Note 588 — PREFACE (continued 4)

The names of these brethren are very much overlooked by the different Peerage writers of Scotland, in their pedigrees of the Rothes family. The first marriage of George Earl of Rothes with Margaret Crichton, daughter of William Lord Crichton, was declared before 1524 to be uncanonical. But by this lady, "his affidate spouse," he had four sons: the eldest was George, who died unmarried; the others were Norman, William, and Robert. The reader may be referred to the Appendix of Nisbet's Heraldry, vol. ii. p. 141, to explain the grounds upon which the two latter, as heirs-male, were passed over in the succession, at their father's death, in 1558, when Andrew Lesley, the eldest son by subsequent marriage, and who had married a niece of the Governor the Earl of Arran, became Earl of Rothes. Of these two brethren, William is styled in Macfarlane's Genealogical Collections, "Laird of Cairnie, and, (it is added,) as some say, he died without succession." Bishop Lesley, in noticing the death of Norman Lesley in France, in 1554, says, "The King of France, for recompence of his service, received his eldest brodir William in favour, and maid him gentill man of his chalmer."—(History, p. 249.) Knox's words in the text imply that he was alive in 1566. The other brother Robert, is perhaps the same who was admitted an Advocate in the Court of Session, in May 1537. He settled in Morayshire, in the parish of Spynie, and became founder of the Fendrassie family. He married Janet Elphingstone, a daughter of Robert Lord Elphingstone, and left three sons and two daughters. An inscription, in Latin verse, in the Cathedral Church of Elgin, while it commemorates their virtues and attachment, records that he and his wife were interred in the same grave.—(Monteith's Theatre of Mortality, p. 222, Edinb., 1713, 8vo.)