Robert Traill

Traill was imprisoned for ten months, when, having fallen sick, he was temporarily permitted to return home. He was charged with high treason before the Privy Council, when he obliged himself, 11 December 1662, to remove from the kingdom within a month, under pain of death. John Livingstone was tried the same day.

Move to Holland Owing to tempestuous weather he experienced difficulty in finding a ship in which to sail to Holland, and the Privy Council granted him a month's further grace in which to take his departure. In a petition he states that he "is towards the age of sixty years, if not more, and so cannot weill take such a journey in such a season without evident hazard of his life" (Reg. P. C). He did make it to Holland along with other ministers and was later joined by his son Robert. For some years he carried on a weekly correspondence with his friend William Guthrie of Fenwick.

Returning to Edinburgh, he died 12 July 1678, and was buried in Greyfriars. A portrait of him is preserved in Smith's Iconographia Scot and Pinkerton's Scottish Gallery.

Family life He married 23 December 1639, Jean (died Dec. 1680), daughter of Alexander Annand of Auchterallan, Aberdeenshire, and then Margaret Cheyne (who suffered imprisonment, June 1665, for corresponding with her husband in his exile), and had 3 sons and 3 daughters: William, minister of Borthwick his second son also called Robert Traill, minister in London, and Bass Rock prisoner James, Lieutenant of Stirling Castle, baptised 10 March 1650, died 1721 Helen (married Thomas Paterson, minister of Borthwick) Agnes, born 1646, died 1690 (married Sir James Steuart of Goodtrees, Lord Advocate of Scotland) Margaret, born 1648, died 1717 (married James Scott of Bristo, writer in Edinburgh)