Amongst other celebrated persons who had the honour of being enrolled
amongst the ancestors of Sir Thomas Urquhart are Pothina, a niece of
Lycurgus; Æquanima, the sister of Marcus Coriolanus; Diosa, the daughter
of Alcibiades; and Tortolina, the daughter of King Arthur. It is
observable that for a good many generations immediately preceding the
author's time, the ladies who figure in the genealogy are of
comparatively lowly birth--seldom, indeed, do they reach the rank of
an earl's daughter. Either the supply of princesses was by this time
somewhat exhausted, or the demands of the Urquharts were less
exorbitant. The high-spirited character of the most remarkable scion of
the family who drew up the genealogy forbids us to think that, with the
lapse of time, they had suffered any diminution of courage. It rather
seems as though the world had entered upon a less heroic stage. Perhaps,
like Sir Thomas Browne in a later age, they had concluded that "it was
too late to be ambitious, for the great mutations of the world were
acted."
[Illustration: SCULPTURED STONE AT KINBEAKIE HOUSE]
In the time of Vocompos (A.D. 775) a further change took place in the
arms of the Urquharts, which gave them their final form. "Vocompos," we
learn, "was the first in the world that had the bears' heads to his
arms, being induced to exchange, by the instigation of King Solvatius,
his arms of three lions' heads, for the three bears' heads, razed,
because of the great exploit, in presence of the King, done by him and
his two brothers, in killing, one morning, three wild bears, in the
Caledonian forrest: the supporters were also changed into two
greyhounds: the crest and impress remaining still the same as it was
since the days of Astioremon."[188]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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