A church here was destroyed by fire in 1072 in the course of a dispute between two claimants of the earldom of Northumberland.
About 1067 he bought the earldom of Northumberland from William the Conqueror; but, repenting of his submission, fled with other Englishmen to the court of Scotland (1068).
After the execution of the regent Morton, the 4th earl, in 1581 this earldom was bestowed upon Maxwell, but in 1586 the attainder of the late earl was reversed and he was deprived of his new title.
All the titles just mentioned have been united in the line of the Earl Talbot who successfully claimed the Shrewsbury title as the 18th earl, the earldom of Shrewsbury (1442) being now the oldest existing that is not merged in a higher title.
Already on his wife's death in 1292 he had resigned the earldom of Carrick to his son, the future king, who presented the deed of resignation to Baliol at Stirling in August 1293, and offered the homage which his father, like his grandfather, was unwilling to render.
An act of 1627, one of several such aimed at aggrandizing families by diverting the descent of dignities in fee from heirs general, entailed the earldom and castle of Arundel upon Thomas, earl of Arundel and Surrey and the heirs male of his body "and for default of such issue, to the heirs of his body."
An earldom followed in 1619.
An insurrection in the north, headed by the earl of Huntly under pretext of rescuing from justice the life which his son had forfeited by his share in a homicidal brawl, was crushed at a blow by the Lord James against whose life, as well as against his sister's liberty, the conspiracy of the Gordons had been aimed, and on whom, after the father had fallen in fight and the son had expiated his double offence on the scaffold, the leading rebel's earldom of Murray was conferred by the gratitude of the queen.
As his uncle the 3rd Earl had no children, Albert Grey was the heir-presumptive to the earldom, and he endeavoured to win a seat in Parliament as a.
As Rivers left no legitimate son the earldom passed on his death to his cousin, John Savage, grandson of the 2nd earl, and a priest in the Roman Catholic Church, on whose death, about 1735, all the family titles became extinct.
At the commencement of the following reign his attainder was reversed and his brother Henry restored to the earldom; and Henry being appointed guardian to the young king Edward III., assisted him to throw off the yoke of Mortimer.
Between the Conquest and the 14th century the earldom of Kent was held successively by Odo, bishop of Bayeux, William of Ypres and Hubert de Burgh (sheriff of the county in the reign of Henry III.), none of whom, however, transmitted the honour, which was bestowed by Edward I.
Bruce commanded the people of Carrick and probably of his old earldom, Annandale.
But Colonel Berkeley's political influence afterwards procured him (1831) a peerage as Lord Segrave of Berkeley, and ten years later an earldom with the title of Fitzhardinge.
But Mary's heart was in the expedition and in the overthrow of Huntly; she was in the hands of her brother, to whom she had secretly given the earldom of Murray, coveted by Huntly, whose good faith she had never believed in, and whose power was apt to trouble the state and disturb her friendly relations with England.
But Philip Howard, the son and heir, succeeded to the ancient earldom of Arundel in 1580, on the death of his maternal grandfather, while the Lord Lumley, his uncle by marriage, surrendered to him his life interest in the castle and honour of Arundel.
By a partition, the motive of which is not quite certain, the districts south of the Forth and Clyde were erected into an earldom for Alexander's younger brother, David.
Charles Yorke's second son by his second marriage was Sir Joseph Sydney Yorke (1768-1831), an admiral in the navy, whose son succeeded to the earldom of Hardwicke.
Conn O'Neill was a relative of Gerald Fitzgerald, and this event accordingly led to the formation of the Geraldine League, a federation which combined the O'Neills, the O'Donnells, the O'Briens of Thomond, and other powerful clans; the primary object of which was to restore Gerald to the earldom of Kildare, but which afterwards aimed at the complete overthrow of English rule in Ireland.
Douglas was succeeded in his earldom by his grandfather, Sir James the Gross, an unwieldy veteran.
Dumbarton was of old the capital of the earldom of Lennox, but was given up by Earl Maldwyn to Alexander II., by whom it was made a royal burgh in 1221 and declared to be free from all imposts and burgh taxes.
Dying unmarried, when the earldom therefore became extinct, Charles was succeeded as Viscount O'Neill by his brother John Bruce Richard (1780-1855), a general in the British army; on whose death without issue in 1855 the male line in the United Kingdom became extinct.
Earl Thomas was executed for treason, and though his attainder was reversed he left no issue, and was succeeded in the earldom by his brother Henry.
Ever since that time it has passed with the earldom or duchy of Cornwall.
