Earl of Mar

“ I infer, therefore, that it came to your ears after the Earl of Mar had risen in Scotland."
I was leaning upon the mantelpiece, looking down into his face, on which the fire shone with a full light; and just for a moment his face changed, the slightest thing in the world, but enough to assure me that my conjecture was right.
"There are inferences, my good cousin," he said sharply, "which it is not over-prudent for a man so delicately circumstanced as yourself to draw." ”

“ It is impossible that the Earl of Mar could have heard, without deep commiseration, and perhaps remorse, of the peril in which those ill-fated adherents of James were placed, although he may not have anticipated the full severity of the law. In one of his subsequent letters he remarks: "By the news I see the Parliament is to have no mercie on our Preston folks: but I hope God will send them salvation in time." One of his greatest sources of anxiety had been respecting the movements of the Duke of Ormond, upon whose making a diversion in favour of James, in England, Mar had counted. ”

“ 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 his early youth the Earl is declared by historians who were adverse to the Stuarts, to have been initiated into every species of licentious dissipation, by Neville Payne: and the young nobleman is characterized as "the scandal of his name." [11] Although his ancestors had been devotedly attached to the interests of the exiled family, yet, it was to be shewn how far Mar preferred those interests to his own, or upon what principles he eventually adopted the cause of hereditary monarchy, which had already brought so much inconvenience, and so many losses to his father and grandfather. ”

“ On the earl’s death in 1435 the earldom was claimed by Robert, Lord Erskine, as heir of Gratney, earl of Mar, through a daughter; but the Crown claimed as reversionary under the creation of 1426. A long struggle followed, till in 1457 James II. obtained from a justiciary court at Aberdeen a recognition of the Crown’s right to the earldom and its lands, and shortly after bestowed them on his son John as earl of Mar and Garioch. He died unmarried in 1479, and in 1483 his elder brother Alexander duke of Albany received the earldom, but was soon forfeited. ”

“ Upon the death of Queen Anne he joined himself in arms with a general insurrection of the Highlanders and Jacobites, headed by his friend and relative the Earl of Mar.
"Mar, a versatile statesman and an able intriguer, had consulted his ambition rather than his talents when he assumed the command of such an enterprise. He sunk beneath the far superior genius of the Duke of Argyle; and after the undecisive battle of Sheriffmuir, the confederacy which he had formed, but was unable to direct, dissolved like a snow-ball, and the nobles concerned in it were fain to fly abroad. ”

“ The Treaty, retarded by many interests, clashing between nations, but, more especially, by the burning recollections of massacred countrymen in the blood-stained valley of Glencoe, was now brought into discussion just when the Earl of Mar was at that age [Pg 23] when a thirst for gain, or an ambition to rise is unquenched, in general, by disappointment. Differing in one respect from many Cavaliers, in being of a family strictly Protestant, Lord Mar had not the inducement which operated upon the Catholics, in their undiminished, ardent desire to restore the young Prince of Wales to the throne. ”

“ Other evidence, and specially that of the exchequer rolls of Scotland (iii. 600, 634) , points to the date of the earl's death as the end of 1404 or beginning of 1405, probably February 1405. The earl had no issue by his wife, but he had several natural children, Alexander (who became Earl of Mar) [q. v.] ”

“ John Dalyell, who was married to a daughter of Viscount Kenmure, on learning of the arrival of the Earl of Mar in 1715 resigned his commission as captain in the army, and set off immediately to the earl's residence at Elliock, to give the news and obtain the co-operation of the other Jacobite nobles of the south of Scotland. On 27 Aug. the Earl of Carnwath attended the so-called hunting-match convened by the Earl of Mar at Aberdeen, and being summoned to Edinburgh to give bail for his allegiance he disregarded the summons. ”

“ According to Mar, the Earl had orders to sail with the King, ‘who waited on the ship above an hour and a half, but, by what accident we yet know not, they did not come, and there was no waiting longer.’ [5] ‘The King and we are in no small pain to know what is become of our friends wee left behind.’ D’Alembert says that the Earl refused to sail. ‘Your Majesty is to protect yourself for your friends. I shall share the sorrows of those who remain true to you in Scotland, I shall gather them, and shall not leave without them.’ If Mar tells truth, the Earl can have made no such speech. ”

