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 DEUMPELLIER'S EXPOSITION, &c. 159
cognisance in such matters, were de "piano forsooth to be barred and tram- vast «?--
surdity of
melled by the crude unauthorised finding, as proved and protested against, t^e Keir
of an inferior leguleius and officiary, not possessing it, and in a case, too, of ^""''i
a different form and compass, ctuH^by a
It would, of a truth, have been far better had the Keir of that day, in stitute's"''
accordance with what is now adventured for his family in such hicubrations competent
— though most gratuitously and preposterously — then fairly met and manfully it, unrUs"'^'^
CllssGn. nP"
opposed Drumpellier, if he conceived himself to have had a preferable right, fore the
But this neither he nor they ever ventured to do on one single occasion, to whom
•' "it was in-
when legal steps were taken by that of DrumpeUier to vindicate their just ^|J}'jP''j^"^ ■
gentUitial rights. They could only bark in secret, or attempt to move, as amuSer
now for the first time, lamely and impotently enough, in a private character, Sf„^''
under favoiu* of the preceding, arifitHo,
The Keir family latterly contrived, last century, in the face of Sir David TOntroi !
Lindsay's Register, to have their bend vert ingraUed, exalted then to a plain
one azure, in wliich guise Nisbet, after noticing its being ingrailed on the
house of Falahall in 1604, informs us it was entered in the " New Register "
of the Lyon Court. In this, however (though it has evoked the criticism of Keir famUy
contrived
Mylne, no secondary antiquary, and a great collector of old MSS., in one of '^st een-
■^ •''■•' tiiry to
his MS. in the Advocates' Library *), the Drumpellier family feel but little t^ave their
concern, nor are at all solicitous to know the ground of the alteration, to f^jj-g^'t^
which, on the contrary, they heartily bid them welcome. ■ They are quite one'azire ■
content with their own regular unexceptionable matriculation adduced in 1818, immaterial
which irrevocably or literally "unrepealahly" secures to them what they hum- peiUCT,°he
bly apprehend to be the far preferable distinctive charge in the Cadder arms, prindpai "
or those necessarily as shown of chief of the Stirlings — viz. the plain bend terms of
. ., .. Sir David
sable (instead of azure), just precisely as it is recorded in the authentic Lindsay's
ruUng Register of Sir David Lindsay, the celebrated Lord Lyon in the reign
of James V., together Avith the due concomitant of supporters. The sable,
* When actually stating this new matricula- remembered that, properly and in keeping with
tion (which he gives without mention, no more its origin at the Crusades, as well as its ma-
than Nisbet in his Heraldry, of its conveying terial bent and purport subsequently, heraldry
any right to supporters), and where, after notic- is to difference, not assimilate — the result of this
ing the antecedent ingrailing of the Keir bend, complete identity of the two arms in question,
he objects against its new form, that " if" thus and that, if broadly admitted, would render it
" it be borne plain and azure, it's ye same wyt in a great measure nugatory and a dead letter,
ye arms of Leslie." This is no doubt true, and Happily the Cadder, now Drumpellier, plain
a relevant objection, for it should always lie bend sable is not obnoxious to the charge.