Earl Of Buchan

The Earl holds the subsidiary titles of: ''Lord Auchterhouse'' (created 1469), ''Lord Cardross'' (1610) and ''Baron Erskine of Restormel Castle'' (1806). The former two of these titles form part of the Peerage of Scotland, while the barony belongs to the Peerage Of The United Kingdom . The Earls of Buchan sat in the House Of Lords by virtue of the UK title until the passage of the Peerage Act 1963 .

The family seat is Newnham House , near Hook, North Hampshire .

FAMILY HISTORIES

The early earls of Buchan included Alexander Comyn (died 1289), John Comyn (died ''circa'' 1313), both constables of Scotland, and Henry Beaumont (died 1340), who had married a Comyn. John Comyn's wife, Isabel, as Countess of Buchan, crowned Robert The Bruce king at Scone in 1306 , and afterwards suffered imprisonment at Berwick ; not, however, in a cage hung on the wall of the castle, as legend would have it.

About 1382 Sir Alexander Stewart (died ''circa'' 1404 ), "the Wolf of Badenoch", a son of King Robert II , became earl of Buchan, and Stewart s held the earldom for about a century and a half, although not in a direct line from Sir Alexander. The most celebrated of the Stewart earls included the Scottish regent, Robert, Duke Of Albany , and his son John Stewart , who became a constable of France and was killed at the Battle Of Verneuil in 1424 .

In 1617 the earldom came to James Erskine (died 1640), a son of John Erskine, 2nd Or 7th Earl Of Mar , whose wife Mary had inherited it from her father, James Douglas (died 1601); and from that time the Erskines have retained the title.

Among the most celebrated of the later earls of Buchan we find the eccentric David Steuart Erskine, 11th Earl ( 1742 - 1829 ), a son of Henry David, 10th earl (died 1767 ), and brother of Henry Erskine ( 1746 - 1817 ) and of Thomas, Lord Erskine . His pertinacity helped in effecting a change in the method of electing Scottish representative peers, and in 1780 he succeeded in founding the Scottish Society Of Antiquaries . His correspondents included Horace Walpole , and he produced an ''Essay on the Lives of Fletcher of Saltoun and the Poet Thomson'' (1792) and other writings. He died at his residence at Dryburgh in April 1829 , leaving no legitimate children, and the earldom passed to his nephew Henry David ( 1783 - 1857 ), the 12th earl.

The 11th earl's natural son, Sir David Erskine (1772 - 1837), who inherited his father's unentailed estates, worked as an antiquary and a dramatist.

REFERENCES

EARLS OF BUCHAN, FIRST CREATION ( 1221 )