“ The very chieftains who hung back from a too ready consent, never deserted the cause which they once undertook. The universal fidelity to the part which they espoused was violated in no instance during the first Rebellion.
At length the assembled chiefs swore an oath to stand by the Earl of Mar, and to bring their friends and dependants to do the same. However, no second meeting was at that time determined upon: every man went back to his own estate, to take measures for appearing in arms after again hearing from the Earl of Mar, who remained among his own people with few attendants. ”

“ Nevertheless, these public scenes gave a pretext to the nobles, who only sought an opportunity for an outbreak. The Earl of Mar, the young prince's tutor, Argyll, Athol, Glencairn, Lindley, Boyd, and even Morton and Maitland themselves, those eternal accomplices of Bothwell, rose, they said, to avenge the death of the king, and to draw the son from hands which had killed the father and which were keeping the mother captive. ”

“ The rapid concentration of reinforcements from Glasgow and other towns at Stirling caused the Earl of Mar, with the Jacobite followers he had raised in the highlands, to hesitate in marching southwards, and in order to reinforce the body of insurgents who were gathering in the southern lowlands, he deemed it advisable to send a portion of his large force across the Forth from Fife. ”

“ Notwithstanding the apparent continuance of the Chevalier's regard, he never forgot the treaty between Lord Stair and the Earl of Mar. The wh [Pg 213] ole of this intrigue, discreditable as it was, has been reprobated by all who have touched upon this portion of Lord Mar's history. His accepting the loan of a thousand pounds from Stair, an old friend, for the purpose of ensuring Lady Mar's journey, has been censured, I think, with too great severity. But, although it be desirable to set to rights matters of fact, yet, it is always unsatisfactory to begin the defence of a bad cause. ”

“ It was towards the latter end of August, in 1715, in the shire of Perth, that the people first began to assemble themselves in a body, until they marched to a small market town, named Kirk Michael, where the Chevalier was first proclaimed, and his standard set up. [185] Meantime several noblemen and gentlemen, both in England and in Scotland, influenced by the Earl of Mar, began to collect their servants and dependants from different places, and under various pretexts, for their proceedings. ”

“ Mar received despatches from France, and also a new commission from the chevalier, given at the court of Bar-le-Duc, 7 Sept., appointing him ‘our general and commander-in-chief of all our forces, both by sea and land, in our ancient kingdom of Scotland.’ It was not, however, till 10 Nov. that he broke up his camp at Perth and marched to Auchterarder, where he was joined by the western clans who had been foiled by the Earl of Islay in their attempt on Inverary. ”

“ By “an equivocation on the facts of the case,” it was recited that “doubts may exist whether the said ancient honour, dignity, and title of peerage of earl of Mar ... was or was not ... by any lawful means surrendered or merged in the Crown” before 1565, and that the House of Lords had decided that Queen Mary’s known charter of 1565 applied only to lands and “did not operate 666 or extend to restore” the peerage dignity, and enacted that “John Francis Erskine Goodeve Erskine” (which last name the claimant had added) should be “restored to” the ancient earldom. ”

“ Your Duke of Ormond got him into France with the help of a lackey's livery. And your redoubtable Mar——"
At that name I started.
"It is indeed so," he said earnestly. "The Earl of Mar, I have it on the best authority, worked his passage as a collier into Scotland."
It was not, however, that I was concerned at all as to how the Earl of Mar had escaped unremarked from London. But it suddenly occurred to me, as an explanation of Rookley's friendly demeanour, that the insurrection might be sweeping southwards on a higher tide of success than I had been disposed to credit. If that was the case, Mr. ”

“ At Sheriffmuir, where a battle was fought in November 1715, Mar’s forces largely outnumbered those of his opponent, Archibald Campbell, afterwards 3rd duke of Argyll; but no bravery could atone for the signal incompetence displayed by the earl, and the fight was virtually a decisive defeat for the Jacobites. Mar then met James Edward at Fetteresso; the cause however was lost, and the prince and the earl fled to France. Mar sought to interest foreign powers in the cause of the Stuarts; but in the course of time he became thoroughly distrusted by the Jacobites. ”

