Account of the families of Birnie and Hamilton of Broomhill

vi PREFATORY REMARKS.
" Amongst many other acts of ther generall assemblies (now rescinded)
they passed one, that noe persone of what qualitie soever should bury
within the walls of the kirk, albeit ther buriall-place was there, and that
many of these kirks and queirs had been built by the predecessors of
these noblemen and gentlemen, that had that privilege from antiquity,
and by the right of foundatione, uncontraverted untill the tyme of thir
new reformers, now in the meredian and greatnesse of ther glory, influence-
ing all the noysome weeds of disloyalty that had sprung up since our re-
bellione in the year 1636.
" It was as much out of peike, as to give obedience to this act of the
generall assemblies, that Sir Walter Stewart of Allontoune, and Sir
James Stewart, his brother, off whom I have spocken somewhat allready,
both heretors in the parish of Cambusnethen ; the first, from some anti-
quity, a fewar of the Earle of Tweddell's in Auchtermuire, whose prede-
cessors untill this man never came to sitt above the saltfoot when at the
Laird of Cambusnethen's table, which for ordinary every sabboth they
dyned at, as did most of the honest men within the parish of any account.
For Sir James Stewart, his brother, when a youth, he was bound a mer-
chant prentice in Edinburgh, his patrimonie scarce paying his prentice
fie, which, when he had finished, with repoart of much honestie towards
his master, and zeall to the Geneva government, (which many of our
natione was then bleeting eftir,) he procures to himself a rich marriage,
one Anna Hope, that keeped the principall, if not the only worset chope
in Edenburgh, whereby in a short tyme he soe enriched himself that he
turned factor, and our armie goeing into England, he was made generall
commissar. At lenth he came to be provost of Edenburgh, and one of
the three
" (As to the barrons that ruled all Scotland for three or four years,)
albeit it consists within the knowledge of all men that knew them, that