with the following doggerel: "I, Will of the Wastle Am King of my castle All the dogs in the town Shall gare gang me down!" However once the bombardment began, it became clear that there was no option but submission. Fenwick's troops entered the castle, and accepted Cockburn's surrender. Cockburn and his men were given quarter for life only. They retreated and Fenwick slighted the fortification. Resurrection In the early 18th century, Hume and its environs came into the possession of the Earls of Marchmont, wealthier and more influential cadets of the main line of the family. The Castle at this point was level with the ground that it was built upon. At some point before his death in 1794, Hugh Hume-Campbell, 3rd Earl of Marchmont, 3rd Lord Polwarth, restored the castle as a folly, from the waste left from its destruction, on the original foundations of its curtain wall. He adorned the wall tops with enormous crenellations that are more picturesque than practical. The Great Alarm In light of its function as a mediæval early warning system, the castle was used again as a beacon during the Napoleonic Wars. In 1804, on the night of 31 January, a sergeant of the Berwickshire Volunteers in charge of the beacon mistook charcoal burners' fires on nearby Dirrington Great Law for a warning. Lighting the beacon at Hume Castle, he set in train the lighting of all the Borders beacons to the West, and 3,000 volunteers turned out in what became known as 'The Great Alarm'. Again, during the Second World War it functioned as a lookout post, and was also to act as a base for resistance in the event of a German invasion. Today The castle is still seen as the spiritual home of the many Homes and Humes in Scotland and abroad. The castle was bought by the state in 1929, and in 1985 a restoration programme was undertaken by the Berwickshire Civic Society funded by the Scottish Office. It re-opened to the public in 1992. In 2006 the Civic Society handed over the castle to a charitable trust run by the Clan Home Association, under the auspices of Historic Scotland, to maintain its preservation in the future. See also List of places in the Scottish Borders Clan Home Hume (surname) References Sources Ordnance Gazetteer-Scotland Vol IV,ed. F.H. Groome, Edinburgh, 1883 External links Clan Home Association - History of