My cousin John Rees wrote on February 29, 2004:
"I just happened to be sitting at my fireside this afternoon and I stretched my arm out and behold what I found in the first book that came to hand." The following account is from the "book that came to hand": Sir Bernard Burke, Vicissitudes of Families.
Footnotes and Armorial Bearings are from:
This site posted by Robert
Sewell
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The Lairds of Callendar
"The rowan tree grows ower their w’a,
The deer grass in their tower, And the howlet, the bat, and the mowdiwart Are rife in Burd Ellen bower." OLD BALLAD.
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AMONGST the chief historical families of Scotland, few
have risen at various periods to greater power and Higher honours, or have
possessed more extensive estates than the Livingstons, and few have fallen
into more complete and disastrous decay. Acquiring in the male line three
distinct Earldoms, Linlithgow, Callendar,and Newburgh, and two Viscounties,
Kilsyth and Teviot, with numerous Baronies and minor honours, Livingston,
Falkirk, Almond, Kynnaird, Campsie, and Flacraig, they almost rivalled
in feudal power the mighty house of Douglas; but nearly the whole of their
splendid inheritance has disappeared. It is believed that there is not
now a single landed proprietor of the name of Livingston (in the male line),
in the possession of lands in the counties of Linlithgow and Stirling,
where they were once so powerful. The titles of the Earldom of Newburgh,
indeed, still remain, in the person of an Italian princess, naturalized
here, Marie Cecilia Princess Giustiniani, and Marchesa Bandini, to whom
they were adjudged in 1858, by the House of Lords; and the heir of the
Earls of Erroll and Kilmarnock still holds his unattainted earldom, and
his great office of Lord High Constable of Scotland, in virtue of his descent
from Lady Margaret Livingston, his direct ancestress, the only surviving
child of James, Earl of Callendar and Linlithgow (attainted in 1715); but
the whole of the wide-spreading lands and baronies have passed into other
hands.
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