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 POPULAR GENEALOGISTS 
 
 OR 
 
 THE ART OF PEDIGREE-MAKING. 
 
EDINBURGH : PRINTED BY THOMAS CONSTABLE, 
 FOR 
 
 EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS. 
 
 LONDON, HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 DUBLIN, M'gLASHAN AND GILL. 
 
 GLASGOW, JAMES MACLEHOSE. 
 
\^^,^,^rrJLtt yO^^^-r^ 
 
 Popular Genealogists 
 
 OR 
 
 THE ART OF PEDIGREE-MAKING 
 
 ' Falsuin comjuittunt viri docti, qui ko minibus de plebe nobilitatem, 
 insignia et antiqztitatem generis adfingtoit. . . . Et potest profecto 
 debetque mercettariorum iliorum poena tunc, quttin reipublicce valde 
 per eos fiocituvi, atque fides jnonnmentorum et historic turbata est, 
 ad ultiniuin su^plicium pro/erri.' 
 
 L'<:ysf.kus, Mediiaiiofies ad Pandectas, Sp. ncxvi. 3. 4. 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS 
 
 1865 
 
Ail 
 
 POPULAR GENEALOGISTS 
 
 OR 
 
 THE ART OF PEDIGREE-MAKING. 
 
 It was the fashion among the wits and 
 philosophers of last century to throw ridicule 
 on the subject of pedigree ; and the sarcasms 
 of Voltaire, Walpole, and Chesterfield may in 
 a measure be excused, when we take into ac- 
 count the mixture of pedantry, fiction, and 
 flattery which in their day so largely usurped 
 the place of historical truth. Since that time, 
 however, genealogical studies have entered on 
 a new phase. It has become an admitted fact 
 that the history of the leading families of a 
 country is an important part of the history of 
 that country. A race of learned and accurate 
 investigators have sprung up, who, approaching 
 
 genealogy in a critical spirit, have brought 
 A 
 
 171 
 
Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 entirely new resources to bear on it. Rejecting 
 all that is not borne out by authentic evidence, 
 they have applied themselves to the patient 
 examination of the national records, the archives 
 and chronicles of the monasteries, and the con- 
 tents of private charter-chests. Each source 
 has yielded its quota of facts, and these facts 
 have been woven into genealogical biographies. 
 Heraldry itself, after having been abandoned 
 to coach-painters and undertakers, has again 
 come into favour, having been found to be a 
 valuable, if not indispensable aid to the know- 
 ledge both of family and of national history. 
 
 England and Scotland have produced a suc- 
 cession of more or less excellent family his- 
 tories, some published and some privately 
 printed, in the foremost rank of which must 
 be placed Lord Lindsay's delightful record 
 of the House of Lindsay, the model for all 
 family histories in time coming. In this change 
 w^hich has come over the spirit of genealogy, it 
 is pleasant to find that Scotland, once notorious 
 for looseness and credulity in matters of pedi- 
 gree, has taken a prominent part. It would not 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 3 
 
 be easy to overrate the value of the muniments 
 which have been preserved and carefully edited 
 by the Maitland, Bannatyne, and Spalding 
 Clubs. 
 
 While this genealogical revival cannot fail to 
 be extremely gratifying to every lover of his- 
 torical truth, I propose in these few pages to 
 make it matter of inquiry, how far it has as yet 
 extended to genealogical literature of a more 
 popular kind, such as the Peerages, histories of 
 the ' Landed Gentry,' and similar works, which 
 are in the hands of every one, and daily referred 
 to by the general public. 
 
 By far the most voluminous of our popular 
 writers on genealogical topics is Sir Bernard 
 Burke, Ulster King-of-Arms. His Peerage and 
 Baro7ietage appears annually, and professes to 
 furnish an account, past and present, of each 
 family belonging to either order, with a verbal 
 blazon and drawing of their arms. Sir Bernard 
 is also the author of a similar volume or 
 volumes, appearing at occasional intervals, re- 
 garding the Landed Gentry of Great Britain 
 a7td Ireland. Three volumes of Heraldic Illns- 
 
Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 trations^ four volumes of Visitations of Seats 
 and Arms, and one volume oi Authorized Arms, 
 are all supplementary works to the Landed 
 Gentry, which contain elaborate engravings of 
 the arms of a number of families, sometimes 
 with detailed pedigrees and descriptions of 
 their seats. Of lighter reading we have two 
 volumes of Vicissitudes of Families, one volume 
 of Family Romaiice, besides Royal Genealogies, 
 and other books of less importance, which it 
 is unnecessary to enumerate. 
 
 The official position of the author of these 
 publications, as at the head of the heraldic 
 establishment of one of the three kingdoms, 
 necessarily imparts to them a stamp of autho- 
 rity which they would not otherwise possess. 
 An account, either of the Peerage families, or 
 of the untitled gentry of Britain, must, if pro- 
 perly drawn up, be a work of great historical 
 value. It would presuppose high genealogical 
 qualifications on the part of its author, in- 
 cluding patience, carefulness, and a scrupul- 
 ous regard to truth. It would be based on 
 an attentive examination of title -deed.s, con- 
 
The Art of Pedigree-makhig. 5 
 
 temporary documents, and the public records, 
 and its statements would be checked by refer- 
 ence to every available source of information. 
 While due weight would be allowed to conclu- 
 sions arrived at by genealogical critics of tried 
 skill and accuracy, no mere dictum of the re- 
 presentative of a family, however unimpeach- 
 able in point of veracity, would be received 
 without investigation. The heraldry would 
 also be carefully checked and corrected by the 
 records of the several Colleges of Arms. The 
 Peerage works of Dugdale and Collins in Eng- 
 land, and of Crawfurd and Sir Robert Douglas 
 in Scotland, written in an uninquiring and 
 credulous age, were probably up to the highest 
 mark of their time. Since their day, the mate- 
 rials for arriving at truth have been so greatly 
 extended, the public records have become so 
 much more accessible, and so much light has 
 been thrown on family history by the labours 
 of genealogical antiquaries, that it is obviously 
 desirable that these standard works should be 
 replaced by others written under advantages 
 which the older writers never possessed, and 
 
Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 embodying the results of the genealogical lite- 
 rature which has been accumulating since their 
 date. Burke's Peerage and Baronetage proposes 
 to supply this desideratum as regards the 
 families of the existing Peers and Baronets ; with 
 what success be it now our business to inquire. 
 
 The volume opens very properly with the 
 pedigree of our Most Gracious Sovereign, de- 
 duced from William the Conqueror, from Ken- 
 neth Macalpine, and from the house of Guelph. 
 The attentive reader on glancing over this 
 genealogy will soon perceive that it is inaccu- 
 rate in many respects, and, in particular, that it 
 is both redundant and defective. It is redun- 
 dant, in so far as it is constantly digressing into 
 remote and unimportant lines of female descent, 
 in order to drag in persons in the ordinary 
 walks of life, who are descended from royalty, 
 and therefore, it is said, 'entitled to quarter 
 the royal arms.' It is defective, in so far as it 
 omits and ignores immediate members of the 
 Royal house, a knowledge of whose position 
 is essential to an understanding of English 
 history. Thus, in enumerating the children of 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 
 
 Edward ill. and their issue, Edmund Duke of 
 York, is said to have had one * only surviving 
 son,' Richard Earl of Cambridge, whereas the 
 fact is familiar to every one conversant either 
 with Shakespeare or with the Wars of the 
 Roses, that besides Richard, his younger son, 
 whose marriage eventually led to the claim of 
 the house of York to the throne, Edmund 
 Duke of York, had an elder son, Edward, who 
 survived him. Surely the ' Aumerle' of Richard 
 II., who, as Duke of York, fell at Agincourt, 
 ought not to have been altogether dropped out 
 of the royal pedigree ; particularly consider- 
 ing that the posterity of Anne, daughter of 
 Thomas Duke of Gloucester, are traced down- 
 wards through a succession of female descents, 
 till an opportunity is found of bringing in the 
 very objectionable assertion that several peers 
 there named, and ' Evelyn John Shirley, Esq., 
 M.P. of Eatington, etc.,' are ' entitled to quarter 
 the royal arms.' It has been hitherto under- 
 stood that no person is allowed to quarter his 
 arms with those of any other family (irrespec- 
 tively of the case of sovereign families) without 
 
Poptdar Genealogists, or 
 
 permission of the King-at-Arms ; and that that 
 permission is only granted where there is not 
 merely descent but representation. The as- 
 sumption of a coat, in virtue of mere female 
 descent from the family to whom it belongs, 
 is a contravention of all heraldic law. Sir 
 Bernard Burke, however, seems to think that 
 if this be the case with regard to the arms of 
 subjects, less respect is due to the ensigns of 
 royalty a doctrine extremely different from 
 that of all previous heraldic writers, who lay it 
 down strongly that the royal ensigns are * more 
 sacred than those of subjects,' and that neither 
 the whole, nor even a part of them, can be 
 granted by a King-at-Arms to any subject, 
 except by special warrant from the Sovereign.^ 
 In Scotland, the royal insignia were thought 
 too sacred to be borne, even differenced, by 
 the younger members of the royal house, who 
 took not the royal lion, but the Stewart family 
 
 ^ See Menestrier, Origine des Ornements des Armoires, p. 
 295 ; Edmonson's Heraldry, vol. i. p. 181 ; De la Colombiere, 
 Science HeroiqiiCy p. 74 ; Sir G. Mackenzie's Heraldry, b. i. 
 ch. ii. ; Nisbet's Heraldry, vol. ii. pp. 63, 69, 75. 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 9 
 
 coat, with some distinction in which the royal 
 tressure was, by special concession, sometimes 
 included. The tressure was occasionally, but 
 rarely, granted by royal concession to represen- 
 tatives of important families directly descended 
 by a maternal ancestor from royalty, or * who 
 had merited well of their King and country.' 
 As the house of Stewart married freely with 
 the principal nobility of the country, there is 
 scarcely any one in Scotland who has a pedi- 
 gree at all, who cannot be traced by some line 
 or lines of descent to royalty, and who might 
 not therefore, according to this doctrine, quarter 
 the royal arms. It is hardly necessary to say 
 that no such right was ever recognised by the 
 heraldic colleges of England or Scotland ; and 
 I allude to this matter more particularly, 
 because throughout the Peerage, Landed Gentry, 
 and all Sir Bernard's writings, the same idea 
 is found continually recurring, till it becomes a 
 positive mania. The undifferenced royal arms of 
 England, and still more frequently of Scotland, 
 are introduced without the slightest ceremony 
 on the most frivolous grounds, often on the 
 
lo Popular Genealogists, o?' 
 
 score of an alleged descent from royalty that 
 will not stand a moment's examination. Thus, 
 in the Heraldic Illustrations, the coat of the 
 family of Forbes-Leith of Whitehaugh is de- 
 picted as quartered with the pure coat of 
 royalty, avowedly in no better ground than 
 that the mother of the present representative 
 of the family was a daughter of a younger son 
 of the family of Stewart of Shambelly, * a 
 descendant of the royal house of Stewart.' 
 The Stewarts of Shambelly prove on exami- 
 nation to be remote cadets of the Earls of 
 Galloway, whose ancestor was Sir John 
 Stewart of Bonkill, an offshoot from the main 
 line of the Stewart family before the marriage 
 of the Steward of Scotland with Marjory 
 Bruce, which brought the crown to his descen- 
 dants. They therefore cannot be said to be 
 of the royal house of Stewart at all. I need 
 hardly add, that neither the Earls of Gallo- 
 way nor the Stewarts of Shambelly ever were 
 allowed to bear, or dreamed of bearing, the royal 
 insignia of Scotland, differenced or undififer- 
 enced. In the same volume of the Illustrations 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 1 1 
 
 is an engraving and verbal blazon of the coat 
 of Frederick Lewis Scrymgeour Wedderburn, 
 Esq. of Wedderburn and Birkhill, * impaling 
 for his wife Helen, fourth daughter of Viscount 
 Arbuthnot, the royal arms of Scotland.' How 
 the Arbuthnot ensigns come to be those of 
 royalty remains unexplained. This same cool 
 assumption of right to bear the royal arms 
 meets us passim, in the Vicissitudes of Families, 
 as in the following passage, vol. i. p. 3 : 
 
 'Among the lineal descendants of Edmund 
 of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, sixth son of Ed- 
 ward I., King of England, entitled to quarter the 
 royal arms, occur a butcher and a toll-gatherer : 
 the first, a Mr. Joseph Smart of Hales Owen ; 
 the latter, a Mr. George Wilmot, keeper of the 
 turnpike-gate at Cooper's Bank near Dudley. 
 Then again, among the descendants of Thomas 
 Plantagenet Duke of Gloucester, fifth son of 
 Edward III., we discover Mr. Stephen James 
 Penny, the late sexton at St. George's, Han- 
 over Square, a strange descent from sword 
 and sceptre to the spade and pick-axe.' 
 
 Did it ever occur to Sir Bernard Burke what 
 
12 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 the persons here enumerated are to quarter the 
 royal arms with f No one can quarter any coat 
 of arms if he have not in the first place a coat 
 of his own, so as to be in the heraldic sense a 
 gentleman. Should any of the persons to whom 
 the Heraldic Illustrations have assigned the 
 royal arms, be really meditating the assumption 
 of them, I would beg to recommend to their 
 notice the following passage from a treatise 
 by Sir George Mackenzie, the eminent jurist. 
 On the Science of Heraldry treated as a part of 
 the Civil Law and Laiv of Nations : 
 
 * By the civil law, he who bears and uses 
 another man's arms to his prejudice, vel in ejus 
 scandalnm ant ignominiam, is to be punished 
 arbitrarily at the discretion of the judge ; but 
 he who usurps his Prince's arms loses his head, 
 and his goods are confiscated.' 
 
 To return to the Peerage and Baronetage, 
 there are a few instances in which the 'lineage' 
 of the peerage families is tolerably correct, and 
 two or three in which it is extremely correct ; but 
 unfortunately these are exceptional cases. Con- 
 fusion and blundering are the more general 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 1 3 
 
 rule, without even an attempt to preserve con- 
 sistency in error. I take Scottish instances in 
 preference, partly because they seem even more 
 faulty than those of the sister kingdom, and 
 partly because I have had larger opportunities 
 of testing them. An average example, not 
 worse than many others, is the pedigree of the 
 Polwarth family. Lord Polwarth is the repre- 
 sentative of the family of Scott of Harden, a 
 very early cadet of the house of Scott. The 
 representative of the male line, progenitor of 
 Buccleuch, on marrying the heiress of Murdock- 
 stone, in the thirteenth century, altered the 
 original arms, the stars and crescent, by in- 
 corporating with them the Murdockstone bend, 
 the old Scott coat being retained by the house 
 of Harden, who branched off prior to the Mur- 
 dockstone marriage : 
 
 ' An aged knight to danger steel' d, 
 
 With many a mosstrooper came on : 
 And azure in a golden field, 
 The stars and crescent graced his shield, 
 Without the bend of Murdieston.' 
 
 The poet is fully borne out in this matter by 
 the prosaic testimony of seals and charters. 
 
14 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 The Buccleuch succession went in the seven- 
 teenth century through an heir- female, Anne 
 Duchess of Buccleuch, to her son by the at- 
 tainted Duke of Monmouth, from whom the 
 ducal house of Buccleuch are now descended, 
 and are therefore not paternally Scotts. The 
 male representation of Buccleuch passed to the 
 latest cadet, Scott of Howpaisley, afterwards of 
 Thirlestane, from whom descend Lord Napier, 
 and all the various Napiers who have deserved 
 so well of their country, who are all paternally 
 Scotts. So long as a male descendant of the 
 Thirlestane branch is in life, or any male de- 
 scendant of Sir Richard le Scot and the Mur- 
 dockstone heiress, the Harden Scotts can never 
 claim the male representation of Buccleuch. 
 Sir Bernard Burke, however, makes Lord Pol- 
 warth the heir-male of Buccleuch, and accom- 
 plishes this by putting forth Thirlestane as a 
 cadet, not of Buccleuch, but of Harden, and 
 assigning him for ancestor James, fourth son 
 of Sir Walter Scott of Harden, who ' lived in 
 the time of James VI.' Yet in the Family 
 Romance, p. 27 (in a narrative called ' The 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 1 5 
 
 Heir of Thirlestane,' which by the way is utterly 
 apocryphaP), the hereditary loyalty of the 
 house of Thirlestane is enlarged on as already 
 ' attested by deeds of arms of ages ' in the time 
 of James V. ; and in the account of the Napier 
 family in the Peerage we find the Thirlestane 
 branch of the Scotts traced upwards correctly 
 enough to William Scott of Howpaisley, whose 
 grandson Walter fell at the battle of Pavia in 
 1525, more than forty years before James VI. 
 was born. I may state as the result of my own 
 experience, that any one who seriously attempts 
 to use Burke's Peerage as a book of reference, 
 will find himself involved at every turn in 
 similar genealogical paradoxes. 
 
 One of the most unsatisfactory features of 
 
 ^ A lady of Thirlestane is there fabled to have poisoned her 
 stepson, the heir of the family, on the day of his intended mar- 
 riage ; whereupon her husband, to beggar this wicked lady's son, 
 spent his whole means in embalming the body of the deceased, 
 and in funeral feasting of the most riotous description. It can 
 easily be shown that this young laird survived his stepmother, 
 and married Mary Lyon of the Glammis family, who survived 
 him, and appears as pursuer in a reported case in the Court of 
 Session against her father-in-law, Sir Robert Scott, Lyon v. 
 Scott^ 25th Feb. 1623, Durie, p. 50. 
 
