History of the Johnstones, 1191-1909, with ... - Electric Scotland

THE
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PREFACE.
eminent genealogist, Mr Fleming, O.C., asserted in the House of
Lords that no pedigree ever compiled was not capable of alteration
or additions, and although many thousands of original documents in
the Register House of Edinburgh, the Record Office in London, several
private charter chests, the Hotel des Archives in Paris, and MSS. in the
British Museum had been examined before this book was begun fresh in-
formation is constantly being produced. Many families have never troubled
about their antecedents or kept any family letters or family Bibles ; others
have sent no reply to inquiries ; and if nothing has brought any member
of these families prominently before the public, it is a work of too much
time and labour to find out anything but their names.
Twelve hundred registered documents were presented to the House of
Lords concerning the Johnstone family by the claimants of the Annandale
"Peerages in 1876-81 ;
'
but
the main object of this book is to show that,
besides the acknowledged heir through females — Mr Hope Johnstone of
Annandale — the ancient Johnstoun chiefs are still represented in the male
line.
By the insertion of family letters and domestic details in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries it is hoped that a more agreeable impression
of the civilisation of Scotland— at least in Dumfriesshire— may be suggested,
than has been gathered from some of the descriptions which have appeared
in modern times of the manners and customs of that period.
The different ways of spelling the name are of no consequence. In the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries phonetic spelling was in vogue. Brougham
is spelt Brume ; Tollemache, Talmash ; Graham,
Graeme ; and
Johnstone in