Spottiswoode Society > History of the affairs of the Church and State of Scotland from the beginning of the reformation to the year 1568 > Volume 1

lxxxviii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE
Several years after this, Mr Alexander Keith, younger of
Ravelston, having made insinuation to Mr Robert Keith
that his own father and he were the representatives of the
Lairds of Pittendrum, and Mr Robert having inquired what
evidence he had for that, Mr Alexander replied, that this
was vouched by a passage in Mr Nisbefs Heraldry. Very
good, 11 said Mr Robert, " that passage which you mean was
put into the Heraldry by me, merely upon the authority of
a conference between your father and me ;"" and so Mr
Robert narrated the story to Mr Alexander. By the bye,
Mr Alexander Keith, the Clerk, believed always that Mr
Robert was author of the Genealogy of the Marischal
Family printed in Mr Nisbefs Appendix, until lately that
I told him the contrary.
At an after conversation between Mr Alexander Keith,
younger, and Mr Robert, the said Mr Alexander supported
his pretension of being the elder branch, by his father's
having been born, as he said, within the house of Pitten-
drum. But as Mr Alexander Keith, elder of Ravelston,
is not yet eighty years old to this day, it is evident that
his birth is near fifty years posterior to the old possessor
of Pittendrum, his being denuded of these lands. And
therefore old Mr Alexander Keith, his being born within
the walls of that mansion-house, poor as it is at this day,
can be no authority for his being the representative of a
Family denuded of their estate so many years before. The
father of Mr Alexander Keith elder, now of Ravelston,
might have been a tenant on that estate ; and I know well,
that the title of the present Alexander Keith, elder of Ravel-
ston, and his fathers title likewise, was Camculter ; but I
suppose neither the father nor the son ever pretended to bear
the title of Laird of Pittendrum, as Mr Robert Keith's grand-
father is designed at the time that he purchased the lands
of Cowton, in the year 1G26. If Mr Keith the clerk's grand-
father, had been in the possession of the lands of Pittendrum
so lately as the birth of Alexander Keith, elder of Ravelston,
minister of the gospel, presently residing in Edinburgh, and Alexander
Keith, writer there." — E.]