About 1606 a dispute arose between the Earls Marischal and Errol in regard to the functions of their respective offices of marischal and constable. Both claimed the privilege of keeping the keys of the houses of parliament, but on 2 July it was declared that the guarding of the outer bar ‘appertains to the lord constable,’ and that ‘the keeping and guarding of the inner bar appertains to the marischal’ (Reg. P. C. Scotl. vii. 221). On a complaint by the Earl of Errol in July 1607 it was further declared that the guarding of the inner bar, and of all within the gates and bars, belongs to the marischal (ib. p. 424).
On 21 Jan. following the earl and his son William, lord Keith, were charged under pain of rebellion to appear before the council on the 26th, on account of certain cartels and challenges written by Lord Keith's footman at their command, and sent to Francis, son of the Earl of Caithness (ib. viii. 38), but the matter appears ultimately to have been arranged satisfactorily. On 14 March 1609 the earl was nominated one of the assessors for the trial of Lord Balmerino (ib. p. 257). He was also chosen on 6 June of the same year the king's commissioner to the Scottish parliament, in room of the deceased Earl of Montrose. On the reconstruction of the Scottish privy council in February 1610 the Earl Marischal was one of the nominated members (ib. p. 815), and he was also about the same time chosen a member of the new court of ecclesiastical commission for the diocese of St. Andrews (Calderwood, vii. 58). When the courts were formed into one in 1615 he became a member of the new court (ib. p. 205), and he was continued a member when the commission was renewed in ampler form on 29 June 1619. In his later years he retired, like his grandfather, to his castle of Dunnottar, where he died on 2 April 1623. He kept himself honourably aloof from political intrigues, and his liberality in founding Marischal College, Aberdeen, proves his patriotism. He was buried in St. Bride's Church, now called Dunnottar. On 30 June a very eulogistic funeral oration was pronounced on him in Marischal College, Aberdeen, by William Ogston, professor of moral philosophy in the college. The earl was twice married. By his first wife, Margaret, daughter of Alexander, fifth lord Home, he had one son, William, sixth earl Marischal [q. v.], and two daughters (1) Anne married to William, second earl of Morton, (2) Margaret, to Sir Robert Arbuthnott of Arbuthnott. By his second wife, Margaret, daughter of James, sixth lord Ogilvy of Airly, he had two sons, James and John.
The earl's portrait, by Jamesone, is in the university of Aberdeen.
[Oratio Funebris, 1623; Lachrimæ Academiæ Marischallanæ, 1623; Fasti Mariscallanæ (New Spalding Club); Calderwood's History of the Church of Scotland; Moysie's Memoirs (Bannatyne Club); Sir James Melville's Memoirs (Bannatyne Club); Hist. of James the Sext (Bannatyne Club); Reg. P. C. Scotl. iii–viii.; P. Buchan's Ancient and Noble Family of Keith; Douglas's Scottish Peerage (Wood), ii. 193–4.]
KEITH, GEORGE (1639?–1716), ‘Christian quaker’ and Anglican missionary, was born about 1639 in Scotland, probably in Aberdeenshire, but not at Aberdeen (Barclay, Truth Triumphant, 1692, p. 588). Educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, where he graduated M.A., he was a class-fellow of Gilbert Burnet [q. v.] in the period 1653–7. He was a good mathematician, and an oriental scholar. On leaving college he became tutor and chaplain in a noble family. Designed for the presbyterian ministry, but apparently not ordained, he adopted the tenets of the quakers, first promulgated in the Aberdeenshire district towards the end of 1662 by William Dewsbury [q. v.] There is nothing to show how he was drawn to quakerism; the date of his ‘conviction’ is almost coincident with the restoration of episcopacy in the Aberdeen diocese. In 1664 he went on a mission to quakers at Aberdeen, and was imprisoned for ten months in the tolbooth. Nevertheless in 1665 he attempted to address the assembled congregation at ‘the great place of worship,’ probably St. Nicholas's Church, Aberdeen, when he was knocked down by the bell-ringer. For preaching in the graveyard at Old Deer, Aberdeenshire, he was locked in the ‘thieves-hole,’ a windowless dungeon. In 1669 he was a prisoner in the tolbooth at Edinburgh.
After the adhesion of Robert Barclay (1648–1690) [q. v.] to quaker principles in 1667, Keith exercised an important influence in shaping the phraseology of the future apologist, and providing him with illustrative materials for his great work. Even the substance of Barclay's doctrine shows traces of the christology of Keith, who had adopted from Postel the idea of a strong distinction between the celestial and the earthly Christ. Keith was probably the author of the English translation (1674) of Pocock's ‘Philosophus Autodidactus,’ from which he supplied Barclay with the story of Hai Ebn Yokdan (Apology, prop. v. vi. § 27). On 14 Feb. 1675 he took part with Barclay at an open-air discussion ‘in Alexander Harper his close,’ Aberdeen, when Barclay's ‘theses,’ the substratum of his ‘Apology,’ were defended