1 6 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 this work is its heraldry, more especially that 
 of the Scotch peerage families. The verbal 
 blazon and the woodcut are continually at 
 variance. The best known and best established 
 differences of cadets are, as a rule, ignored ; 
 sometimes, however, they occur in the verbal 
 blazon and not in the engraving. A coat de- 
 scribed as quartered is in an immense number 
 of instances represented as a plain coat, one of 
 the quarters, and very generally the least im- 
 portant, being engraved. Occasionally the en- 
 graving gives all the quarters described, but 
 quite differently disposed from the description. 
 The artist has sometimes adopted an obviously 
 wrong reading of the blazon, as in the coat 
 assigned to Sir Charles M'Gregor, * An oak-tree 
 surmounted by a sword in bend proper,' where 
 the sword rises from above the tree, surmount- 
 ing it certainly, but not in the heraldic sense. 
 Exactly the same coat, crest, motto, and sup- 
 porters are now and then assigned to two 
 families but remotely connected with each 
 other, as in the case of the Duke of Athole and 
 Earl of Dunmore, the Earl of Morton and Sir 
 
The Art of Pedigree-making. 1 7 
 
 R. P. Douglas of Cam To Lord Erskine, who 
 in point of fact bears his paternal coat of 
 Erskine quartered with Marr, Stewart of Kirk- 
 hill, and Fairfax, we find assigned the pure coat 
 of Comyn alone, the verbally described coat 
 being here identical with the engraved one. 
 The same pure coat of Comyn is given to the 
 Earl of Buchan in the engraving, but the arms 
 described are his true family arms. The Duke 
 of Roxburghe's coat is Ker quartered with 
 Weapont [Vipont .?] in the blazon, and Ker quar- 
 tered with Innes in the engraving. Coats with 
 their quarters marshalled in so decidedly un- 
 Scottish a mode, that we are persuaded they 
 never could have had the sanction of the Lord 
 Lyon, are in various cases assigned to Scottish 
 families ; an extreme instance being the coat 
 of Sir W. F. F. A. Wallace of Craigie, with its 
 nine quarters and three crests. 
 
 Burke's Landed Gentry professes to give an 
 account of the present state and lineage of the 
 lesser nobility or gentry of Britain, and is pre- 
 ceded by an essay * On the Position of the 
 British Gentry,' by the Rev. J. H. Gray of 
 
1 8 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 Carntyne, who insists rightly, though in rather 
 magniloquent language, on their heraldic equa- 
 lity with the titled nobility of the Continent, a 
 matter regarding which some confusion of ideas 
 exists on the other side of the Channel. The 
 possession of a coat of arms is in Britain as on 
 the Continent the legal test of nobility, in the 
 strict sense of that term. In Britain, however, 
 the word 'Nobility' has gradually come to be 
 exclusively applied to the possessors of peer- 
 age titles ; * Gentry,' in its more restricted sense, 
 corresponding to the continental nobility. 
 
 Sir Bernard Burke professes to confine his 
 * Landed Gentry ' to families possessing the 
 heraldic qualification, arms being assigned in 
 every, or at least almost every case. Of course it 
 does not follow from this that all are of ancient 
 lineage ; and families of recent origin, who 
 have acquired, socially as well as heraldically, 
 the position of ' Landed Gentry,' have a right 
 to be included in a work of this description 
 The production of such a book necessarily 
 involves no inconsiderable amount of labour, 
 and it would be too much to expect that it 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 1 9 
 
 should not contain errors, particularly of omis- 
 sion. But making every allowance for the 
 difficulties of the task, it is impossible to say 
 that it has been executed in a mode that 
 reflects any credit on the head of the Heralds' 
 College of Ireland. Its first appearance was in 
 1837, 3-^ a Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionaiy 
 of the Commons of Great Britain and Ireland, in 
 four volumes, the families selected being prin- 
 cipally those of prominent members of the 
 House of Commons, The second issue ap- 
 peared from 1846 to 1848, in two volumes, with 
 a separate supplemental volume and index, of 
 date 1849. In 1850, a third issue was pub- 
 lished in two volumes, and the latest edition 
 appeared in 1863, in one thick volume, with 
 most of the pedigrees much condensed, and the 
 index left out. Though we call these works 
 different editions, each is to a great extent a 
 new book, yet not always an improvement on 
 those that were before it. While the Peerage may 
 be to a slight extent improving from year to 
 year, the Landed Gentry is deteriorating. The 
 successive editions are marked by a gradual dis- 
 
Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 appearance of families of status and historical 
 repute, while their places are to a large extent 
 filled by persons whose sole connexion with 
 land arises from their having been purchasers 
 of a few acres in a county where their very 
 names are unknown. Surely Ulster does not 
 consider the representatives of the Lords of the 
 Isles, who had their due place in former edi- 
 tions, unworthy of being numbered among the 
 lesser nobility, because their ancient possessions 
 have passed into other hands. The excluded 
 list comprehends also, it is difficult to divine 
 why, other families of consideration, whose 
 position as landed gentry remains unaltered, 
 some of them (as the Bethunes of Balfour) being 
 those whose genealogies were in former editions 
 among the most elaborate in the work. 
 
 The immense majority of the pedigrees in 
 the Landed Gentry, including more especially 
 the Scottish pedigrees, cannot, I fear, be char- 
 acterized as otherwise than utterly worth- 
 less. The errors of the Peerage are as nothing 
 to the fables which we encounter everywhere. 
 Families of notoriously obscure origin have 
 
TJie A rt of Pedigree-making. 2 1 
 
 their veins filled with the blood of generations 
 of royal personages of the ancient and myth- 
 ical world. There are not a few minute 
 circumstantial genealogies of soi-disant old 
 and distinguished families, with high-sounding 
 titles, which families can be proved by docu- 
 mentary evidence never to have had a cor- 
 poreal existence. Other pedigrees contain a 
 small germ of truth eked out with a mass of 
 fiction, in the proportion of Falstafif's bread and 
 sack ; while an extreme minuteness of detail 
 is often combined with reckless disregard of 
 dates and historical possibilities. Some of the 
 anachronisms encountered are quite as bold as 
 Mrs. Beecher Stowe's assertion that Sir William 
 Wallace received his education at the Grammar 
 School of Dundee.^ These are no doubt strong 
 assertions ; but to show the reader that I am 
 not overstating the facts, two examples are 
 here selected for analysis, out of a number 
 which I have examined with similar results ; 
 the first may serve as an illustration of the 
 wholly, the second of the partially fictitious 
 
 ^ Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Letter vii. 
 
22 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 pedigree, and each of them will, it is believed, 
 give the uninitiated reader a little insight into 
 the Art of Pedigree-making. 
 
 As the individuals whom we are to meet 
 with in the wholly fictitious pedigree are in- 
 corporeal shadows, it must be premised at the 
 outset that the gentleman put forward as their 
 descendant is (except as regards some of his 
 titles) no ghost, but a real substance : 
 
 'COULTHA^T OF COULTHART, COLLYN AND 
 ASHTON-UNDER-I.YNE. 
 
 ' CouLTHART, JoHN Ross, Esq. of Coulthart, co. 
 Wigtown, Collyn, go. Dumfries, and Croft House, 
 Ashton-under-Lyne, co. Lancaster, b. 24 June 1807, 
 and s. his father as chief of the name Coulthart, 
 7 October 1847, Mr. Coulthart is a magistrate 
 for the county of Lancaster, and served the office 
 of Mayor of Ashton-under-Lyne, between Nov. 1855 
 and Nov. 1857.' 
 
 Should the reader have any curiosity regard- 
 ing the personal appearance of the ' chief of the 
 name Coulthart,' he will find his portrait in the 
 Bankers' Magazine for January 1858, along with 
 the following particulars regarding his history : 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 2 3 
 
 ' Mr. John Ross Coulthart was educated at the 
 Grammar School of Buittle, in the stewartry of Kirk- 
 cudbright, under the eye of the head-master, the late 
 Mr. Tait, who was distantly related to the Coultharts 
 of Coulthart. On leaving school he was placed by 
 his father in the law and banking offices of James 
 Lidderdale, Esq. of Castle Douglas, who was then, 
 and still is, an eminent writer or attorney, and the 
 agent of the National Bank of Scotland's branch 
 in that important market-town. While in Castle 
 Douglas, Mr. Coulthart's fellow-clerks were Andrew 
 M'Kean, Esq., the present manager of the Kilkenny 
 branch of the Provincial Bank of Ireland, and 
 Alexander Davidson, Esq., the present general mana- 
 ger of the CarUsle City and District Bank. In 1834, 
 the Yorkshire District Banking Company was formed 
 at Leeds by the late Matthew Edwards, Esq., and 
 branch banks thereof established in various towns in 
 the county of York, Mr. M'Kean above mentioned, 
 and Mr. Coulthart, being appointed the two principal 
 officers of the one opened at Halifax. It was whilst 
 at Halifax, in the discharge of his duties as accountant 
 to the Yorkshire District Banking Company, that Mr. 
 Coulthart was selected, in 1836, to establish and 
 manage the Ashton, Staleybridge, Hyde, and Glossop 
 Bank at Ashton-under-Lyne, since which period he 
 has continued the manager, and one of the registered 
 public officers of that successful banking institution. 
 
24 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 Though in some respects Mr. Coulthart may be said 
 to be engaged in an arduous and exacting profession, 
 yet he has not neglected to cultivate general literature, 
 nor to employ his time in the acquisition of information 
 which has been deemed useful by his fellow-towns- 
 men and the public. In 1838 he published an octavo 
 volume of Decimal Interest Tables, which have been 
 found exceedingly valuable by bankers. . . . Mr. 
 Coulthart is understood to be a frequent contributor 
 to the periodical press, including the eighth edition 
 of the EncyclopcBdia Britannica now in course of 
 publication. Mr. Coulthart is a Fellow of the 
 Society of Antiquaries, Scotland ; an Associate of the 
 British Archaeological Association, London ; Local 
 Secretary to the Camden Society for Ashton-under- 
 Lyne ; a member of the Chetham Society, Man- 
 chester, and of the Lancashire and Cheshire Historic 
 Society, Liverpool. He is also Treasurer of the 
 Borough of Ashton-under-Lyne, of the Ashton-under- 
 Lyne Savings' Bank, and of the Ashton-under-Lyne 
 Poor-Law Union, and served the office of Mayor of 
 Ashton-under-Lyne between November 1855 and 
 November 1857.' 
 
 The reader must now be introduced to the 
 'lineage' of this gentleman. I shall quote it in 
 preference from the supplemental volume of 
 1849, which, in this as in other pedigrees, deals 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 2 5 
 
 less in mere dry enumerations of names, and 
 more in details and references to authorities, 
 than the later editions. A few additions, found 
 in the Landed Gentry for 1863, are indicated 
 within brackets, and, as we go along, we may 
 occasionally compare the full-fledged pedigree 
 of 1849 with the less developed 'lineage' of 
 1846-8 : 
 
 ' The Coultharts are of the highest antiquity in the 
 south of Scotland, and derive their name and descent 
 from CouLTHARTUS, a Roman lieutenant, who, ac- 
 cording to Tacitus, contracted marriage with Marsa, 
 dau. of Kadalyne, chief of the Novantes, and there- 
 by acquiring possessions at Leucophibia, settled in 
 that part of North Britain, soon after the decisive 
 engagement under Agricola at the foot of the Gram- 
 pian mountains. In Ptolemy's time, Coulthartus 
 dwelt near Epiacum ; and Bede records that in a.d. 
 707, descendants of the same Roman officer lived 
 near Candida Casa, which historians agree refer to 
 the same locality, namely, the Whithorn of modem 
 maps. In the early chronicles, we find John de 
 Coulthart, a Hneal descendant of Coulthartus, actively 
 engaged as a cadet under Walwein, in resisting the 
 encroachments of the King of Northumbria, when 
 that powerful prince subdued the Strathcluyd Britons, 
 
Popular Genealogists, 
 
 and added the kingdom of Galloway to his other 
 possessions.' 
 
 Yet it is the fact that Tacitus, Ptolemy, 
 Bede, and all the ' early chronicles,' will be 
 searched in vain for any mention of these indi- 
 viduals, or anything that can be construed 
 into mention of them. 
 
 ' As further evidence of the great antiquity 
 of the Coultharts, it may be mentioned that there 
 is carefully preserved by the present representative 
 of the family, a marriage settlement, bearing date 
 the twenty-first year of the reign of King Ken- 
 NETHUS III., made between one Angus de Cumin near 
 Quhytherne, of one part, and Waluain de Cumin and 
 Rowland de Duffus, of another part, whereby certain 
 lands situated near Quhytherne were conveyed in 
 trust to the said Waluain de Cumin and Rowland de 
 Duffus by the said Angus de Cumin, in contemplation 
 of her marriage with William de Coulthart and Larg- 
 more.' 
 
 * Jeshu, Master Slender, can you not see but 
 marry boys V It is rather a remarkable circum- 
 stance that both the parties to this marriage 
 were of the male sex ; but perhaps this was not 
 unusual in the twenty-first year of the reign 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 27 
 
 of King Kennethus ill. It has been hitherto 
 believed that the very earHest written legal in- 
 struments in Scotland belong to the closing 
 years of the eleventh century ; but this relic 
 of conveyancing before the Conquest must up- 
 set all old-fashioned historical notions, besides 
 proving the * early chronicles' all in the wrong 
 in asserting that King Kenneth III. reigned only 
 eight years, from 997 to 1005. Surely the pos- 
 sessor of this unparalleled antiquarian treasure 
 could be induced to allow it to be exhibited to 
 his brother Fellows of the Society of Anti- 
 quaries of Scotland. One of the Vice-Presidents 
 of that body is more deeply^ versed in early 
 Scottish writs than any man living, and he, in 
 common with all the other students of charter 
 literature belonging to that Society, would 
 doubtless take an intense interest in so great a 
 novelty. 
 
 ' Also in the records of the parish of Carspherne, 
 mention is made of Robert de Coulthart and Larg- 
 more giving ten merks to the poor in the eighteenth 
 year of the reign of King Alexander ii. ; but from 
 that date till 1427, neither the historical narratives of 
 
Populai' Genealogists, or 
 
 the times, the registers of the surrounding parishes, 
 nor the private papers of the family, afford informa- 
 tion sufficient to connect the Hneal descent.' 
 
 The absence of such information is to be 
 deplored '} but it must be admitted that it is 
 not every parish in Scotland that can show 
 records of the time of Alexander II. The 
 Landed Gentry for 1846 says further that in the 
 records of the same parish, ' mention is made of 
 Robert Coulthart, laird of Largmore, giving ten 
 marks to the poor of the parish, A.D. 1534.' The 
 late Mr. Turnbull must have been strangely im- 
 posed upon when preparing his Memoranda of 
 the State of the Parochial Registers of Scotland 
 (Edinburgh 1849), before he could have made 
 the following statement regarding this remark- 
 able parish : 
 
 ' Carsphairn. No return. The clergyman 
 writes : " I am sorry to say that our system of 
 registration has been and still is very defective. 
 There has been a register of births since 1758, 
 but it is very imperfect, and there are no regis- 
 
 ^ The gap has since been adequately supplied, see note, p. 51- 
 
The Art of Pedigree- fuaking. 29 
 
 ters of marriage and deaths. On my coming 
 to the parish in 1833, I was disappointed in 
 finding such a deficiency in the records ; but I 
 have not been able to make any improve- 
 ment." ' 
 
 ' Confining our details, therefore, to the evidence 
 of documents clearly authentic, and commencing our 
 chronicle at a period of the family history which is 
 subsequently corroborated by concurrent testimony, 
 we deduce the genealogy from Sir Roger de Coult- 
 HART, Chief of Coulthart, co. Wigtoun, and of 
 Largmore, in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright, who m. 
 (covenant dated on the eve of St. Martin's feast, in 
 the third year of the reign of King James i. of Scot- 
 land) Margery, dau. and co-heiress of John the Ross 
 of Renfrew, Knt, and maternally co-heiress of Mac- 
 knyghte of Macknyghte and Glendonyn of that ilk. 
 By that heiress Sir Roger had (with other chil- 
 dren) 
 
 ' Roger (Sir), his heir. 
 
 ' Gilbert, who went in the train of Earl Douglas, 
 Lord of Galloway, to various European Courts, 
 A.D. 1449, and fought at the battle of Brechin, 
 18 May 1452. 
 
 ' James, m. Joan, dau. of Sir Andrew Ogilvy of 
 Auchterhouse. 
 
 ' Margery, 7?i. to James Mackintosh of Linlithgow.' 
 
30 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 With regard to this Earl Douglas, the follow- 
 ing authority is cited in a foot-note : 
 
 ' " Thair was vtheris of lower estate, as Coulthart, 
 Vrquhart, Campbell, Forrester, and Lowther, all 
 knightis and gentlemen, whose convoy maid the 
 Earle so proud and insolent, that he represented ane 
 kingis magnificence quhair evir he came. Out of 
 Flanderis he passed in France, and out of France to 
 Italic, and so forwardis to Rome. Bot the Romans, 
 having knowledge of his cuming, mett him with 
 ane honourable companie, and receaved him verie 
 princlie within the town." Lindsay's Chronicles of 
 Scotlaiid' 
 
 Will it be believed that the name here printed 
 Cotdthart is Calder in the original, the per- 
 son alluded to by Lindsay of Pitscottie being 
 doubtless Sir John Sandilands of Calder, an- 
 cestor of Lord Torphichen, who, as a far-off 
 cousin of the Douglas, and his vassal in the 
 lands of Calder, was naturally one of the high- 
 born gentlemen who formed the Earl's train .^^ 
 
 " Sir James Sandilands, in the fourteenth century, obtained 
 in marriage Eleanor de Douglas, Countess of Carrick, by whom 
 he had a daughter and a son, the latter the direct ancestor of 
 the Lords Torphichen. As the Countess of Carrick had no 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 3 1 
 
 But the Coulthart family had their represen- 
 tatives who sought death or glory at Arbroath, 
 Roxburgh, Bannockburn {i.e., Sauchieburn), 
 Flodden, Ancrum Muir, and Pinkie. Arbroath 
 having been a mere local skirmish between the 
 Lindsays and Ogilvies, it is remarkable how 
 many of the ancestors of Sir Bernard Burke's 
 landed gentry find their way there. The 
 Coultharts also produced an * admiral of the 
 
 issue by her first husband, the son of the second marriage on the 
 failure of male issue became the heir of line of the family of 
 Douglas, the male representation passing by virtue of an entail 
 to Archibald Douglas, Lord of Galloway, generally said to be 
 an illegitimate son of the good Sir James. With the lady Sir 
 James obtained the barony of Calder from William, his brother- 
 in-law, to be held by them and the heirs of their body as freely 
 as Earl William held the same from the Earl of Fife. The 
 barony of Calder continued in the Sandilands family, and is 
 still in their possession. Sir John, the great-grandson of the 
 Countess of Carrick and Sir James Sandilands, obtained from 
 the Earl Douglas, the superior, a precept for infefting him in 
 the barony in 1435, which is still in possession of the Torphichen 
 family. Not being a Lord of Parhament, but a feudal baron, 
 Sir John is only described by his baronial appellation. Hume 
 of Godscroft gives nearly the same list as Pitscottie, specifically 
 naming Calder; and that it is the Torphichen Calder cannot 
 be questioned. 
 
