2nd MARQUESS

Lauderdale, whose daughter had married Tweeddale's son, Lord Yester, had been created a Duke with special remainder to his Hay grandchildren,
' but during the Countess', his wife's, fatal illness he took up with the Countess of Dysart, whom he eventually married.
She was very jealous of her stepdaughter and managed to persuade the Duke not only to have his patent of Dukedom altered in favour of her children,
but to quarrel with the Hays and to get Tweeddale dismissed from office. The children never materialised.

A monumental lawsuit ensued by which both families were much impoverished but Tweeddale did secure the reversion of the Lauderdale estates
and the Duchess of Lauderdale was constantly writing to him during her widowhood to borrow small sums of money for 'absolute necessities.'
After Lauderdale's downfall Tweeddale was again appointed a Commissioner to the Mint and continued in office after the revolution of 1688.
 He was made Lord Chancellor in 1692, and created Marquess in 1694 In 1696 he was dismissed, ostensibly for his support of the ill-fated
Darien Scheme-an attempt to set up a Scottish colony in Panama —but more likely because William of Orange had never forgiven him for his report
on the Massacre of Glencoe, for which he had said, the King must bear at least part of the blame.

A portrait of the 1st Marquess by Sir Peter Lely, hangs in the drawing room, as well as that of his wife and daughter-in-law by the same artist
The first Marchioness was the daughter of the Earl of Buccleuch. She was something of a beauty and spent a fortune on her clothes.
It is to the vision of the 1st Marquess that we owe the beauty of the setting of Tester House; he laid out the park, built the seven miles of enclosing wall,
which was completed in 1675, and planted many of the trees. Some of the seedlings were a gift to him from the ladies of East Lothian and Berwickshire.
He also commissioned the first Yester House at the hands of Alexander McGill, and it was inhabited in his lifetime, although not finished.