birlthegroat

Updated: June 23, 2025

The law is my vocation in an especial, and, I may say, in an hereditary way, my vocation; for although I have not the honour to belong to any of the great families who form in Scotland, as in France, the noblesse of the robe, and with us, at least, carry their heads as high, or rather higher, than the noblesse of the sword, for the former consist more frequently of the 'first-born of Egypt, yet my grandfather, who, I dare say, was a most excellent person, had the honour to sign a bitter protest against the Union, in the respectable character of town-clerk to the ancient Borough of Birlthegroat; and there is some reason shall I say to hope, or to suspect? that he may have been a natural son of a first cousin of the then Fairford of that Ilk, who had been long numbered among the minor barons.

Sir Walter Scott - Redgauntlet