The Sterling genealogy

%f)t Hetr SLine
V £1IR WILLIAM DE STRIVELING, KNIGHT (1270-
/^ 1295). Third son of John de Striueling of Ochiltree.
He witnesed a charter by William Gourlay to the Abbey
of Melrose in the year 1293, and with Sir John de Striveling, his
brother, he witnessed a charter by William de Kinmonde to the
Abbey of Cambuskenneth. Sir James Balfour, in his Blazons, says
that in the year 1292 " Sir William Stirling, parted per fesse,
sable and or, three buckles of the last on the first."
Several seals belonging to persons of the name of Stirling
are appended to the Deeds of Homage, commonly called the Ragman
Rolls, which were exacted by Edward I of England from the
Scottish Barons in 1292 and 1296, and are preserved in the
Chapter House, Westminster.
Willelmus de Strevelin has a shield of arms, on a chief, three
buckles, supported by two lions. Jehan de Striveline, chevalier,
bears the same coat as already shown.
Johannes de Stirvelyn bears six mullets. He was Sir John
Striveline of Moray, chief of the family of Strivelings which
settled in Moray. Alexander de Striveling acquired lands there
before 1234, by marriage with a daughter of Ereskin de Kerdale,
a near relative of the great family of Moravia, and Sir John was
probably the son of that marriage. The mullets borne by him were
the arms of the Moray family, and either through the inter-
marriage of his father, or from his being a vassal of that family,
he had assumed the mullets as arms of alliance or dependence.
The origin of the buckles, which have for so long a period
been the chief Stirling arms, has not been ascertained. Buckles,
clasps, and rings in heraldry " represent power and authority in
the bearers, as also an acknowledgment of a dependence of sov-