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

178 COMMENTS ON KEIR PEEFORMANCE,
Sir William The most remarkable feature in tTie preceding Sir William of Keir's life, is
charged his having been of the party opposed to his sovereign James III. ; and he has
murder of even been charged with his murder. However general the clamosa fama
James III. ^ o ./
has been against liim, it may be said mainly to rest on historical authority.
His ex- The Keir Performance (throwing out of the question Ferrerius, who has
here in the already been spoken to^) brings forward as its cheval de guerre, to " exculpate
1 See Ex *^^ Laird of Keir of any part in the assassination of James TIL," an Act of
pos^ition, Parliament, which it asserts to be "almost cotemporary with the event," ^ and
■■' See Keir " which provides, ' be the command and advertisement of om- sovereign lord
work X)
'25. ' ' the King,' that ' for the eschewing and ceasing of the heavy murmurs and
noise of the people of the deid ' (death) ' and slaughter of our sovereign
lord's father .... that the person or persons that put violent hands on
his person, and slew him, are nocht punished,' a reward should be given to
' any who should make known those that were the overthrowers of the late
King with their hands,' James IV. being ' maist desirous ' that the ' perpetra-
tors be known and punished after their demerits,' calling the murder an
' odious and cruel deed,' and a reward of one hundred merks' worth of land
is offered for the discovery."
This is all it literally gives or says of the Act, without condescending to
Acts of add its date, or where it may be entered in the Acts of Parliament — con-
ment', vol. trary again to the mode adopted in all regular discussion — so we must supply
the deficiency. We find that it actually passed February 20, 1491-2 — that
Lfndsay's'^ is, at the Very end of 1491, the year then beginning on the 2.5th of March —
thrund- while the assassination of James III. occrn'red as far back as the 9th of June
p^Ye™'"' 1488.^ Thus, instead of the Act being, as the work asserts, "almost cotem-
porary with the event," it was certainly more than three years and a half
after. It hence is flagrantly wrong in the assertion ; and we here again, as
p. 101. elsewhere, are disagi-eeably forced to subject it to the alternatives,* each self-
inculpating, — first, of either being guilty of extreme carelessness or inadvert-
ence ; or, secondly, of undue concealment of dates for tlie purposes of the
argument, which may be served better by the Act being immediately on the
death of the monarch, than, as was the fact, long subsequently.
From the passage quoted, however, just as it stands, the Keir Performance
draws its grand argument in the matter, and contends that "if at the
date" (thus curiously, though erroneously, founded upon, though not given)
" of this Act, and previous to it, rumour had pointed to the Laird of Keir as