A very amusing reference to this book of Sir Thomas Urquhart's is to be found in the Decisions of the Court of Session, under date of 23rd to 25th January, 1706.[197] In that year an action was brought by the Earl of Sutherland against the Earls of Crawford, Errol, and Marischal, to determine the question of precedency in the rolls of Parliament. The pursuer asserted that he was lineally descended from an Earl of Sutherland living in 1275, while his opponents' ancestors were not Earls till about 1399. The pursuer laid stress upon the fact that, in 1630, a formal inquiry into this matter had been held at Inverness, and that the decision had been in his favour. The persons who conducted the inquiry were, he said, of undoubted credit, and well versed in the particulars investigated, and "might have had good information from old men and writs, which in the course of time and through accidents had long disappeared." The advocate for the defenders replied that the "Chancellor of the Inquest" had been Sir Thomas Urquhart, who might have traced the pursuer's descent from Noah, as he had deduced his own genealogy from Adam, and that the decision arrived at was of no more value than "his fanciful derivation of his own pedigree. For the members of the Inquest seemed to have sworn rashly upon matters of greater antiquity than they could certainly know." "It is true," was the pursuer's reply, "the defender in his gaiety objects against Sir Thomas Urquhart as an ill genealogist; and it is owned that his derivation from Adam and Noah was fantastic enough, and indeed but lusus ingenii; but, after all, the defender's criticism will not hinder him to pass for a most knowing gentleman." The case was decided in favour of the Earl of Sutherland, so far as some of his contentions were concerned. But it is somewhat curious that his advocate overlooked the fact that the Sir Thomas Urquhart of 1630, who had been the "Chancellor of the Inquest," was not the author of the book containing the genealogy of the Urquharts, but that it was written by his son. It is quite possible, however, that it was a matter of notoriety that the elder Sir Thomas had been a believer in the long pedigree which his more famous son had, years after, elaborated and published.[198]
[175] The full title of the work is as follows:—ΠΑΝΤΟΧΡΟΝΟΧΑΝΟΝ: or, A Peculiar PROMPTUARY of TIME; Wherein (not one instant being omitted since the beginning of motion) is displayed A most exact Directory for all particular Chronologies in what Family soever: And that by deducing the true Pedigree and Lineal descent of the most ancient and honourable name of the VRQVHARTS, in the house of Cromartie, since the Creation of the world, until this present yeer of God, 1652. London, Printed for Richard Baddeley, and are to be sold at his shop, within the Middle-Temple-Gate, 1652.
[176] Works, p. 151.
[177] Works, p. 152.
[178] Ibid. p. 152.
[179] Poor Sir Thomas thought that he was going back to the beginning when he traced his descent up to Adam, or, to be more exact, to the red earth of which the "protoplast" was made. The late Charles Darwin carried back the pedigree of man a prodigious length, though he lowered its quality. There can be little doubt that our author would have disdained to accept what used to be called "the lower animals" as, in any sense, ancestors of mankind, or, at any rate, of the dignified family of Urquhart.
[180] Works, p. 156.
[181] In one respect, at any rate, we have legitimate ground of triumph over our ancestors—we spell better than they did. Charles Lamb once lent a volume of the old dramatists to a friend, and asked him his opinion of it. The reply was that it contained a considerable amount of bad spelling! The name Urquhart, as thus written, occurs here in Sir Thomas's "Pedigree," and is, doubtless, the correct form of the name. In the Latinised shape of Urquhardus it occurs on the register of the University of Aberdeen, at which our author studied. Yet Urchard seems to have been
"The name our valiant Knight
To all his challenges did write."
The unbridled licence in the matter of spelling prevalent at that period is still further illustrated by the historian Gordon, who wrote the History of Scots Affairs, and who gives us the name in the form of Wrqhward! This, one would think, was as far as it was possible to get in the way of bad spelling, without altogether taking leave of the sounds to be expressed by alphabetical signs. After it the spelling Wrwhart, as we find it in an Act of Parliament of 1663, seems rather poor.