Historic memorials of the Stewarts of Forthergill Perthshire, and their male descendants. With an appendix containing title-deeds and various documents of interest in the history of the family

iv PREFACE.
in many private collections, as well as his experience and facility in deciphering ancient
records, are well known to all interested in these studies.
The beautiful facsimiles and reproductions of original sketches are due to the talent
of T. B. Johnston, Esq., F.S.A. Scot., whose attainments, scientific, artistic, and anti-
quarian, are as well known as his tried gentleness and urbanity.
Some idea may be formed of the difficulties met with, when it is remembered that no
one has ever yet attempted to verify the famdy history of this line ; but the lineage
handed down by tradition has been accepted without inquiry as correct, — which, with one
or two errors, it is now proved to be, and this hy evidence which will bear the strictest
legal scrutiny.
Neither could assistance be obtained from other branches of the Forthergill Stewarts,
most of whom are extinct in the male line, and none appear to have taken sufficient
interest in the Lives and actions of their ancestors to investigate the proofs of their
family history.
Moreover, the defective state of the parish registers in Scotland renders them prac-
tically useless, and is a continual source of grief to the genealogist.
Mr. Turnbull's " Memoranda of the State of the Parochial Registers of Scotland "
(Edinburgh, 1840), G. Seton's " History and Imperfect Condition of the Parochial
Eecords in Scotland" (Edinburgh, 1854), give deplorable examples of this.
Some points connected with the earlier history contained in the following pages will
probably be elucidated in a few years by the publication of records, which are almost
annually brought to light from the mines of historic documents in the Register House,
and other public collections, or still lying in piles, almost unknown, and in many instances
without even catalogues, inventories, or abstracts, in numerous private charter-rooms.
These points are the further history of James Stewart, first of Forthergill ; of Marion, wife
of John his son ; the exact relationship of Elizabeth Gordon, wife of Niel (another son of
James), to the Earls of Huntly ; and of Elizabeth Stewart, wife of Niel I., to the Earls of
Athole.
Meanwhile these pages are offered for the indulgent perusal of the present members
of this lineage, as containing all the evidence at present obtainable on the subject, though
with a perfect consciousness of many defects, notwithstanding the time, labour, and
patience they have involved, but in the earnest hope that some future representative of
the Stewarts of Forthergill may, with the superior advantages at his disposal, bring to
thorough completeness that which is left undone in this volume ; for there will certainly
be then a far richer collection of newly divulged historic muniments than is known to
the present generation.
C. P. S.
Oxford and Cambridge Club,
London.