372 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



for hundreds of years by the various families of Turnbull of Bedrule, 

 of Know, of St. Bathan's, of Strickatb.ro, of Smiddicbill, of Currie, 

 and others.* Yet, ancient as these arms were, there seems to have 

 been, nearer to the time of Robert Bruce, a still older coat, which 

 was charged with one bull's head only. On a buttress of Jedburgh 

 Abbey — approximating in point of date, it would seem, to the time I 

 have named — is a shield bearing one bull's head only ; and Nlsbet, in 

 his work on heraldry, f says : " The name of Turnbull carried Argent, 

 a bull's head erased sable, of late three of them, disposed two and 

 one ; " and then, after repeating the origin of the name, which he 

 says before was Ruel, and laying the scene in the Forest of Stirling 

 (in which Callander, traditionally said to be the place where it 

 occurred, was), he adds : — " I have seen the armorial seal of Turnbull 

 of Minto appended to a charter of his of the date 1455, wbich had 

 only one bull's head, and that cabossed. Of late those of this name 

 multiply the heads to three." Mr. Turnbull's arms of Abbey St. 

 Bathan's are : — " Per chevron, argent and sable, three bull's heads 

 erased, counter changed." 



The earliest form of the crest, as borne by the family of Bed rule, 

 is not known, but it seems to have been always, in some form or 

 other, the bull's head. The oldest in the Lyon Office is that of 

 Turnbull of Know (1672), and it was " a bull's head cabossed, sable." 

 Mr. Turnbull's of Abbey St. Bathan's is "a dexter hand fessways, 

 couped, holding a dagger erect, proper, hilted, and pommelled or, 

 bearing on the point thereof a bull's head erased, sable." It can be 

 traced back for one hundred and fifty years. Of the origin of his 

 striking motto, which so singularly confirms the old tradition — 

 31 fiabctl t|)e Mints; — Mr. Turnbull knows nothing, except that he finds 

 it on silver plate from 100 to 150 years old, so that it is at least no 

 new assumption. 



* I have not thought it worth while to allude to the suppositions of some 

 that the family of Turnbull were derived from Robertus de Tremblage, whose 

 name appears on the " Ragman's Roll " — that is, the list of those Scots who 

 swore submission to Edward I. of England in the years 1292-96 and 1297. 

 Robert de Tremblage took the oath of allegiance on July 28th, 1296, at Elgin. 

 A member of such a family was not very likely to have so soon afterwards 

 received a grant of land from Robert Bruce : the supposition is unsupported by 

 any evidence whatever ; and the Tremblages, living in Fifeshire, Forfarshire, or 

 Kincardine, were most remote from the country in which so shortly afterwards 

 the Turnbull family flourished. 



t Nisbet's " System of Heraldry," p. 340, and 2nd ed., 1804, p. 332. 



