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

148
COMMENTS ON KEIR PEEFORMANCE,
*
Curiously
Napoleon,
in public
documents,
called the
English
Lions Leo-
pards to
their pre-
judice, but
quite ac-
cording
to Nisbet's
doctrine. —
(See his
Essay on
Armories,
Edinburgh,
1718,
pp. 159,
160, et seg.)
Almost the
only in-
stance of
a due ex-
planation
of an
ancient
arms.
1 Heraldry,
first edit,,
vol. i. p.
365.
charged with stars, as an honourable distinctive augmentation to the arms
of his marshals ; * while the bend dexter, again, charged with buckles, in
those of the Stirlings of Gadder, was quite in keeping, in a warlike view,
with the chief, it being but the military shoulder-belt under another appel-
lation.
There is onlj one instance, at an ancient epoch, of the easy solution or
explanation of old armorial bearings, through an ecclesiastical medium in the
first instance, of which the writer is aware ; and it so happens in the iden-
tical case of the great episcopal and archiepiscopal see of Glasgow, the supe-
riors of the baronial fief of the Stirlings of Gadder, as it will be afterwards
proved. It is supplied to us by this accurate modern description in Latin
of the original seal (then extant) of Robert, Bishop of Glasgow (installed in
1272), appended to a grant by him of the lands of Hauchiltree to Melrose, —
a copy of which, as well as of writs connected with the see, in the Scottish
Gollege at Paris, was forwarded last century to the University of Glasgow, at
their request, with whom they still are : —
" Huic cartse appensum est sigillum .... ex una parte Episcopum veteri
casula indutum cum baculo, et mitra hinc inde pisceni et avem .... ex
altera vero parte, triplici distincta segmine, in superiore, Episcopum sedentem,
et coram eo quemdam genufiexum pisciculum cum annulo in ore manu
tenentem, medio segmine Regem stantem gladium strictum dextra tenentem,
a sinistris Reginam coronatam dextra annulum tenentem. In inferiore
segmine Episcopum genufleximi supplicantem, et habitu pontificali indutum,
inscriptum in cu'cumferentia Rex furit, h^ec plorat, patet aurum, dum sacee
OEAT," which we may render in Enghsh : " The King storms — she {the Queen)
implores and beseeches ; and while the holy man (Saint Mungo or Ken-
tigern) prays, the gold w golden ring appears or is recovered."
We have here graphically represented and explained the miracle which
originated and constituted the arms of the archiepiscopal see, and next
of the city of Glasgow, which in a great measure stepped into its shoes, and
which Nisbet thus,^ in the main, gives as borne by the latter — viz. " in base "
(that is, of the shield), " a salmon fish, with a ring in its mouth, all proper, to
perpetuate the story of a miracle said to be wrought by St Mungo, that
* See that rather rare work now, the Armo- Empire, vol. i., plates 5 and 6, and especially
>-ial General de l^Empire Franqais, by Simon, 12 and 13.
published at Paris in ISl;"?, during the first