Publications of the Clan Lindsay Society - Electric Scotland

226 NOTKS AND COMMENTS.
with an amount of proof tliat is seldom attained in
genealogy. All tlie Lindsays who had the right to
coat armour bore the conmion device as little obscured
as might be by the necessary difTerences. Even those
among them who were hewers of wood and drawers
of water were, very probably, what they themselves
claimed to be, cadets of the landed families. Where-
ever such landed families had been settled there are
to be found to-day—and the fact was more distinct a
century ago — colonies of Lindsays of the humbler
sort ; yet never were these in such numbers as to give
countenance to the supposition that the name was
often assumed by those who had not been born to it.
Moreover, notwithstanding their wide geographical
distribution and the absence of any binding obligation
to that effect, there is good evidence to show that all
the Lindsays acknowledged the head of the eldest line
as chief, even those who held their lands as vassals of
another overlord, or those who found it necessary to
put themselves under the protection of a nearer
potentate ; and tliey are often found rendering mutual
aid to one another, apparently for the sake of the
common blood. If actual kinship, then, and the
practical acceptance of the obligations arising there-
from were sufficient to make them so, the Lindsays
were a clan. At the same time it cannot be said that
they were so associated as to present in their associa-
tion others of the main characteristics of the clan
system. The head of the house, for example, never
was and never could be required by the Government
to be answerable for all of his name. Admitting this,
and granting that the term when applied to the
Lindsays generally must be given a limited meaning,