 There is certainly another Calder in the north, now called 
 Cawdor, and for a long time Caddell, which belonged to the 
 descendants of a younger branch of the house of Argyll. It is 
 still in possession of the same family, and gives his title to the 
 Earl of Cawdor. 
 
Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 fleet,' about as remarkable a phenomenon in 
 the sixteenth century as a marriage contract in 
 the tenth. 
 
 ' Sir Roger distinguished himself at the battle of 
 Aberbrothic, 13 Jan. 1445-6, and fell at the siege 
 of Roxburgh Castle, 17 Sep. 1460. He was s. by 
 his son, 
 
 ' Sir Roger de Coulthart, who was served heir 
 to the lands of Coulthart and Largmore in 1461, and 
 to those of Renfrew, Macknyghte and Glendonyn on 
 the death of his mother in 1474. He m. Anne, dau. 
 and co-heiress of Sir Richard Carmichael of Cars- 
 pherne, and by her had issue, 
 
 ' Richard, his heir. 
 
 ' Walter, an admiral of the fleet. 
 
 ' Henry, who settled in Craven, co. York [and 
 
 was ancestor of H. W. Coulthurst, D.D., late 
 
 Vicar of Halifax]. 
 
 ' Alan "^ 
 
 ^ , ' i mentioned in a charter; 1471.' 
 ' Edward, j 
 
 It was a foolish and unaccountable act in the 
 Vicar of Halifax thus to modify his illustrious 
 patronymic ; but he had himself only to blame 
 when the public forgot his distinguished lineage, 
 and imagined him to be the scion of a mere 
 
The Art of Pedigree-making. 33 
 
 commonplace respectable family of the Irish 
 baronetcy. 
 
 ' Sir Roger was killed at Bannockburn, 1 1 June 
 1488, having received the honour of knighthood from 
 King James 111. only a few months before his death. 
 His successor was his eldest son, 
 
 * Richard de Coulthart, who fell at Flodden, 
 9 Sep. 1 5 13, leaving by Matilda his wife, dau. of 
 David Betoun of Creech, a large family of children, 
 the eldest of whom was 
 
 ' CuTHBERT DE CouLTHART, a man of extraordi- 
 nary physical powers, who frequently distinguished 
 himself in the military encounters of his time. At 
 the battle of Ancrum Muir he behaved with great 
 braver}', and at Pinkie he commanded a division of 
 the Scottish army with admirable courage and dis- 
 cretion. He in. Lady Elizabeth Hay, dau. of George, 
 seventh Earl of Errol, and dying at Largmore in 
 1570, was s. in his estates and family chiefship by 
 his eldest son.' 
 
 Ever since 1852, Burke's Peerage has duly 
 chronicled this marriage in the * lineage ' of the 
 Erroll family, where, among the daughters of 
 the sixth Earl, are enumerated * Elizabeth, m. 
 1st to Cuthbert Coulthart of Coulthart, lord of 
 the barony of Coulthart, chief of his name, by 
 r 
 
34 Popular Genealogists^ or 
 
 whom he had an only son, John (see Burke's 
 Landed Gentry) ; 2dly, to WilHam Lord Keith, 
 son and heir-apparent of William, fourth Earl 
 Marischal, by whom she had four sons and four 
 daughters.' But in the accounts of the Erroll 
 and Marischal families, given by Crawfurd and 
 Sir Robert Douglas, Lord Keith is stated to 
 have been Lady Elizabeth's sole husband ; and 
 Douglas refers to a writ of the Marischal family 
 of 1543 as evidence of the marriage, which had 
 therefore taken place four years before the culmi- 
 nating act of Cuthbert's prowess at Pinkie (i 547), 
 and twenty-seven years before 1570, the date 
 of that redoubtable warrior's death. According 
 also to Douglas, George, fifth Earl Marischal, 
 the founder of Marischal College, Aberdeen, 
 son of Lord Keith and Lady Elizabeth Hay, 
 died at Dunnottar in 1623, in his seventieth 
 year ; he must therefore have been born in 
 1553 or 1554, sixteen or seventeen years be- 
 fore the death of his mother's alleged first 
 husband. If it be supposed that Douglas may 
 be in error in both these particulars, what is to 
 be said of the record in the Great Seal Register 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 3 5 
 
 of a remission obtained by George, fifth Earl 
 Marischal, on 5th June 1585, to himself and 
 other individuals, for being art and part in the 
 slaughter of the deceased William Keith, appa- 
 rent of Ludquhairn, on the 31st of May preced- 
 ing ? If we postpone the marriage of Lady 
 Elizabeth and Lord Keith till a year after Cuth- 
 bert's death, the Earl Marischal could only have 
 been a boy of thirteen when engaged in that affair. 
 There is of course always the alternative supposi- 
 tion that Lady Elizabeth's first marriage was dis- 
 solved by divorce, but Sir Bernard is surely bound 
 to produce something like evidence before throw- 
 ing a stain on the memory of a lady whose fair 
 fame was never before called in question.^ 
 
 * John Coulthart of Coulthart and Largmore, 
 who m. Helen, dau. and eventually co-heiress of 
 John Forbes of Pitscottie, by whom he had issue 
 
 ' William, his heir. 
 
 * Roger, in holy orders, m. Barbara, dau. of Hugh 
 
 Campbell of Ayr. 
 ' Cuthbert, Captaifi^ Royal Artillery m. Sarah, dau. 
 of Colonel Cunninghame. 
 
 ^ It is of course taken for granted that the chevalier sans pen i- 
 must have lieen also sans reproche. 
 
36 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 * Christian, 7n. to William Livingstone of Calendar. 
 ' Helen, ;;/. to John Sinclair of Dunbeath. 
 ' Matilda. Agnes.' 
 
 Interesting information maybe expected from 
 the Coulthart papers and family portraits re- 
 garding the pay and the uniform of a captain 
 of Royal Artillery of the reign of James VI. 
 It is inexplicable how the beHef has gained cur- 
 rency that there was no corps of artillery in the 
 British army until the time of Queen Anne. 
 
 ' His eldest son, William Coulthart of Coulthart 
 and Largmore, was a party to deeds in 16 12, having 
 the armorial ensigns of Coulthart, Renfrew, Mac- 
 knyghte, and Glendonyn impressed on lead, sus- 
 pended at the bottom.' 
 
 In the Landed Gent7y for 1846-8, where the 
 earliest notice is to be found of the Coulthart 
 family, this gentleman is asserted to have been 
 designed in these deeds. ' William Coulthart of 
 Largmore, j^^^;//^;/,' a designation nowhere else to 
 be met with in Scotland, and which in any view 
 is not very applicable to a great territorial chief. 
 But the deeds alluded to must be at least as 
 great marvels as the King Kenneth marriage 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 
 
 contract ; for though Papal bulls were wont to 
 be sealed with lead, a leaden seal on any other 
 legal instrument was a thing absolutely un- 
 known. Mr. Coulthart will perhaps allow these 
 documents to be exhibited to the Scottish 
 Society of Antiquaries, along with the mar- 
 riage contract, and permit Mr. Henry Laing 
 of Edinburgh to take a cast of the seals, in 
 order to describe them in his forthcoming 
 Catalogue of Scottish Seals. They would, 
 without doubt, be the greatest curiosities of 
 the collection. 
 
 'He m. in 1624, Mary, dau. and co-heiress of 
 Richard Mackenzie of Craighall, and niece of Gavin 
 Hamilton, D.D., sometime Bishop, of Galloway. By 
 this lady he had issue 
 ' John, his heir. 
 
 ' Richard, a major in the army [of King Charles 11., 
 
 who to avoid persecution when Oliver Cromwell 
 
 was proclaimed Lord Protector, fled beyond 
 
 seas, and never afterwards returned from exile]. 
 
 ' Mary, m. in 1661 to the Rev. John Forbes of Kells. 
 
 ' Janet, d. unm. 
 
 ' Mr. Coulthart of Coulthart d. 20 Feb. 1653, and 
 was j". by his son, 
 
38 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 'John Coulthart, Esq. of Coulthart and Larg- 
 more, who m. in 1658, Janet, third dau. of James 
 Douglas, Esq. of Dee House, and by her (who d. 
 24th June 1692) had issue 
 ' Richard, his heir. 
 
 ' Robert, an officer in the R. N. [killed in June 
 1693, off St. Vincent, while fighting under Ad- 
 miral Rooke against the French squadron.] 
 ' William, who represented the burgh of Wigtown 
 in Parliament from 1692 to the Union, of which 
 he was a staunch supporter. 
 ' Grizel, m. to James Adamson, Esq. 
 ' Margaret, m. in 1678 to George Stewart, Esq. of 
 Caimsmuir, co. Ayr.' 
 
 The naval officer who fell at St. Vincent was 
 a creditable cadet for the house of Coulthart ; 
 the Royalist major, in whose eyes discretion 
 was the better part of valour, hardly so much 
 so. Some difficulty will however be found in 
 understanding how a major* in Charles ll.'s 
 army could take his final leave of England on 
 the proclamation of Cromwell's Protectorate. 
 The Member of Parliament is not in strictness 
 to be accounted so utter a phantom as the 
 rest, inasmuch as the actual commissioner for 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 39 
 
 the burgh of Wigtown at the Union was Wilh'am 
 Cultraine (not Coulthart), Provost of Wigtown, 
 whose name the author of this pedigree may 
 have seen in the Scots Acts. Provost Cultraine 
 is said by Wodrow to have assisted at the trial 
 of the 'Wigtown Martyrs/ and to have been 
 active in the preparation for their execution ; 
 but an alibi was not long since proved in his 
 favour by Mr. Mark Napier, from the Wigtown 
 Town-Council Records (see The Case for the 
 Crowjt against the Wigtown Martyrs, 1863). The 
 Provost was owner of a small property called 
 Drummoral, and I have been able to learn a 
 number of authentic particulars regarding his 
 family and relatives from old Session papers 
 and other genuine sources, where, however, 
 strange to say, no allusion is made to his re- 
 lationship to the far-famed house of Coulthart.^ 
 
 ^ Provost Cultraine, besides one son, had three daughters, 
 Mrs. Hunter, Mrs. Agnew of Dalragle, and Mrs. Boyd, each 
 of whom had a family. His only son, Patrick, married a 
 daughter of Stewart of Physgill, and had four children, John, 
 Patrick, David, and Henrietta. In 1725, various questions 
 arose before the Court of Session regarding a legacy left by one 
 Thomas Stewart of Chelsea to the grandchildren of Provost 
 
40 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 The heir of the last-mentioned chief was 
 
 ' Richard Coulthart, Esq., chief of his name and 
 family, Lord of Coulthart and Largmore [an eminent 
 practical agriculturist, and author of the once cele- 
 brated work entitled The Economy o^ Agriculture, 
 which long formed a textbook to the farmers in 
 Scotland. He was b. at Coulthart, i6 Jan. 1659].' . . . 
 
 Being curious in all that relates to the history 
 of agriculture, I was disposed to hail with de- 
 light the prospect of meeting with a work on 
 the Georgics of Scotland as practised before 
 the Union. But alas ! I sought in vain for the 
 'once celebrated work' in the great libraries of 
 England and Scotland, whose keepers, strange 
 to say, not merely had never heard of it, but 
 
 Cultraine. Patrick's eldest son, John, married Christian, 
 daughter of Heron of that Ilk, and succeeded in 1734 to 
 Physgill in \irtue of an entail made by his maternal grand 
 father, whereupon he exchanged his paternal name of Cultraine 
 for Stewart. But he was not allowed to remain in peaceable 
 possession of this estate, for the entailer's grand-daughter by a 
 son, Agnes Stewart, who was married to a gentleman of the 
 name of Hawthorne, succeeded in reducing the entail as having 
 been made in contravention of a previous marriage-contract, and 
 obtained a judgment of the House of Lords in her favour, in vir- 
 tue of which she ousted her cousin from Physgill. Captain John 
 Cultraine, alias Stewart, fell at the battle of Preston, leaving issue . 
 
The Art of Pedigree-making. 4 1 
 
 were sceptics enough to deny its existence. In 
 the course of my researches, however, I stumbled 
 on a book by another member of the family, 
 which, though rare, is to be found in the British 
 Museum Library, viz., ' The Quacks Unmask' d, 
 by P. Coltheart, Surgeon. Printed for the 
 Author, and Sold by the Booksellers of Lon- 
 don and Westminster. i/i/.' I know not 
 where the author's place may be in the family 
 tree, but would beg earnestly to recommend 
 a perusal of this excellent work to the present 
 noble chieftain. The great agriculturist's son 
 and heir was 
 
 ' James Coulthart, Esq. of Coulthart and Larg- 
 more \b. 2 Jan. 1702. Served heir to his father 
 12 July 1723 : purchased the estate of Knockhill, co. 
 Ayr, 16 May 1732, and] m. [28 Sep.] 1734, Grizel, 
 dau. of M'Turk, Esq. [of the Glenkens, co. Kirk- 
 cudbright'], and by her (who d. 14 Jan. 1765) had 
 issue.' . . . 
 
 If this James, chief of Coulthart, can, as seems 
 probable, be identified with a person mentioned 
 in M'Taggart's Gallovidian EncyclopcEdia (1824), 
 as possessing the sobriquet of ' Laird Cowtart,' 
 
42 Popular Genealogists, ^r 
 
 he is the first decidedly non-mythical person in 
 the pedigree.^ 
 
 In the next generation we have 
 
 ' William Coulthart, Esq. of Coulthart and 
 Largmore, b. 6 Jan. 1739, ^- ^ Oct. 1766, Janet, 
 eldest dau. of John M 'Naught, Esq. of Milltown, co. 
 Kirkcudbright, by whom (who d. at Collyn House, 
 18 May 1832) he had issue 
 
 ' Mr. Coulthart removed from Largmore in the 
 
 ^ ' Laird Cowtart, or the obstinate man. His proper name 
 was James Coltart. He was a labouring man, as I am told, 
 the greater part of his life ; and whether he became heir to a 
 little house and garden in the suburbs of Kirkcudbright, or ob- 
 tained it by his own honest industry, I know not ; however, a 
 little laird he was, and went the most of his days under the 
 name of Laird Cowtart. He was the most attentive man to his 
 word ever known in Galloway. . , . There was a merchant 
 in Kirkcudbright of the name of Harris, who sold groceries. 
 This person and the laird once disputed about something, and 
 our obstinate man said he would purchase nothing out of his 
 shop more, nor allow himself to taste any of his wares. The 
 laird's wife, however, . . . purchased from this merchant some 
 bai'ley for the broth : the laird knew not of the matter till he 
 had dined on the said broth ; so in his stomach they should not 
 remain : he raged about, and there was no peace in the house 
 till the laird had disgorged what of them he had swallowed, 
 every "groat." He used to make "beeskeps " in the evening 
 when his day's work was over, that's to say, his day's work with 
 
The Art of Pedigree-making. 43 
 
 stewartry of Kirkcudbright, a.d. 1766, and took pos- 
 session of the estate of Collyn, co. Dumfries, on the 
 4th day of June in that year. Mr. Coulthart d. 
 15 Feb. 1807, aged 68 years, and was s. in his 
 estates and family chieftainship by his only surviving 
 son, . . . William Coulthart, Esq. of Coult- 
 hart, CO. Wigtoun, and of Collyn, co. Dumfries.' 
 
 This was the father of the present chief. 
 The reader has probably formed his opinion 
 already of this pedigree. A few circumstances, 
 
 those with whom he was employed. Once, while so engaged, 
 out before his door in the open air, the wife came and called 
 him to supper. He said he would come if she did not call him 
 again His wife forgot though, came out after a little, and 
 called James to come into his " champed potatoes." " Ay, ay, 
 gudewife!" he exclaimed, "ye ha'e done for me now." As 
 usual, he held by his word, and amused himself by sitting out 
 all night. Being challenged once coming through a field by its 
 tenant, that he had no right to come that way, the laird said, 
 "his feet should never touch the grass of that field more." 
 Some of the laird's fellow-labourers heard of his determination, 
 and bore him into the field by force : there he lay on his back 
 with his feet up in the air, and roared and cried so mightily 
 that they were obliged to bear him out of it again. . . . He 
 drove a mule in a little cart long ; and many thought he and 
 the mule were a "dead match." He was always considered to 
 be rigidly honest, was well liked, and the good family of Selkirk 
 was all along very kind to him.' M'Taggart's Gallovidian 
 Encyclopcedia^ p. 309. 
 
44 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 however, remain to be explained connected 
 with it. The name Coulthart or Colt-herd 
 prevails among the peasantry of Cumberland, 
 and is also not unfrequently found among the 
 same class on the northern side of the Solway. 
 No family of the name is mentioned in any of 
 the chronicles or county histories, in any known 
 charters, or other sources from which family 
 history is derived, or in the public records. No 
 such lands as those of Coulthart exist, or ever 
 existed, in Wigtownshire or any other shire in 
 Scotland ; and it is instructive to note that in 
 the 1846-8 edition of the Landed Gentry, where 
 the earliest trace is to be found of the family, 
 they are merely Coultharts 'of Largmore,' the 
 territorial designation 'of Coulthart' not having 
 been thought of. Had the framer of this pedi- 
 gree been a Scotchman, he would probably 
 hav^been aware that the Register of Retours 
 afforded a sure and easy means of testing its 
 truth. Not only every minor baron, but every 
 laird holding from the Crown, however small, be- 
 fore he acquires a right to his property by suc- 
 cession, must be served and 'retoured' heir to it. 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 45 
 
 The retours are preserved in a register which is 
 rendered peculiarly accessible to the public by 
 an excellent printed index and abstract, easy of 
 reference, which is to be found in every large 
 public library of the kingdom ; and notwith- 
 standing day and date given, as above quoted, 
 to the services of some of these Coultharts, 
 neither the lands nor the surname occur once 
 in this index ; whereas had these ' Lords of 
 Coulthart ' ever existed, every one of them 
 would have appeared in his place. Had they 
 been even mere feuars, whom a vivid imagina- 
 tion had magnified into lairds and barons, 
 they would have been found in another record, 
 the Register of Sasines, where their names 
 will also be looked for in vain. The other 
 alleged ancestral estate, Largmore, is a farm in 
 the parish of Kells, shown by the Retours to 
 have belonged first to the Gordons of Bar- 
 skeoch, and afterwards to the Selkirk family, 
 during the period when it is said to have been 
 the property of the Coulthart chieftains. It is 
 here that ' Laird Cowtart ' is reputed to have 
 had his dwelling, and the popular belief on this 
 
 i^<. 
 
