Series 1 > Loyall dissuasive

THE LOYALL DISSUASIVE
space at least, as yours has been for severall ages more, and it
were great pity that either the one or the other should be
shrunk into a shrubb, or which in good heraldrie is more mean
and base, the sapless branch of any other tree of no better kind
or quality than your own.
My next and last remark from this short sentence is, that as
Dougall Daule’s predicessor was a parson or churchman, the
same or ane other of his ancestors, was King of Lynster in
Ireland, which agrees to a tittle, with the former historic, and
is so close and pregnant a proof of the genealogie of our familie
that I doubt not our adversaries may find it a hard task to
bring such ane other for their own.
A stranger or any indifferent person will be much to seek
how to find out a reason why the M‘Intoshes deny a matter
of fact, that if they are Clanchattan makes no less for their
honour than for ours; but this need be no mysterie to any that
knows the temper and politick of that partie. They think
(tho’ very groundlesly as is proved above) that they have honour
enough without it, and rather than admit of any that may make
for ours and set us on a level with themselves tho’ it may be
likeways equally for their own, they are resolved to con¬
tradict it, and vainly imagine they have authority enough to
laugh it out of countenance.
I have several times smiled to see some of these Gentlemen
make wry faces upon their hearing that the Illustrious family
of the Keiths1 is come of the Clanchattan, as we are, but being
to speak of this in another place, I shall insist the less upon
it at present, for tho1 our adversarys don’t like it, they have
not confidence to contradict it, because the tradition of both
familys is for it, and the Earls of Marishal have from age to
age owned no less themselves. And you may remember that
1 No doubt the Keiths claimed of old to be the descendants of Clan Chattan.
See Douglas’s Peerage. The remarkable monument claiming the connection, to
be seen at Ravelston House, is an interesting relic of the tradition. It is called
the Black Stock of Dunotter. Thomas Kirk in his account of his tour in Scotland
in 1677 says: ‘In the buttery [of Dunotter] is an old table called the black
stock of Dunoter, where many a health has been drunk.’ Mr. P. Hume Brown in
his edition of the traveller’s journal, p. 39, gives the long Latin inscription now
upon the table, where the words stirps ista Chattorum are prominent.