[6] The earliest mention of Lord Oliphant is around the Tournai marble tombstone of Sir William Olifard's effigy in Aberdalgie Church, which itself has been dated to circa 1365 and reads: "Hic jacet Dominus Willielmus de Olyphant, Dominus de Aberdalgy, qui obiis Quinto Die Mensis Februarir, millesimo tricentesimo vigesimo nono, Orate" which translates as "Here lies Lord William Olyphant, Lord of Aberdalgy, who died 5th February 1329."

[8] Thereafter, the monks of Pluscarden record that in 1408, two brothers of Lord Oliphant,[9] William and Arthur, had assisted in the murder of Sir Patrick Graham, Earl of Strathearn.

[10] Walter Bower, who continued John of Fordun's chronicles is also cited to have made reference to the same incident circa 1408.

The interim lack of any mention of a Lord Oliphant can be explained by Laurence’s father having died young in a feud between the Ogilvies and the Lindsays at Arbroath in 1445 and Laurence's grandfather William, although retoured heir to his father in 1417, spending some twenty years, being most of his adult life, imprisoned in England in the Tower of London from 1424, where he either died or did so within a year of his release,[7] which precluded either from having the opportunity to have acted politically or on record as Lord Oliphant.

Sir Lawrence (sic) Oliphant was acknowledged as a Lord of Parliament under King James II and the first mention of him as Lord Oliphant was in July 1455, a month after he reached his majority, indicating that he had become eligible to inherit it then, rather than that it had been created instanto.

[7] The principle of law, that a Peerage of Scotland of unknown origin shall be presumed to be limited to the heirs male of the body of the Grantee, had not been established by a decision or otherwise in the seventeenth Century; and Laurence Oliphant, 5th Lord Oliphant, having no son but having a daughter Anne who became the wife of Sir James I Douglas of Mordington, by a Procuratory of Resignation resigned his Peerage in favour of Patrick Oliphant his heir male, desiring to ensure the continuance of his Dignity in the male line of his family.

The Lords of Session found that as her father and his predecessors had held and enjoyed the Dignity, such enjoyment and use, there being no Writ to show an entail, were sufficient to transmit the Lordship title to the heirs female; but that the Procuratory of Resignation, although the King had not conferred the Honour in conformity with it, had denuded Lord Oliphant of the Peerage and had barred all claims to it.

The reason for the anomaly was probably political, in that Sir James Douglas (the first Lord Mordington) was brother of the powerful Earl of Angus.

In fact since the Act of Union in 1707 it was no longer the right of a peer to nominate his successor in the manner thereto.

He sat and voted as Lord Oliphant at the General Election of Peers in 1761[6] and died at Great Pulteney Street in London on Sunday, 27 October 1770.