46 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 subject is corroborated by the parish register 
 of Kells. According to the latest edition of 
 the Landed Ge?itry, the family seat is * Croft 
 House, Ashton-under-Lyne ;' and a minute 
 description and view of it is given in the Visi- 
 tation of Seats and A rms. 
 
 The blazon of the family arms I shall not 
 transcribe in full, owing to its extreme length. 
 It has eight quarters, one of them counter- 
 quartered, and includes the insignia of * Ross of 
 Renfrew,' ' Macknyghte of Macknyghte,' * Glen- 
 donyn of Glendonyn,' ' Carmichael of Car- 
 spherne,' 'Forbes of Pitscottie,' * Mackenzie of 
 Craighall,' and * Gordon of Sorbie,' coats, some 
 of which were never seen elsewhere, while the 
 rest belong to other and really existing families. 
 The paternal Coulthart coat is precisely the 
 same as that of Sir Edward Colt, Bart., of 
 Leominster, in the county of Hereford. Sup- 
 porters are of course a part of the chiefs in- 
 signia, namely, a colt and a hart, a rebus on 
 the name. I would venture to suggest one im- 
 provement on the coat, which would then be 
 perfect, namely, the introduction of the Royal 
 
The Art of Pedigree-making. 47 
 
 Arms of Scotland, there being no manner of 
 doubt that the chief of the Coultharts is 
 entitledg^ to quarter with royalty, in respect 
 of his ancestress Lady Elizabeth Hay, whose 
 maternal grandmother was a Stewart, It 
 is to be hoped that this omission will be 
 supplied in the next edition of .the Landed 
 Gentry. 
 
 In a little work, lately published, called El- 
 vin's Anecdotes of Heraldry, the Coulthart coat 
 is engraved in accordance with Sir Bernard 
 Burke's blazon, and with the not unimportant 
 addition of the Garter (!) encircling the shield, 
 in which the motto, Coulthart of Coulthart and 
 Collyn has been substituted for Honi soil qui 
 mal y pense. The following account is there 
 given of the origin of the Coulthart arms : 
 
 ' Alfred, Lord or Laird of the barony of Coulthart, 
 within the regality of Galloway, North Britain, chief 
 of his name, was summoned by his Sovereign, Mal- 
 colm Kianmore, to attend a conference of Estates at 
 Forfar in 1065, to determine as to the best means of 
 placing the Kingdom of Scotland in a posture of 
 defence against the anticipated invasion of William 
 
48 Poptdar Genealogists, or 
 
 Duke of Normandy, afterwards called William the 
 Conqueror. Alfred's assistance in furtherance of that 
 object being so highly estimated by King Malcolm, 
 he granted him a confirmation charter of the barony 
 of Coulthart, on condition that he should always fur- 
 nish the Sovereigns of Scotland in time of war with 
 three horses when required : and to secure the ful- 
 filment of that condition he was commanded in 
 the same charter to bear ever afterwards three colts 
 courant on his warrior's shield, to perpetuate the 
 remembrance of the obligation.' 
 
 A confirmation charter from Malcolm Can- 
 more is hardly less wonderful than a marriage 
 contract of King Kenneth's time. But a formal 
 grant of arms in Scotland, more than a century 
 before the earliest germs of coat-armour in 
 Normandy, is more wonderful still. 
 
 ' An augmentation was made to these arms in 1240, 
 when Sir Roger de Coulthart, Knight, fifth Laird of 
 Coulthart in descent from Alfred, had the honour of 
 tilting at the Royal Haddington tournament before 
 Alexander 11., who was so highly pleased with the 
 skill he displayed on the occasion, that he personally 
 invested him with the knightly girdle, and heraldi- 
 cally added to the three black colts courant on his 
 silver shield, a fesse sable, which armorial ensigns 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 49 
 
 have ever since, without alteration, been borne by the 
 chiefs of the family. Genealogists have not been 
 able to trace the origin of the supporters to the arms 
 of this very ancient family \ but they have un- 
 doubtedly been used since November 24, 1443, ^^ 
 they appear on a pendant seal of Sir Roger de Coult- 
 hart of that date, granting the lands of Fellmore in 
 Galloway to one Robert Agnew.' 
 
 In Lower's Patronymica Britannica, p. 71, 
 will be found an account of the Coulthart family, 
 with further particulars not in Burke's Landed 
 Gentry, and an engraving of the seal mentioned 
 
 by Mr. Elvin. Any person who has given 
 attention to the study of seals will at once pro- 
 nounce it a very poorly executed fabrication. 
 
50 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 There is a clumsy and ignorant attempt to imi- 
 tate the position of the couche shield, helmet, 
 and supporters, but the caparisoning of the 
 horse is of the eighteenth century, and the 
 whole is surrounded by a classical dentil-mould- 
 ing. The inscription ' SiGlLLVM COVLTHARTI,' 
 without Christian name, would alone point out 
 its spuriousness. 
 
 Sir Bernard Burke, in his Vicissitudes of 
 Families, vol. i. p. 219, adverts to the issuing of 
 a warrant in 1547, by the Earl Marshal to 
 Somerset Herald, ' directed to all justices of the 
 peace, constables, and head boroughs, authoriz- 
 ing the apprehension of one W. Dakyns, " a 
 notable dealer in arms, and maker of false pedi- 
 grees, for which fault about xx years past, he 
 lost one of his ears.'' ' The warrant referred to 
 mentions that this Dakyns had compiled spuri- 
 ous pedigrees for nearly a hundred families in 
 the counties of Essex, Hertford, and Cambridge. 
 Whoever the Dakyns be who has compiled this 
 pedigree, he can hardly be a Scotchman, for 
 reasons which have already been indicated ; he 
 probably, therefore, belongs either to England 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 5 
 
 or Ireland ; and, if the latter, it is devoutly to 
 be hoped that a warrant will forthwith be issued 
 by Ulster King-at-Arms for his apprehension, 
 in order that he may suffer the condign punish- 
 ment that he deserves. Besides imposing on 
 Ulster's credulity he has doubtless also made 
 a dupe of Mr. Coulthart himself, whom how- 
 ever I would recommend to be on his guard 
 for the future, and to remember that genealogy 
 is a matter of quite as great exactness as bank- 
 ing or decimal interest tables.^ 
 
 ^ The author has been favoured with the perusal of a privately 
 printed book, of date 1855, splendidly got up on vellum, with a 
 circulation limited to seventy-five copies, and purporting to con- 
 taui a full and particular history of the Coulthart family. It 
 contains matter far more astounding than anything alluded to in 
 the text, and gives a biography of every chief of the family from 
 Agricola's lieutenant downwards. Not only is the ' Sigillum 
 Coultharti ' engraved, but we have verbatim et literatim copies 
 of alleged charters to the Coultharts from Robert i., David ii., 
 Robert ii., and Robert 111. The constructor of these last-men- 
 tioned documents has, however, made a sad blunder. Instead 
 of taking actual charters for his models, he has gone to the 
 printed volume of the Great Seal Register, and, all unaware of the 
 difference in form between the actual deed and the abbreviated 
 record of it, he has transcribed four entries of charters literatim 
 as they appear in the Register, and therefore in a form in which 
 no charter was ever issued, changing only the name of tlie gran- 
 
52 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 It will be found that the Coulthart lineage is 
 far enough from being the only piece of un- 
 mixed fable in the La7ided Gentry ; other pedi- 
 grees could easily be named as completely 
 destitute of foundation, and not a few which 
 
 tee and the designation of the lands. The record of the charter 
 of Robert i., Rot. i. 32, 'Alexandre de Meynies militi et 
 Egidiae secundge sponsae suae,' of the lands of Durrisdeer, is trans- 
 formed into a charter, 'Johanni de Coulthart militi et Eliza- 
 bethre secundae sponsae suae,' of the lands of Quhithurn, with the 
 same date, and in the same terms ; and Robert lli.'s ' Carta pro 
 Mariota de Wardlaw et Andrea de Wardlaw filio quondam Gil- 
 berti de Wardlaw,' Rot. x. 40, still more naturally becomes 
 ' Carta pro Mariota de Coulthart et Andrea de Coulthart filio 
 quondam Gilberti de Coulthart,' with all details scrupulously 
 copied, letter for letter, down to the veiy verbal abbreviations, 
 except the name of the lands, the identity extending to date, 
 place of signing, and full name and designation of witnesses. The 
 deeds of David ii. and Robert ii. conclude ' Testibus etc.,' 
 without enumeration of witnesses, an ending, it is needless to 
 say, never found in any actual charters, though in accordance 
 with the abridged form in which the charters of these two 
 monarchs are entered in the Great Seal Register. But these 
 mistakes of inexperience are amply atoned for by the charming 
 naivete with which the designation ' Willielmo de Coulthart, 
 gentis nominisque sui facile primario,' comes into these fourteenth 
 century charters. Besides the Erroll alliance already alluded to, 
 this pedigree chronicles numerous intermarriages with equally 
 well-known historical houses, including Lindsays Earls of Craw- 
 furd, Murrays of TuUibardine, Ramsays of Dalhousie, the Earls 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 5 3 
 
 bear suspicious marks of being the work of the 
 same hand. These pedigrees contain inter- 
 marriages, not merely with Coultharts and the 
 Hke, but with famihes of position and historical 
 note ; and the statements contained in them are 
 
 of Breadalbane, the Lords Napier and Somerville, the Sinclairs 
 of Dunbeath, Anstruthers of that Ilk, Wallaces of Craigie, 
 Baillies of Lamington, Hendersons of Fordel, Chalmers of 
 Gadgirth, Campbells of Skerrington, Muirheads of Lauchope, 
 Boswells of Auchmleck, and Boswells of Balmuto. The repre- 
 sentatives of all these families, as well as the Earls of Glasgow, 
 are claimed as kinsmen by the descendant of Coulthartus. It 
 has hitherto been believed that Balmuto came to the Boswells 
 by an intermarriage in the fifteenth century with the heiress of 
 Balmuto, whose family name was Glen ; but we have here a 
 Roger de Coulthart, in the reign of William the Lion, marrying 
 Margaret, daughter of Boswell of Balmuto. In this same 
 brochure is included a full historical account of all the families 
 said to be represented in the female line by the Coultharts, 
 whose alleged arms form part of the quartered achievement men- 
 tioned in the text, all under the same constant reference to docu- 
 mentary evidence. One of these is the Glendonwyns of Glendon- 
 wyn. A well-known family of that name, whose history is to be 
 found at length in Douglas's Baj-onage, long existed in Roxburgh- 
 shire, owning also estates in Kirkcudbright, but these Coulthar- 
 tian Glendonvjryns are in Ayrshire, and their history and succession 
 bear no resemblance to those of the real family. The rest of 
 these subsidiary families are purely fabulous. One of them, the 
 Gordons of Sorbie, are said to have been owners of the lands 
 of Sorbie from the time of David r. to 1552, (where were the 
 
54 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 gradually finding their way, on Sir Bernard's 
 authority, into all sorts of popular works. 
 
 The partially fictitious pedigree, which has 
 now to be exemplified, is quite as mischievous 
 as the wholly fictitious in polluting the sources of 
 historical truth. Some of the pedigrees of this 
 
 Ahannays then ?) and their alliances during the fifteenth century 
 are not quite what might have been expected of a Galloway 
 family at that date. For example, one representative of the 
 family, whose mother was ' Millicent, dau. of Sir W. Knatchley,' 
 marries ' Rachel, dau. of Thomas Maltravers of Balgoram,' 
 while his daughters marry ' Colonel Cavendish' [sic) and ' Mac- 
 lachlane of Drumore.' Is this production the 7m d'' esprit of 
 some wag, who, having had his fancy tickled by the Coulthartian 
 pedigree in the Landed Gentry^ thought he would improve upon 
 it, and try if there were any limits to what credulous genealogists 
 would swallow ? It seems impossible that it can be anything else ; 
 and yet one is puzzled what to think of the fonnal attestation of 
 its accuracy, before ' The Right Reverend James Prince, Lord 
 Bishop of Manchester, and the Reverend Thomas Rothwell 
 Bentley, M.A., of Emanuel College, Cambridge, and Incum- 
 bent of St. Matthew's, Manchester.' Perhaps the so-called 
 ' genealogist and heraldic artist,' who subscribes this attestation, 
 is himself a myth like the rest. The hoax has at all events been 
 eminently successful in duping a whole host of our popular 
 writers on genealogy, among whom the existence and antiquity 
 of the Coulthart family has become matter of implicit faith. In 
 various recently published works this privately printed book is 
 referred to, and extracts given from it, in all seriousness, as sober 
 genealogical history. 
 
TJLe A rt of Pedigree-making. 5 5 
 
 kind purport to exhibit the Hneage of persons 
 of the most unquestionable status and probity, 
 who, ignorant and careless about genealogy, 
 allow their family histories to be written by one 
 of those genealogical charlatan? on whom the 
 mantle of Dakyns has descended, and who seem 
 to make a trade of writing for the Laiided Gentry. 
 Finding it impossible to illustrate this phase 
 of pedigree-making by what the lawyers call 
 an A B case, I have in preference selected for 
 examination the account of a family whose 
 social position and high honourable principles 
 preclude the idea of knowingly conniving at 
 falsehood or fiction. As the pedigree in 
 question extends in the supplemental volume 
 of 1849 to eleven closely printed columns, I 
 am not going to transcribe the whole of it, but 
 shall choose those parts that are necessary to 
 render the connexion intelligible. It is entitled 
 'BONAIl OF BONARE, KELTYE, KILCxRASTON, 
 and KiMMERGHAME,' and professes to set forth 
 the descent of 
 
 'James Bonar, Esq. of Kimmerghame, co. Ber- 
 Avick, and Warriston in Mid-Lothian, b. in 1795, 
 
56 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 chief of the name, and 20th in descent from William 
 de Bonare, founder of the family in Scotland ; heir- 
 male and representative of Bonar of that Ilk, of Keltye, 
 and of Kilgraston, and heir of line and representative 
 of Oliphant of Dron, and of Grahame of Callander.' 
 
 It may be premised that the following are 
 the chief known historical facts regarding the 
 name of Bonar in Scotland. It occurs in no 
 early charters. In the fourteenth century, a Wil- 
 liam Bonar, unconnected with land, is mentioned 
 in the Accounts of the Great Chamberlains of 
 Scotland as being ' Constable of Kinghorn.' At 
 the close of the fifteenth century, Bonars are first 
 heard of connected with land ; and in the six- 
 teenth and seventeenth centuries there were 
 two baronial families of the name, designated 
 * of Kelty,' and ' of Rossie,' who do not seem to 
 have taken any prominent part in public affairs, 
 but whose succession can be traced so long as 
 they possessed these estates. Nothing is known 
 of the relationship between these two families, 
 but they had most probably a common origin, 
 and bore arms differing but slightly from each 
 other. Other Bonars, who may have been of 
 
TJlc a rt of Pedigire-makiiig. 5 7 
 
 the same stock, though the connexion is un- 
 known, existed in Perthshire, who were not 
 strictly lairds or freeholders, but feuars holding 
 of subject superiors, a common enough position 
 for cadets of families even of considerable note. 
 One of these families held for six generations 
 a portion of the lands of Kilgirstoun, now called 
 Kilgraston, from the Moncriefifs of Moncrieff. 
 But to proceed with the ' lineage.' 
 
 ' An ancient tradition in this family, wliich is of 
 French origin, thus accounts for the name assumed 
 by one of their earlier ancestors, Guilhem le Danois, 
 a valvassor of Aquitaine (claiming descent from the 
 Danish Vikingars, who sailed up the Loire in 842, 
 and founded a colony at Angers), who, after giving 
 a complete defeat to a band of Pagan Northmen, 
 during one of the many invasions to which France 
 was in those times subjected, was blamed by many 
 at the Court of France as sacrilegious, because he 
 had set fire to the Abbey of St. Blayse sur Loire, in 
 which the Pagan freebooters had entrenched them- 
 selves and their blood-stained booty; but the then 
 King of France approved of what the valiant knight 
 had done, and turning from those of his Court who 
 blamed the valvassor, exclaimed, in the rude Latin of 
 that day, ^^ Bona res ! Bona res ! Conspedu Dei et 
 
58 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 regis/" from which royal words the knight was 
 thenceforth called Guilhem de Bonares, which appel- 
 lation has descended as a patronymic to his race. 
 . . . This family settled in Scotland, apparently not 
 before the close of the twelfth century, under King 
 William the Lion, who invited over many French 
 knights ; and the Bonares preserved in their new 
 country the same rank among the feudal chivalry of 
 the kingdom which they had held in their native 
 land, and which they also enjoyed in all the different 
 countries of Europe, to which several branches 
 migrated from Scotland as early as the thirteenth 
 century. . . . Full details of these lines of the Bonar 
 family are to be found in the following authors : 
 Okolsky, Paprocius, Miechow, Sinapius, Spenerius, 
 Bucelinus, Schiekfusius, Henelius, Gauhen, Mushar- 
 dus, and Niemicz.' 
 
 I regret not having been able to procure copies 
 of the writings of these authors, which ought 
 surely to be in every public library in Britain. 
 
 ' Sir Guilhem de Bonare, the first of this family, 
 with whom we commence the Scottish branches, settled 
 in North Britain, under King Wilham the Lion {a7ite 
 1200), as feudal baron of Bonare in Perthshire, 
 having given to the lands assigned to him in fief his 
 own surname, which is still borne to this day by the 
 
The Ji rt of Pedigrce-makmg. 5 9 
 
 village of Bonar, situate at the foot of a hill, on the 
 summit of which stand the ruins of Castle Bonar. 
 This ancient fortalice is now crumbling to pieces, all 
 but the donjon or keep, which is still erect ; and 
 although this barony has long since passed into other 
 hands, it still continues to be a saying amongst the 
 peasantry that "the auld tower will stand till the 
 Bonares come back." ' 
 
 County maps, county histories, and the Sta- 
 tistical Account of Scotland, ^n\\\ be searched in 
 vain for the whereabouts of the village and 
 castle of ' Bonare.' Perhaps Schiekfusius or 
 Mushardus could inform us whether the proper 
 locality of the latter be Spain. 
 
