including Arthur Seat and Salisbury Crags, the treasurer paid on 24th January 1541 ‘‘to Schir David Murray of Balwaird, Knight, in recompense of his lands of Duddingstone tane into the new park beside Halyrude Hous, iiij○ li” (£400). Sir David died before 1552, as in February of that year there was granted by the Abbot of Kelso, a '‘ Precept of Clare Constat”’ in favour of Andrew Murray as his heir in ‘‘the half lands and town of Wester Duddingston.”
The estates of Murray about twenty or thirty years after this appear to have been heavily burdened with debt, if we may judge from the number of infeftments and other legal documents granted by Sir Andrew Murray. The following are several specimens :—
In 1578 there is a discharge in the form of a notarial instrument narrating that Robert Ker, one of the Bailies of Edinburgh, in consideration of the sum of £200 Scots, ‘‘paid in half-merk pieces, plakis, and balbeis,” by Andrew Murray of Arngask, discharges the latter of an annual rent of £20 Scots, secured on the said lands of Wester Duddingston,
In 1585, Andrew Murray of Balvaird, Knight, granted to John Fenton, Clerk of the Rolls, ‘‘in feu, ferm, and heritage that parcel of land called Orchard in the territory of Duddingston, to the south of Duddingston Loch,” which was to be held for 20s Scots yearly.
In 1587 and 1588, Murray is found granting similar legal documents over the same lands.*
Tt is not very clear whether his property included Peffermill or not. Sir Andrew died before 1589, and we have no further trace of the family in the locality till 1690, when one Thomas Murray had a retour of the lands of ‘ Peffermill and Kingsmeadow, alias Sharnichall, within the parish of Liberton,” in succession to his father, Anthony Murray. The property does not appear to have been large, and probably included a portion of Peffermill lands and Prestonfield.
The family of the Kers figure in the parish history as owners of the kirk lands of Duddingston for a long period from the dime of the Reformation, when two-thirds of the Church property was alienated for secular purposes by the Crown. In the sixteenth century, the Kers and the Lawsons were related to each other by marriage, as we learn from a mutilated document in the charter