Expeditions reduced the Highlands to order; earldom after earldom was forfeited; but this vigour aroused the desire for revenge, and at length cost James his life.
Feudal law required that the king should take seisin of the earldom before regranting it and receiving the homage, and the sheriff of Ayr was directed to take it on Baliol's behalf.
For after the battle of Evesham a treaty was concluded between the English king and the Welsh prince at Montgomery, whereby the latter was confirmed in his principality of Gwynedd and was permitted to receive the homage of all the Welsh barons, save that of the head of the house of Dynevor, which the king reserved to himself; whilst the four fertile cantrefs of Perfeddwlad, lying between Gwynedd and the earldom of Chester, were granted to the prince.
For its connexion with the title of earl of Arundel see Arundel, Earldom Of.
Formerly an appanage of the earldom of Ross, Gairloch has belonged to the Mackenzies since the end of the 15th century.
Hastings was succeeded by his son, Francis George Augustus (1808-1844), who in 1840 succeeded through his mother to the earldom of Loudoun.
He died unmarried, and the earldom became extinct, the barony (see below) passing to his brother Robert.
He lost his earldom and took refuge in Scotland, where Malcolm seems to have provided for him.
He married in 1113 Matilda, daughter and heiress of Waltheof, earl of Northumbria, and thus became possessed of the earldom of Huntingdon.
He now stood forth as her champion; Mary took refuge with him at Dunbar, presented him, among other estates, with the castle there and the chief lands of the earldom of March, and made him the most powerful noble in the south of Scotland.
He received instead only the earldom of Huntingdon, too far from the border to be a dangerous possession, to which he had a hereditary right as descending from Earl Waltheof.
He received the earldom of Hereford with the special duty of pushing into Wales.
He regained his earldom and held it till his death, although he was once in serious danger from the avarice of theking (1239), who was tempted by Hubert's enormous wealth to revive the charge of treason.
Henry was connected with the royal house of Scotland through his mother Margaret, a sister of William the Lion; an alliance which no doubt assisted him to obtain the earldom of Hereford from John (1199).
Her father had conferred the earldom of Tyrone on Conn Bacach O'Neill, with remainder to his supposed son Matthew, created baron of Dungannon, the offspring of a g p g O'Neill.
His brother, John V., gave him his earldom of Richmond in England.
His descendant William, of Elmley, married Isabel, sister and eventually heiress to William Mauduit, earl of Warwick, and their son succeeded in 1268 to Warwick Castle and that earldom, which remained with his descendants in the male line till 1445.
His earldom died with him, though he left two sons.
His fall in 1801 was softened by the grant of an earldom (he was created earl of Rosslyn 21st April 1801, with remainder to his nephew), and by a pension of £4000 per annum.
His father and brother were beheaded after the battle of Edgecot, and he succeeded in August of that year to the earldom.
His friend and master, after about two years' tenure of the earldom of Devonshire, died of the plague in June 1628, and the affairs of the family were so disordered financially that the widowed countess was left with the task of righting them in the boyhood of the third earl.
His grandson Lewis, the 3rd baron (16J5-1724), was created earl of Rockingham in 1714, and was succeeded by his grandson Lewis (c. 1709174J), whose brother Thomas, the 3rd earl, died unmarried in February 1746, when the earldom became extinct.
His life was prosperous, for from his first prize at the university till his acquisition of an earldom, he went on a course of almost unbroken success.
His nephew and heir, Humphrey X., who inherited the earldom of Northampton from his father, was territorially the most important representative of the Bohuns.
His son John, the 8th lord (c. 1586-1613), was at feud with the Johnstones, who had killed his father in a skirmish, and with the Douglases over the earldom of Morton, which he regarded as his inheritance.
His son, Donald of the Isles, was memorable for his rebellion in support of his claim to the earldom of Ross, in which, however, he was unsuccessful.
His son, Robert, earl of Angus (1277-1325), was taken prisoner by the Scots at Bannockburn, but was soon released, though he was deprived of the earldom of Angus and of his Scottish estates.
Hugh, who was probably one of William the Conqueror's companions, was made earl of Chester in 1071; he had special privileges in his earldom, and he held land in twenty counties.
Humphrey V., his son and heir, returned to the path of loyalty, and was permitted, some time before 1239, to inherit the earldom of Essex from his maternal uncle, William de Mandeville.
If 'the earl had known how to profit by this victory, he might now have successfully withstood the English power in Ireland; for in every part of Ireland - and especially in the south, where James Fitzthomas Fitzgerald with O'Neill's support was asserting his claim to the earldom of Desmond at the head of a formidable army of Geraldine clansmen - discontent broke into flame.
