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

WITH DRUMPELLIEE'S EXPOSITION, &c. 141
Darnley (in whom that title originated), early in the fourteenth century, and
whose direct representative, in 1429, was the gallant Sir John Stuart of Darn-
ley, who, with his brother William, fell at the siege of Orleans. The earliest
instance, it is believed, of the family arms, is supplied by his seal in 1426, i i„tiie
which is appended to a deed in the Tresor cles Chartres at Paris, engraved caTTabl?
by Andrew Stuart in his Genealogical History of the Stuarts,^ and which there.
exclusively exhibits, as his bearing, a fess cheque of four tracts or lines (for
Stuart), surmounted by a simple uncharged Lend dexter. The latter was a
distinguislied and even a princely mark of cadency — being precisely what tlae
Bourbons formerly took in their chai'acter of royal cadets, and placed over
tlae French fleur-de-lis — while the additional tract or line in the Stuart
arms, as borne in the Darnley coat in 1426 (they ordinarily consisting but of
three), may serve as another difference. But neither there nor antecedently
is there a trace of the Stuarts of Darnley having in any shape used the Bon-
kill insignia. It was subsequent to this, though in the same century, that they
adopted the buckles, though not quarterly — as erroneously asserted in the
Keir Performance — but placed, eight in number, on a border round their
arms. This was proved by their family shield, tastefully sculptured, with due
Gothic accompaniments,* on the front of their old mansion in the " Rotten-
row " of Glasgow, on the eminence leading eastward to the Cathedral, t
This introduction of the buckles into the arms of Darnley or Lennox
Stuart was not owing to any intermarriage between this family and the
Bonkills, but was merely to indicate the original descent of the former as
cadets from Sir John Stuart of Bonkill, younger brother of James, High
Steward of Scotland (ancestor of the house of Stuart), who figured both
before and after 1300.
Other Stuarts, said to be similarly descended, placed the buckles upon
their hend of difference jiecidiar to themselves, but with which the Bonkills
had nothing to do. There is no proof that the latter, when subsisting as a
separate and detached family, took the bend.
But, independently of the above, what have the Stirlings to do with the
* Of which, long ago, the writer took an have been at one time), and was then the prin-
etching. cipal street of the city. Now, however, the
t The above "Rottenrow" — corresponding mansion in question no longer exists, it having
with that in London — is a corruption of Route recently been razed to the ground in accord-
de Roi (and strangely Latinised with us, via ance with the prevalent and mucli-lamented
raitonum — street of rats, as it may literally disregard of old structures.