Mar, an ancient district of SW Aberdeenshire, subdivided into Braemar, Midmar, and Cromar. A Mormaer of Mar was present at the battle of Clontarff (1014); and Ruadri or Rothri, Mormaer of Mar, figures in the foundation charter of Scone priory (1115) as 'comes' or earl. The male line of the Celtic Earls of Mar expired in 1377 with Thomas, thirteenth Earl, whose sister, Margaret, married William, first Earl of Douglas; and their daughter, Isabel, in 1404 married Alexander Stewart, the' Wolfe of Badenoch,' who, after her death in 1419, was designated Earl of Mar. The earldom by rights should have gone to Janet Keith, great-granddaughter of the eleventh Celtic Earl, and wife to Sir Thomas Erskine; but it was not till 1565 that it was restored, per modum justitiœ, to their sixth descendant, John, fifth Lord Erskine. Into the present vexed question of this peerage, it is not possible-here to enter; enough, that there are now two bearers of the title- Walter Henry Erskine, Earl of Mar and Kellie, whose seat is Alloa Park; and Francis Erskine GoodeveErskine, whose seat is Wilton Hall, in Herefordshire. The former is Earl de facto, according to judgment of the House of Lords (1875); but the latter is Earl de jure, according to the late Earl of Crawford's Earldom of Mar in Sunshine and Shade during Five Hundred Years (2 vols., Edinb. 1882).
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different and there are known to be occasional errors of fact in the original
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