Paper on the Mar peerage

It seems to be proved with sufficient clearness that Mar was
originally a territorial dignity, and that the Earls of Mar were of
the number of the seven Earls of Scotland who at an early period
of the history of that kingdom possessed some undefined pre-
eminence over others of a similar rank. It was denied by the
opposing Petitioner that the dignity was territorial in the sense
of being a dignity by tenure, or dependent upon the seizin of
the lands. But as far as we can trace its early history we find
the dignity and the lands always enjoyed by the same person.
From the first Earl of Mar eleven male descents took place,
interrupted by two apparent intruders upon the succession (no
relationship being traceable between them and the descendants
of the first Earl), who with the possession of the lands assumed
the title of Earl of Mar, the dispossessed Earls resuming the
title upon repossessing themselves of the lands. Whatever,
therefore, may have been the exact nature of the tie between
the dignity and the lands, it is evident that at the beginning
they were not separable or at least not actually separate from
each other.
This, however, is a matter of less importance than the ques-
tion how the dignity, or the dignity with the lands, was originally
descendible ? Although it is probable that in limiting lands con-
nected with, or which carried a dignity with them, they would be
granted by preference to male heirs, there is no reason to believe
that in such cases females were always excluded. In the competi*
tion between Bruce and Baliol for the crown of Scotland, the
assessors appointed by King Edward, in answers to questions
put to them, stated that " Earldoms in the Kingdom of Scotland
were not divisible, and that if an Earldom devolved upon
daughters, the eldest born carried off the whole in entirety," thus
speaking of a descent to females as a possible event. Lord
Mansfield, therefore, in the Cassilis case (Maidment, page 45)
uses language too unqualified in saying of earldoms and other
territorial dignities, they most certainly descended " to the
issue male."
The fact of there having been a continued lineal descent of
males from the first Earl down to Earl Thomas, the last of the
male line before Queen Mary's charter, by no means removes
one of the great difficulties in the case, which is to ascertain in
what right Margaret the sister of Earl Thomas, and after her
her daughter Isabella, had successively possession of the earldom
or comitatus, and respectively assumed the title of Countess of
Mar. Margaret, in her brother Thomas's lifetime, had married
William the first Earl of Douglas (which dignity he acquired
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