Records of the clan and name of Fergusson, Ferguson and Fergus. Supplement

FERGUSONS IN ABERDEENSHIRE 33
of the hospitality and service rendered to King Robert the
Bruce on the eve of, and at, the battle of Inverury in 1308.
A graphic illustration is also given of how — to use the
words of one of Queen Elizabeth's agents in the sixteenth
century — ' the nation is given to stray abroad, some into
Sweden and some into Flanders,' in the quaint letter
addressed by the Edinburgh writer to his nephew the
middy, in which he tells him of fighting forbears in foreign
lands. In the life of Robert Ferguson, the famous Plotter
(published in 1887), it was observed that 'although the
tradition among the Jacobites of 1*745 was that " Inverurie
was always a loyal place," and the Laird of Badifurrow
became its representative in the Scottish Parliament during
the three years that immediately followed the Restoration,
and aided in the pageant with which the triumphant
Cavaliers took down the head of the great Montrose from
the spike on which it had blenched, and laid the honoured
remains to rest in the church that had rung with the
excommunications of the Royalists, his eldest son must
early have commenced to exhibit his idiosyncrasy of running
counter to the established order of his place and time. The
eldest of a large family, he seems to have completely severed
his connection with his early home, and notices of his
relatives are extremely rare in his future history. If
educated at the " Oxford of the North," he did not imbibe
its spirit . . . the opinions that distinguished him certainly
clashed with the Cavalier sentiments of his father ; his name
disappears from the circle of his relatives in the north, and he
departs to pass a long life amid companionships of the most
antagonistic kind.' It is remarkable that ten years after
these words were written, there should emerge to light a
certified copy of the actual deed by which, two years before
the Restoration, the future Plotter renounced his portion
and birthright, executed in the same year in which his
father settled his estate of Badifurrow upon himself in life-
rent and his second son in fee, and that there should also be
found extant the explicit statement by a relative that ' his
father disinherited him ' for being the only ' instance of the
contrary ' in a family ' remarkably loyal.' The presence of
the Laird of Badifurrow in 16G0 at the 'True Funerals' of