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Clans and Families
of Ireland and Scotland
IV. The Kingdom of the
Picts: Christianity, Paganism and the Making of Gaelic Scotland |
and Dunblane as "our
bishops"). Also in the territory of Strathearn was Abernethy, the most sacred place
of the Southern Picts, and the hill of Creiff, long associated with the Pictish
high-kingship. Abernethy, as we have seen, was probably dedicated in pagan times to the
goddess-spirit Brigid (later St. Brigid or St. Bride) and a number of Pictish kings bore a
form of her name (Brude or Bridie), apparently as a throne name. The use of the Pictish
royal name "Brude" or "Bridei" was continued, both by the earls of
Strathearn and by the earls of Angus, but under the Gaelic and Christian form
of"Gillebride" (servant of St. Bride). In the twelfth century the name was again
changed, as the area including the earldoms, the fertile east coast lowlands of the old
Pictish kingdom, again changed its prestige dialect; after that it appears under the Anglo-Norman form of
"Gilbert." Other Pictish royal names also continued into the twelfth century.
These include "Ferteth" among the earls of Strathearn, and "Gartnait"
among the earls of Mar. These names are far from quaint or provential: During the Heroic
period (fifth—ninth centuries) they occasionally grace the king-lists of Dal Riada
and Northumberland, presumably as a result of dynastic intermarriage.
The earldom of Strathearn was vested in the Crown by David II, who made
his nephew Robert the Stewart Earl of Strathearn in 1357. After his accession to the
throne as Robert II, Robert gave the earldom as a palatinate (an earldom in which the earl
has sovereign power within that territory—basically a small kingdom) to his son David
(along with the Earldom of Caithness, which had also belonged by inheritance to Malise,
last Celtic earl of Strathearn). However, the old traditions of sovereignty within the
earldom became such a political hot potato that it was eventually discontinued.
The earldom passed out of the Stewart family in the early fifteenth
century, and devolved upon Malise Graham, grandson of David, Earl of Strathearn and
Caithness by his daughter Euphemia, his only child. In 1427, however, while Malise Graham
was still in his minority and a hostage in England as well, the acquisitive James I
(himself recently returned from a long captivity in England) flagrantly deprived Malise of
the earldom and gave it instead to his uncle, Walter Stewart, Earl of Atholl (during the same period the
insecure and acquisitive Stewarts enhanced their direct power and control over Scotland by
deviously obtaining control of all the most important Scottish earldoms). Subsequently (in
1437) James was murdered, hacked to death by disgruntled nobles—Stewarts among
them—led by Sir Robert Graham, uncle of Malise. After 1437 the title remained in
abeyance, and in 1484, Strathearn was made a "Stewartry" (a sheriffdom of lands
held directly by the Crown) under the Murrays of Tullibardine in Strathearn, descendants
of Malise, Steward of Strathearn through his daughter Ada about 1284. The office of
Steward (or Stewart) was originally that of "first household officer," and as
such, this Malise undoubtedly descended from a younger son of one of the earls of
Strathearn the office passing with the lands of Tullibardine. The |
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