Lord Glenallan

Lord Glenallan
Elspeth Mucklebackit and Lord Glenallan, engraved by Charles Courtry from a design by Alfred Holst Tourrier
First appearance	The Antiquary (1816)
Created by	Walter Scott
Information
Full name	William, Earl of Glenallan, formerly Lord Geraldin
Occupation	Laird
Spouse(s)	Eveline Neville
Children	William Neville, alias Lovel
Religion	Roman Catholic
Nationality	Scottish

William, Earl of Glenallan, otherwise Lord Glenallan, is a character in Sir Walter Scott's 1816 novel The Antiquary, a Scottish aristocrat whose life has been ruined by the suicide of his wife and the belief that he has unwittingly committed incest. His story forms the melodramatic Gothic strand in an otherwise largely realistic comic novel.

Lord Glenallan first makes a brief appearance in the novel as the chief mourner at the midnight funeral procession of his mother, the Countess of Glenallan, near the north-eastern Scottish town of Fairport. Later, a former servant of his, the half-senile Elspeth Mucklebackit, learns of the Countess's death and persuades the beggar Edie Ochiltree to go to Lord Geraldin, now become Earl of Glenallan in succession to the Countess, and tell him that she wishes to see him before she dies. We are told that the Glenallans are a Catholic family, that the present earl has for many years lived a life of withdrawn and melancholy devotion to his religion, and that he had a younger brother called Edward, now dead. Ochiltree finds Lord Glenallan a wreck of a man, old beyond his years, and apparently in deep penance for some hideous crime. He tells the earl that Elspeth wishes to confide to him something of great importance that hangs on her conscience. As he leaves Glenallan House the beggar learns from an old family servant that the earl had in his youth loved a woman called Eveline Neville, a cousin of his, but that she had committed suicide.

Glenallan responds to the summons by visiting the Mucklebackit cottage, and there finds the whole family in mourning for Elspeth's drowned grandson, young Steenie Mucklebackit who has been buried that day. Steenie's parents wish to deny him admittance, but Elspeth takes command and sends them out. She reminds Glenallan of the arrival in his life many years ago of Eveline Neville, the young woman with whom he fell in love, and tells him that his mother opposed their marriage because the birth of any son to them would deprive her of her legal rights to the Glenallans' house and estate. She hoped to prevent such a match by telling him falsely that Eveline was his own half-sister, and not the cousin she claimed to be, but she was unaware that the two lovers had some months before married secretly. When Eveline was told her husband was also her half-brother she was so overcome by horror and despair that she threw herself from a cliff into the sea, but was recovered from the waves, and before dying gave birth to a premature baby. The whole business was hushed up, the baby was taken away, and Elspeth is unable to say what its fate was. Here they are interrupted by a visit from Jonathan Oldbuck, who we discover had also been a suitor of Eveline Neville. Oldbuck leaves the house to avoid the unpleasant memories his rival evokes, but Glenallan persuades Oldbuck to listen to his story. When he hears the full story, and learns for the first time of the supposed incest and actual deception, Oldbuck is won over to the earl's cause and promises to help him discover the baby and prove its legitimacy. He invites him to Monkbarns, the Oldbuck family home, and the uproarious household there show the gloomy earl its best hospitality, though Glenallan follows his usual practice of eating with penitential sparingness. Oldbuck gives reasons for believing that the baby was not killed, but rather spirited off to the earl's younger brother and raised by him. He promises to set enquiries on foot, and the two men part on the best of terms.