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

214 COMMENTS ON KEIR PERFORMANCE,
or relinquishment was advantageous ; and -who, therefore, so far as he could,
compensated Robert and his heirs in retm-n in parts of Gadder, under the
remarkable warranty of his old Keir patrimony. This transaction, unless upon
a gentihtial footing — not unUkely including claims upon Gadder — so deci-
sive for Drumpellier, it seems impossible to explain. The respectable Keir
agent in 1818 could offer no different solution, while he so distinctly
admitted he could not disprove the arguments and conclusions on the
opposite side that were specially submitted to him. And taken with what
otherwise so forcibly obtains for Drumpellier — even bating the import of
any Gadder entail in 1414 — more especially the fact proved of the same
Robert of Bankeir and Letter and his heirs being next collateral heirs of
Janet of Gadder, while backed with the remaining concurrent features and
incidents of the Drumpellier case — ancient and modern — it may be held to
be fully substantiated.
The i^receding is stated by the exponent from mere motives of openness
and candour, though strictly not required, the general or material question
confessedly being, as shown, long legally foreclosed in his favour.
Having now brought to a conclusion, without any recapitulation, which
indeed would be supererogatory, and perhaps annoying to the reader, a case
requiring exposition, it may be admitted, on the other hand, that a status
and descent have been unduly arrogated for the first time by the Keir Per-
formance to the Keir family without a vestige of evidence — nothing of the
kind, independently of its refutation, being condescended upon — to the mani-
fest prejudice and injury of a party, the true force of whose claims and gen-
tihtial rights has been unduly ignored and misrepresented.
Remarks Iguorance of the now long undenied and formally recognised Drumpel-
duct ofThe lier status cannot be pleaded in excuse by their opponents, after the remark-
andpre- able colUsion between them and the late Keir in 1818, with the determined
tensions. . . , . ,
opposition then tlireatened and attempted, but afterwards so inconsistently
abandoned by him and his partisans. The memory of these events, they
having been of so singular a character, with the mutual correspondence —
already given in the Exposition — must naturally be presumed to be in the
Keir charter-chest, as well as the printed abstract of evidence for Drumpellier
in 1818, quoted partially in the Keir work to serve a purpose, but when