CHAPTER  TV

ROBERT   HUNTER   AND   THE   SETTLEMENT    OF   THE   PALATINES

1710-1719
 

N the 14th of June, 1710, attended by a fieet and army,
General Robert Hunter arrived at New-York, and was
inaugurated with the usual ceremonies. He was among
the most able, and certainly the most scholarly, of all
the colonial governors of New-York, and of ancient and honorable
ancestry, being a descendant of the Hunters of Hunterston, Ayrshire,
Scotland. The families of that name in Scotland are of Norman ex¬
traction. The office held by the original bearers of it is supposed to
have been of the nature of " forester." One Aylmer de la Hunter is
said to have been the progenitor '' of the Hunters of Arneil, designed
of Hunterston and of that ilk." An authority on Scottish heraldry
remarks, in regard to the antiquity of the name, that " Grulielmus
Venator (which I take for Hunter) is a witness
in the charter of erection of the bishopric of
Grlasgow by David I. when he was prince of
Cumberland. In a charter of King Alexander
II., of the lands of Manners to William Badde-
ley, . . . the lands of Norman Hunter are ex¬
empted."-'^ There soon begin to appear two
distinct branches, the Hunters of Polmood in
Peeblesshire, and the Hunters of Hunterston
in Ayrshire. The former line is now extinct.
Of the Hunterston line it is asserted that 'Hhey
appear to have had at least a part of the estate they possess in Cun¬
ningham while the Morvilles were lords of that country, as far back
as the reign of Alexander II." — that is, between the years 1214 and
1249. The tenth in succession in the ownership of Hunterston was
Mungo or Quintegern Hunter, who was the ninth in direct descent
from Norman le Hunter. His grandson, Patrick Hunter, was a mem¬
ber of the committee of war for Ayrshire, in the troublous times un¬
der Charles I. in 1647. His eldest son, Robert Hunter, had four sons,
the youngest of whom became the father of Robert Hunter, the gover-

iNisbet's " System of Heraldry," 1: 332.

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