Sentence:  [H]e brought with him money enough to purchase the small estate of Monkbarns, then sold by a dissipated <WSD>laird</WSD> to whose father it had been gifted, with other church lands, upon the dissolution of the great and wealthy monastery to which it had belonged. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  The owner of a Scottish estate; a member of the landed gentry, a landowner. (from 14th c.)