history as Bonnie Dundee (or as
"Bloody Claver’s" by the Covenanters he campaigned against).
In the early fifteenth century the then
Graham chief’s half-brother Patrick Graham married Robert II’s granddaughter,
who was the heiress of the new Stewart Earldom of Strathearn, and their son, Malise
Graham, was thus heir of Strathearn. Patrick Graham was killed by the Drummonds in 1413,
leaving the infant Malise in the guardianship of Patrick’s younger brother Sir Robert
Graham of Kinpoint. In 1427 James I seized the rich Earldom of Strathearn, giving Malise
instead the almost empty title of Earl of Mentieth, and packing him off to England as a
hostage-prisoner for almost 26 years. Sir Robert Graham, the boy’s uncle and guardian
protested in vain, and finally raided the King at Perth and killed the King himself, for
which act he was later tortured to death. This line continued, however, and in 1631 the
then Earl of Mentieth renewed his claim on Strathearn, but was in 1633 forced to accept
the Earldom of Airth instead.
The MacGilvernocks (Mac Giolla
Mhearnaigh—"Son of the servant of St. Ernan"), a sept of the Graham’s
Highland Border regions, Anglicized their name as Graham. This was the family of the
Reverend Archibald Graham, last Bishop of the Isles, 1680—1688.
The Grants (Grannd, from the Norman-French
"le Grand," meaning "the big") are a Norman family introduced into the
north of Scotland by the Bissets on the return of some of them from their exile of 1242.
In England the Bissets and the Grants possessed adjoining lands in Nottinghamshire and
were intermarried. In 1246 King Henry Ill of England granted Lowdham to Walter Byset till
he should recover his lands in Scotland. The adjacent manor of East Bridgeford was then
held by William le Grant, who had married Alfreda Byset, a Bisset heiress, They are first
recorded in Scotland when Laurence and Robert Ie Grant appear as witnesses to a grant by
the Bissets to Beauly Priory near Inverness in 1258. Later, as Sir Laurence le Grant, the
former appears as Sheriff of Inverness, while Robert is recorded as holding land in nearby
Nairnshire. As sheriffs of Inverness, the chiefs of the Grants became established in the
Glenmoriston area around their center at Castle Urquhart on the northeastern shore of Loch
Ness, and acquired blood-ties to the native-men of the district, who held themselves
connected to the MacGregors, which may simply indicate their traditional connection to
Argyle. In this connection it should be mentioned that the arms of the MacArthurs,
formerly princes in Argyle till 1427, could be taken as a differenced version of the arms
of the Grants as both color and the "Cross Moline" are standard marks of
difference to show bloodrelationship. There did exist a famous Norman family of Grants in
the early thirteenth century with the same armorial motto as the Scottish Grants:
"Stand Fast,"—Latin, Tenons
Ferme. Nevertheless, the arms of the Grants, three golden antique crowns on red, may have
been inherited at the time that the Grants settled in Scotland around 1258, hence the
possible MacArthur |
