Mormaer in the context of "Province of Moray"

The Kingdom of Scotland was a sovereign state in northwest Europe, traditionally said to have been founded in 843. Its territories expanded and shrank, but it came to occupy the northern third of the island of Great Britain, sharing a land border to the south with the Kingdom of England. During the Middle Ages, Scotland engaged in intermittent conflict with England, most prominently the Wars of Scottish Independence, which saw the Scots assert their independence from the English. Following the annexation of the Hebrides and the Northern Isles from Norway in 1266 and 1472 respectively, and the capture of Berwick by England in 1482, the territory of the Kingdom of Scotland corresponded to that of modern-day Scotland, bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest.

In 1603, James VI of Scotland became King of England, joining Scotland with England in a personal union. In 1707, during the reign of Queen Anne, the two kingdoms were united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain under the terms of the Acts of Union. The Crown was the most important element of Scotland's government. The Scottish monarchy in the Middle Ages was a largely itinerant institution, before Edinburgh developed as a capital city in the second half of the 15th century. The Crown remained at the centre of political life and in the 16th century emerged as a major centre of display and artistic patronage, until it was effectively dissolved with the 1603 Union of Crowns. The Scottish Crown adopted the conventional offices of western European monarchical states of the time and developed a Privy Council and great offices of state. Parliament also emerged as a major legal institution, gaining an oversight of taxation and policy, but was never as central to the national life. In the early period, the kings of the Scots depended on the great lords—the mormaers and toísechs—but from the reign of David I, sheriffdoms were introduced, which allowed more direct control and gradually limited the power of the major lordships.

Earl (/ɜːrl, ɜːrəl/) is a rank of the nobility in the United Kingdom. In modern Britain, an earl is a member of the peerage, ranking below a marquess and above a viscount. A feminine form of earl never developed; instead, countess is used.

The title originates in the Old English word eorl, meaning "a man of noble birth or rank". The word is cognate with the Scandinavian form jarl. After the Norman Conquest, it became the equivalent of the continental count. In Scotland, it assimilated the concept of mormaer. Since the 1960s, earldoms have typically been created only for members of the royal family. The last non-royal earldom, Earl of Stockton, was created in 1984 for Harold Macmillan, prime minister from 1957 to 1963.

The title Earl of Moray, or Mormaer of Moray (pronounced "Murry"), was originally held by the rulers of the Province of Moray, which existed from the 10th century with varying degrees of independence from the Kingdom of Alba to the south. Until 1130 the status of Moray's rulers was ambiguous and they were described in some sources as "mormaers" (the Gaelic term for "Earl"), in others as "Kings of Moray", and in others as "Kings of Alba". The position was suppressed by David I of Scotland some time after his defeat of Óengus of Moray at the Battle of Stracathro in 1130, but was recreated as a feudal earldom by Robert the Bruce and granted to Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray in 1312.

The title has subsequently been created several times in the Peerage of Scotland. It has been held by Clan Stewart since the 16th century, when James Stewart, illegitimate son of James V, was granted the title.

The provinces of Scotland were the primary subdivisions of the early Kingdom of Alba, first recorded in the 10th century and probably developing from earlier Pictish territories. Provinces were led by a mormaer, the leader of the most powerful provincial kin-group, and had military, fiscal and judicial functions. Their high degree of local autonomy made them important regional powerbases for competing claimants to the throne of Alba.

Provinces declined in importance during the late 12th and early 13th centuries as expanding royal power saw feudal landholding rather than local kinship established as the dominant basis of secular authority. The power of mormaers became increasingly focused on their earldom, the territory that they controlled directly, rather than their leadership of the broader provincial community, and large provincial lordships were established that often rivalled earldoms in size and were granted to loyal supporters of the king. Local justice and administration became increasingly dominated by sheriffdoms, which were more directly under royal control.

Gille Coemgáin mac Máil Brigti (died 1032) was the King or Mormaer of Moray, a semi-autonomous kingdom centred on Inverness that stretched across the north of Scotland. Unlike his two predecessors, he is not called King of Scotland in his death notice, but merely Mormaer. This has led to some speculation that he was never actually the ruler of Moray, but merely a subordinate of MacBethad mac Findláich. (Hudson p. 136).

In 1020, he participated in the killing of his uncle Findláech, the father of MacBeth. He became the Mormaer of Moray in 1029, after the death of his brother. He married Gruoch, the granddaughter of Kenneth III, and they had a son, Lulach.

A toísech or toísech clainne was the head of a local kin-group in medieval Scotland. The word, meaning "first" or "leader" in Scottish Gaelic, is first attested in the property records written into the Book of Deer some time between the 1130s and the 1150s.

The toísech held and extracted tribute from specific settlements within the kindred's territory, while other settlements provided tribute to the mormaer or king. The Book of Deer property records describe multiple lands whose tribute was granted to Deer Abbey by the mormaer and the toísech, each granting their respective renders, while one land was given by a lord "who was mormaer and was toiseach". showing that mormaers could themselves also be toiseachs.

Earl of Carrick (Scottish Gaelic: Iarla Charraig; also Mormaer of Carrick) is the title applied to the ruler of Carrick, Ayrshire, subsequently part of the Peerage of Scotland. The position came to be strongly associated with the Scottish crown when Robert the Bruce, who had inherited it from his maternal kin, became King of Scots in the early 14th century. Since the 15th century, the title of Earl of Carrick has automatically been held by the heir apparent to the throne, thus the current holder of the title is Prince William, Duke of Rothesay.