History of the Stewarts | Famous Stewarts
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Stewart married Margaret Hamilton, daughter of Sir Claude Hamilton of Shawfield, Rutherglen, and Illieston . He was made keeper of Dumbarton Castle in 1620.
Margaret was a Catholic, and she was converted from her Catholicism by a prisoner in the castle, Alexander Simpson (1570-1639), minister of Dryburgh and Merton, in 1621. John Stewart was said to have treated Simpson and another minister, Andrew Duncan, well and even paid for their food and lodging which was unusual as most prisoners would have been expected to pay for their own food and board.
In 1625, Sir John Stewart of Methven undertook to have 16 "fensible men in ordinary" in the castle, as a garrison to keep watch and ward. Methven was said to have been lax in his duties at Dumbarton, spending time in Ireland at Mongavlin Castle which he had acquired and built in 1611 and his lands in Raphoe in Portloughe, both in Donegal. These lands in the Plantation of Ulster had been granted to his father, the Duke of Lennox.
In September 1626 the Privy Council found he had been living in adultery in Dumbarton Castle with two servant women, Isobel Beaton and Margaret Kilmaurs, and had kept his wife, Dame Margaret, a prisoner in a ruinous and damp part of the castle for 13 days, chained to the bed, and he beat her. Isobel Beaton and Isobel Scot had previously been admonished by Dumbarton Kirk for scandalous behaviour.
Stewart was found guilty of three adulteries and sentenced to be executed "by the king’s will", and the court ordered that he should be hanged in December 1627. It is unclear if he was hanged, but he was dead by 1630 when a legal case mentions his decease, and his widow Margaret married Sir John Seton of Gargunnock in 1629.
