Historical and genealogical memoirs of the House of Hamilton

OF THE HOUSE OF HAMILTON. 47
1. Daughter, Elizabeth, married to Sir Alexander Frazer of Cowie and sir david de
° tii HAMILTON,
Dores, ancestor to the Frazers, Lords Sultoun. loud of cadvow.
He died before 1392.
even referred to by that able and ingenious author, it is clear that Janet Keith ' of Gen. Hist. pp. 83-4,
GaktorC was afterwards married, towards the end of the fourteenth century, to Sir &c-
Alexander Stuart of Darnley. She again survived her husband, having by him been
the mother of the heroic Sir John Stuart of Darnley, Constable of France, who fell at
Orleans in 1429. In proof of which latter assertion, there is a charter in 1406, above Reg. Mag. sig. Hot.
quoted, in which he is styled her son. As Janet survived her husband, it indisputably
follows that the William Stuart, (supposed ancestor of Castlemilk,) who also fell at Or-
leans, and is acknowledged on all hands to have been his younger brother, must like-
wise have been her offspring. But the William, the undoubted ancestor of Castle- FueJera.tom. 8,tul. 58.
milk, is proved, by a deed in Rymer's Foedera, to have been a knight, and appointed
one of the umpires, on the part of Scotland, for the preservation of the peace of the
Western Marches, as earlyas 1398. Andrew Stuart expressly claims this person as their
ancestor; while the William, the son of Darnley, owing to the circumstance of his Gen. Hist. p. 334.
being a younger son, and the late diite of his father's and mother's marriage, subsequent
to 1381, (as directly follows from the charter,) could only have been a child or strip-
ling at a period when he is thus figured in the grave character of a responsible gua-
rantee for the peace of two rival nations, and as having attained the highest of the
degrees of chivalry, when it was the hard-earned reward of arduous and protracted
services. Neither can it be instructed that William of Darnley was designed, or pro-
prietor, of Castlemilk.
" But what is again conclusive, is the fact of Sir John Stewart of Darnley, though Reg- Mag. Sig. Rot.
early bred in arms, not even having been a squire or knight in 1406; and the still
more irresistible one, as appears from the authorities of Andrew Stuart himself of his
brother William, the imaginary progenitor of Castlemilk, having only been a squire* Gen. Hist - P- '20, &c.
as late as 1421. William the squire, then, in 1421, could not possibly have been
Sir William of Castlemilk the knight, in 1398, who was much his senior, nay, indeed,
might have been his father ; and in this manner the identity is disproved. Other proof
to the same effect might also be adduced, but this, it is hoped, will suffice ; and hence,
on such grounds, the claim of the family of Castlemilk to a Darnley descent cannot
be maintained. Though unfortunately unsuccessful in his main attempt, upon which
he had expended the labour and ingenuity of many years, the work of Andrew Stuart
must ever be highly prized by antiquarians for the original information, and acute
remarks upon other subjects, with which it abounds ; nor will his exposure of the in-
judicious attacks of opponents be less entitled to our admiration.
" The above remarks may perhaps not be regarded irrelevant, relating, as they do,
to Janet Keith of Galston, — the common ancestrix of the noble family of Hamilton,
and their cousins the Stuarts of Darnley, from whom James the First of Great Bri-
tain, and the subsequent monarchs of the house of Stuart, were lineally descended."
* It is really surprising that tliis should have escaped the observation of one so acute as Andrew Stuart William
is only then styled " E^uyer" and never " Chevalier."