General Notes

Earl William died in 1273, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Donald, seventh Earl of Mar. He was present at the meeting of the Estates held at Scone on the 5th of February, 1284, in which the barons and bishops bound themselves in the name of the nation to acknowledge the king’s granddaughter, Margaret, the Maid of Norway, as the heir of the Crown of Scotland.

After the death of the Maid of Norway, in September, 1290, it appears that the Earl of Mar became a supporter of the claims of Robert Bruce of Annandale to the Crown of Scotland. In 1291, Donald, Earl of Mar, one of the seven Earls of Scotland, and the king’s freemen of Moray, appealed from William, Bishop of St. Andrews, and John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch, Guardians of Scotland, to Edward I. for redress of wrongs done to them by under-wardens of Scotland, who had wasted and plundered their towns and lands in Moray, burned their barns, carried away their goods, and slain men and women.

The Earl of Mar was present in the chapel of the Castle of Berwick, on the 3rd of August, 1291, when Edward I. protested that his consent to try the claims of the candidates for the Scottish Crown within the realm of Scotland, should not prejudice the exercise of his right as Lord Superior of Scotland, within the kingdom of England. The same year, on the 24th of July, he was present in the Church of the Friars at Perth, when Edward I. received the fealty of Mary, Queen of Isle of Man, and Countess of Strathearn.

Earl Donald fought at the battle of Dunbar, on the 26th of April, 1296; and shortly after he was taken a prisoner by the English.

He married Muriel, a daughter of the Earl of Strathearn, by whom he had issue. He died in 1297, and was succeeded by his son, Gartney, eighth Earl of Mar. He married Christian Bruce, a sister of Robert I.; while Robert I. married Isabel, a sister of Earl Gartney. The Earl received with his wife the lordship of Garioch, to be held in free regality. He died in 1305, and was succeeded by his son, Donald, ninth Earl of Mar, who was then a boy; and Edward I. ordered that the heir of Mar should be kept in the Castle of Bristol; and soon after ordered that Donald, Earl of Mar, is to be with the king in his own household. He was detained a prisoner in England till after the battle of Bannockburn.

Earl Gartney left two daughters—Ellen of Mar, the eldest, and Janet. Ellen married Sir John Monteith; their daughter, Christian Monteith, married Sir Edward Keith, Great Marischal of Scotland; and their daughter, Janet Keith, married Sir Thomas Erskine; their son, Sir Robert Erskine, as a descendant of Ellen of Mar, became heir to the Earldom of Mar, and claimed it in the following century.

Earl Donald returned to Scotland in 1314, but it appears that he occasionally revisited England. He led one of the divisions of the Scottish army which invaded England in the summer of 1327. After the death of Robert I., the Earl of Mar joined the cause of his cousin, the young Prince David II. On the death of the Earl of Moray, the Regent of Scotland, in 1332, the Earl of Mar was elected Regent of the Kingdom. Shortly after he was slain at the disastrous battle of Dupplin. He was succeeded by his son, Thomas, tenth Earl of Mar.
(from Andrei Kohl's tree at Ancestry.com)