In 1050 he was largely instrumental in restoring Sweyn, the son of Earl Godwin, to his earldom, and about the same time went to Rome "on the king's errand."
In 1050, however, he regained his earldom, and in 1051 he shared his father's exile.
In 1069 Robert of Comines, a Norman to whom William had given the earldom of Northumberland, was murdered by the English at Durham; the north declared for Edgar Atheling, the last male representative of the West-Saxon dynasty; and Sweyn Estrithson of Denmark sent a fleet to aid the rebels.
In 1254 Prince Edward, afterwards King Edward I., was created earl of Chester, and since this date the earldom has always been held by the heirs apparent to the English crown with the single exception of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester.
In 1265, after Montfort's fall, Edmund received the earldom of Leicester, and two years later was created earl of Lancaster.
In 1427 James seized, as a male fee, the earldom of Strathearn, gave the earl by female descent the title of 1Vlenteith, and sent him to England as a hostage for his ransom.
In 1471 James bestowed the castle and lands of Ravenscraig in Fife on William, earl of Orkney, in exchange for all his rights to the earldom of Orkney, which, by act of parliament passed on the 20th of February of the same year, was annexed to the Scottish crown.
In 1537 Lord Thomas Fitzgerald and his five uncles were executed for rebellion in Munster, and the English government made every effort to lay hands also on Gerald, the youthful heir to the earldom of Kildare, a boy of twelve years of age who was in the secret custody of his aunt Lady Eleanor McCarthy.
In 1564 Lord Robert Stewart, natural son of James V., who had visited Kirkwall twenty-four years before, was made sheriff of the Orkneys and Shetlands, and received possession of the estates of the udallers; in 1581 he was created earl of Orkney by James IV., the charter being ratified ten years later to his son Patrick, but in 1615 the earldom was again annexed to the crown.
In 1584 Hugh O'Neill, if O'Neill he was (being second son of Matthew, mentioned above), became chief of part of Tyrone; in 1587 he obtained the coveted earldom, and in 1593 was the admitted head of the whole tribe.
In 1688 his widow was created countess of Stafford for life, and his eldest son, Henry, had the earldom of Stafford, with special remainder to his brothers.
In all the three creations (barony 1783, viscountcy 1797, earldom 1800) the title is "Donoughmore of Knocklofty."
In answer to his petition for the dukedom, the king had, on the 6th of June 1644, given him a patent of the earldom of Norfolk, in order, as it would seem, to flatter him by suggesting that the title of Norfolk would at least be refused to any other family.
In May Harley obtained the earldom of Oxford and was made lord treasurer, while in July St John was greatly disappointed at receiving only his viscountcy instead of the earldom lately extinct in his family, and at being passed over for the Garter.
In November 1232 the earldom of Chester was granted to his nephew John the Scot, earl of Huntingdon (c. 1207-1237), and in 1246, nine years after John had died childless, it was annexed to the English crown "lest so fair a dominion should be divided among women."
In return for this aid the younger Henry granted to William the earldom of Northumberland, a possession which the latter had vainly sought from the English king, and which was possibly the cause of their first estrangement.
In that year the earldom of Caithness was granted to Magnus, second son of the earl of Angus, whom the king of Norway apparently confirmed in the title.
In the next year he returned in arms, raised Wessex in revolt, and compelled the king to in-law him again, to restore his earldom, and to dismiss with ignominy the Norman favorites who were hunted over seas.
In the same year he succeeded to the earldom and to the family estates.
In this Richard confirmed him at his accession, and gave him a more tangible endowment by allowing him to marry Isabella, the heiress of the earldom of Gloucester, and by bestowing on him the honor of Lancaster and the shires of Derby, Devon, Cornwall and Somerset.
Its name is variously derived from the Gaelic crom, crooked, and bath, bay, or ard, height, meaning either the "crooked bay," or the "bend between the heights" (the high 'rocks, or Sutors, which guard the entrance to the Firth), and gave the title to the earldom of Cromarty.
James Stewart received the Hamilton earldom of Arran, and under him and Lennox the young king began his long strife with the kirk and his halfhearted dealings with the Catholics and his mother.
Later, when this plan had fallen through, he was endowed with castles, revenues and lands on both sides of the channel; the vacant earldom of Cornwall was reserved for him (1175); he was betrothed to Isabella the heiress of the earldom of Gloucester (1176); and he was granted the lordship of Ireland with the homage of the Anglo-Irish baronage (1177).
