Series 3 > Highland papers

MENZIES CHARTER
Charter by John Earl of Atholl to Sir Alexander
de Meyners of the lands of Weem and Aberfeldy
beg—not dated, but circa 1296 1
This is the first charter to the family of Menzies, of Weem
and Aberfeldy, which they continued to possess for over
600 years. For their origin and early history vide supra, p. 8.
The granter, John de Strathbogie, Earl of Atholl, who took
the side of Bruce, was captured after the Battle of Methven
and, with other prisoners of war, murdered by Edward i., his
body being burned and his head stuck up on London Bridge.
His son David submitted to the English. After Bannockburn
his Scottish estates and dignities were forfeited, but Edward n.
summoned him to an English Parhament, and his son and
grandson, it is said, were similarly treated. That remarkable
tribunal, the Committee for Privileges, recently came to the
conclusion that an English barony had thus been created,
and that on the death of the grandson in 1375, leaving two
daughters, this fell into abeyance. In 1916, on the advice of
Mr. Asquith, the abeyance was terminated by the Crown, and
Mr. Cuthbert Matthias Kenworthy became Lord Strabolgi in
the Peerage of England, with a seat in the House of Lords ! 2
1 Original penes J. R. N. Macphail.
2 This afiords a good illustration of the vagaries of English Peerage
Law as administered by the Committee for Privileges, and it seems to
have caused annoyance even in England if one may judge from an official
Memorandum printed in the Report of a Select Committee of the House
of Lords on Peerages in Abeyance. Dealing with the claim to the Barony
of Strabolgi, the Memorandum proceeds (p. 143) : ‘ The claim was founded
upon an alleged summons of one David de Strabolgi Earl of Atholl to an
alleged Parliament in York in 1318, followed by an alleged sitting in that
Parliament. Very grave doubt arises as to whether the Assembly of
1318 was a Parliament in any real sense of the word, and if it was whether
the Earl of Atholl was summoned to it, and if he was whether he sat in
it. These doubts must be set at rest by the decision of the Committee
of Privileges—and de Strabolgi Earl of Atholl was a Scotch refugee who
appears to have held land at one time or another in the County of Norfolk,
but its tenure does not appear to be in any way connected with the
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