 ' This knight, whom we may call in this pedigree 
 William, first feudal Lord of Bonare, bore "azure, 
 two swords crossed saltier ways argent." He was s. 
 by his son, 
 
 ' William, second feudal lord, who lived temp. 
 Alexander 11., 1230, and was s. by his son, 
 
 ' William-Roger de Bonar, third feudal lord, 
 who took the cross (in 1248-9) and joined the sixth 
 Crusade, with the other Scottish knights, whom Alex- 
 ander III. sent to Palestine under the banner of St. 
 Louis. The College Heraldique of France, in pub- 
 lishing the Livre d'or de la noblesse, gives a " Liste des 
 
6o Popular Genealogists ^ or 
 
 families qui ont eu des representans aux Croisades, 
 et sur lesquelles le College peut fournir des titres 
 originaux crees sur le sol meme de I'Orient." Amongst 
 them is noted this baron, who appears in a deed 
 bearing date 1250, " Messire Roger de Bonarijs, 
 Chevalier." He was a Knight of the Sacred and 
 Military Hospitaller Order of the Holy Sepulchre. . . . 
 On his return from the Holy Land (1254-5), Sir Wil- 
 liam, in commemoration of this crusade, changed his 
 paternal coat, " Azure two swords in saltier argent," for 
 the armorial ensigns which have ever since been borne 
 by his descendants, viz. " Argent, a saltire azure." ' 
 
 The compiler of this pedigree must surely 
 have been unaw^are that the combined use of 
 two Christian names, as ' William-Roger,' or 
 * William-Robert,' which we have a little further 
 on, is a practice of very recent introduction in 
 Scotland. The ' Messire Roger de Bonarijs ' 
 alluded to was undoubtedly a Frenchman, or 
 the reverse would have been stated. 
 
 ' Of the issue of William-Roger, the crusader, two 
 sons alone are known, viz. : 
 
 ' I. William, master of Bon are. 
 
 ' 11. John of Laindes. ... * 
 
 ' William-Roger, the crusader, was s. by his eldest 
 son. 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 6 1 
 
 ' William Bonar, fourth feudal lord, royal senes- 
 chal of Kyngshorne on the coast of Fife, temp. King 
 Alexander iil, at the time that this fortress acquired 
 melancholy notoriety from the death of that monarch 
 at King's Craig, in its immediate vicinity, 1285-6. 
 He was s. by his son, 
 
 ' William Bonar, fifth feudal lord, royal seneschal 
 of Kyngshorne, temp. King Robert i., who is men- 
 tioned in the Chamberlain's Roll, vol. i. fol. 20, as 
 then holding that dignity. He had been a zealous 
 follower of the immortal hero, Sir William Wallace, 
 and fought at Bannockburn in 13 14, under the ban- 
 ner of Robert the Bruce, whose royal blood was 
 destined to mingle with that of his gallant and loyal 
 partisan, two centuries later. The seneschal had an 
 only son, 
 
 William-Robert Bonar, sixth feudal lord, royal 
 seneschal of Kyngshorne, temp. Kings Robert l and 
 David il, as appears from mention made of him in 
 the Chamberlain's Roll, fol. 157, ann. 1328, and again, 
 fol. 167, ann. 1329, and fol. 192, ann. 1330. In the 
 second of these records the name is written Boner, 
 which is the only instance in Scotland of the ortho- 
 graphy so constantly occurring on the Continent. 
 He fought at the battle of Halidon Hill in 1333. By 
 Margaret his wife, of the family of Wemyss of that 
 Ilk, he had issue i. John, his heir ; 11. James of Bon- 
 arton, founder of that line, and ancestor of other 
 
62 Popiilai' Genealogists, or 
 
 branches, which, as before said, flourished in Poland 
 and Silesia. The Hne of Bonarton flourished for 
 about 300 years. The last seneschal of Kyngs- 
 horne was killed at the battle of Durham in 1346, as 
 appears from a mention of a payment made to his 
 widow, in which he is styled, not seneschal, but " con- 
 stabularius de Kyngshorne qui mortuus est sub vexillo 
 dominij Nostri Regis," in the Chamberlain's Rolls, 
 fol. 309, and notice is likewise taken of a sum of 
 monies paid to him by order of the King, some short 
 time before that disastrous battle, in which the King 
 fell into the hands of the English, and which is thus 
 mentioned, " Ante adflictum in Northumbria." ' 
 
 The sole foundation for all this, is that in the 
 Accounts of the Great Chamberlains of Scotland 
 (which are printed by the Bannatyne Club, and 
 accessible to every one), mention is several times 
 made of money paid to and received from a 
 William Bonar, constable (not royal seneschal) 
 of Kinghorn. Had he been a feudal lord, Lord 
 of Bonare, or anyways connected with land, that 
 would have been specified. He was probably 
 a person of small mark ; his office was not here- 
 ditary, and he was succeeded in it by a person 
 of as little note as himself, ' Bartholomaeus de 
 
Tlte A rt of Pedigree-making. 63 
 
 Kyngorn.' The whole story of his being at the 
 battle of Durham is pure romance. The words 
 * qui mortuus est sub vexillo domini regis,' are 
 as barefaced an interpolation as the substitution 
 of 'Coulthart' for * Calder' in Lindsay of Pits- 
 cottie's narrative. In the passage referred to 
 at p. 309 of the Chamberlain's Rolls, mention is 
 simply made of ;^20 which had been received 
 from the deceased William Bonar, constable of 
 Kinghorn, at various times before the battle of 
 Durham (then an important punctum temporis), 
 and of ;^34 received from Bartholomaeus de 
 Kyngorn his successor.^ 
 
 ' John Bonar, seventh feudal lord of Bonare, was 
 at the murderous siege of Carlaveroc in 1355, ^^^ 
 was still living in 1380. He in. Anne of the Ram- 
 says of-Dalhousie, and left the following issue 
 ' I. William, his heir. 
 ' 11. James, of Rossye, founder of the Rossye 
 
 family and other lines. . . . 
 ' Sir John de Bonare was succeeded by his son, 
 
 ^ ' Idem onerat se de xx li receptis a Willielmo Bonar quon- 
 dam constabulario de Kyngorn de diversis terminis ante conflic- 
 tum de Durhame. Et de xxxiiij li receptis a Bartholomaeo de 
 Kyngorn, constabulario ejusdem.' 
 
64 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 ' William Bonar of Bonare, who is the first of 
 this family whom we find designated as feudal lord 
 of Keltye (which afterwards became the chief barony 
 of the family). He served in the French wars under 
 the Bold Bastard of Orleans, who led a body of Scot- 
 tish knights to the King's aid, and thus gained the 
 victories of Beaug^ in 1421, and ofVerneuil in 1424, 
 over the English. Sir William, after his return from 
 France, appears in a decreet of 1437, Act. Dom. 
 Cone. lib. XLii. fol. 191, and bore arms in Scotland, 
 havhig assisted at the battle of Arbroath in 1445, 
 and again at Bannockburn in 1448, with his sons by 
 his side. By his marriage with Christian, of the Bal- 
 fours of Burleigh (whose namesake and kinswoman 
 had married William of Rossye, kinsman and name- 
 sake to this baron), he left 
 ' I. John, his heir. 
 
 ' II. Wilham, of Keltye, who fought with his father 
 and brother at Arbroath and Bannockburn. 
 He d. in 1478, leaving issue.' 
 
 Turning up the reference here given to the 
 Acta Dominormn Concilii, we find the name of 
 * Walter Bonar of Kelty' in a decree, which, 
 however, bears date, not 1437, but 1531, nearly 
 a century later. The hypothetical ' William 
 Bonar of Bonare, feudal lord of Keltye,' is no- 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 65 
 
 where to be encountered in the chronicles of 
 the French wars, nor is he met with, any more 
 than the Chief of the Coultharts, in any extant 
 account of the battle of Arbroath. * Bannock- 
 burn ' cannot be Bruce's Bannockburn, which 
 was fought in 13 14; it must therefore mean 
 Sauchieburn, otherwise called the second battle 
 of Bannockburn. But Sauchieburn was fought, 
 not, as here stated, in 1448, but in 1488, and it 
 is hardly within the limits of possibility that a 
 man whose father fought at Caerlaverock in 
 1355 should himself fight in 1488. It will also 
 be observed that the second son of this redoubt- 
 able warrior, who was at Bannockburn with his 
 father and brother, died in 1478, ten years 
 before the true date of that battle. An in- 
 accurate memorandum of the date of Bannock- 
 burn has led to more heroes than these two 
 being made to fight there, who were dead long 
 years before it. 
 
 From the fourth son of this William Bonar of 
 Bonare are said to descend the Bonars of Kil- 
 graston, and the main line of* Keltye' is inter- 
 rupted in order to exhibit their succession. The 
 
 E 
 
66 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 first Kilgraston was, of course, at Flodden. The 
 second carries us out of the region of pure 
 fiction into that of embeUished history. This 
 part of the pedigree has been got up under 
 reference to documents and records ; the Hneages 
 of the wives, the marriages of the daughters, 
 and the notices of the younger sons, being how- 
 ever, for the most part, embeUishments supphed 
 by the compiler's imagination. Legitimated 
 bastards^ of the family are also particularized, 
 who doubtless added to the renown of the 
 ' lairds,' ' ladies,' and ' masters ' of Kilgraston, 
 this last title being, as in the case of Lords of 
 Parliament, applied throughout to the eldest 
 son. In one case the succession passes through 
 an heir-female : 
 
 'Eupheme, Lady of Kilgraston, m. her kinsman, 
 James Bonar of Trevor, who s. at Kilgraston as 
 
 'James, of Kilgraston and Trevor. He left by 
 her I. John, his heir. . . . The Lady of Kilgraston 
 predeceasing him, James was remarried, to his cousin, 
 
 ^ One of these bastards is a real person, whose legitimation 
 will be found in the Great Seal Register, the letters being in 
 favour of 'Johanni Bonare in Doning, bastardo filio naturali 
 quondam Joannis Bonare in ' (not ' de') ' Kilgirstoun. ' 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 6^ 
 
 Margaret, of the Colvilles of Culross, and left by her 
 Patrick, who continued the line of Trevor. The 
 elder son s. as 
 
 * John of Kilgraston.' . . . 
 
 Part of this is also in the Retours, which give 
 us the service of John Bonar, ' portioner of Kil- 
 girstoun,' to his mother Euphemia in part of the 
 lands of Kilgirstoun. To those unacquainted 
 with Scottish usages, it will require to be ex- 
 plained that the expression employed indicates 
 that this John Bonar was not a freeholder, but 
 a mere feudal dependant on the Moncrieffs, 
 from whom he held a portion of Kilgirstoun, 
 itself a portion of the barony of Moncrieff. The 
 husband of this Euphemia was James Bonar of 
 Boghall, who has been metamorphosed, ettphonice 
 causa, into James Bonar of * Trevor,' and a 
 descent assigned him from the Bonars of Kelty. 
 
 * He m.^ previously to 1608, Rosinaof the Murrays 
 of Auchtertyre, and left I. John, his heir. . . . The 
 elder son who s. his father, as 
 
 'John of Kilgraston, ;;/., in 1634, Agnes, dau. and 
 heir of Laurence Graham of Callander, a scion of 
 Montrose, and left by her I. Jo'tiN, Master of Kil- 
 
68 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 graston, in right of his mother, representative and 
 heir of Hne of Graham of Callander.' 
 
 This marriage with a daughter of Grahame 
 of Callander, is, unlike most of the marriages 
 given, a historical fact ; not so that the lady 
 was an heiress, -she having two brothers. Of 
 this * Master of Kilgraston ' we shall hear more 
 anon. 
 
 The main line of ' Keltye,' is once more 
 taken up from Sir William Bonar of Bonare, 
 the hero of Beauge and Bannockburn, who, 
 dying in 1469 (fifteen years before Bannock- 
 burn), is succeeded by his eldest son, 
 
 ' John Bonar, second feudal lord of Keltye, who 
 had fought with his father and brother at Arbroath 
 in 1445, and at Bannockburn in 1448, assisting at a 
 grand tournament at Falkland, in which, amongst 
 other diversions, a combat of the King's lions and 
 leopards was to be shown. One huge lion broke 
 from his den, and rushed towards the Queen's tri- 
 bune ; when this baron, seizing a piece of flesh pro- 
 vided for the feeding of the animals, flung himself 
 before the lion, whose attention he thus drew on 
 himself, and then killed him with his dagger ; in 
 commemoration of which bold feat the King granted 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 69 
 
 to him a chief on his coat of arms, charged with a 
 lion rampant, encountered by two hands clad in steel 
 gauntlets, of which the sinister bears a piece of ani- 
 mal flesh, and the dexter a poniard. This chief is 
 seen on many seals of the Bonar family, and is 
 blazoned in many of the heraldic works.' 
 
 This is a remarkably ingenious attempt to 
 poetize one of the most deplorable modern per- 
 versions of heraldry on record. Mr. Seton, in 
 his Lazv and Practice of Heraldry i7i Scotland, 
 gives several instances from the books, both of 
 the English and Scottish Colleges of Arms, of 
 the abasement which the art of blazon had 
 reached in the first quarter of the present cen- 
 tury ; some of which he characterizes as suffi- 
 cient to call forth the shade of 'Gude Schir David 
 Lindsay.' All his examples, however, are out- 
 done by a coat actually granted in Scotland to 
 one of the Bonar family in 1812, which maybe 
 considered as the nc phis ultra of Prince Regent 
 heraldry, and is probably unparalleled by any- 
 thing else to be found in the books of the Col- 
 lege of Arms of either kingdom. The actual 
 recorded blazon is, 'Argent, a saltire and chief 
 
70 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 azure, the last charged with a dexter hand pro- 
 per, vested with a shirt-sleeve argent issuing 
 from the dexter chief point, holding a shoulder 
 of mutton proper to a lion passant or, all within 
 a bordure gules.' This coat first appeared in 
 print in Berry's Encyclopcedia of Heraldry, in 
 1824, where it was erroneously alleged to be a 
 recent grant of the English, not the Scottish, 
 College of Arms. From the pages of Berry 
 it was transferred to Robson's B^'itish Herald, 
 and thence to Burke's General Armory, where 
 doubtless the compiler of this pedigree found 
 it, and by dint of delicately paraphrasing the 
 shirt-sleeve into a steel gauntlet, and the 
 shoulder of mutton into a ' piece of animal 
 flesh,' as well as extemporizing a poniard, he 
 elaborated out of this heraldic burlesque a ro- 
 mantic tale of queens, knights, and tournaments. 
 
 ' Buchanan records this John amongst the barons 
 who signed the act of settlement of the Crown of 
 Scotland, in favour of Prince John of Scotland, Duke 
 of Albany, and his heirs, failing the King's issue, in 
 1477 : he had likewise signed the demand of Prince 
 Alexander of Scotland, Duke of Albany (father of the 
 
The Art of Pedigree-making. J i 
 
 prince before mentioned), for a divorce with his 
 Duchess, Catherine Sinclair, daughter of the Earl 
 of Orkney and Caithness, Lord High Chancellor of 
 Scotland.' 
 
 No mention is to be found in Buchanan of 
 any such person as this John Bonar, or of the 
 alleged act of settlement in favour of Prince 
 John, which is itself a myth. No Bonar signed 
 the demand for the divorce of Alexander Duke 
 of Albany, but a John Bonar was present as a 
 witness at the divorce in 1477 {Act. Pari. Scot. 
 ii. 83), who is only particularized by the desig- 
 nation of ' Dominus,' showing that he was in all 
 probability a churchman, and could therefore 
 hardly have been the hero of the shoulder of 
 mutton. 
 
 ' By his marriage with Margaret, of the Seatons of 
 Parbroath, he had an only son, Ninian, Master of 
 Bonare, who d. in infancy, whereupon the represen- 
 tation of the family devolved on John's nephew, 
 
 ' Ninian Bonar, Baron of Keltye, eldest son of 
 William of Keltye, and grandson of William of 
 Bonare. Sir Ninian had been left a minor at his 
 father's death in 147 1, under the tutory of his uncle. 
 
72 
 
 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 Robert i. of Strathy, with whom he is mentioned in 
 a decre^et, Act. dom. Audit. Feb. 18-20, 1471. He 
 was created knight-banneret on the field of Cauglor 
 (or Sauchyburn as it is often called) in 1488, in which 
 he saved the life of King James, by whose side he 
 was afterwards killed at Flodden in 15 13. 
 
 This is the first Bonar of Kelty who belongs 
 to history and not fable. Allusions to him 
 occur in various contemporary documents. If 
 he was, as here stated, at Sauchieburn, he must 
 have fought side by side with the ghosts of his 
 father, his grandfather, and his shoulder-of- 
 mutton uncle. Did the writer of this know that 
 the battles of Sauchieburn and Bannockburn 
 were identical 1 The banneret story is disposed 
 of by the fact that in the Acta dom. Concilii, 
 23d October 1495, seven years after Sauchieburn, 
 he is called simply ' Ninian Bonare of Kelty,' 
 neither baron, knight, nor banneret. He ap- 
 pears there as co-defender in an action regard- 
 ing the wrongous manuring of lands, along with 
 ' Robert Bonare, dwelland in Straithifentoune,' 
 probably the person who becomes in the hands 
 of the family biographer, ' Robert Bonar, I. of 
 
The Art of Pedigree-making. 7 3 
 
 Strathy/ his uncle and guardian, but who, 
 neither here nor in the passage above cited from 
 the Act. dom. Audit., is designed as either one 
 or other. 
 
