xxiv Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. 
armour-bearer and secretary of Eobert the Bruce. He may have 
been the clerk who, in Barbour’s poem, rode along with his master 
from the English Court in London to Lochmaben, which they 
reached on the fifth day. According to another cherished tradition 
of the family, he guarded Bruce during one of the perilous passages 
of his life, when he slept under a hollybush in the Forest of Drum. 
These and other services were rewarded by the charter in 1523 of 
the estate of Drum in free forestry, followed next year by a Charter 
converting the Estate into a barony, both of which still exist amongst 
the muniments of Drum. The arms of the family originally, or at 
least in the oldest form known, as given in Sir David Lyndsay’s 
Register, three holly leaves vert on a field argent, with holly leaves 
for the crest, and the motto, “Sub sole sub umbra virens,” give 
some corroboration to the latter tradition. The Chamberlain Rolls 
of 1329 prove that William de Irvine was Clerk of the Rolls in 
that year — a man of law and letters as well as of arms. 
The subject of this notice was the twentieth in descent from the 
comrade of Bruce, and is said to have been also the twentieth head 
of the family who bore the name of Alexander. 
Another ancestor, “ the strong undoubted Laird of Drum,” died 
fighting with Maclean of Duart for the king against the Highland 
host at the Battle of the Harlaw : — 
“ Glide Sir Alexander Irvine, 
The much renowned Laird of Drum, 
None in his days was better seen 
When they were semblit all and sum. 
“ To praise him we suld not be dumm 
For valour, witt, and worthiness, 
To end his days he there did come, 
Quhois ransom is remeidyless.” 
— Ballad of the Battle of Harlaw, Stanzas xxxix., xl. 
His son received a grant about the year 1420 from the Abbot of 
Arbroath of the lands of Eorglinn and the custody of the Breach 
Bannoch, which entailed the duty of leading the vassals of the Abbey 
when summoned to the royal host. This venerable relic was a 
casket or reliquary — perhaps that still preserved at Monymusk by a 
family whose predecessors at one period held the ofiice of its 
custodier. It was believed to contain a fragment of the last earthly 
