From the time of Malcolm Canmore, in the year 1065, until the fourteenth century, the family of De Mar enjoyed this Earldom; but on the death of Thomas, the thirteenth Earl of Mar, in 1377, the direct male line of this race ended. The Earldom then devolved upon the female representatives of the house of De Mar; and thence, as in most similar instances in Scotland, it became the subject of contention, fraud, and violence.
Isabel, Countess of Mar and Garioch, the last of the De Mar family, was won in marriage by a singular and determined species of courtship, formerly common in Scotland; the influence of terror. The heiress of the castle of Kildrummie, and a widow, her first husband, Sir Malcolm Drummond, having died in 1403, her wealth and rank attracted the regards of Alexander Stewart, the natural son of Robert Earl of Buchan, of royal blood. Without waiting for the ordinary mode of persuasion to establish an interest in his favour, this wild, rapacious man appeared in the Highlands at the head of a band of plunderers, and planting himself before the castle of Kildrummie, stormed it, and effected a marriage between himself and the Countess of Mar. Alexander Stewart, in cooler moments, however, perceived the danger of this bold measure, and resolved to establish his right to the Countess and to her estates by another process. One morning, during the month of September 1404, he presented himself at the Castle gate of Kildrummie, and formally surrendered to the Countess the castle, its furniture, and the title-deeds kept within its chests; thus returning them to her to do with them as she pleased. The Countess, on the other hand, holding the keys in her hand, and declaring herself to be of "mature advice," chose the said Alexander for her husband, and gave him the castle, the Earldom of Mar, with all the other family estates in her possession. She afterwards conferred these gifts by a charter, signed and sealed in the open fields, in the presence of the Bishop of Ross, and of her whole tenantry, in order to show that these acts were produced by no unlawful coercion on the part of her husband. The said honours and estates were also to descend to any children born in that marriage. Some of her kindred listened resentfully to the account of these proceedings of Isabel of Mar.
The next heir to the Earldom, after the death of Isabel, was Janet, grand-daughter of Gratney, eleventh Earl of Mar. This lady had married Sir Thomas Erskine, the proprietor of the Barony of Erskine, on the Clyde, the property of the family during many ages; and she expected, on the death of the Countess of Mar, to succeed to the honours which had descended to her by the female line. By a series of unjust and rapacious acts on the part of the Crown, not only did Robert, Lord Erskine, her son, fail in securing his rights, but her descendants had the vexation of seeing their just honours and rights revert to the King, James the Third, who bestowed them first upon his brother, the accomplished and unfortunate John Earl of Mar, who was bled to death in one of the houses of the Canongate, in Edinburgh; and afterwards, upon Cochrane, the favourite of James the Third. The Earldom of Mar was then conferred on Alexander Stewart, the third son of King James; and after his death, upon James Stewart, Prior of St. Andrews, who had a charter from his sister, Queen Mary, entitling him to enjoy the long contested honour. But he soon relinquished the title, to assume that of Moray, which had also been bestowed upon him by the Queen: and in 1565 Mary repaired the injustice committed by her predecessors, and restored John Lord Erskine to the Earldom of Mar.
The house of Erskine, on whom these honours now descended, has the same traditional origin as that of most of the other Scottish families of note. In the days of Malcolm the Second, a Scottish man having killed with his own hand Enrique, a Danish general, presented the head of the enemy to his Sovereign, and, holding in his hand the bloody dagger with which the deed had been performed, exclaimed, in Gaelic, "Eris Skyne," alluding to the head and the dagger; upon which the surname of Erskine was imposed on him. The armorial bearing of a hand holding a dagger, was added as a further distinction, together with the motto, Je pense plus, in allusion to the declaration of the chieftain that he intended to perform even greater actions than that which procured him the name which has since been so celebrated in Scottish history. The crest and motto are still borne by the family.
This anecdote has, however, been rejected for the more probable conjecture that the family of Erskine derived its appellation from the estate of Erskine on the Clyde:[7] yet it is not impossible but that tradition may, in most cases, have a deeper source than we are willing to allow to it. "There are few points in ancient history," observes a modern writer, "on which more judgment is required than in the amount of weight due to tradition. In general it will be found that the tradition subsisting in the families themselves has a true basis to rest upon, however much it may be overloaded with collateral matter which obscures it."[8]
But that which ennobled most truly the first Earl of Mar, of the house of Erskine, was his own probity, loyalty, and patriotism. Destined originally to the church, John, properly sixth Earl of Mar, carried into public life those virtues which would have adorned the career of a private individual. In the melancholy interest of Queen Mary's eventful life, it is consolatory to reflect on the integrity and moderation of this exemplary nobleman. Too good and too sensitive for his times, he died of a broken heart, the result of that inward and incurable sorrow which the generous and the honest experience, when their hopes and designs are baffled by the selfish policy of their own party. "He was, perhaps," says Robertson, "the only person in the kingdom who could have enjoyed the office of Regent without envy, and have left it without loss of reputation."[9]
From the restoration of John Earl of Mar to his family honours, until the reign of Charles the First, the prosperity of this loyal and favoured family increased, interrupted indeed by some vicissitudes of fortune, but by no serious reverses, until that period which, during the commotions of the Great Rebellion, reduced many of our proudest nobility to comparative poverty.
Among other important trusts enjoyed by the family of Erskine, the government of the Castle of Edinburgh, and the custody of the principal forts in the kingdom, attested the confidence of their Sovereigns. To these was added by Mary Queen of Scots, the command of the Castle of Stirling, and the still more important charge of her infant son. To these marks of confidence numerous grants of lands and high appointments succeeded,—obligations which were repaid with a fidelity which impoverished the family of Erskine; and which produced, towards the close of the seventeenth century, a marked decline in their fortunes, and decay of their local influence.
John, ninth Earl of Mar, the grandfather of the Jacobite Earl, suffered severely for his loyalty in joining the association at Cumbernauld, in favour of Charles the First. He afterwards raised forces at Brae-Mar for the King's service, for which he was heavily fined by the Parliament, and his estates were sequestrated. During all this season of adversity he lived in a cottage at the gate of his house at Alloa, until the Restoration relieved him from the sequestration.
His son Charles, who raised the first regiment of Scottish Fusileers, and was constituted their Colonel, began life as a determined Royalist; but disapproving of the measures of James the Second, he had prepared to go abroad when the Prince of Orange landed in England. He appears afterwards to have pursued somewhat of the same wavering course as that of which his son has been accused, and, joining the disaffected party against William, he was arrested, but afterwards released. The heavy incumbrances upon his estates, contracted during the civil wars, were such as to oblige him to sell a great portion of his lands, and to part with the ancient Barony of Erskine, the first possession of the family. This necessity may almost be considered as an ill omen for the future welfare of a family; which never seems to be so utterly brought low by fortune, as when compelled to consign to strangers that from which the first sense of importance and stability has been derived.