Earl of Rothes

IntroductionOne name, two dignities

Two legally distinct dignities now bear the name of Rothes, both originating in the same Leslie line. The parliamentary earldom, created by James II in or about 1457–58 as a peerage of Scotland, has passed by blood through twenty-two holders to James Malcolm David Leslie, 22nd Earl of Rothes.^{1, 2} The feudal, or territorial, earldom comprises the lands, baronies, burgh, offices and honour of Rothes united under the earls’ Crown charters of 1457–58, 1663 and 1859. These passed with the estates in 1919 and are now vested in Ambassador Dario Item by the assignation of Sir Christopher Ondaatje.^{3, 4, 5} There has never been competition between the two dignities. Both derive from the Crown and are titles of nobility recognised by Scots law, but their rules of descent differ: succession to the peerage is by blood alone, whereas the feudal earldom, owing to its feudal origin, may pass by inheritance or by deed. Each has its own governing law and authority, with a standing that is complete within its respective order.

The account that follows traces both histories. Its principal sources are Sir James Balfour Paul’s Scots Peerage, the Dictionary of National Biography, the History of Parliament, the records of Historic Environment Scotland, the statutes and the published Notes of the Court of the Lord Lyon. Statements supported solely by deeds in the present holder’s possession are identified as such in the notes. The form ‘1457–58’ is used for dates before 1600, when the Scottish year began on 25 March. The numbering of the earls follows modern peerage authorities, with William, killed at Flodden, counted as the 3rd Earl.⁶

IFrom Lesslyn to Rothes

Leslie, formerly Lesslyn, is the barony and parish in the Garioch of Aberdeenshire from which the family acquired its name. Bartolf, also known as Bartholomew, is its documented founder, although he is attested only through the charters of his son Malcolm. David, Earl of Huntingdon and brother of William the Lion, granted Malcolm the lands of Lesslyn, with pit and gallows, by a writ that can date no earlier than 1172. The Scots Peerage considered Bartolf ‘probably of Flemish origin’. Colonel Leslie, the family’s own historian, instead described a Hungarian nobleman who had come north in Queen Margaret’s retinue and married a sister of Malcolm III; the Scots Peerage dismissed that tradition as unauthenticated.^{7, 8, 9}

The first to adopt the surname was Malcolm’s grandson Norman, who described himself as ‘Norman of Leslie’ in a charter of 1253.¹⁰ In 1296 Sir Norman of Leslie did homage to Edward I. His son Sir Andrew, ‘Lord of Leslie’, was among the Scottish barons who sealed the letter sent to Pope John XXII in 1320, now known as the Declaration of Arbroath.¹¹ Through Sir Andrew’s marriage to Mary Abernethy, co-heiress of Sir Alexander Abernethy, the family acquired part of the Abernethy inheritance. This is generally held to have included Rothes on the Spey in Moray and Ballinbreich on the Tay in Fife; the Rothes arms retain the quartering of the Abernethy lion.^{12, 13} On a hill above the river stood the curtain-walled fortress of Rothes Castle, where Edward I lodged on 29 July 1296. It continued to serve as a centre of the family’s lordship until the seventeenth century.¹⁴

The earliest styling of Sir George Leslie as ‘of Rothes’ dates to 26 April 1392. A royal charter of 5 February 1397–98 erected his Fife lands into the barony of Fythkill, subsequently known as Leslie.¹⁵ His grandson George, born about 1417, bore the style Lord of Leslie when retoured heir to his father in 1439–40. His creation as a Lord of Parliament, with the title Lord Leslie of Leven, is dated to 1445 on the evidence of an old chronicle, corroborated by two charters which he issued as Lord Leslie in May 1448.^{16, 1}

IIThe creation of the earldom, 1457–58

The patent of creation is not extant. At the Privy Council sitting of 5 November 1457, which rejected Lord Erskine’s claim to the earldom of Mar, George still sat under the style ‘George, Lord Leslie’. By 20 March 1457–58 James II was styling him Earl of Rothes in a charter that granted and confirmed the lands and barony of Ballinbreich, together with other lands, united ‘into one free barony called the barony of Ballinbreich’. On the next day, 21 March, the king erected the Earl’s town of Leslie Green into a free burgh of barony.¹ The creation thus falls between the Council sitting and the charter, in the year designated 1457 by the Scottish calendar and 1458 by modern reckoning. Peerage reference works accordingly give the date as 1457, 1457/8 or 1458.^{13, 17}

Under this grant, one holder possessed both the parliamentary honour of an earl and the feudal lordship of an extensive estate in Fife and Moray. The family’s principal Fife stronghold, the tower house of Ballinbreich on the Firth of Tay, remains as a scheduled ruin, while the Green at Leslie retains the layout of the burgh established for the 1st Earl.¹⁸ The subsequent history of Rothes proceeds from this original union of parliamentary honour and landed lordship.

