|
 Carnegie
In 1358 Walter de Maule made a
grant of the lands and barony of Carnegie, lying
in the parish of Carmylie to John de Balinhard.
There is no certain record of the origin of the
de Balinhards save that their lands were near
Arbroath. Nisbet suggests that the de Balinhards
were related to the Ramsays. but there is no
direct evidence of this. Duthac de Carnegie
acquired part of the lands of Kinnaird in
Forfarshire around 1401, and subsequently
obtained from Robert, Duke of Albany, Governor of
Scotland, a charter dated 21 February 1409,
confirming him in these lands. Duthac was killed
at the Battle of Harlaw in 1411, leaving an
infant son, Walter. Walter Carnegie of Kinnaird
fought at the Battle of Brechin in May 1452 under
the standard of James II borne by the Earl of
Huntly. The rebels, commanded by the Earl of
Crawford, were defeated. Crawford later burned
Kinnaird in revenge. Walter later rebuilt the
house using a corner of the old foundations, and
it remained largely unaltered until the time of
Sir Robert Carnegie who enlarged it, probably
around 1555.
John Carnegie of Kinnaird
fought and died at the Battle of Flodden in
September 1513. His son, Sir Robert, who extended
Kinnaird, was appointed one of the judges of the
College of Justice in 1547 and sent to England
the following year to negotiate the ransom of the
Earl of Huntly, Chancellor of Scotland, who had
been captured at the Battle of Pinkie. It is said
that he was the first Carnegie to claim that his
ancestors were cup bearers to the kings of Scots,
the family arms bear an antique cup as a
reference to this royal office.
Sir Robert’s son, John,
extended the family lands and was a faithful and
loyal adherent to Mary, Queen of Scots. He,
unlike many, never abandoned his loyalty to the
queen. He died without issue in 1595, and the
estates passed through his younger brother. Sir
David Carnegie, born in 1575, was created Lord
Carnegie of Kinnaird in April 1616. He was
advanced to the rank of Earl of Southesk in June
1633. Sir John Carnegie, the second son of David
Carnegie of Panbride and brother of David, first
Earl of Southesk, was also elevated to the
peerage in 1639 as Lord Lour, and in 1647 he was
created Earl of Ethie. In 1662 he procured an
exchange of his titles of Earl of Ethie and Lord
Lour, for those of Earl of Northesk and Lord Rosehill.
James, second Earl of
Southesk, attended on the king in exile, Charles
II, in Holland in 1650 and was one of the
Commissioners chosen for Scotland to sit in the
Parliament of England during the Protectorate. He
succeeded his father in 1658, although he was
nearly killed in a duel with the Master of Gray
in London in 1660. The younger son of the third
Earl was not so fortunate in his dueling career
and was killed in Paris in 1681 by William, son
of the Duchess of Lauderdale. The Carnegies were
Jacobites, and although the fourth Earl took no
part in opposing the Revolution of 1688, he
thereafter shunned the royal court. He had
married Mary, daughter of the Earl of Lauderdale,
by whom he had an only son, James, the fifth
Earl. He followed the ‘Old Pretender’
in the rising of 1715, and for this he was
attainted by Act of Parliament and his estates
forfeited to the Crown. In 1717 a special Act of
Parliament was passed to enable the Crown to make
some provision for his wife and children. Sadly,
the royal provision for the fifth Earl’s
children could not protect them from the high
rate of infant mortality al that time, and both
died young. The earl him-self died in France in
1730, and the representation of the family then
devolved on Sir James Carnegie of Pittarrow, who
was descended from a younger son of the first
Earl of Southesk. This line had been created
Baronets of Nova Scotia in 1663. The sixth
Baronet, Sir James Carnegie, was a distinguished
soldier who was able to secure in 1855 an Act of
Parliament reversing the attainder and restoring
the titles of Earl of Southesk and Lord Carnegie
of Kinnaird and Leuchars with their original
precedence. The ninth Earl harkened back to his
family’s early ancestry when he chose the
title of "Baron Balinhaird" on his elevation to the peerage of the United Kingdom in
December 1869. The Carnegies, in common with most
Scottish noble families, sought to secure their
fortunes by judicious and powerful alliances by
marriage. No such alliance was more splendid
than that of the eleventh Earl who, as Lord
Carnegie, married Her Highness Princess Maude,
younger daughter of the Princess and
granddaughter of Edward VII. The princess assumed
the title of her husband on her marriage in
accordance with the English custom, although she
retained her royal status. On her death, her son,
as well as being heir to his father’s
earldom of Southesk and the chiefship of the
Carnegies, inherited the dukedom of Fife, the
title of his maternal grandfather. The eleventh
Earl died in 1992 and his son, the Duke of Fife,
succeeded to the chiefship. He thereafter decreed
that the subsidiary title of the dukedom, borne
by the heir apparent, would be Earl of Southesk
in honour of his Carnegie ancestors.
|
