Historical and genealogical memoirs of the House of Hamilton

46 HISTORICAL AND GENEALOGICAL MEMOIRS
sir david de IV. Andrew, ancestor of the Hamiltons of Udston.
HAMILTON, lt , ^ ...
lord or cadvow. V. John, ancestor of the family or Bardowie, concerning whom, more
particulars will be found in the second part of this Work.
Foi. ?85. " Janet Keith of Galston, as is evident from Sir Ludovick Stewart's volume of MS.
Collections in the Advocates' Library, having been the heiress, through her mother,
of the once great and ancient family of Galbraith, who possessed both Galston and
Bathgate, would naturally, in this manner, confirm the acts of its subordinate mem-
bers and retainers. And here she is directly proved to have been the wife of a David
Hamilton who possessed the manor of Dalserf which was the undoubted property of
David Hamilton of Cadyow, and hence no other than him.
" Taking all these circumstances together, there really seems no ground for the
contrary supposition of Andrew Stuart, which labours under the additional objec-
tion that there is no legal evidence of the existence of a Janet Keith, daughter of
a Marshal of Scotland, the wife of David ,• nay, so far from this, it is even proved, by
incontestable evidence in the charter-chest of the noble family of Mar, partly alluded
to by Lord Hailes in the Sutherland case, that the cotemporary Janet Keith, — daughter
of Sir Edward Keith, admitted to have been Marshal of Scotland, whom Andrew
v n. Hist. P . 92. Stuart, upon the authority of Nisbet's Heraldry, wishes to represent as the wife of
David of Cadzow, and the ancestrix of his subsequent line, — the only other Janet
Keith of ivhom there is legal proof at the time, — was in fact the wife of Thomas
Erskine of Erskine from the year 1390, (probably before it,) down at least to the
year 1413 : And as it is in right of this very lady, whose grandmother was the Lady
Elyne Mar, daughter of Gratney, Earl of Mar, that the family of Erskine succeeded,
as heirs-at-law, to the Earldom of Mar, it follows that she could not have left de-
scendants by any previous marriage with a Hamilton ; for, in that event, they, and
not the Erskines, would have been the preferable heirs to the Earldom. Neither can
it be pretended that she was the wife of David of Cadzow after the death of Erskine,
because it is very certain that David was dead long before 1390, while the other was
alive, and her husband as late as the year 1413.
Peerage, vol. ii. " R is singular that a late Peerage writer, Mr Wood, in all appearance to avoid
pp. 186—7. this conclusion, has created a third Janet Keith, assuming, upon no competent autho-
rity, that Sir Edward, the Marshal, had tiro daughters of that name, — one, of course,
the wife of David of Cadzow, and the other of Erskine, while he also talks of Janet
Keith, daughter of the Knight of Galston ; thus in some degree rather compromising
the purity of the descent of two noble families, whom he elsewhere is at pains to com-
memorate.
" The fact that John was son and heir of David of Cadyow, though generally
asserted, was formerly by no means proved ; but here we have him, in a legal deed,
explicitly called son and heir-apparent of his father ; — so that now the whole male
line of the Ducal family of Hamilton, from Walter Fitz-Gilbert, the original ancestor
in 1292, down to the present moment, is fully and legally instructed.
" But this is not all; the date of the charter in 1381 is, besides, fatal to the pre-
tensions of the family of Castlemilk, as espoused by Andrew Stuart, (by whom it was
never seen,) to the male representation of the Stuarts of Darnley. By evidence that is
fir* V