IIIFlodden and the murder of Cardinal Beaton

At his trial in 1464 for forging a royal acquittance, George, 1st Earl, was ‘triumphantly acquitted’ on 15 October. He was a regular attender of Parliament from 1467 to 1481 and sat in James IV’s first Parliament in October 1488. His death occurred between 31 August 1489 and 24 May 1490. Since his son Andrew, Master of Rothes, had died before him, his grandson George inherited the earldom.^{19, 20}

The 2nd Earl, George, left no surviving issue. His death occurred between August 1511 and 31 March 1513, by which time an Act of Parliament referred to him as deceased. His brother William, 3rd Earl, still held only the Crown’s signature of 14 July 1513 for the barony of Ballinbreich when, on 9 September, ‘King and subject were both killed at Flodden’. Earlier peerage works had placed both brothers at the battle; that error was corrected by the Scots Peerage and the Dictionary of National Biography.^{21, 22, 6}

On the day of Flodden the title passed to George, 4th Earl. Appointed Sheriff of Fife on 2 March 1528–29, he held an office that became hereditary in the family on 7 December 1540. He accompanied James V to France by sea in 1536 and was appointed an extraordinary lord of session on 1 July 1541.⁶ The murder of Cardinal Beaton in the castle of St Andrews on 29 May 1546 involved two members of the Earl’s family: his eldest son Norman, Master of Rothes, and his brother John Leslie of Parkhill were among the assassins. An accusation of complicity was also brought against the Earl. At his trial on 15 July 1547 before the Governor and the Chancellor, with an assize sitting on the banks of the Yarrow, he ‘denied the charge and was fully acquitted by the jury’.²³ He was sent to Denmark as ambassador in June 1550. In December 1557 Parliament named him a commissioner for the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots, to the Dauphin, celebrated at Notre-Dame on 24 April 1558.^{6, 24} The commissioners became violently ill at Dieppe on their return journey, and Rothes died there on 28 November 1558. Allegations of poisoning by the French arose immediately and persisted for centuries. The Scots Peerage, however, considered a dish of unwholesome shellfish the more likely explanation.²⁵

IVReformation, Covenant and Restoration

In 1559 Andrew, 5th Earl, marched with the Lords of the Congregation. He was a party to the bond for Riccio’s murder in 1566 and received a pardon, fought on Queen Mary’s side at Langside in 1568, and, in the reign of James VI, served on the assize which condemned Morton in 1581.²⁶ Lord Lindsay of the Byres disputed his right to the hereditary sheriffdom. The dispute continued until 9 May 1573, when arbiters ruled that the Earl should redeem the office for 5,000 merks.²⁷ His grandson succeeded him at his death in 1611.

John, 6th Earl (c. 1600–1641), would not vote for the Five Articles of Perth in 1621. He subsequently became one of the principal authors of the National Covenant of 1638 and acted as the Covenanters’ chief spokesman at the Glasgow Assembly and the pacification of Berwick in 1639. In 1640 he was sent to London as a commissioner. Rapidly advancing consumption caused his death at Richmond on 23 August 1641; his burial at Leslie followed on 24 November.^{28, 29, 30}

John, 7th Earl (1630–1681), his son, bore the sword of state at Charles II’s coronation at Scone. Captured at Worcester on 3 September 1651, he remained a prisoner in the Tower and at Newcastle until 1655. His appointments after the Restoration included President of the Privy Council on 30 August 1660, extraordinary lord of session in 1661, and Lord High Treasurer for life and the King’s Commissioner to Parliament in 1663. In October 1667 he became Lord Chancellor of Scotland for life.^{31, 32} He rebuilt Leslie House between 1667 and 1672 as a quadrangular palace. John Mylne supplied the design; after his death Robert Mylne completed the work with advice from Sir William Bruce. William Adam drew the house about 1730 for his Vitruvius Scoticus. Historic Environment Scotland describes it as ‘the largest and earliest Restoration house in Fife’.^{33, 34}

The charter of 1663 is fundamental to the history of Rothes. Following his own resignation, the Earl secured from Charles II a charter of ‘the title, honour, and dignity of Earl of Rothes, Lord Leslie and Ballinbreich, with the whole earldom, lands, baronies, and lordships’. The grant was to the Earl and the heirs male of his body; failing them, his eldest heir female was to succeed without division, provided that she married a Leslie or someone who would adopt the name. Further substitutes were specified in succession, ending with his ‘heirs and assignees whomsoever’. Dated at Whitehall on 4 June 1663 and entered in the Register of the Great Seal, the charter was ratified by the Scottish Parliament on 9 October 1663.^{31, 17} Under its provisions, the earldom passed through the female line in 1681, 1773, 1817, 1859 and 1886.

