Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 1.djvu/252

 202 COMPLETE PEERAGE argyll General. (*) In 1610 he had, on his resignation, a charter to himself in life rent, and to his s. and h. ap., Archibald, in fee, of his Earldom and hereditary offices. Having expelled the Macdonalds of Kintyre,he obtained a grant of the whole of that Lordship, including the island of Jura, in 1 6 1 7. In 1 61 8, having become a Roman Catholic after his 2nd marriage with a lady of that faith, he served, under Philip III of Spain, against Holland. (") On 16 Feb. 161 8/9, he was formally declared a rebel and traitor at the Market Cross, Edinburgh, which sentence was reversed 22 Nov. 162 1. He »»., istly, 24 July 1592, Agnes, 5th da. of William (Douglas), 8th Earl (") The Precedency of the Earls of Angus, Argyll, Crawford, Erroll and Marischal Over the other Earls [S.] of more ancient creation. As in England, by the ranking of Henry VIII, several of the King's Officers of State were placed {during their tenure of office) at the top of that class of the nobility of which they happened to be members, so in Scotland (on a somewhat similar principle) certain Earls who held high office (though, in some cases, hereditary office) were ranked above other Earls of more ancient creation. The precedency of Angus, above all other Earls, (which apparently was origin- ally one more by privilege than office) had been conferred by James VI, under charter of the Great Seal [S.] in 1602, and, consequently, was ratified four years later at the " Decreet of Ranking " in 1606. (For a fuller account of the precedency of Angus see ante p. 160 note " b. ") In this decreet the 1st place was allotted to Angus, the next to Argyll, and the 3rd, 4th and 5th places, to Crawford, Erroll and Marischal respectively. This was according to " the old established Precedences from Office or Privilege a matter about which much evidence may be gleaned from the Scottish Records. Privilege or office, and not priority of creation was the cause why Angus, Argyle [owing to his office as Justice General], Crawford, Erroll and Marischal, preceded all the other Earls. Next came the two oldest Earls [according to priority of creation, viz.' Sutherland and Mar, the former producing title deeds dating from 1347, the latter from 1395 and 1404. Then followed Rothes, is'c Till the middle of the sixteenth century there seems to have been no recognition of precedency in virtue of priority of creation. In the fifteenth century the idea of the great Earls of Douglas or Crawford yielding the pas to an Earl of older date {e.g. Ross or Sutherland) would have been unintelligible. The right of Angus (who came in the place of Douglas) to bear the Crown and precede all Earls (if not Dukes) was recognized in Pari, in 1592, and by charter of 1599. O" public occasions, when Angus bore the Crown, Argyle, who also held the hereditary office of Justiciary, bore the sceptre ; and, by contemporary evidence, Crawford's privilege of bearing the sword was equally acknowledged. As the Constable [i.e. the Earl of Erroll] and [the Earl] Marischal, were both Commissioners [in the decreet of ranking, in 1606], it would have been strange if their official precedence, often alluded to in the records, had been unrecognised. It was the clashing of the new ideas with the old that had caused the unseemly scenes in Pari., and that led to the appointment of the Commission of 1606. " See an able article on " Jurisdiction in Scottish Peerages, " by George Burnett, sometime Lyon, in the Journal of Juris- prudence, yc, vol. 27 (No. 317), p. 241 and note thereto. ('') It is to this that Alexander Craig refers in his bitter lines, which are quoted in Scot's Staggering State : — " Now Earl of Guile and Lord Forlorn thou goes Quitting thy Prince to serve his foreign foes. " V.G.