Douglas book > Angus memoirs

10
THE STEWART EAELS OF ANGUS.
rTIHE third line of Angus Earls was inaugurated by the grant of the title
and territory of Angus by King Robert the Bruce to Sie John Stewart
of Boncle. He was the son of Sir Alexander Stewart of Boncle, and great-
grandson of Alexander, High Steward of Scotland in the time of King
Alexander the Third. He was thus related by marriage to King Robert the
Bruce, and also to Thomas Randolph, Earl of Moray, who became Regent.
Some writers state that Sir Alexander Stewart of Boncle, the father of Sir
John, was the first Earl of Angus created by Bruce. But he nowhere appears
on record under that designation, and there is reason to believe he was dead
before 1329, when the first authentic mention of a Stewart Earl of Angus is
found. It is probably he who is referred to in the grant by King Edward
the Second of England in 1319 to Bartholomew de Badlesmere of the manor
of Ulndale, which is said to have belonged to the deceased Alexander Stewart,
a Scotchman, and an enemy and rebel to the king. At all events it is Sir John
Stewart who is first styled Earl of Angus and Lord of Boncle in a charter granted
by him to Gilbert Lumsden of the lands of Blanerne, on 15th June 1329. 1
About 1331 Sir John Stewart, Earl of Angus, received from his uncle,
Randolph, Earl of Moray, then Regent of Scotland, a grant of the reversion
of the lands of Mordington and Longformacus in Lammermuir. 2 John, Earl
of Angus, only survived until 9th December 1331. 3 He married Margaret,
eldest daughter and co-heiress of Sir Alexander Abernethy, having obtained
1 Andrew Stuart's History of the Stewarts, Randolph, Earl of Moray, married Isobel,
pp. 54, 55. Confirmed by an old but un- daughter of Sir John Stewart of Bonele, grand-
dated copy of the Charter in the Douglas father of this Earl of Angus. [Andrew
Charter-chest. Vol. iii. of this work. Stuart's History of the Stewarts, p. 52.]
2 Vol. iii. of this work, p. 14. Thomas 3 Fordun, a Goodall, vol. ii. p. 303.