The last lineal male descendant of the Buchanans of Leny was Henry Buchanan about 1728, whose daughter and heiress, Catherine, married Thomas Buchanan of Spittal, an officer in the Dutch service, who took for his second wife, Elizabeth, youngest daughter of John Hamilton of Bardowie, the sole survivor of her family, and by her he had four sons and two daughters. Their eldest son John, born in 1758, succeeded to the estate of Bardowie, and assumed the additional name of Hamilton, but dying without male issue, was succeeded by his brother, the above named Dr. Francis Hamilton-Buchanan.

The first of the Buchanans of Ardoch was William Buchanan who, in 1693, acquired that estate in the parish of Kilmaronock, Dumbartonshire. He was descended from John Buchanan, eldest son of the second marriage of Thomas Buchanan of Carbeth, grandson of Thomas Buchanan, third son of Sir Walter Buchanan, thirteenth laird of Buchanan.

The Buchanans of Ardinconnal and Anchintorlie, in the same county, are also a branch of the ancient house of Buchanan of that ilk and of Leny. Of this family was George Buchanan, a merchant in Glasgow, and his three brothers, Andrew of Drumpellier, in Lanarkahire; Niel, of Hillington, county of Renfrew, M.P. for the Glasgow district of burghs, whose male line is now extinct; and Archibald of Auchintorlie. These four brothers were the original promoters, in 1725, of the Buchanan Society of Glasgow, one of the most flourishing benevolent institutions in the west of Scotland. Mary, their sister, married George Buchanan of Auchintoshen in Dumbartonshire. The Drumpellier branch of the Buchanan family is represented by the descendant of Andrew's second son, Robert Carrick Buchanan, Esq. of Drumpellier.

The name of Buchanan was at one time so numerous in heritors that it is said that the laird of Buchanan could, in a summer's day, call fifty heritors of his own surname to his house, upon any occasion, and all of them might with convenience return to their respective residences before night, the most distant of their homes not being above ten miles from Buchanan castle.

In Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. ii. pp.544-557, is given, under date of May 31, 1608, the trial of one Margaret Hertsyde, wife of John, afterwards Sir John Buchanan, a female servant of her majesty, Anne, queen of James the Sixth, for stealing the queen's jewels. The uncommon nature of the crime, and the interest of the pleadings induced him to insert the entire arguments. He remarks that the real cause of the criminal prosecution of this servant of the queen is understood to have originated in Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Buchanan's being too deeply versed in certain court intrigues, and it was deemed necessarv to get rid of her, even in the face of the most strenuous remonstrances on the part of her majesty. She was in the following August found guilty, and banished to Orkney. On this case, Balfour has the following entry in his Annals, (vol ii. p.26,)

'John Buchanan and his wyffe, Margaret Hartesyde, that had laynn longe in prisson helm, for the allegeit stealing some of the quelna jewells (hot the courtiers talked, that it was for revelling some of the quems secretts to the king, wich a wysse chaimbermialde wold not have done), was, by ane sentence, condemned to peroetualle exyle, in the iylandes of Orkney, and declared to be ane infamous persone." The sentence was, however, recalled in the following November.

Volume third of the same Collection contains the indictment of several persons of the name of Buchanan, and among them Patrick the son of George Buchanan of Auchmar. under date June 6, 1628, for the slaughter of one Duncan McFarlane, in the preceding April The accused gave in a supplication which revealed incidents of a most horrible nature. It appears from it that the McFarlanes had seized one William Buchanan, while hunting, and after torturing him for ten hours had barbarously murdered him, His tongue and entrails they cut out, and having slain his dogs, they took out the tongue and entrails of one of them and transferred them to each other, and so left him and the dogs lying on the earth, where they were not discovered for eight days the offence of Buchanan being that he had inquired after some goods said to have been stolen by the said Duncan McFarlane; and the latter having afterwards stolen an ox from one of the party, he was pursued, and firing his gun at them was slain in self-defence. The McFarlanes on their part also gave in a supplication giving a different complexion to the case, and the laird of Buchanan came forward and offered to submit the matter, as it arose out of the murder of one of his clan, to the earls of Mar, Menteith, Wigtoun, and Linlithgow, but no records remain as to the result of this extraordinary case.

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