Note 182 — The Life of Robert Ker of Kersland, Esq.

It would appear, he was retaken about the end of that year, by the acts of council; and liberate without any conditions: which was a thing uncommon at this time. Vid. Wodrow's history, Vol. {illegible}, page 146.

N. B. It has been thought somewhat strange, that the posterity of such ancient and religious families as this and Earlstoun should be now extinct in their houses and estates. But this needs be no paradox; for the condition of the covenant or promise of property and dignity is,—if thy children will keep my covenant and testimony, their children shall also sit upon thy throne for ever, and shall return unto the Lord thy God, and obey his voice; thy God will bring them unto the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shall possess it. Now the contrary practices must produce the contrary effects: and upon none more remarkable than those who apostatize from the profession, principles and piety of their ancestors. It is said, that Sir Thomas Gordon of Earlstoun fell into a profligate and irreligious life. And for Donald Ker, he fell in with king William, and was killed at the battle of Steinkirk in Flanders, 1692. And for John Crawford (alias Ker) who married his sister, and with her the estate of Kersland, he got a patent to be a rogue, patrem sequitur sua proles, from Queen Ann and her ministry, by virtue of which, he feigned himself sometimes a Jacobite, and sometimes an old dissenter, or Cameronian, (as he calls them) unto whom he gives high encomiums. What correspondences he might have with some of these who had been officers in the Angus regiment I know not; but it is evident from the minute of the general meeting that he was never admitted into the community, or secrets of the genuine old dissenters: for, though he attended one or more of their meetings, yet he was refused, and so could never influence them to publish any of their declarations. But more of this, if the Lord will, elsewhere on another occasion.

The reader will find the above mentioned patent on the frontispiece of his memoirs: And what satisfaction he himself had in this dirty work and wicked courses in the courts interest, as he himself calls it, and how he was by them repaid as he deserved, in these memoirs, from page 31 to 81, &c.