 The Duke's estate became the subject of a famous and bitter legal dispute, known as the 'Douglas Cause', between his nephew Archibald James Edward Douglas and the Duke of Hamilton.Douglas was eventually victorious and ennobled as Baron Douglas in 1790, and the castle descended through his daughter, and granddaughter, to the Earls of Home.In the 1930s Charles Douglas-Home, 13th Earl of Home allowed the mining of coal in the park adjacent to the castle, in an attempt to relieve desperate levels of local unemployment.