Lord Grey married Alice, daughter of Robert Stayner Holford, and had, besides daughters, a son who succeeded him in the earldom and who married the daughter of the 2nd Earl of Selborne.
Marrying Matilda, widow of Simon de St Liz and heiress of Waltheof, David received the earldom of Huntingdon and supposed himself to have claims over Northumberland, a cause of war for' three generations.
Meanwhile in 1494 Fox had been translated to Durham, not merely because it was a richer see than Bath and Wells but because of its political importance as a palatine earldom and its position with regard to the Borders and relations with Scotland.
Moreover after the time of Beowulf and Jordanes there are very few references to the kingdom of the Gotar and in Olaf Sktittkonung's time it was merely an earldom.
On the collapse of his confederate's rising, Roger was tried before the Great Council, deprived of his lands and earldom, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment; but he was released, with other political prisoners, at the death of William I.
On the death of the "Wolf of Badenoch" the earldom of Buchan passed to his brother Robert, duke of Albany, also earl of Fife and earl of Menteith, but these earldoms were forfeited on the execution of his son Murdoch in 1425, the earldom of Buchan again, however, coming to the house of Stewart in the person of James, second son of Sir James Stewart, the black knight of Lorn, by Joan or Joanna, widow of King James I.
On the death of this cousin the descent of the title was for a short time in dispute, and the lands were claimed for Lord Edmund Howard (now Talbot), an infant son of the duke of Norfolk, under the will of the last earl; but the courts decided that, under a private act obtained by the duke of Shrewsbury shortly before his death, the title and bulk of the estates must go together, and the true successor to the earldom was found in Earl Talbot, the head of another line of the descendants of Sir Gilbert Talbot of Grafton, sprung from a second marriage of Sir Gilbert's son, Sir John Talbot of Albrighton.
On the forfeiture of the earldom of Ross it became a royal castle (being visited by Queen Mary), and afterwards passed for a period into the hands of the Mackenzies of Gairloch.
On the occasion of the opening of the Royal Courts Lord Selborne received an earldom.
Queen Elizabeth continued his employment in diplomacy, and had he been richer he might have had an earldom.
Randolph died in July 1332, and in August Edward Baliol, with the disinherited lord of Liddesdale, and Beaumont, the disinherited earl of Buchan, and the English claimant of the earldom of Atholl, landed a filibustering force in Forfarshire.
Richard did hun homage or Leinster, engaging to hold it as a palatine earldom, and not .o claim the name or rights of a king.
She was married in childhood to Lionel, son of Edward III., who was recognized in her right as earl of Ulster, and their direct representative, the duke of York, ascended the throne in 1461 as Edward IV., since when the earldom of Ulster has been only held by members of the royal family.
Sir Alexander Stewart, earl of Buchan, fourth son of Robert II., who earned by his ferocity the title of the "Wolf of Badenoch," inherited by his wife the earldom of Ross, but died without legitimate issue, although from his illegitimate offspring were descended the Stewarts of Belladrum, of Athole, of Garth, of Urrard and of St Fort.
Sir William Howard of Lingfield, younger brother of the great admiral, carried on the Effingham line, his great-grandson succeeding to the barony on the extinction of the earldom.
Siward held the earldom till his death in 1055, when it was given to Tostig, son of earl Godwine, and after his banishment to Morkere, son of iElfgar, earl of Mercia.
Soon after John's accession in 1199 the Scottish king asked for the earldom of Northumberland, which Richard I., like his father, had refused to restore to Scotland.
Soon after the funeral a bill was passed bestowing a pension of 4000 a year on his successors in the earldom.
Standing as a Liberal Unionist, he lost his seat at the General Election of that year, and did not reappear in Parliament till he succeeded his uncle in the earldom in 1894.
Strangely enough it was this cession of a Northumbrian earldom to the Northern king that ultimately made Scotland an Englishspeaking country.
Such were Ingimund the Old, Geirmund Hellskin, Thord Beardie (who had wed St Edmund's granddaughter,) Audun Shackle, Bryniulf the Old, Uni, to whom Harold promised the earldom of the new land if he could make the settlers acknowledge him as king (a hopeless project), and others by whom the north-west, north and east were almost completely " claimed."
The 4th earl (1601-1635) distinguished himself on the English side in O'Neill's rebellion and afterwards, and obtained the English earldom of St Albans in 1628, his son Ulick receiving further the Irish marquessate of Clanricarde (1646).
The bishop returned to his earldom and soon organized a rebellion with the object of handing over England to his eldest nephew, Duke Robert.
