Comments in refutation of pretensions advanced for the first time, and statements in a recent work "The Stirlings of Keir and their family papers"

PEEFACE.
At a very early period of his professional career, more than forty years
ago, the framer and writer of the following Exposition was applied to
and consulted by WiUiam Stirling, younger of Drumpellier, on the part
of his father, Andrew Stirling, then of Drumpellier, in respect to certain
gentilitial rights and claims, including the representation of the ancient
Stirlings of Cadder, which, by invariable tradition, had vested in their
family.
On examination of the documentary and other evidence which Mr
Stirling adduced, backed with more either then familiar to, or shortly
afterwards recovered by him, the writer saw that the case was not only
an honest one, but possessed incidents remarkable in their way, some
of them even of a tragical or affecting character.* This, coupled with
the interest of certain legal questions mooted, especially excited his
ardour and zeal, and he not only accepted the offer to conduct the case,
but actively entered upon the discharge of its duties.
* This is fairly admitted by the recent Keir with which the writer may conjoin the far
compilation, where it is prominently announced more tragical and affecting one of the unfor-
at the outset that " not the least interesting tunate Buchanans of Leny — the instrument or
part of the following narrative (including the cause of the catastrophe being much the same
Cadder and Keir histories and genealogies) is in both instances, as will be seen in the present
' See Pre-
face, p. X. the story of the ill-fated heiress of Cadder," ^ and Exposition.
a