Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 1 Vol 5.djvu/229

 MAR. 227 being then estimated at 1,000 marks,) and waa set lit liberty 10 Jane 1 425. He was ci: also, as Janet is credited (not only with a sister, also named Janet, but) with a brother, he, and not site, would have inherited any estate vested in their common father. The chief point however, in support of this pedigree, is [3] that the appellation of "Janet Barclay " ami "Christian Keith" must of ntcotitp indicate the maiden name of these ladies and not the name of a previous husband, and that such pater- nity Can only thus be accounted for. On this point Mr. V. A. Lindsay writes (24 Jan. 181)3), as under. " Now, as regards women's names ; Kgidia, half sister of Robert II., married Sir James Lindsay in 185] ami was thrice re-married. All thro' her career, as wife of Egiintoltn and of Douglas, she is called Llmlmy [ttot Slca:art.~ Stewart was. perhaps, not then a surname. Of course women were always called by their maiden names [in] later [times] but 71107/ when did this become the established rule ? In very early times, I doubt, if they bore any surnames at all. It appears to me that we know loo little of this [subject] to argue from Janet being called Barclay that she was hum Ilarelay. It really comes, I think, to no more than this [that] because Ilarelay must have been her maiden name had she lived in the 16th century, it was. therefore, her name in the 1 1th." The matter, however, of "Janet Barclay" whether "widow" or "spinster" is likely to be thrashed out in the current vol. (vol. ix) of " The QtntaXogitt, N.S., in which one article on the subject, by Mr. J. Horace Round, has already (Jan. 1S93) appeared. Without in any way attempting to (/isprove the Barclay descent, the following objections to it, of a negative as well as a positive kind, may be considered (1) the absence of any proof of the marriage of Christian, nei Mcnteith, with Sir David (or any other) Barclay by whom she could be mother of Janet. (2j the attestation ilit f/istrum de pGHMitre, vol. ii, p. 230j of Thomas Bisset in 1-137. sometime servitor to Sir Thomas Krskine and Dame Janet his wife, to the effect that he had frequently heard that the said Janet was the mother (by a former husband " the bust Sir David Barclay, of Brechin "), of [Margaret] the Countess of Athole [heiress of Brechin] the mother of David Stewart. This important testimony, given by one likely to be well acquainted with the facts of the case 1 which makes it impossible that Janet should be the da. of Sir 1 >avid Barclay the elder, who in the pedigree next above is made her h irsbttud's father) is rejected altogether by Mr. Halleti, chiefly, apparently, on the ground that as Janet was the wife of Sir Thomas de Krskine in 1868 [Stg, M<"J. $iff-. p. ti l), she could not have been the relict of rt( lust Sir David Barclay of Brechin, who was alive in 1371 (b'.cch. Hulls, ii. 894), tho' dead in 1373 (/I). 133). The identity, however of the '• David Barclay," Deputy of the Sheriff of Fife, to whom a payment is made in 1371, with "Sir David Barclay " [of Bicchin]. the wardship of whose da. and h. was in 1373 granted to Sir Thomas Krskine, is, tho' very probable, not conclusive, when opposed to contradictory evidence. The pedigree of Barclay is very hazy. The last Sir David of Brechin is generally made ton of the Sir David, who m. the heiress of Bivchin. yet he mention Sir David Barclay and Sir Alexander Lindsay, as his uncles, that it seems more probable, tl.nl his mother SV7U a Bister to the said Alexander and his father a brother of the said David, he himself being (consequently) grandson (not son) of the Sir David who nt.the heiressof Brechin [L'.r infornt.'. Lindsay]. Another David Barclay is alluded to [" Atltenmum," 3 July 1889, sub "The Exch. Bolls of Scotland] as existing in 137S [rrctins. 1358), and as being " the representative of a collateral line then rising into importance " ; (3) the descent of the estate of Synton from the family of Keith (who acquired it by marriage with Isabella of Synton) to that of Krskine (by whom it, or, at all events, the superiority of it) was held as late as 1620, indicates a descent from Keith, which (as before stated) is incompatible with one from Barclay: (4) That Christian Keith, stated in the old family pedigrees to have been da. of Helen of Mar. married Sir Robert de Krskine is proved by a charter of Robert II. [Mar evidence, 1 S7. p. 3S1 ] ; (f.) That Janet, called Janet Barclay, da, of Christian Keith, married Sir Thomas Krskine and was mother of Robert, retourcd Karl of Mar, is asserted by the old [rival] pedigrees [Mar evidence, 1885, Xo. 3]. Mir. V. A. Lindsay adds (letter 24 Jan. 1893). " I cannot prove the parentage of Christian and Janet as independent facts, outside their being links in the course of heirship The line stated ill the old pedigree exactly accounts for the heirship to the [Countess] Isabella. It has not been denied or disproved and it is corroborated by the new Monteith-evidenee which Burnett found in the Exchequer Bolls i; [See Mar minutes, 1S85, part 3]. It satisfied the committee ; and the Preamble [to the [Mar restitution Q 2