 Many details are given of the succeeding 
 barons of Kelty, and we have a full and parti- 
 cular account of the ten Bonars who fought at 
 Flodden, distinguishing the killed, wounded, 
 and prisoners. Strange that they remain un- 
 mentioned in all the historical accounts of the 
 battle. The son of the alleged banneret and 
 baron was in reality the first baron, and had 
 a charter from James V. erecting Kelty into a 
 barony. Passing over four generations, whose 
 feuds, battles, and marriages are chronicled 
 with the most elaborate minuteness, we come 
 to William, said to be the last baron of Kelty 
 of the direct line : 
 
 ' He m. his cousin, Helen, dau. of Graham of Bal- 
 gowane, and had an only son, Ninian, Master of 
 Keltye, who d. the year of his birth, 1689. The 
 same year, William, eleventh baron of Keltye, with 
 consent of his kinsmen and heirs-male, John, vi. of 
 Kilgraston, and John, Master of Kilgraston, conveyed 
 
74 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 the barony of Keltye in mortgage to his cousins, 
 Graham of Balgowane, Graham of Garvock, OHphant 
 of Gask, and OHphant of Cultuquhaine, under re- 
 version and reservation of free regress and ingress 
 to the said barony of Keltye to his kinsmen, the 
 lairds of Kilgraston and their heirs-male, and failing 
 them, to the heirs-male whatsoever : " Quibus de- 
 ficientibus tunc haeredibus masculis quibuscunque 
 cognomen de Bonar et arma gerentibus, totas et in- 
 tegras terras ac Baroniam de Keltye, cum castro et 
 molendino et pertinentibus earundem," etc. : disposi- 
 tion of conveyance dated "Keltye, 7 July 1689." ' 
 
 No one who has the slightest acquaintance 
 with Scotch deeds or Scotch law needs to be 
 told that no such document could ever have 
 been executed to the north of the Tweed. The 
 whole transaction is as purely imaginary as 
 King Kenneth's marriage contract, and its 
 phraseology is altogether foreign to Scotland. 
 
 * This last baron of Keltye died in Dec. 1691, and 
 in his person the second line of the family ended, 
 and the representation devolved on his kinsman, 
 John, vi. of Kilgraston.' 
 
 Yet the printed Index of Retours, which the 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 7 5 
 
 writer of this must have had before him, con- 
 tains the general service, on April 23, 169 1, of 
 Ninian Bonar of Kelty to William Bonar, his 
 father, thus contradicting the assertion that 
 Ninian died in infancy. The line of Kelty was 
 therefore not extinguished by the death of 
 William, whose descendants may yet exist. 
 But the family of Kelty henceforth drops out of 
 the Register of Retours, in consequence of the 
 lands having been sold by this Ninian, soon after 
 his father's death,, to one John Drummond, 
 whose family continued to own Kelty for some 
 generations. I am not in possession of any 
 certain information as to where the descendants 
 of Ninian Bonar are now to be found ; but were 
 any bona fide genealogist set on their track, it 
 seems not at all unlikely that they might be 
 brought to light. 
 
 We are now brought back to the line of Kil- 
 graston, thus groundlessly assumed to be the 
 representative of Kelty ; and have to derive 
 from it the pedigree of Kimmerghame. It 
 would be easy to produce satisfactory evidence 
 that the father of the late Mr. Bonar of Kim- 
 
j6 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 merghame was descended of three successive 
 generations of clergymen of the Church of 
 Scotland, the first of whom was parish minister 
 of Torphichen, near Edinburgh, in the begin- 
 ning of last century, when not a few members 
 of the most distinguished families in the country 
 were to be found in the ranks of the Presby- 
 terian clergy. Counting the proper number of 
 generations upwards, the father of the first of 
 these three clergymen must be 
 
 * John Bonar, sixdi of Kilgraston, eldest son of 
 John, fifth of Kilgraston, and Agnes Grahame of Cal- 
 lander {see the line of Kilgraston) ; he bore for his 
 arms the Bon are saltier, charged with a chief azure, 
 charged with three estoiles argent, but on becoming 
 chief of the family he assumed the arms and qualifi- 
 cation of titular Baron of Keltye. He had been in- 
 feft in the tenandry of Kilgraston by precept of dare 
 constat^ 8 Feb. 1659, in which he is designated as 
 " John, son and heir of John of Kilgraston, son and 
 heir of James of Trevor and Eupheme, Lady of Kil- 
 graston, heretrix to John of Kilgraston." ' 
 
 The actual designation of which this is a 
 paraphrase will be found on consulting the deed 
 in the Register. It is ' John Bonnar, oy.' {i.e.. 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making, 77 
 
 grandson], * and narrest and laufull air foirsaid 
 to the said John Bonnar, portioner of Kil- 
 girstoun, his guidsir.' There is no word of 
 ' Trevor,' and the lands are not the ' tenandry,' 
 but the ' aught merk lands of Kilgirstoun.' 
 
 ' By Jean his wife, dau. of Reyd of Carse, . . . 
 he had issue I. John, i Master of Kilgraston and 
 titular Master of Keltye.' . . . 
 
 Should the reader be curious to know how 
 the titular Baron of Keltye caused the birth of 
 the titular Master of Keltye and Master of Kil- 
 graston to be recorded, a reference to the parish 
 Register of Forgandenny will show that it was 
 as follows : 
 
 ' 18 January 1671. Baptized to John Bonar, 
 portioner of Kilgirstoun, ane sone called John, 
 being born on the i6th day of the foresaid 
 month.' 
 
 This ' Master of Kilgraston, and titular Master 
 of Keltye,' was no other than the future incum- 
 bent of Torphichen, who had little enough idea 
 of the outlandish being into which the magic 
 wand of Ulster King-at-Arms was destined to 
 transform him. 
 
yS Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 ' By a disposition, dated at Kilgraston, 23 Oct. 
 1696, he conveyed his tenandry of Kilgraston, with 
 the castle, manor, and lands thereof, to his cousins, 
 Oliphant of Carssow, Oliphant of Cultuquhaine, 
 Murray of Auchtertyre, and Craigie of Dumbarnye, 
 in mortgage, under reversion and reservation of free 
 regress and ingress to said tenandry of Kilgraston to 
 his heirs-male.' 
 
 This deed, .s the reader will surmise, is as 
 purely imaginary as the castle that it conveys. 
 The Rev. John Bonar, alias titular Master of 
 Keltye, could have no such lands to dispose of, 
 in so far as his father had in 1682 sold the 
 'aught merk lands of Kilgirstoun' to John 
 Oliphant of Carpow by a disposition, in which 
 he bore the usual designation of ' portioner of 
 Kilgirstoun.' 
 
 * During the troubles of those days he was sub- 
 jected three several times to imprisonment and fines, 
 for his attachment to the royal cause.' 
 
 What does Sir Bernard Burke mean by * the 
 royal cause .'' ' Surely that is not the way in 
 which the holder of a commission from Her 
 Majesty characterizes the 'rising' of 1745. It 
 
The Art of Pedigree-making. 79 
 
 was however an unusual 'cause' for a Presby- 
 terian minister to suffer in. 
 
 'He d. 7 Aug. 1747, and was s. by his eldest 
 son, 
 
 ' John Bonar, who bore the designation of titular 
 of Kilgraston.' 
 
 He would probably have sooner borne the 
 designation of Great Mogul. Though incum- 
 bent of the remote parish of Fetlar in Zet- 
 land (a fact too insignificant to be narrated), 
 he too 
 
 ' Was in part subjected to the severe measures 
 directed against the Royalists who had taken part in 
 the affairs of 1745-6. He was s. in 1750 by his eldest 
 son, 
 
 ' John Bonar, titular baron of Keltye, and tenth 
 laird of Kilgraston,' 
 
 Otherv/ise one of the ministers of Perth. The 
 reader is probably of opinion by this time 
 that the whole pedigree, from first to last, is 
 utterly worthless ; and it may surprise him 
 to be told, that though this ' Keltye ' repre- 
 sentation is a fiction, and the Bonars of Bonare 
 are mere phantoms, the public records do con- 
 
3o Popular Genealogists^ or 
 
 tain satisfactory evidence that the gentleman 
 whose Hneage is here set forth was really the 
 representative of the Bonars, portioners of Kil- 
 graston, and the descendant, although not the 
 representative, of the Grahames of Callendar. 
 This, however, must be believed, not on the 
 authority of, but in spite of, the genealogy, 
 which, after garbling every step of the descent, 
 has ended by turning three generations of sober- 
 minded theologians into Jacobite soldiers, and 
 investing them with impossible attributes and 
 harlequin titles never heard of in Scotland or 
 anywhere else, which envelop the whole story 
 in an atmosphere of unreality and burlesque. 
 Should the reader be at the pains of perusing 
 the entire Bonar pedigree, as given in the sup- 
 plemental volume of the Landed Gentry for 
 1849, he will find it throughout as startling, as 
 romantic, and as irreconcilable with history as 
 the above excerpts. 
 
 A word as to the arms. The coat which the 
 family is believed to be really entitled to bear, 
 is a beautiful specimen of the simple and ap- 
 propriate heraldry of Scotland : Argent, a sal- 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 8 1 
 
 tire azure, on a chief sable three escallops or. 
 The escallop shells on the chief are introduced 
 as an indication of the descent from the 
 Grahames. The coat assigned by Sir Bernard 
 Burke is, on the other hand, so strange a heral- 
 dic caricature, that it could never have been 
 granted by any King-at-Arms, and must be 
 the pure invention of Mr. Dakyns. From the 
 vagueness of the blazon it is not easy to under- 
 stand it, but I have endeavoured to do my 
 best : 
 
 ^ Arms Quarterly: ist grand quarter, Bonar 
 ancient, quartering Bonar modern; 2nd grand quarter, 
 Oliphant of Dron, quartering the royal ensigns of 
 Scotland ; 3rd grand quarter, Graham of Callander, 
 quartering Grahame of Montrose ; 4th grand 
 quarter, Bonar of Keltye, quartering Bonar of 
 KiLGRASTON ; Over all, Bonar of Kimmerghame.' 
 
 Bonar ancient ' probably means the two 
 swords, which would be more appropriately 
 called * Bonar novissimus] being a pure freak of 
 the pedigree-maker's fancy. * Bonar modern ' 
 is perhaps the true coat of Bonar of Kelty, 
 Argent, a saltire azure. The Oliphant coat is 
 F 
 
S2 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 objectionable, there being in no view any repre- 
 sentation of that family, unless through the in- 
 corporeal ' Trevor,' who has been substituted for 
 Boghall. The royal ensigns of Scotland were 
 to be expected as a matter of course. * Grahame 
 of Callendar' is inadmissible, as there is only 
 descent, not representation ; Graham of Mon- 
 trose is still less admissible. ' Bonar of Kelty ' 
 probably means the shoulder-of-mutton coat ; 
 and either ' Bonar of Kilgraston ' or ' Bonar of 
 Kimmerghame ' will be the coat to which Mr. 
 Bonar has really a right. It is difficult to say 
 whether this heraldic monstrosity is more offen- 
 sive from its defiance of the laws of arms or its 
 ugliness, but it has been transferred to the pages 
 of Rietstap's Armorial General, where it will 
 doubtless be regarded on the Continent as a 
 fair specimen of legitimate Scottish heraldry. 
 
 The Landed Gentry is full of similar heraldry, 
 and so are the Heraldic Illustrations, the A utho- 
 rized Arms, and the Visitations of Seats and 
 Arms. Whatever powers Ulster may have to 
 hold 'visitations' and * authorize' the use of 
 arms in Ireland, it is difficult to see what juris- 
 
The Art of Pedigree-making. 83 
 
 diction he can claim in the rest of the United 
 Kingdom ; and yet by far the majority of the 
 coats in these works belong either to England 
 or Scotland. It will not do to say that they are 
 arms ' authorized' by the rules of heraldry or by 
 the Kings-at-Arms, for it is not to be believed 
 that either Garter, Lyon, Clarencieux, or Norroy 
 would be so forgetful of their duty to their 
 Sovereign as to allow all and sundry to make 
 free in the way that we have seen with the 
 ensigns of royalty. The Scottish arms, like the 
 Scottish pedigrees, belong even more to the 
 region of romance than the English, and set at 
 naught all those features which notoriously char- 
 acterize the heraldry of North Britain. Differ- 
 encing, so important a matter in the eyes of the 
 Scotch heralds, is hardly thought of. The mere 
 bearing the name of a family seems warrant 
 enough to 'authorize' the use of the undifferenced 
 arms, often of the supporters of the chief family 
 of the name. The undifferenced quartered arms 
 of the ducal house of Argyle are engraved as the 
 'authorized arms' of Sir James Campbell of Stra- 
 cathro, a coat certainly very different from that 
 
84 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 ^ 
 
 which is to be seen on a window placed by that 
 much respected knight in Glasgow Cathedral, 
 which is doubtless what he is really entitled to 
 bear. A gentleman of the name of Boyd, said to 
 be sprung from an abbot of Kilwinning, is 'autho- 
 rized,' in virtue of his monastic lineage, to take 
 the ancient coat of the Earls of Kilmarnock 
 undifferenced, and with the family supporters. 
 Another descendant of an illegitimate son of an 
 old Scottish family gets the pure coat of that 
 famxily, and is put forth as its representative, with 
 a tabular pedigree. Supporters are distributed as 
 freely as the royal insignia. The * colt ' and the 
 
 * hart ' meet us in every volume with the most 
 
 * damnable iteration,' and in one of the plates of 
 the Visitations the 'Sigillum Coultharti' occupies 
 the centre, while round it are arranged the several 
 quarterings of the notable Coulthart escutcheon. 
 
 But to return to the pedigrees. If the wholly 
 fictitious lineage has been illustrated by an ex- 
 treme case, not so the partially fictitious. In the 
 Bonar genealogy there is a far larger substratum 
 of truth than in most of the class. So much is 
 this the case, that one is constrained to believe 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 85 
 
 that it embodies the work of two distinct indi- 
 viduals. Indications are not wanting of an 
 honest genealogist having traced the Bonars of 
 Kilgraston, by authentic documents, to the first 
 half of the sixteenth century, and made a note 
 of what instances he could discover of the occur- 
 rence of the name Bonar in the public re- 
 cords. But his materials had been unfortunately 
 surrendered to the tender mercies of a pedigree- 
 maker of the Dakyns stamp, the reader has seen 
 with what result. 
 
 A few words may be added regarding Sir 
 Bernard Burke's other writings. The Vicissitudes 
 of Families, and Fa^nily Romance, though at 
 times they contain a correct enough sketch of 
 some remarkable incident of family history, are 
 full of the same looseness and credulity in every- 
 thing that relates to pedigree. As a sample, we 
 may take the genealogy assigned in the second 
 volume of the Vicissitudes to John Law of 
 Lauriston, the financier, whose chequered life 
 forms the subject of a recent novel by Mr. Har- 
 rison Ainsworth. Novelists are supposed to 
 enjoy a right to clothe historical persons with 
 
S6 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 characteristics of their imagination, a license 
 which however can hardly be conceded to Ulster 
 King-at-Arms, at least in his own department 
 of genealogy. ' Mr. Law,' says the author of a 
 contemporary memoir,^ ' was born at Edinburgh 
 in Scotland about the year 1670. His father was 
 a working silversmith in that city of good repu- 
 tation,^ and educated this eldest son John as a 
 
 ^ The Memoirs of the Life and Character of the great Mr. Law 
 and his Brother at Paris. Written by a Scots Gentleman. 
 London. 1721. 
 
 2 A holograph account, found among the papers of the author 
 of the Diplomata Scotics, throws some light on the nature of 
 William Law's business transactions. The original was oblig- 
 ingly communicated to me by its present possessor : 
 
 ' David Pringell his acompt to William Law, Feb ri war 1669. 
 Itm for dresing a wach keey, 
 Itm resting for the seting of a ring to the 
 
 Ladie Barbarklly, .... 
 
 Itm for a pllaine howp, .... 
 Itm a dusane of fllowrd spuns, 24 wnce 13 
 
 drop at 3 pond 10 sh the wnce is . . 86 16 00 
 Itm for shewger caster io wnce ii drop at 3 
 
 pond 12 sh the wnce, . . . . 38 10 00 
 
 Swma is 
 Itm recived of broken sillwer thretie siwen 
 wnce at 3 pond the wnce is . 
 
 So rests. 
 
 03 00 
 
 00 
 
 05 08 
 
 00 
 
 03 00 
 
 00 
 
 i36 
 
 14 
 
 00 
 
 iii 
 
 00 
 
 00 
 
 025 
 
 14 
 
 00 
 
The Art of Pedigree-making. 8 7 
 
 gentleman; his younger son William he brought 
 up to his own trade.' Had the father of John 
 Law had any claim to gentle birth, and, more 
 particularly, had he been the younger brother 
 of a not undistinguished baronial family, his 
 biographer, who had been intimate with him 
 from the outset of his career, would, with the 
 usual respect of his countrymen for pedigree, 
 have been sure to chronicler the fact, about which 
 he and other writers of his time are altogether 
 silent. William Law married one Jean Camp- 
 bell, a clanswoman doubtless of the Duke of 
 Argyll, but noways known to be more related 
 to Macailinmore than the whole clan bearing 
 the same surname. He purchased with the 
 earnings of his trade a property of 180 acres 
 on the Firth of Forth, where was a dwelling- 
 house, which was to be seen in the memory of 
 many persons yet living, and is figured in 
 
 ' Received fwll and complleit payment of the abowe writen 
 acompt, and of all acompts and recknings what soewer pre- 
 ceading this two and twintie day of Janwer on thowsand six 
 hwnder and sewenty-nyne yeirs. William Law.' 
 
 It must be borne in mind that this account is in Scots money, 
 which is one-twelfth of the value of sterling. 
 
88 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 Wood's Anticnt and Modern State of the ParisJi 
 of Cramo7td. It was by no means a very ex- 
 travagant residence for an Edinburgh burgess 
 of the seventeenth century ; but on its site a 
 first-class mansion has since sprung up, in which 
 the walls of the dwelling-house made famous 
 by the history of its proprietor have been in- 
 corporated. The Vicissitudes has, however, 
 transformed the working silversmith into an 
 ' eminent banker and goldsmith,' younger son 
 of James Law, * free baron of Burntown in Fife- 
 shire,' who was son of * Dr. James Law of 
 Lithrie and Burntown, Archbishop of Glasgow, 
 who married Marian, daughter of John Boyle 
 of Kelburne, ancestor of the present Earl of 
 Glasgow.' The small property of Lauriston has 
 become * the lands of Lauriston and Randleston 
 with the castle of Lauriston,' and William Law's 
 wife is * a scion of the noble and illustrious house 
 of Argyle, and cousin of the great John Camp- 
 bell, Duke of Argyle and Greenwich, and of his 
 brother Archibald Campbell, Earl of Islay, who 
 succeeded him as Duke of Argyle.' All that 
 is known of the descent of John Law is, I 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 89 
 
 believe, to be found in an article in Notes and 
 Queries of August 22d, 1863. 
 
