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

206
COMMENTS ON KEIR PEEFOEMANCE,
Summa-
tion in said
secondary
and ri-
diculous
matter.
1 See Keir
Perform-
ance, Pre-
face, p. X.,
and work,
p. 3.
3 Ibid.
Triumph-
ant Keir
results,
however,
arrogated
by the Keir
editor to
the Keir
familv.
proof of the cardinal link connecting "John de StriTel}Ti," in 1338, who
may be styled, as things stand, both " lack-land and lack-'pa,vent," — the first
only admissible Keir ancestor, with John and Alexander, the resiDCCtive
Vicecomites de Strivelin, before and after 1266 ; the latter of whom, be it
remembered, has been shown to have died without issue, — is utterly want-
ing ; and it would be a jest to hold it in the least assisted as so futilely
pretended, by means of Sii* William de Strivelin, in 1292, who is here
an absolute stranger ; wliile intervening links, also interpolated, are — as
coiild be shown too — quite unauthenticated, and incoherent — the entire
superficies of the preceding supposititious Keir-Cadder descent, as well as of
the putative southern, in all its phases, must at once collapse, and, brittle as
ice, at- the first touch of inquiry be shivered into atoms.
We cannot but be amazed that such an unprecedented pedigree should be
coolly palmed off upon the public, that the Keir family, tlirough such a medium,
should be maintained to have flom-ished for more than seven centuries, while
" few famiUes^ (it is at the same time announced) can boast of an inherit-
ance which has descended through so long a line of ancestors ; " and will it
be believed that this actually alludes to Cadder, which the Keirs only first
acquired in the peculiar way shown by a singular title in 1541 ? Not to
misrepresent the case, the precise words of the original may be here given.^
" The Stii'liugs (of Keir, by the work) first apjsear as owners of land in the
twelfth century. After jjossessing lands in different counties, they acquired,
in the reign of William the Lyon (who reigned from 1166 to 1214) the
estate of Cawder, which has continued in the family without interruption
to the present time, a period of nearly seven centuries." And then follows
what has just been quoted, the whole semel et simul, inculcating that from
the reign of the above prince down to Keir, the present possessor, it had
invariably continued in his family. What a perversion of fact, and capable of
such manifest refutation ! — the family, forsooth, to have flourished for seven
centuries, when it only dates from the isolated and unattached (that is to say,
to any other stock at present) John de Strivelin in 1338 — a descent, how-
ever, more than five centuries back, with which, it is apprehended, if the Keir
family could have been content, they would have stood on far higher gi'ound,
tb.an by grasping at that to which they can properly establish no right.
Having discussed the ancient possessors of Cadder, a subject of such high
ambition, and, it is beheved, all new material on that head, we may next.