Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Sandilands, James (d.1579)
SANDILANDS, JAMES, first Lord Torphichen (d. 1579), was second son of Sir James Sandilands of Calder, by Margaret or Mariot, only daughter of Archibald Forrester of Corstorphine. At an early period the family were in possession of the lands of Sandilands in Lanarkshire, and from the time of David II, when Sir James Sandilands distinguished himself in the wars against the English, they began to acquire a position of some power and prominence. By his marriage with Eleanor, countess of Carrick, widow of Alexander, earl of Carrick, son of Edward Bruce, this Sir James Sandilands, who was killed at the battle of Halidon Hill in 1333, obtained the barony of West Calder, Mid-Lothian. The father of the first Lord Torphichen, also Sir James Sandilands of Calder, survived until after 17 July 1559. With him at Calder Knox ‘most resided after his return to Scotland’ in 1555. He was the ‘ancient honourable father’ chosen in 1558 to present a ‘common and public supplication’ to the queen regent for her support to ‘a godly reformation’ (Knox, Works, i. 301). Knox describes him as a man ‘whose age and years deserved reverence, whose honesty and worship might have craved audience of any majesty on earth’ (ib.)
The son was in 1543 appointed by the grandmaster of the knights of Malta (or knights hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem) preceptor of Torphichen and head of the order in Scotland (cf. Notes and Queries, 1st ser. x. 201). In virtue of this office he had a seat in parliament, and on 23 Jan. 1545–6 his name appears as a member of the privy council (Reg. P. C. Scotl. i. 20). Along with his father he supported the Reformation, and in 1559 he joined the lords of the congregation against the queen regent on Cupar Muir. After her death he was, by the parliament held at Edinburgh in July–August of the same year, appointed to proceed to France to give an account of the proceedings (more especially in declaring the abolition of the papacy) to Francis and Mary (Knox, ii. 125; ‘Pouvoirs donnés par les États d'Écosse à Sir James Sandilands, grand prieur de l'ordre de Saint-Jean,’ in Teulet's Relations Politiques, ii. 147–50). On this strange errand he set out on 23 Sept. (Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 280). After a very unfavourable reception, he was dismissed without an answer, returning to Edinburgh on 19 Dec. (ib. p. 326).
On 27 Jan. 1561 Sandilands signed the act of the privy council approving of the Book of Discipline. In 1563 he resigned the possessions of the order of St. John to the crown, and in payment of ten thousand crowns, and an annual rent of five hundred merks, he received a grant to him and his heirs of the lands of the order which were erected into the temporal lordship of Torphichen. In the spring of 1572 an action was raised against him for detaining certain goods of the queen, including ‘ane coffer full of buikis.’ He denied the goods and the coffer, but admitted he had certain books which, according to one witness, were ‘markit with the king and queen of France's armes’ (Thomson, Collection of Inventories, 1815, pp. 182, 190). At a meeting of the privy council it was decreed that inasmuch as he had neither brought nor produced ‘the saidis gudis and gear confessit be him,’ he should be charged to do so on the morrow; and that, should he fail to do so, it would be taken as a confession that he possessed also the remainder of the goods charged against him (Reg. P. C. Scotl. ii. 228). This threat seems to have proved effectual, for in the ‘Catalogue of the Library of James VI’ (ed. G. F. Warner in Miscellany of the Scottish History Society, p. xxxiv) certain books are entered as got by Morton ‘from my Lord St. John.’
Torphichen died in 1579, probably in September, for on 19 Oct. the Earl of Morton complained to the council that although he was heritably ‘infeft in the mains of Halbarnis and place of Halyairdis by the late James, Lord of Torphichen,’ his relict, Dame Jonett Murray (she was daughter of Murray of Polmaise), had received letters from the king, charging the ‘keepers of the place of Halyairdis’ to deliver it up within six hours (Reg. P. C. Scotl. iii. 228). In her reply Dame Jonett Murray explained that the Earl of Morton had invaded the place in September, when her husband was unable to resist, on account of ‘a deadly sickness of apoplexy’ (ib. p. 238). By his wife, from whom he was long separated, Sandilands left no issue, and his estates and title devolved on his grandnephew, James Sandilands of Calder.
[Knox's Works; Diurnal of Occurrents in the Bannatyne Club; Reg. P. C. Scotl. vols. i–iii.; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), ii. 592–3, which is full of errors in the account of Torphichen.]