Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 1 Vol 5.djvu/236

 234 MAR. necessary, the End's right of regress being protected by an act of Pari. 2!> July ]pS7-(") His efforts were successful, the vast estate of Kildrummic, which had been alienated to the family of Elpbinstoue, being among the Inndsso recovered. In the course of these proceedings " the Court of Session affirmed in the most solemn manner the validity of the charter of 0 Dec. 1401. and of the retours .if 1438 "( b J The " rank- ing " of the Earldom of M«r was settled (dm ing his lifetime) at the " decreet of rank- ing " in 1006.C--) He was er, 10 June loin, LOUD OF CAEDR08S [S.] with power (*) "This remarkable document" is given "at Very full length" in " A " (vol. i, p. 380, us in note " h." p. 218), as also are the proceedings for the various recoveries. The act (which was long before the act of 1617 as to forty yean being the period of prescription! did awav with anv right of prescription. m See '■ D " as in note " b," p. 218. ( c ) The decreet of the Royal Commissioners in 1600. as to the precedence of Mar. which has never been over ruled by the Court of (Session (the only place at which such award was liable to be challenged) is, according to the edict of James VI. [S.] respect- ing such decreets, " not to be Contravened," A constitutional attempt to upset it was once made but failed, (bit of the ten Earls placed undir M Mar" (who, had the crea- tion been oneof 1505, would have been above him.) no less than six protested against the precedency assigned to him as holding his Earldom "by services of heirs," but this protest was not confirmed by the Court of Session. In the article " D us in note "b," p. 218, it is stated that " except in the case of the five Karls at the head of the list [Angus, Argyle, Crawford, Erroll, and Marischal], who owed their place to office or privilege, the precedence awarded was in strict correspondence with the antiquity of the writs produced. The Earl of Sutherland [the 6th Earldom of this ranking] produced a charter of 1347 ; Mar [the 7th of such Earldoms] one of 1101 [Countess Isabel's charter of December that year], Rothes [the 8th such Earldom], one of 1459, &c, and they were ranked accordingly." The date of 1457 often assigned? as being that of the Earldom (a date which woidd be sufficiently early to place "Mai before " Rothes " was [erroneously] supposed by the present writer (see " Remarks on the Earl of Redesdale's letter, of 1883, on the Earldom of Mar " in Mar- shall's " Genealogist" vol. vii, pp. 145 — 156}, to have been the date acted upon at the decreet of 1606. Mr. Burnett, late Lyon King of Arms (in a letter, d July 1SS3, to G. Vf. Marshall, the then Editor of the Genealogist) points out two serious errors in this article of which he otherwise speaks most favourable, viz. 11) the assumption that the rank of on// of the five Earls, who head the list, was due to anything else but privilege or office, remarking of " Crawford '' (the only one of the five to whom such remark might seem to be inapplicable) that " I think there are sufficient grounds, not exactly those adduced by the late Earl of Crawford* for holding Crawford's position to have been also connected with privilege. In the loth century the Earls of Douglas and Crawford wielded an authority which often overshadowed the Crown and no other Earl could possibly have taken precedence of them on the plea of greater antiquity. The right of Angus (who came in place of Douglas) to bias the Crown and precede all Earls, if not Dukes, was, as your contributor shews, fully recognised by the Crown Only a few years before the decreet ; Argyll, he also allows to rank where he does from privilege or office : the official precedence of [Erroll the] Constable and [of Marischal, the] Marischal is often alluded to in the records, tho' sometimes called in question, but as both were Commissioners, under the remit, it would have been strange if it had been wholly unrecognised. It seems to me evident, in the light of subsequent Court-of -Session proceeding that the ranking bgsenioritg began with Sutherland, whom the Commissioners meant to rank from 1347, and Mar from 139.0 or 1404, 1 would say 1395." (2) as to the assumption (above alluded to) that 1457 (not 1305 or 1404) was the date acted upon in the decreet of 1606. On this, Mr. liurnett remarks (as above) "the position of Meuteith furnishes one of the many disproofs of this [1457] date. Menteith was ranked as of 1460, by the Commissioners, on the strength of <; On 15 May 1457, the retour of Robert (Erskine), Earl of Mar, in 1438, as heir to Isabel, suo jure Countess of Mar, was reduced at the instigation of the Crown con- firmed by net of Pari. 5 Nor. following, but (on the other hand) by charter 23 June 1566 (confirmed, also, by act of Pari. l'J April 1567), the Queen declared the then Lord Erskine to be "as if he stood in the place oj 'his predecessor, Robert, Earl oj r Mar." The date therefore, of ii Nov. 1457 (wdien the above cited act of Pari, was passed) Wits [erroneously] considered by some as tho dato of tho peerage itself.