The family of Burnett of Leys, with collateral - Electric Scotland

ARMS of Burnett of Leys.
APPENDIX. 289
XXXVIII.
IN 1673 Sir Thomas Burnett of Leys registered Argent, three holly leaves in
chief vert and a hunting horn in base sable, garnished gules. These arms were
registered in compliance with an Act of the Scots Parliament of date 1672,
ordaining all the nobility and gentry of Scotland to register their armorial bearings
in the book of the Lord Lyon. This Act of Parliament was passed in consequence
of the destruction of the Lyon Registers, between 1542 and 1672, but the same
arms were borne by the family long before its date. Seton's Scottish Heraldry.
These bearings are cut in stone at Crathes, impaled with Hamilton, 1553,
and impaled with Gordon of Lesmore, 1596. They are also found in the interior
of the castle on the stone pendants of the dining hall, and carved in wood on
various articles of furniture of the same dates.
At Muchalls the same appear with supporters a man in a lowland hunting
garb and a greyhound in plaster, being the arms of Sir Thomas Burnett, who
finished Muchalls in 1627. On a stone brought from Muchalls, and now at
Crathes, the same arms appear impaled with those of Moncrieff of Moncrieff, and
with the same supporters. Sir Thomas Burnett, ist Baronet, married, as his
second wife, Jean, daughter of Sir John Moncrieff of that ilk, in 1621.
These supporters were not recorded in the matriculation of 1673, but in 1838
another entry was made by Sir Thomas Burnett, then of Leys, in which they
were blazoned " Dexter a highlander in a hunting garb holding in his exterior
" hand a bow, and on the sinister a greyhound all proper." In the matriculation
it is stated as the reason for granting supporters, that Sir Thomas had
"established his claim to supporters as the male representative of one of the
"minor barons of Scotland prior to the year one thousand five hundred and
" eighty-seven."
The reason for the substitution of a highlander for a man in a lowland hunting
garb is not very apparent, but we have the authority of Sir George Mackenzie of
Rosehaugh for saying that the highlander was one of the supporters in 1680.
He "
says Thus Burnet carries a hunting horn in his shield, and a High-
"
lander in a hunting garb and grewhounds for his supporters,
to shew that he was
" His Majesties Forrester in that northern forest."
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