A further creation on 29 May 1680 conferred on the Earl the titles Duke of Rothes, Marquess of Ballinbreich, Earl of Leslie, Viscount of Lugtoun, Lord Auchmoutie and Caskieberry, with succession confined to the heirs male of his body. His death at Holyrood on 27 July 1681 brought the dukedom to an end.^{35, 32} The funeral of 23 and 24 August 1681 proceeded from St Giles’ to Holyrood, then through Leith and Burntisland to Leslie. Among the most elaborate heraldic processions ever held in Scotland, it survives in Alexander Kincaid’s engravings after a contemporary drawing now lost, and has attracted the study of modern heralds.^{35, 36}

VThrough the female line

The entail of 1663 governed the succession of Margaret, 8th Countess (d. 1700). Charles Hamilton, 5th Earl of Haddington, her husband, assumed the name Leslie. Their marriage settlement of 1674 reserved Rothes for the first son and Haddington for the second, preventing any union of the two earldoms.^{37, 17} John Hamilton-Leslie, 9th Earl (1679–1722), followed his father-in-law Tweeddale into the Squadrone and consistently voted for the Union of 1707. He sat as a Scottish representative peer from 1708 and played a leading role in the government’s military measures in Fife during the rising of 1715. His offices included Vice-Admiral of Scotland, Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly (1715–21) and Governor of Stirling Castle; the History of Parliament also records his hereditary offices as sheriff principal of Aberdeen and of Fife.³⁸

A soldier by profession, John, 10th Earl (c. 1698–1767), fought at Dettingen and Rocoux and became Governor of Duncannon Fort and Commander-in-Chief of the forces in Ireland. He was appointed a Knight of the Thistle on 3 March 1753, attained the rank of general in 1765 and sat as a representative peer for more than thirty years.³⁹ His tenure also saw two events of particular consequence for this history: the surrender of the hereditary sheriffdom of Fife to the Crown in 1747, for compensation under the Heritable Jurisdictions Act, and the destruction by fire of the Duke’s palace at Leslie on 28 December 1763. Only the west wing escaped the fire.^{17, 34}

The west wing was rebuilt into the present house by his son John, 11th Earl, who died without children in 1773.^{34, 40} His sister Jane Elizabeth, 12th Countess (1750–1810), faced a competing claim from her uncle Andrew Leslie. She ‘effectually vindicated her right’ in the Court of Session and subsequently at Westminster, where the House of Lords found in her favour on 10 May 1774.^{41, 42} The 13th Earl was her son by her first husband, George Raymond Evelyn. Her marriage to her second husband, the physician Sir Lucas Pepys, President of the Royal College of Physicians, made her the ancestress of the Leslie baronets.⁴³

VIThe Victorian line and the charter of 1859

The ensuing line of succession ran from George William Evelyn-Leslie, 13th Earl (1768–1817), to his daughter Henrietta Anne, 14th Countess (1790–1819), who married George Gwyther. Her son George William Evelyn Leslie, 15th Earl (1809–1841), was followed by his own son, also George William Evelyn Leslie, 16th Earl (1835–1859). The latter died unmarried on 2 January 1859 and was succeeded by his sister Henrietta Anderson Morshead Leslie, 17th Countess (1832–1886). In 1861 she married the Hon. George Waldegrave, a younger son of the 8th Earl Waldegrave, who then assumed the name Waldegrave-Leslie.^{43, 44}