 The reader who has followed me thus far will 
 probably be of opinion that the works which we 
 have been examining are in no respect worthy 
 of the present condition of genealogical science. 
 It is a remarkable circumstance that side by side 
 with the laborious and critical genealogists, there 
 should have sprung up a set of venal pedigree- 
 mongers, whose occupation consists in garbling 
 truth, and inventing falsehood, a calling which 
 they pursue with the most untiring assiduity. 
 But it is unfortunate indeed, that the easy cre- 
 dulity of Sir Bernard Burke should allow him 
 to be led blindfold by these obscure persons, 
 whose most palpable fictions he seldom shows 
 the least hesitation in adopting. Statements 
 which would never otherwise have obtained a 
 moment's credit, have been allowed to go forth 
 with the imprimatur of the chief herald of Ire- 
 land, on the strength of which they are relied 
 on by a large section of the public. In an essay 
 on the * Landmarks of Genealogy,' appended to 
 the Vicissitudes of Families, Sir Bernard Burke 
 
90 Poptdar Genealogists, or 
 
 includes in his enumeration of repertories of trust- 
 worthy genealogical information, his own Peer- 
 age and Landed Gentry ; and both are profusely- 
 quoted in books circulating on the Continent as 
 well as in Britain. Year by year new fictions, 
 belonging not to respectable legend, but to 
 vulgar imposture, are obtaining general accept- 
 ance on their authority ; it is therefore high 
 time that the public should be disabused of 
 their faith in these books. 
 
 The ludicrous side of pedigree-making must 
 not blind us to the graver considerations con- 
 nected with it. The compilers of imaginary 
 genealogies, like the ' quacks ' whom Mr. P. 
 Coltheart ' unmasks,' may perhaps think them- 
 selves justified in hoaxing the public to any 
 extent to which the public is willing to be 
 hoaxed. But it is as well they should be re- 
 minded that the legal tribunals of the country 
 take a different view of the matter. It is far 
 from beyond possibility that some of such circum- 
 stantial quotations as those given above from 
 deeds that never existed, may come to be ad- 
 duced in support of a peerage claim or in a 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 9 1 
 
 question of succession ; and if so, the pedigree- 
 maker might find himself unexpectedly in the 
 position of having to expiate his hoax, if not by 
 the loss of an ear, at least by prison diet and 
 hard labour. Twenty-five years ago a case 
 occurred in our criminal records, where a claim- 
 ant of the Earldom of Stirling had to answer at 
 the bar of the High Court of Justiciary in Scot- 
 land for making use of fabricated writings in 
 support of his claim. The jury found it proved 
 that the writings were forged, but not proved 
 that they were known to be forged by the pri- 
 soner who used them, who was accordingly 
 acquitted. The framers of the writings were, 
 however, only saved from justice by the circum- 
 stance that they were in France, and therefore 
 beyond the jurisdiction of the Court. 
 
 It is not in one way, but in many ways, that 
 genealogy, which ought to be the handmaid of 
 truth, is pressed into the service of fiction. The 
 revival of glass-painting has led to a renewal of 
 the practice of placing memorial windows in 
 churches ; and it is believed that there are 
 cases where donors have deliberately erected 
 
92 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 windows to the memory of successions of ances- 
 tors who never had an existence, with impaled 
 armorial coats of husband and wife for each 
 generation. There is an account, in a recent 
 number of the Herald and Genealogist, of a 
 splendid memorial window designed and exe- 
 cuted by Mr. Williment of London, which has 
 been placed by Mr. Coulthart in the church of 
 Boulton-le-Strand, Cumberland, to the memory, 
 not, it is admitted, of his mythical progenitors, 
 but of his deceased father ; the lower part of 
 the window, however, contains the Coulthart 
 armorial bearings, with the eight quarterings 
 indicative of the imaginary families represented 
 in the female line, and the colt and hart for 
 supporters. There are other impaled shields 
 near the principal coat ; and an inscription bears 
 that the window is erected ' Ad gloriant Dei.' 
 In other quarters, tombstones are being tam- 
 pered with to build up visionary pedigrees, thus 
 falsifying the sort of evidence which legal tri- 
 bunals have reckoned among the most impor- 
 tant for deciding the right of property, and 
 descent of dignities. Instances could be par- 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 93 
 
 ticularized of the insertion of monumental 
 brasses in churches to record the decease of 
 imaginary persons, the utmost possible skill of 
 workmanship having been brought into requi- 
 sition to impart the appearance of age to these 
 modern antiques. Some years ago (February 
 1852) a correspondent of the Gentleman's Maga- 
 zine called public attention to the prevalence of 
 frauds of this description, giving some instances 
 which had come under his own observation in 
 the counties of Lancashire and Cheshire. The 
 following extract is quoted from his letter, which 
 seems to have excited less attention than the 
 subject deserved : 
 
 ' In the Church of St. Mary at Chester, over 
 the recumbent effigy of Philip Oldfield (who died 
 in 161 6), I saw suspended a hatchment which 
 erewhile decorated the house of Thomas Brame 
 Oldfield, Esq., upon Champion Hill, Camberwell, 
 in the county of Surrey. Looking somewhat 
 further, in order to account for the extraordi- 
 nary juxtaposition (to me more extraordinary 
 than the meeting of the grasshopper of the 
 Exchange with the dragon of Bow), I soon dis- 
 
94 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 covered that a very handsome memorial win- 
 dow, immediately behind the recumbent figure, 
 had been put up to commemorate the said 
 Thomas Brame Oldfield, a London merchant, 
 and in no way connected with the city of 
 Chester, but the son of an individual who, 
 having come from Yorkshire in early life, re- 
 sided at Rotherhithe, in the county of Surrey. 
 That no connexion between the two families 
 had been established I knew full well, and my 
 experience taught me that to prove it would be 
 next to impossible ; nevertheless, my astonish- 
 ment was to be further increased by reading an 
 inscription (rather obscurely placed to be sure), 
 stating that the -said Thomas Brame Oldfield 
 was fifth in descent from one of Philip's sons, 
 in consequence whereof the said monument had 
 been repaired and the window erected ; thus 
 asserting upon sacred walls, as a fact, what 
 ought to have been previously proved to, and 
 admitted by, competent authority, and which, 
 far from being so proved, appears to have had 
 its origin merely in pretence and foolish vanity. 
 'But, sir, this achievement is completely 
 
The A rt of Pedigree-making. 95 
 
 thrown into shade by the Dearden achievement 
 at Rochdale, where Hves a gentleman of con- 
 siderable property, but no descent from gentle 
 blood, as is shown by a record of his family in 
 the College of Arms. This gentleman has de- 
 voted a portion of the sacred edifice at Roch- 
 dale to a long series of mediaeval mockeries, 
 and surely here the incumbent is as much, if 
 not more to blame than the individual, whose 
 vanity has led him into so great a folly. A 
 portion of the church has been parted off and 
 called the Dearden Chapel, surrounded with a 
 handsome carved screen, profusely decorated 
 with armorial insignia and other devices, amongst 
 which is conspicuous the arms of the ancient 
 family of Rachdale, which Mr. Dearden appears 
 to have appropriated not only to himself, but to 
 all his visionary ancestry. In the centre of this 
 chapel lies the effigy of a cross-legged warrior, 
 with the arms of a Rachdale on his shield, but 
 yclept a Derden or Dereden. Close by his side 
 reposes a bishop with crosier and mitre, who 
 has also been pressed into this imaginary race 
 of progenitors ; and he, forsooth, is Walterus 
 
96 Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 Durus Dens or Durdent, Bishop of Lichfield 
 and Coventry (in the time of King Stephen), of 
 whom it has been reserved for Mr. Dearden to 
 discover that he was of his race of Dereden, 
 and buried at Rochdale, whilst other (perhaps 
 less learned) authorities, state that he was buried 
 at Coventry, the seat of his own episcopate, a 
 place of sepulture certainly somewhat more 
 probable. Incised slabs and brasses, all in- 
 scribed to the memory of Derdens, Duerdens, 
 and Deardens, and in close imitation of the 
 styles of different eras, are placed here as com- 
 memoration of the ancestors of a man whose own 
 inquiries have failed to carry back those ances- 
 tors beyond the time of James i., and they not 
 even of a rank which could obtain for them the 
 notice of the heralds in their visitations. I have 
 since regretted that I did not copy the inscrip- 
 tions. The disgust which was uppermost in 
 my mind prevented my doing so ; but if my 
 memory serves me right, the " Hie jacet" and 
 " Icy gist " were there, to render the ecclesiasti- 
 cal masquerade more complete.' 
 
 As might be expected, the lineage of the 
 
The Art of Pedigree-making. 97 
 
 family of * Dearden of Handle Hall, and of the 
 Orchard, Lord of the Manor of Rochdale,' is 
 chronicled in Burke's Landed Gentry from the 
 time of Henry VI. downwards, and the arms 
 assigned are 'Arg. an inescutcheon within an 
 orle of martlets sa., as depicted in Trinity Chapel 
 in Rochdale church, the family burial-place.' 
 This is precisely the coat that was borne by the 
 family of Rachdale, extinct now in the male 
 line, but represented in the female line by the 
 Earl of Mexborough, among whose quarterings 
 it is included. The pedigree mentioned in the 
 above letter, as on record for the Dearden family 
 was entered on the books of the College of 
 Arms in 1841, by Mr. James Dearden of Handle 
 Hall, in the parish of Rochdale, who proved 
 himself to be eighth in descent from Richard 
 Dearden or Dureden of Whitfield, in the parish 
 of Huddersfield, who died in 1630. Neither 
 this gentleman nor his predecessors were en- 
 titled to arms ; there are none to be found in 
 the Visitations or Records of the College of 
 Arms for any of the family, and it is almost 
 needless to say, that none of Mr. Dearden's 
 
9^ Popular Genealogists, or 
 
 ancestors were ever Lords of the Manor of 
 Rochdale. 
 
 In bringing this and similar genealogical 
 fictions to the light of day, it is proper for me 
 to add, that no necessity exists for supposing 
 that the late Mr. Dearden, or the other persons 
 for whose glorification they were invented, had 
 any complicity in the fraud. The presumption 
 is, that they had not. Profoundly ignorant of 
 history and genealogy, and only interested in 
 the latter in so far as it could be made to 
 minister to their foolish vanity, a superabun- 
 dance of this latter quality has probably led 
 them to be eyed as promising subjects by one 
 of these genealogical impostors who live on the 
 folly and credulity of the public ; and having 
 once fallen into the hands of the charlatan, they 
 yield as implicit a faith to his fables as does the 
 unhappy patient to the nostrums of the quack 
 doctor. As Mr. Coltheart exposed the medical 
 charlatans of his day, and 'set in a true light 
 their pernicious and destructive practice, with 
 some reasons why it ought to be entirely abol- 
 ish'd,' so have I thought it a duty, humbly 
 
The Art of Pedigree-making. 99 
 
 following in the wake of that eminent surgeon, 
 to ' unmask ' those ' quacks ' who deal, not in 
 pdlls and potions, but in pedigrees, and whom a 
 large portion of the community seem unable to 
 distinguish from bona fide g^nQslogists. 
 
 Little need be said of the other so-called 
 Peerages which were alluded to in the opening 
 pages. Most of them are of a professedly 
 ephemeral character, and consist chiefly of an 
 account of the present state of the families of 
 the different peers. Of these, Lodge's is on the 
 whole the best and most trustworthy ; and there 
 is a companion volume of genealogy, appearing 
 at occasional intervals, which, though not very 
 comprehensive in its plan, is decidedly superior 
 to Burke in accuracy. The brief outlines of 
 family history in Walford's Cotinty Families of 
 the United Kingdom, are filled with matter so 
 extraordinary that it is difficult to conceive from 
 what source the writer could have collected it. 
 I need hardly add, that in speaking of Peerages 
 generally, I do not include Courthope's Historic 
 Peerage of England, founded on the late Sir 
 Harris Nicolas's Synopsis of the Peerage of Eng- 
 
loo Popular Genealogists. 
 
 land, a work of very great value and extreme 
 accuracy, containing an outline of all the changes 
 in the English Peerage from the Norman Con- 
 quest. Mr. Courthope's book is however from 
 its nature a mere outline. A larger history of 
 the Peerage and other landed families of the 
 United Kingdom, written in a proper spirit, and 
 based on the materials which have been accu- 
 mulating for the last forty years, is a desidera- 
 tum which has yet to be supplied. Such a 
 work, free not only from grosser blemishes, but 
 also from anything like suppressio veiH or servile 
 complaisance to fashionable or other powers, 
 and founded on a pure and independent basis 
 of truth, would be inv^aluable to the genealogical 
 student and antiquary. It would also be in- 
 tensely interesting. Historical truth always 
 possesses a far deeper and more real interest 
 than anything that can be substituted for it ; 
 though the Lives of the Conltharts might un- 
 doubtedly form an amusing book, its attractions 
 could never compete with those of the Lives of 
 the Lindsays. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abhrbrothic. See Arbroath. 
 Acta Dominorum Auditorum, 72, 73. 
 Acta Dominorum Concilii, 64, 72. 
 Admiral of the fleet in sixteenth cen- 
 tury, 32. 
 Agnew, Mrs. of Dalragle, 39, n. 
 
 Robert, 49. 
 
 Agricola, 45. 
 
 Ahannays of Sorbie, 53, n. 
 
 Albany, Alexander Duke of, 70, 71. 
 
 John Duke of, 70, 71. 
 
 Alexander 11., 27, 48, 59. 
 
 parish registers of his time, 27. 
 
 Alexander in., 59, 61. 
 Ancrum Muir, battle of, 31, 33. 
 Anstruther of that Ilk, 53, . 
 Antiquaries, Society of, Scotland, 24, 
 
 27. 37- 
 Arbroath, battle of, 31, 32, 64, 65, 68. 
 Arbuthnot arms those of royalty, 10. 
 Argyll, Archibald Duke of, 88. 
 family arms, 83. 
 
 John Duke of, 88. 
 
 Arms the test of nobility, 18. 
 Artillery, Royal, temp. James i., 35, 36. 
 Ashton-under-Lyne, 22, 23, 24, 46. 
 Athole, Duke of, 16. 
 
 ' Aumerle ' of Shakespeare, 7. 
 
 Baillie of Lamington, 53, n. 
 Balfour of Burleigh, 64. 
 ' Bankers' Magazine,' 22. 
 Bannatyne Club, 3, 62. 
 Banneret, an imaginary, 72. 
 Bannockburn, battle of (Bruce's), 61. 
 Bannockburn (Sauchieburn), 31, 33, 
 64, 65, 68. See Sauchieburn. 
 
 Beaug^, battle of, 64. 
 
 Bede, 25, 26. 
 
 Bently, Rev. T. R , M.A., 54. n. 
 
 Berry's ' Encyclopaedia of Heraldry,' 7c. 
 
 Bethune of Balfour, 20. 
 
 Betoun of Creech, 33. 
 
 Blayse sur Loire, Abbey of St., 57. 
 
 Bolton-le-Gate, Coulthart window at, 
 
 92. 
 Bonar arms, 59, 60, 76, 80. 
 
 bastards of Kilgraston, 66. 
 
 castle of, where ? 59. 
 
 Constable of Kinghom, 56, 62. 
 
 Dominus Joannes, 71. 
 
 in Straithifentoune, 72. 
 
 master of Bonare, 60, 71. 
 
 master of Keltye, 73. 
 
 master of Kilgraston, 66, 67, 69, 
 
 73, 77- 
 
 of Boghall, 67, 82. 
 
 of Bonare, 55, 59, 65, 79. 
 
 of Bonarton, 61. 
 
 of Kelty(e), 55, 56, 64, 65, 67, 69, 
 
 71, 73, 75, 8r, 82. 
 
 Knight-banneret, 72. 
 
 Ninian, service of, ig- 
 
 nored, 74. 
 
 representation of, 75. 
 
 of Kilgirstoun or Kilgraston, 55, 
 
 57, 65, 66, 67, 73, 74, 76, 77, 80, 
 82, 85. 
 
 of Kimmerghame, 35, 75, 82. 
 
 of Laindes, 60. 
 
 of Rossie, 56, 63, 64. 
 
 of Strathy, 72. 
 
 of Trevor, 66, 82. 
 
 origin of name, 57. 
 
I04 Index. 
 
 Bonar, pedigree examined, 53, et seq., 
 
 Campbell ^^^ Argyle, Breadalbane, 
 
 84. 
 
 Cawdor, Islay. 
 
 royal seneschal of Kyngshorne, 
 
 Hugh of Ayr, 35. 
 
 61. 
 
 Jean, mother of John Law, 87. 
 
 titular baron of Keltye, 79. 
 
 of Skerrington, 53, . 
 
 titular master of Keltye, 77, 78. 
 
 of Stracathro, 83. 
 
 titular of Kilgraston, 79. 
 
 Candida Casa, 25. 
 
 William-Robert, 61. 
 
 Carlaverock, siege of, 63, 65. 
 
 William-Roger, the Crusader, 59, 
 
 Carmichael of Carspherne, 32, 46. 
 
 60. 
 
 Carrick, Eleanor Countess of, 30, n. 
 
 Bonars clergymen of Church of Scot- 
 
 Carsphairn, parish records of, 27, 28. 
 
 land, 76, et seq. 
 
 Cavendish, Colonel, 54, n. 
 
 Bonariis, Roger de, 60. 
 
 Cawdor, Earl of, 31, . 
 
 Boswell of Auchinleck, 53, n. 
 
 Chalmer of Gadgirth, 53, h. 
 
 of Balmuto, 53, . 
 
 Chamberlains of Scotland, Accounts, 
 
 Boyd, of monastic lineage, 84. 
 
 56, 61, 62, 63. 
 
 Mrs., 39, n. 
 
 Charles 11., 37, 38. 
 
 Boyle of Kelburne, 88. 
 
 Charters, fictitious, 51, n, 91. 
 
