Wedderburn book > History

INTRODUCTION. xlix.
vols. 243, 245, 247-48, 251, 261). Similar, though less numerous, quotations introd.
occur on most of the books of several of these old notaries in Dundee. Thus
Robert's brother, Alexander, the clerk, writes (D.B.R. 8) : —
Non vox sed votum, non musica cordula sed cor,
Non clamans sed amans candet in aure dei.
Kingennie's servitor, Thomas Fyiff, constantly repeats the epitaph of Mary,
Queen of Scots, on his title pages. Kingennie himself writes, " In my
defence God me defend, and bring my soul to ane guid end," " guid God
be merciful unto me; imprint thy fear in my hairt" (D.B.R. 15), and so
on, down to the time of the last clerk of the Dame, on whose final protocol
book, interrupted by his share in the '15, is written, " If spending of thy
time thou be, Remember time is spending thee."
The symbols of the different notaries of the name have been facsimiled
in the second volume (pp. 186-87). That of old Robert is
Notarial simple and has no motto, but the later ones are elaborate and
1525-1715. were intended, no doubt, both to be difficult of imitation and to
impress the ignorant with a due sense of writing as an art.
That of Robert, the notary (as we may call the brother of the clerk), has
two mottoes, "Bona fide" and "Nihil tarn occulte quam non revelabitur,"
while his brother has one with "Deum time." Kingennie and his two sons
all used no mottoes with their symbols, but Sir Alexander of Blackness
reverted to the "Deum time" of his great-grandfather, though he sometimes
substituted for it " Fear God," in English. James, his son and successor,
had for symbol a most elaborate signature, with the words " Dum spiro spero "
below it, while his son, again, the last of the clerks, had a simpler symbol
with his initials A.W. and the motto, " Sit deo Gloria." The last of the
notaries, Robert of Pearsie, who died in 1786, used no symbol, but only a
motto, " Libertas optima rerum."
The eldest brother of Robert, the notary, is, as far as I know, the first of
his name to have been clerk of Dundee. Douglas, in his Baronage
burnsf clerks of Scotland, followed by some others, has spoken of John Wed-
i557-ru7 e ' derburn (son to James Wedderburn and Janet Froster) and
of David Wedderburn, who married Helen Lawson, both as being
father and son and as having been successively clerks of Dundee, but there
is no ground for either assertion. It is, of course, possible that there were
clerks of the name before the time of Alexander, and when in 1703 the last
of the Wedderburn clerks was attempting to remove by process one James
Ramsay from the deputy clerkship, he alleged that the Wedderburns had
"for fourteen generations" been clerks of Dundee. This was, I think, either
a piece of pleading or a statement based on tradition untested by fact. The
office of clerk was, indeed, continuously held by seven members of the family
through six generations. But the first of these seven, Alexander, succeeded
one Robert Seres, and at an early date — 1425 — we find the office held by
one John Bell, clear proof that fourteen successive generations goes far beyond
the fact. The office, no doubt, came to be regarded as hereditary in the
family. On the death of the first Wedderburn clerk it fell to his eldest son,
but in the next generation when the second clerk died, leaving not only a
vacancy in the clerkship but the estate of Kingennie, the latter devolved in
the line of his eldest son, while his second son, James, took up the office
of clerk. Later on history repeated itself, for once again the office was
inherited, so to speak, by James' son, Sir Alexander of Blackness, on whose
death it passed to his second son, James, the estate of Blackness falling to
the eldest son.
•with some of these mottoes, thus: — "At meitt be glaid, sport honestlie," etc. (post, vol. ii., p. 225);
" Patior ut potiar," "Temperantia prorogat aunos," and "Spernit pericula virtus," this last
being the motto of the first baronet of Blackness.