A few months after her succession, the 17th Countess secured a Crown Charter of Confirmation from Queen Victoria. It was sealed at Edinburgh on 19 October 1859 and entered in the Register of the Great Seal. In the Queen’s name, the instrument confirms ‘for ever’ to the Countess and the heirs and substitutes designated by Margaret, Countess of Rothes, in her entail of 1 January 1684, ‘All and Sundry the Earldom, lands, Lordship, Baronies, lands and others’ of the house. It specifies the lands and barony of Leslie, with the castle, mills and fishings, ‘united into one whole and free barony called the barony of Leslie’; the burgh’s four free fairs, at Michaelmas, after Pasch, after Whitsunday and after Lammas; the office of Sheriff of Fife; the Countess’s house in the burgh of Cupar; the patronage of Kinglassie parish church; and the lands of Caskieberran, Strathore and Auchmuty, annexed to the earldom by Charles II. Confirmation also extends to the sasine of 1842 in favour of her brother, the 16th Earl, and to her own service as his heir of tailzie, retoured before the Sheriff Substitute of Fife on 19 April 1859.^{3, 45} The Register’s copy of this finely executed vellum charter describes Leslie’s Tuesday market on its sixth page, in a passage that also records the feudal earldom’s origin:

‘All and Whole the weekly market to be held weekly within the said burgh of Leslie upon Tuesday, with the whole Tolls, customs, casualties, profits and duties of the same; which whole lands, baronies, free fairs, weekly market, dwelling house, lands, annual rents, office of Sheriff of Fife and others particularly and generally above mentioned, with certain other lands and baronies and the Honor, Title and dignity of Rothes, were all united, annexed, created, erected and incorporated into a whole and free Lordship and Earldom, Barony, burgh of Barony and Lordship of Leslie and Earldom of Rothes, conform to Charter under the Great Seal granted by King Charles the Second in favour of the deceased John Duke of Rothes, dated at Whitehall the fourth day of June one thousand six hundred and sixty three.’³

Such charters of confirmation recited anew, in the Crown’s name, the titles under which an estate was held. The particular significance of this instrument is twofold. It establishes Whitehall, 4 June 1663, as the place and date of the Duke’s charter, and identifies that charter as the instrument erecting lands, burgh, market, office and ‘the Honor, Title and dignity of Rothes’ into ‘a whole and free Lordship and Earldom’. Through the confirmation, the feudal earldom entered the modern law of heritable succession as a single unit comprising lands, privileges and honour. A transcription of the complete text appears in the Appendix.

On Henrietta’s death without issue on 10 February 1886, the peerage passed to her aunt Mary Elizabeth, 18th Countess (1811–1893). Her husband, Captain Martin Haworth, had added Leslie to his name by royal licence.⁴⁶ The Fife estates had meanwhile been settled in trust.⁴⁷ The family’s estate papers for the years 1580 to 1830 were discovered in 1966 in a farm building near the Leslie House stables. They were subsequently deposited on loan at Kirkcaldy Museum as the Rothes Papers.⁴⁸

VIITitanic, the sale of 1919 and Westminster

Following his grandmother’s death, Norman Evelyn Leslie, 19th Earl (1877–1927), succeeded on 19 September 1893. He married Lucy Noël Martha Dyer-Edwardes on 19 April 1900 and settled at Leslie House in 1904.⁴⁶ The Countess was on her way to join him in North America when Titanic sank on 15 April 1912. After being placed in Lifeboat 8, she took the tiller at the request of Thomas Jones, the able seaman in command. Ten days later he told the United States Senate inquiry: ‘She had a lot to say, and I put her to steering my boat.’ She remained at the tiller for more than an hour and earned from the crew the name ‘the plucky little countess’. In gratitude for her survival, her father gave the lifeboat Lady Rothes to Fraserburgh.^{49, 50, 51, 52} During the war, she converted a wing of Leslie House into a hospital for wounded soldiers.⁵¹

Captain Crundall purchased Leslie House and the Fife estates from the Earl in 1919, then resold the house that same year to Sir Robert Spencer Nairn, the linoleum manufacturer of Kirkcaldy. The Leslie family moved to England; the Earl died at Chelsea on 29 March 1927.^{33, 53, 46} In 1952 the Spencer Nairns donated Leslie House to the Church of Scotland for use as an eventide home. Sold for conversion in 2005, the building was gutted by fire in February 2009. Work to restore it as apartments began in 2021.^{34, 54}

From 1931 to 1959 Malcolm, 20th Earl (1902–1975), served as a Scottish representative peer. Ian, 21st Earl (1932–2005), entered the House of Lords on his succession in 1975. His membership ended on 11 November 1999, when the House of Lords Act 1999 excluded all but ninety-two hereditary peers. A naval cadet in his youth, he later founded the Clan Leslie Society, with commissioners in North America and Australasia. In 1982 he established the Clan Leslie Charitable Trust to assemble the historical relics associated with the name. Shortly before his death at Salisbury on 15 April 2005, he asked his younger son to take on the chiefship of the clan.^{2, 55, 56, 57, 58}

