History of the earldoms of Strathern, Monteith, and Airth

OF STRATHERN AND MONTEITH. 23
of Albany, the very last Earl of Monteith, had ^^^'f^ ^^^^^
•^ -^ OF MONTEITH.
inherited it from his mother. ' 1427.
The obvious inference from these facts is,
that being an hei?- general, Malise Graham was
deprived of an Earldom which had been previ-
ously held by male heirs ; and that he obtained, in
exchange, an Earldom which, having often de-
scended to heirs general, and being destined to
him and his heirs genej^al, was strictly consistent
with his status as an heir general.
By the Charter of the territorial Earldom of
Monteith^, King James the First granted to his
dear cousin Malise, Earl of Monteith, all and
singular the lands following, namely, the lands
of Craynis, &c., in the county of Perth, which
he erected into the free Earldom of Monteith,
(reserving to the Crown the other lands which of
old were part of the said Earldom), which lands,
the Charter proceeds, " We ordain and of new
erect into the free Earldom of Monteith, to be
held by the said Malise and his heirs male of
his body lawfully procreated (whom failing, to
return freely to us and our successors,) of us and
our heirs as the free Earldom of Monteith/'
It is perfectly clear that this Charter was not
the instrument by which the jjersonal Dignity
of Earl of Monteith was created^: —
1 Vide note, p. 30., and Appendix, No. V.
2 For a copy of the original, see the Appendix, No. VII.
^ This fact was admitted by the Lord Advocate, in his
speech on the Claim to the Earldom of Airth, in 1839.
c 4