Publications of the Clan Lindsay Society - Electric Scotland

THE LAIRDS OF DOWHILL. 267
A coiitribiitloii to the uioi-e ultimate taiiiily liistory
is to be found in tiie rccurds of tlie l^rivy Coiiiicil l\>v
tlie year 1084 in the 8lia[)e of a cninphiint by the
children of the Bishop to the follow ing- etiect :
"Their father died in April 1G79, when the eldest of
them was under nine years old, having appointed
Katherine Skene, their mother, his solo executrix and
intromitter with his goods, extending to 17,000 nierks
or thereby, conform to an inventory produced, he
having no heritage or heritable sums whatsoever, and
having commended the support and education of the
said children to her, and to provide portions to them
out of his means according as they should behave
dutifully to her. Nevertheless the said Katherine
Skene, forgetting the said trust and her natural
affection to them, shortly after their father's death, put
the complainers, her own children, ' all and everyone
of them out of her family, so that ever since they have
bein entertained and educat upon the charity of freinds,
and without which they hade all certainely been starved;
as also in the latter end of October or beginning of
November last she did marry herselfe to David
Fermour, wreater in Edinburgh, ane old man of sixty
years and upwards, and who is known to be an indigent
and broken man, and hath applyed and resolves to
apply the saids complainers their father's whole meanes
and estate towards the payment of her present husband's
debts, and hath already assigned to him the greatest
part of the deceast Bishop of Dunkeld's estate and
meanes, and is resolved to dispone and assigne the
remainder to him, and thereby to defraud the com-
plainers his children totally of the samen, and to
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