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

184 COMMENTS ON KEIR PERFORMANCE,
elevated to even higher rank and pre-eminence than what he at present either
possesses or aims at.
All that has been above said might also hold, a fortiori, with regard to
Luke, whose acuteness, abihty, provident propensity, and, above all, the fact of
his being styled "nobill" (as will be proved), combined to render him a very
desirable collateral taker in the Gadder entail in 1414, failing the direct law-
ful heirs.
Entails Of such pecuHar family arrangements or settlements, apposite instances are
often for-
merly in by no means wanting. Indeed, antecedently to 19 th January 1512-13, there
favour of _ _ "^ "^
parties not ig an entail of the Hamilton estates bv James, Earl of Arran,^ and the heirs-
laOTul •'
latives'^^ male of his body, whom faihng, even to certain spurious offspring (quite
1 Great straugcrs at common law), including Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, his
tlr. ^^'^ natural son, to the exclusion of several lawful heirs-male. This may not im-
probably have been owing to the talents and energy of Sir James, so well
known in history as the Bastard of Arran. Then again, by a royal patent,
2 Ibid. June 1,1677," the old barony of Sinclair was settled or entailed, with the origi-
nal precedence, after the direct ispue of John, Lord Sinclair, upon certain Sin-
As also to clairs oi Herdmanston and their heirs-male ; and yet the latter, though of an-
by delcent. cieut desccut and the same surname, were of quite a different stock of Sinclairs
to the former : however, they might just as much be deemed of the same race
as Keir and Gadder, so far at least as entails may go in proving relationship.
But still further do these cases resemble one another, for the Sinclairs of
Herdmanstou bore the same arms as their noble namesake. After a corre-
sponding fashion, also, David Ross of Balnagowan, the head of the ancient
Rosses in tlie north, heirs-male of the original Earls of Ross, in 1711 en-
3 Before tailed his large estates upon a General Ross, and after him upon a younger
preme citu SOU of the Lord Ross in Renfrewshire, although his lordship was of quite a
Minutes of distiuct family, being of the Norman Rosses, while they most truly are stated.
Evidence
in the case, in a Baluagowau process in 1760, to have been all "utter strangers to the
famUy of Balnagowan, to whom they have no manner of affinity otlier than
the sound of a surname." And to give one other instance, of an older date,
supplied to us througli the regulating Errol grants, in the discussion before
the House of Lords in 1797, upon the question of the right to the Errol
dignity. The ancient earldom of Errol, with the high and transcendent
hereditary office of Gonstable of Scotland, and the estate, was duly settled
and entailed by powers obtained* from the crown, the 16th February 1674,