or whether any of them were descended from the noble Scottish family of Sinclair, as there was a whole clan of that name in Scotland. The Andrew (Anders) Sinclar above-mentioned may have belonged to that family, from which also the various Swedish noble families of that name are said to have derived their origin. Francis (Frants) Sinclar was the first of that name who was raised, in 1649, to the order of Swedish knighthood and nobility. (See Stjernman's "Register of Swedish Knighthood and Nobility," part i., pp. 425, 516, and 710, and p. 22, part iii.) The Scottish noble family of Sinclair or St. Clair is of Norman origin, but it came originally from St. Clair in France, whence William St. Clair--a son of Walter, Earl of St. Clair, and Margaret, daughter of Richard, Duke of Normandy--emigrated in the twelfth century to Scotland, where he acquired extensive lands in Midlothian. The possessions of his descendants increased considerably under the munificence of the Kings of Scotland, especially during the reign of Robert Bruce, and embraced at last the baronies of Roslyn, Pentland, Cowsland, Catcune, and others. One of the same William St. Clair's descendants in a direct line--namely, Henry St. Clair (de Sancto Claro)--was in 1379 made, by King Hakon VI. of Norway, Jarl or Earl of the Orkney Islands, which were then under the suzerainty of the kingdom of Norway, and his family held that dignity until the year 1471, when by an Act of Parliament the Orkney Islands were annexed to the Scottish Crown, and in compensation for the same, William St. Clair, then Earl of Orkney and Earl of Caithness, received from King James III. the Castle of Ravensheuch, of which the ruins, still in existence, belong to the Earls of Roslyn, who represent a branch of the St. Clair family. According to Stjernman, the Earl of Orkney (_vide_ "Catalogus Comitum Orcadensium" in the "Orkneyinga Saga," Havniæ, 1780) used as his motto the word "Fight." As adherents of the House of Stuart, the St. Clair family lost its lands and was obliged to wander in exile. As is well known, Walter Scott has described the tragical fate of the family in the sixth canto of his "Lay of the Last Minstrel." The family is, however, widely spread in Scotland, and the noble Swedish family of the same name is said to be descended from the St. Clairs of Freswick and Dunbeath. Although there is no historical certainty that George Sinclair, who fell at Kringlen, was also descended from the noble Scotch family of St. Clair, yet it is very probable that such was the case.