“ As guardian of James, afterwards King James VI., he prevented the young prince from falling into the hands of Bothwell, and when the Scottish nobles rose against Mary and Both well, Mar was one of their leaders; he took part in the government of Scotland during Mary’s imprisonment at Lochleven, and also after her subsequent abdication. In September 1571 he was chosen regent of Scotland, but he was overshadowed and perhaps slighted by the earl of Morton, and he died at Stirling on the 29th of October 1572. ”

“ In the same year when Mar's rebellion broke out he at once proceeded to his own district, raised forces which the government agreed to equip, and endeavoured to prevent the Earl of Seaforth from joining Mar. ”

“ Nous nous porton très bien; l'aire d'icy est foie bonne."
A subsequent letter is addressed "A ma cousine La Duchesse de Mar"—and subscribed "votre affectionée cousine, Clementine;" yet notwithstanding these professions of confidence and affection, the seeds of distrust [Pg 212] were, it seems, soon sown between James and the Earl and Countess of Mar. ”

“ The release of the Earl of March from captivity, and the restoration of the son of Hotspur to the honours of the Percies, were acts of more decided liberality; but, if we are to believe the gossip of the period, these two young gentlemen were a pair of spoons, wholly incapable of making a stir of any kind. The Earl of March was, it is true, a spoon of the king's pattern, for he was a scion of a royal stock, but he nevertheless had enough of the fiddle-head about him to make it certain that he could be played upon, or let down a peg when occasion required. ”

“ MAR, JOHN ERSKINE, 6th or 11th Earl of (1675–1732) , Scottish Jacobite, was the eldest son of Charles, the 5th earl (1650–1689) , from whom he inherited estates which were heavily loaded with debt. He was associated with the party favourable to the English government; he was one of the commissioners for the Union, and was made a Scottish secretary of state, becoming after the Union of 1707 a representative peer for Scotland, keeper of the signet and a privy councillor. ”

“ Merchants and artificers tread upon our knightly heels, and the avarice of trade eats up our chivalry as a rust. We nobles, in our greater day, have had the crown at our disposal, and William the Norman dared not think what Edward Earl of March hath been permitted with impunity to do. We, Sir Earl—we knights and barons—would a king simple in his manhood and princely in his truth. Richard Earl of Warwick, thou art of royal blood, the descendant of old John of Gaunt. In thee we behold the true, the living likeness of the Third Edward, and the Hero-Prince of Cressy. ”

“ The regent had by that time gathered together an imposing army. As the invaders approached Strathearn on their way northwards, they found Mar encamped on Dupplin Moor, on the left bank of the Earn, and holding in force the only bridge available for crossing the river. There was some parleying between the two hosts. "We are sons of magnates of this land," declared the disinherited to Mar. "We are come hither with the lord Edward of Balliol, the right heir of the realm, to demand the lands which belong to us by hereditary right." ”

“ I have heard of such things at sea.'
'And what might your wisdom suppose them to be?' said the Earl, with a sneer.
'It is hard for man to tell,' said the seaman, who had not been the slightest discomposed by the voice. 'He who made the ocean and the dry land alone knows; but a conscience void of offence is the sheet anchor for man to rely upon in the voyage of life. I never knew such a thing to happen save to a wicked man.'
'Ha,' said the Earl sarcastically, 'a moralizing tar-bucket. ”

“ He cared not to come abroad among us soldiers, or to see us handle our arms or do our exercise’ (True Account of the Proceedings at Perth, written by a Rebel, 1716, p. 20) . The chevalier was weak of purpose, and was managed by his favourites. Mar saw the need of devising a means by which he could decorously escape the perilous consequences of his rash enterprise. The only persons prepared to risk battle on behalf of the chevalier were the highland chiefs and their followers; but their chivalrous determination was one of Mar's chief difficulties. ”