The earl founded the abbey of St Mary de Pre at Leicester and other religious houses, and by a charter confirmed the burgesses of Leicester in the possession of their merchant-gild and customs. His son, Robert, succeeded to the earldom of Leicester, and with other English barons assisted prince Henry in his revolt against his father the king in 1173.
The earldom in the 10th century apparently included several other counties, and its most famous holder was the ealdorman Brihtnoth, who fell at the battle of Maldon in 991.
The earldom of Berkeley was never assumed by the eldest legitimate son of the 5th earl, and was in 1909 enjoyed by Randal Thomas Mowbray Berkeley, 8th earl, grandson of admiral Sir George Cranfield Berkeley, second son of the 4 th earl.
The earldom of Chesterfield passed at his death to his godson, already mentioned, as 5th earl, and so to the latter's son and grandson.
The earldom of Dysart must not be confounded with that of Desart (Irish), created (barony 1733) in 1793, and held in the Cuffe family, who were originally of Creech St Michael, Somerset, the Irish branch dating from Queen Elizabeth's time.
The earldom of Lichfield was conferred on the family in the next.
The earldom of Northumberland, with palatine rights, was bought by Hugh Puiset, bishop of Durham.
The earldom of Sussex seems later to have been held sometimes with that of Kent.
The earldom of Ulster, the old inheritance of the De Burghs, had descended to him from Lionel, duke of Clarence; the earldom of March came from the Mortimers, and the dukedom of York and the earldom of Cambridge from his paternal ancestry.
The earldom, and the viscounty of the United Kingdom, being limited to heirs male, became extinct, but the barony, being to heirs general, passed to his daughter, Sophia Charlotte (1762-1835), who married the Hon.
The Hamiltons, now in English exile, were forfeited; d'Aubigny received the earldom of Lennox; and, as after Darnley's death, placards, were posted urging the trial of Morton for that crime.
The one appropriated Mayo as the Lower (Oughter) M`William, and the earldom of Mayo perpetuates the memory of the event.
The queen offered him the dignity of an earldom, which he declined.
The Scottish earldom was first conferred in 1703 upon the 4th earl's great-grandfather, Archibald Primrose of Dalmeny (1664-1723), a staunch Whig and a commissioner for the Union.
The subsequent earls and dukes of Lancaster were all recognized as stewards of England, the office apparently being treated as annexed to the earldom, or honor, of Leicester.
The third son, Walter, obtained by marriage the earldom of Menteith, which ultimately came by marriage to Robert, duke of Albany, son of Robert II.
The title of Granville descended to his son Robert, who died without issue in 1776, when the earldom of this creation became extinct.
The town and lands belonged of old to the Abbey of Deer, built in the 13th century by William Comyn, earl of Buchan; but when the abbey was erected into a temporal lordship in the family of Keith the superiority of the town passed to the earl marischal, with whom it continued till the forfeiture of the earldom in 1716.
There is a monument for Edmund Neville who claimed the earldom of Westmorland in the 17th century, and William Stukeley, the antiquary, was buried in the churchyard.
These two men, with Campbell of Loch Awe, and Randolph's son, the earl of Moray, held up the national standard and were joined by the English claimant of the earldom of Atholl.
This earldom ended in 1762, but the attainder was reversed by an act of 1824 and in the following year Sir George Jerningham, the heir general, established his claim to the Stafford barony of 1640.
Thomas Howard, a politic mind, loyal to the powers that be, was released from the Tower of London in 1489, his earldom of Surrey and his Garter restored.
Two of his sons succeeded in turn to the earldom of Nottingham, extinct on the death of Charles, the third earl in 1681.
Tyrone submitted at last, craving pardon on his knees, renouncing his Celtic chiefry, and abjuring all foreign powers, but still retaining his earldom, and power almost too great for a subject.
Under the will of his father, Colonel William Berkeley, the eldest illegitimate son, had the castle and estates, and on the failure of his claim to the earldom he demanded a writ of summons as a baron by reason of his tenure of the castle.
When Tyrone died, Matthew's son, Brian O'Neill, baron of Dungannon, claimed his earldom under the patent.
With him ended the earldom of Norwich, while the representation of the Mowbrays and Segraves passed to his nieces, the Ladies Stourton and Petre, the abeyance of the two baronies being determined in 1878 in favour of Lord Stourton.
With the advent of the Normans, William the Conqueror, with the object of placing a firm feudal barrier between Wales and the earldom of Mercia, erected three palatine counties along the Cymric frontier.