 Brasses, fabricated monumental, 93, 
 
 Chateaux en Espagne, 59, 78, 88. 
 
 96. 
 
 Chester, hatchment and window at, 93. 
 
 Breadalbane, Earls of, 53, n. 
 
 Christian name, double, 60. 
 
 Brechin, battle of, 29. 
 
 Chronicles, early, 25, 26, 27. 
 
 British Museum Library, 41. 
 
 College Heraldique, France, 59. 
 
 Bruce, Marjory, 10. 
 
 Collins' ' Peerage,' 5. 
 
 Buccleuch, heir-male of, 14. 
 
 Collyn, 42. 
 
 Bucelinus, 58. 
 
 Colombiere, De la, 'Science He'- 
 
 Buchanan, George, 70. 
 
 roique,' 8. 
 
 Bulls, Papal, 37. 
 
 Colt, Sir E., of Leominster, 46. 
 
 Burke, Sir B., Ulster King-at-Arms, 
 
 Coltheart, P., surgeon, 41, 90, 99. 
 
 3, et^ seq. 
 
 Colville of Culross, 67. 
 
 Burke's * Authorized Arms,' 4, 82. 
 
 Comyn arms, 17. 
 
 ' Family Romance,' 4, 14, 15. 
 
 Conveyancing before the Conquest, 26. 
 
 ' General Armory,' 70. 
 
 Coulthart arms, 46, 84, 92. 
 
 ' Heraldic Illustrations,' 3, 10, 82. 
 
 charters, 51, . 
 
 ' Landed Gentry,' 3, 9, 17, etseq., 
 
 Cuthbert, of Coulthart, at Ancrum 
 
 97- 
 
 Muir and Pinkie, 33, et seq. 
 
 'Peerage and Baronetage,' 3, 6, 
 
 his marriage with Lady 
 
 33- 
 
 Elizabeth Hay, 33, etseq. 
 
 its heraldry, 16. 
 
 Cuthbert de. Captain, Royal 
 
 * Royal Genealogies,' 4. 
 
 Artillery, 35. 
 
 'Vicissitudes of Families,' 4, 11, 
 
 Gilbert de, in train of Earl 
 
 50, 85, 89. 
 
 Douglas, 29. 
 
 ' Visitations of Seats and Arms,' 
 
 James, of Coulthart, qiuere. Laird 
 
 4. 46, 82, 84. 
 
 Cowtart? 41. 
 
 
 John Ross, of Coulthart, 22, 51. 
 
 Calder, 30. 
 
 marriage-contract, temp. Ken- 
 
 Cambridge, Richard Earl of, 7. 
 
 neth III., 26. 
 
Coulthart memorial window, 92. 
 
 name of, 25, 44. 
 
 pedigree examined, 22, et seq. 
 
 privately printed genealogy, 51, . 
 
 Richard de, at Flodden, 32. 
 
 Richard, Royalist major, 37, 38. 
 
 Richard, * Economy of Agricul- 
 
 ture,' 38, 40. 
 
 Sir Roger, at Arbroath, 31. 
 
 seals, 36, 49, 51, 84. 
 
 on lead, 36. 
 
 vice Calder, 30, 63. 
 
 vice Wardlaw, 52, n. 
 
 Walter, Admiral of the Fleet, 32. 
 
 William, of Largmore, yeoman, 
 
 36. 
 
 William, M.P., 38. 6"^^ Cul- 
 
 traine. 
 
 Coulthartus, a Roman lieutenant, 25. 
 
 Coulthurst, H. W. D. D., Vicar of 
 Halifax, 32. 
 
 Courthope's ' Historic Peerage of Eng- 
 land,' 99- 
 
 Cowtart, Laird, 41, 42, ., 45. 
 
 Craigie of Dumbarnye, 78. 
 
 Crawfurd's ' Peerage,' 5, 34. 
 
 Croft House, 46. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 37, 38. 
 
 Crusade, the sixth, 59. 
 
 Cultraine, Patrick, 40, h. 
 
 alias Stewart, John, 40, n. 
 
 William, of Drummoral, M.P., 
 
 39- 
 Cumin, Angus and Waluein de, 26. 
 Cunninghame, Colonel, 35. 
 
 Dakvns, W., 50, 55, 81. 
 
 David I., 53. 
 
 David II., 51, n. 
 
 Davidson, Alexander, Carlisle City 
 
 and District Bank, 23. 
 Dearden monuments at Rochdale, 95. 
 
 genealogy, 97. 
 
 James, of Handle Hall, 97. 
 
 Richard, of Whitfield, 97. 
 
 Decimal Interest Tables, 24, 51. 
 ' Diplomata Scotiae,' 86. 
 
 Douglas, Archibald, Lord of Galloway, 
 31, n. 
 
 Earl of Morton, 16. 
 
 Earl of Selkirk, 42, ., 43. 
 
 Eleanor de. Countess of Carrick, 
 
 30, n. 
 
 Good Sir James, 31, n. 
 
 heir of line of the, 31. 
 
 James, of Dee House, 38. 
 
 Sir Robert, ' Peerage,' 5, 
 
 34i 
 
 45, 
 
 Sir R. P., ofCarr, 16. 
 
 William, ist Earl, 31, n. 
 
 William, 8th Earl, 29, 30. 
 
 Drummoral, 39. 
 
 Duffus, Rowland de, 26. 
 
 Dugdale's 'Baronage,' 5. 
 
 Dunmore, Earl of, 16. 
 
 Dunnottar, 54. 
 
 Durdent, Walter, Bishop of Lichfield 
 
 and Coventry, 96. 
 Durham, battle of, 62, 63. 
 
 'Economy of Agriculture,' 38, 40. 
 
 Edmondson's ' Heraldry,' 8. 
 
 Edward in., children of, 7. 
 
 Elvin's 'Anecdotes of Heraldry,' 47. 
 
 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' 24. 
 
 Epiacum, 25. 
 
 Errol family, 33, 42, n. 
 
 George, Earl of, 30. 
 
 Erskine, Lord, arms of, 17. 
 
 Falkland, 68. 
 
 Family histories, 2. 
 
 Fellmore, lands of, 49. 
 
 Flodden, 33, 66, 72. 
 
 Forbes of Kells, Rev. John, 37. 
 
 of Pitscottie, 46. 
 
 Leith of Whitehaugh, 10. 
 
 Forgandenny parish register, 77. 
 
 Galloway, Douglas Lord of, 31. 
 
 Hamilton, Bishop of, 37. 
 
 Stewart, Earl of, 10. 
 
 subdued by King of Northum- 
 
 bria, 25. 
 
Garter, order of the, 47. 
 
 Gauhen, 58. 
 
 Genealogy, revival of the study of, i. 
 
 ' Gentleman's Magazine,' 93. 
 
 Gentry corresponding to Continental 
 
 nobility, 18. 
 Glasgow, Earls of, 53, ., 88, 
 
 Law, Archbishop of, 88. 
 
 Glendon(w)yn of Glendon(w)yn, 29, 
 
 36, 46, 53, n. 
 Gloucester, descendants of Thomas, 
 
 Duke of, 7, II. 
 Gordon of Barskeoch, 45. 
 
 of Sorbie, 46, 53, n. 
 
 Graham of Balgowan, 73, 74. 
 
 of Callendar, 56, 67, 76, 80. 
 
 of Garvock, 74. 
 
 Grampians, 25. 
 
 Gray, Rev. J. H., of Carntyne, 17. 
 Great Seal Register, 34, 51. 
 Guilhem le Danois, 57. 
 
 Haddington tournament, 48. 
 
 Halidon Hill, battle of, 61. 
 
 Hamilton, Gavin, D.D., Bishop of 
 
 Galloway, 37. 
 Hay, marriage of Lady Elizabeth with 
 
 Cuthbert Coulthart of Coulthart, 33, 
 
 et seq. 
 ' Heir of Thirlestane,' 15. 
 Henderson of Fordel, 53, n. 
 Henelius, 58. 
 Henry vi., 97. 
 
 ' Herald and Genealogist, ' 92. 
 Heraldry an aid to history, 2. 
 
 of Scotland, 17, 83. 
 
 Heron of that Ilk, 40, . 
 Hume of Godscroft, 31, u. 
 Hunter, Mrs., 39, h. 
 
 Innes arms, 17. 
 
 Islay, Archibald Earl of, 88. 
 
 Isles, Lords of the, 20. 
 
 Jacobitism, imaginary, 79. 
 James i. (Scotland), 29. 
 James iii., 33. 
 
 James iv., 72. 
 James v., 73. 
 James vi. (i.), 36, 96. 
 
 K.\DALVNE, chief of the Novantes, 25. 
 Keith, George, 5th Earl Marischal, 34 
 
 William, 4th Earl Marischal, 34. 
 
 William, Lord, 34. 
 
 William, apparent of Ludquhairn, 
 
 35- 
 Kells, 37. 45. 
 
 parish register of, 46. 
 
 Kenneth iii , marriage-contract in his 
 
 reign, 26. 
 Kent, descendants of Edmund Duke 
 
 of, II. 
 
 Kilmarnock, Earl of, 84. 
 Kinghorn, 61. 
 
 Knatchley, Sir William, 34, u. 
 Knockhill, estate of, 41. 
 Kyngorn, Bartholomaeus de, 62. 
 
 Laing, Henry, Edinburgh, 37. 
 Landmarks of genealogy, 89. 
 Largmore, 27, 32, 41, 42, 44, 45. 
 Laurieston Castle, 88. 
 Law, James, of Burntown, Archbishop 
 
 of Glasgow, 88. 
 John, of Lauriston, 85. 
 
 William, silversmith, 86. 
 
 Leaden seals, 36. 
 
 Leith of Whitehaugh, 10. 
 
 Leucophibia, 25. 
 
 Litchfield and Coventry, Durdent 
 
 Bishop of, 96. 
 Lidderdale, James, of Castle-Douglas, 
 
 23 
 Lind-say, Earl of Crawfurd, 52, m. 
 
 of Pitscottie, 29. 
 
 Sir David, 69. 
 
 Lord, ' Lives of the Lindsays,' 2, 
 
 ICG. 
 
 Livingston of Callendar, 36. 
 
 Lower's ' Patronymica Britannica,' 49. 
 
 Lyon, Mary, 15, n. 
 
 V. Scott, IS, n. 
 
 MacGregor, Sir Charles, 16. 
 
Index. 
 
 107 
 
 MacKean, Andrew, 23. 
 
 Ogilvies, 31. 
 
 MacKenzie of Craighall, 37, 46. 
 
 Ogilvy, Sir Andrew of Auchterhouse, 
 
 Sir George, 8, 12. 
 
 29. 
 
 Mackintosh, James, of Linlithgow, 29. 
 
 Okolsky, 58. 
 
 Macknyghte of Macknyghte, 29, 36, 
 
 Oldfield, Philip, 93. 
 
 46. 
 
 Thomas Brame, 93. 
 
 Maclachlane of Drumore, 54, n. 
 
 Oliphant of Cultuquhane, 74, 78. 
 
 MacNaught of Milltown, 42. 
 
 of Carpow, 78. 
 
 MacTaggart's ' Gallovidian Encyclo- 
 
 of Carssow, 78. 
 
 paedia,' 41. 
 
 of Dron, 56, 81. 
 
 MacTurk of the Glenkens, 41. 
 
 of Gask, 74. 
 
 Maitland Club, 3. 
 
 Orleans, Bastard of, 64. 
 
 Malcolm Canmore, 47. 
 
 
 
 Paprocius, 58. 
 
 arms by, 48. 
 
 Parish register of Carsphairn, 27, 28. 
 
 Maltravers of Balgoram, 54, . 
 
 Forgandenny, 77. 
 
 Manchester, James Prince, Bishop of, 
 
 Kells, 46. 
 
 54, 
 
 Pa via, battle of, 15. 
 
 Marriage-contract temp. Kenneth iii., 
 
 Peerage, Burke's, 3, 6, 12, 33, 99. 
 
 26. 
 
 Collins', 5. 
 
 Marischal College, Aberdeen, 34. 
 
 Courthope's Historic, 99. 
 
 George, fifth Earl, 34. 
 
 Crawfurd's, 5, 34. 
 
 William, fourth Earl, 35. 
 
 Douglas', 5, 34, 53, n. 
 
 Memorial windows, 91, 94. 
 
 Lodge's, 99. 
 
 Menestrier, C. F., 8. 
 
 Nicolas' Sjmopsis of the, 99. 
 
 Mexborough, Earl of, 97. 
 
 Penney, Stephen James, 11. 
 
 Meynies, Alexander de, 52, n. 
 
 Physgill contested succession, 40, . 
 
 Miechow, 58. 
 
 Pinkie, battle of, 31, 33, 34. 
 
 MoncriefF of Moncrieff, 57. 
 
 Pol war th family, genealogy of the, 13. 
 
 Monmouth, Duke of, 14. 
 
 Preston, battle of, 40, n. 
 
 Morton, Earl of, 16, 
 
 Prince Regent heraldry, 69 
 
 Mortgage, English, in Scotland, 74. 
 
 Ptolemy, 25, 26. 
 
 Muirhead of Lauchope, 53, . 
 
 
 Murdockstone heiress married to Sir 
 
 ' Quacks Unmask'd,' 41, 90, 98. 
 
 Richard le Scot, 13. 
 
 Quartering requires leave of King-at- 
 
 Murray of Auchtertyre, 67, 78. 
 
 Arms, 7. 
 
 
 the royal arms, 6, etseq., 11, 47, 81. 
 
 Mushardus, 58, 59. 
 
 without representation, 8. 
 
 
 Quhytherne. .S",?^ Whithem. 
 
 Napier, family of, 14, 53, n. 
 
 
 Mark, 39. 
 
 Rachdale arms assumed by Dear- 
 
 Nicolas, Sir Harris, 99. 
 
 dens, 95, 97. 
 
 Niemicz, 58. 
 
 family, 95. 
 
 Nisbet's 'Heraldry,' 8. 
 
 female representation, 97. 
 
 Nobility, arms the test of, 18. 
 
 Ramsay of Dalhousie, 52, ., 63. 
 
 Continental, 18. 
 
 Retours, Register of, 44, 45, 75. 
 
 Northumbria. King of, 25. 
 
 Rietstap's ' Armorial General,' 82. 
 
io8 Index. 
 
 Robert i., 51, ., 61. 
 
 Sinclairs of Dunbeath, 36, 53, n. 
 
 Robert 11., 51, . 
 
 Smart, Joseph, of Hales Owen, 11. 
 
 Robert in., 51, n. 
 
 Somerville, Lord, 53, . 
 
 Robson's ' British Herald,' 70. 
 
 Spalding Club, 3. 
 
 Rochdale, fictitious monumehts at, 95. 
 
 Spenerius, 58. 
 
 Rooke, Admiral, 38. 
 
 Stewart family, 9, 10, 47 
 
 Ross, of Renfrew, 29, 36, 46. 
 
 Earl of Galloway, 10. 
 
 Roxburgh, siege of, 31, 32. 
 
 
 Roxburghe, Duke of, 17. 
 
 of Chelsea, 39, n. 
 
 Royal arms, assumption of, ii, 12, 47, 
 
 of Physgill, 39, n. 
 
 81. 
 
 of Shambelly, 39, n. 
 
 sacredness of, 8. 
 
 Stirling peerage, claimant of, 91. 
 
 ' Royal cause,' 78. 
 
 Stowe, Mrs. Beecher, 21. 
 
 family, genealogy of, 6. 
 
 Strathcluyd Britons, 25. 
 
 Royalty, descent from, 9, et seq. 
 
 Supporters, 84. 
 
 
 of Coulthart family, 46, 49, 84, 92. 
 
 Sandilands, Sir James, of Calder, 
 
 
 30, . 
 
 Tacitus, 25, 26. 
 
 Sir John, of Calder, 31, n. 
 
 Tombstones, fabricated, 92, 96. 
 
 Sasines, Register of, 45. 
 
 Torphichen, Lord, 30. 
 
 Sauchieburn, 31, 72. See also Ban- 
 
 Tressure, royal, granted to subjects, 9. 
 
 nockburn. 
 
 Trevor vice Boghall, 67, 77, 82, 
 
 Schiekfusins, 58, 59. 
 
 TumbuU, W. B., on parochial regis- 
 
 Scott. vS^-^ Buccleuch, Pohvarth. . 
 
 ters, 28. 
 
 arms, 13. 
 
 
 . of Harden, 13, 14. 
 
 Verneiil, battle of, 64. 
 
 of Howpaisley, 14, 15. 
 
 Vikingars, Danish, 57. 
 
 of Thirlestane, 14. 
 
 
 Sir Richard le, 14. 
 
 Walford's ' County Families,' 99. 
 
 Scrymgeour Wedderburn of Wedder- 
 
 Wallace of Craigie, 17, 53, n 
 
 bum, II. 
 
 Sir William, 21, 61. 
 
 Seals, Coulthart family, 36, 49, 51, ., 84. 
 
 Walwein, 25. 
 
 Laing's catalogue of, 37. 
 
 Wardlaw, Coulthart vice, 52. 
 
 leaden, 36, 37. 
 
 Weapont (Vipont), 17, 
 
 Seaton of Parbroath, 71. 
 
 Wemyss of that Ilk, 61. 
 
 Selkirk, Earl of, 43, 7t., 45. 
 
 Whithern ^Quhythern), 25, 26, 52, . 
 
 Services of heirs, Scotland, 32, 41, 45 
 
 Wigtown Martyrs, 39. 
 
 Seton's ' Law and Practice of Heraldry 
 
 William the Conqueror, 48. 
 
 in Scotland,' 69. 
 
 the Lion, 53, ., 58. 
 
 Shirley, E. J., M. P., 7. 
 
 Wilmot, George, 11. 
 
 Shoulder of mutton, legend of a, 68, 
 
 Wood's ' Parish ofCramond,' 88. 
 
 70, 71, 72, 82. 
 
 
 ' Sigillum Coultharti,' 49, 51, ., 84. 
 
 Yeoman, the designation, 36. j 
 
 Sinapius, 38. 
 
 York, Edmund Duke of, 7. 
 
 ERRATUM. 
 
 Page 92, 1. 9,y^r Boulton-le-Strand, read Bolton-le-Gate. 
 
 1 
 
 H