Born on 4 June 1958, James Malcolm David Leslie succeeded on 15 April 2005 as 22nd Earl of Rothes and 22nd Lord Leslie. He was educated at Eton and at John Makepeace’s school for wood craftsmen at Parnham, and lives in Dorset. Unmarried, he has as his heir presumptive his brother, the Hon. Alexander Leslie (b. 1962), whom the Clan Leslie Society records as chief of Clan Leslie and who represents the clan on the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs.^{2, 57, 59} The Earl has never sat at Westminster. Royal Assent was given to the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026 on 18 March 2026; under that Act, the remaining hereditary peers ceased to be members at the close of the session on 29 April 2026. No seat in the House of Lords is now held by right of a hereditary peerage.^{60, 61}

VIIIThe feudal earldom: lands, charters, assignations

Scots law treats the erection of an earl’s lands by Crown charter in unum comitatum, into one earldom, as a feudal dignity distinct from the personal peerage dignity, as the Court of the Lord Lyon explains.⁶² Rothes has an unusually complete sequence of charters. The first, dated 20 March 1457–58, united Ballinbreich ‘into one free barony’. The charter issued at Whitehall on 4 June 1663 granted ‘the whole earldom, lands, baronies, and lordships’ with the honour; by its terms, as recited in the charter of 1859, the lands, burgh, market, office of Sheriff and ‘the Honor, Title and dignity of Rothes’ were ‘united, annexed, created, erected and incorporated into a whole and free Lordship and Earldom’. The charter of 1859 confirmed the whole to the 17th Countess and her heirs.^{1, 31, 3} A peerage can descend only by blood, whereas lands and the dignities united with them may pass by inheritance or by deed. The sale of the estates in 1919 therefore necessarily separated them: the feudal dignities passed with the land, while the Leslies retained the peerage.

Captain Alexander Crundall acquired the Leslie estates under the disposition of 9 December 1919. His son William Alexander Crundall made up title in 1957. The Captain’s grandson, William Patrick Alexander Crundall, assigned the dignities to Sheldon Gustav Franco-Rooks on 1 April 2004; they passed from Franco-Rooks to Sir Christopher Ondaatje (1933–2026) on 21 May 2004.^{47, 63} Sir Christopher was born in Kandy and pursued a career in finance and publishing in Canada. An Olympic bobsledder, traveller and author, he was also one of his generation’s foremost cultural benefactors. His knighthood in 2003 recognised his philanthropy and services to museums, galleries and learned societies. He supported the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Geographical Society; his name is borne by the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society’s medal for exploration.⁶⁴

The subsequent steps are documented in the Lyon Court’s published papers. On 26 November 2004, two days before the appointed day of the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000, Sir Christopher was infeft in ‘All and Whole the lands and other heritages forming the barony and territorial lordship of Leslie and the territorial earldom of Rothes together with the territorial office of Sheriff of Fife’. A warrant of 5 September 2006 from the Lord Lyon, Robin Blair, designated him ‘Feudal Earl of Rothes and Baron and Feudal Lord of Leslie and holder of the territorial office of Sheriff of Fife’.⁴

In his ninety-second year, towards the end of his life, Sir Christopher considered the succession to the Scottish dignities he had held for twenty years. Having endowed galleries and learned societies throughout his life, he chose his successor with a patron’s concern for the future custody of a collection and the care it would receive. By Assignation dated 5 November 2024 he conveyed to Ambassador Dario Item ‘all my whole right and entitlement’ in the Earldom of Rothes and the Sheriffdom of Fife. The deed gives his motive in his own words: ‘as a mark of personal esteem and acknowledgment of his long-standing cultural patronage’.⁶⁵ The dignity thus passed as a chosen inheritance between stewards of historical and cultural heritage. The Ambassador’s Claim of Entitlement ‘to The Dignity of the Feudal Earldom of Rothes and the Hereditary Office of Sheriff of Fife’ was accepted and registered in the Scottish Barony Register on 25 November 2024, in Volume 6, folios 27 to 29. The Custodian’s Certificate of Registration followed on 19 December 2024.⁵ Burke’s Peerage records the succession; Debrett’s lists ‘Rothes (Earldom) and Sheriffdom of Fife’ under Ambassador Item among the dignities of the Baronage of Scotland.^{66, 67}

