Mar

Mar, an ancient district of Scotland between the Dee and the Don, comprising nearly the south half of Aberdeenshire, and subdivided into Braemar, Midmar, and Cromar. In 1014 a Mormaer of Mar was present at the battle of Clontarf; and in 1115 another figure in the foundation charter of Scone priory as 'comes' or earl. The male line of these Celtic Earls of Mar expired in 1377 with Thomas, thirteenth earl, whose sister Margaret married William, first Earl of Douglas. Their daughter, Isabella, in 1404 married Alexander Stewart, the 'Wolfe of Badenoch,' who, after her death in 1419, was designated Earl of Mar. The earldom by right should have gone to Janet Keith, great-granddaughter of Gratney, eleventh Celtic earl, and wife to Sir Thomas Erskine; but it was not till 1565 that it was either restored, or else granted by a new creation with limitation to heirs male, to their sixth descendant, John, sixth Lord Erskine, who at his death in 1572 had been for a twelvemonth regent of Scotland. John, Earl of Mar (1675-1732), who began life as a Whig, and by his frequent change of sides earned the nickname of 'Bobbing Joan,' headed the rebellion of 1715 (see JACOBITES), and died in exile at Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1824 the reversion of his attainer was procured by his grandson, John Francis Erskine, but his grandson dying without issue in 1866, the question arose whether the earldom of Mar could pass through his sister to her son, John Francis Goodve-Erskine (né Goodeve), or must go to his first cousin, Walter Coningsby Erskine, Earl of Kellie. And the strange solution of that question has been that in 1875 Walter Henry Erskine, thirteenth Earl of Kellie, was declared by the Committee of Privileges also eleventh Earl of Mar, and that in 1885 the Earldom of Mar Restitution Bill declared Mr Goodve-Erskine twenty-sixth Earl of Mar, claiming creation before 1014, but allowed precedence 1404. See the Earl of Crawford's Earldom of Mar in Sunshine and Shade (2 vols. Edin. 1882).