”, originally appeared in William Thomson’s Orpheus Caledonius, or a Collection of the Best Scotch Songs in 1725
Grizel died in London on 6 December 1746, and was buried at Mellerstain on 25 December, her eighty-first birthday.