Ambassador Item’s armorial bearings were granted by warrant of the Lord Lyon King of Arms dated 4 April 2025, on his application of 5 February 2025, and matriculated in the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings in Scotland: Vert, a hauszeichen Or, on a chief enarched two dragon’s heads couped combatant Vert; above the shield a helm befitting his degree with a mantling Vert doubled Or, and on a wreath of the liveries for crest a demi-dragon rampant Vert, with the motto Gradatim Ferociter; and for pennon two tracts of the liveries Vert and Or bearing the arms in the hoist.⁶⁸

A Swiss lawyer and notary, Dr Dario Item has served since 2018 as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Antigua and Barbuda to the Kingdom of Spain. He presented his credentials to the Sovereign Prince of Monaco on 28 February 2019 and is also accredited to the Principality of Liechtenstein. Since Antigua and Barbuda joined UN Tourism in 2021, he has been his country’s Permanent Representative to the organisation.^{69, 70, 71}

IXWhy the two lines parted: the law

The peerage

The limitation in its patent or charter of creation governs the descent of a peerage, which is a personal dignity. It may neither be alienated nor surrendered. In 1640 the House of Lords resolved that a peer could not alienate or transfer his honour to another; the Buckhurst Peerage Case of 1876 reaffirmed the principle.⁷² Official recognition of a successor to a Scottish peerage has, since 2004, required entry on the Roll of the Peerage. Matriculation of arms in the Lyon Register supplies evidence of succession but does not itself constitute it.⁷³ Under the Peerage Act 1963, a successor may disclaim the dignity for his own lifetime, provided that he does so within twelve months of succeeding. The peerage then remains dormant until his death.⁷⁴

The feudal dignity

A feudal dignity belongs to the older order of nobility in which honour and land formed a single holding. It is heritable, following the former modes of transmission of land: succession by an heir or conveyance by deed to someone chosen by the holder. The institutional writers of Scots law classified these dignities as noble feus. Craig held that ‘dukes, marquesses, and earls are all comprehended among the barons’, while Stair described lordships and earldoms as ‘but more noble titles of a barony’. In 1992 Lord Clyde reiterated that ‘in feudal classification a barony falls into the class of noble as opposed to ignoble feus’.⁷⁵ Such dignities were preserved when the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000 abolished the feudal system of land tenure on the appointed day, 28 November 2004. Section 63 states that ‘nothing in this Act affects the dignity of baron or any other dignity or office (whether or not of feudal origin)’. It defines ‘dignity’ to include ‘any quality or precedence associated with, and any heraldic privilege incidental to, a dignity’. Although a dignity ‘shall not attach to the land’, it remains ‘incorporeal heritable property’; in legal usage, heritable denotes that which descends to heirs.^{76, 77} This was precisely the arrangement envisaged by the Scottish Law Commission in the report implemented by the Act: separation from the soil, descent on death under the ancient rules of heritable succession, and transmission by deed during the holder’s lifetime. The Act’s Explanatory Notes confirm that intention.^{78, 79} Earldoms are neither mentioned nor created by the Act, which preserves dignities of feudal origin as it found them. The definition of Rothes therefore rests on its charters, rather than on the statute.

The Court of the Lord Lyon

Successive holders of the office of Lord Lyon have adopted different forms of recognition for these dignities in the Court of the Lord Lyon, the Crown’s heraldic authority in Scotland. Lyon Blair recognised by warrant in 2006 the feudal Earls of Breadalbane and Rothes and the feudal Countess of Crawfurd-Lindsay. A Note issued in the following decade on the petition of Sturzenegger of Arran took a more restrictive view of the style.⁶² The Lord Lyon, Dr Joseph Morrow, settled the question in his Note of 30 April 2015 on George Menking’s petition, drawing on Craig and Stair. He held that ‘the higher feudal dignities are of the genus of barony’ and that recognition of a feudal lordship or earldom ‘is a matter for the discretion of the Lord Lyon’. Possession of such a dignity brings the holder within the Lord Lyon’s jurisdiction and entitles him to petition for arms.⁸⁰ The ordinary courts determine questions of right. Successions and assignations are entered in the Scottish Barony Register, established by Scottish solicitors on the appointed day in 2004. The Lord Lyon accepts the Custodian’s certificate as evidence of the holder’s right.^{81, 82}

The office of Sheriff of Fife

The office of Sheriff of Fife, heritable in the Rothes family since 1540, came within the heritable jurisdictions abolished by the Act of 1746 with effect from 25 March 1748. The Crown compensated the proprietors, and the 10th Earl surrendered the office. Salaried sheriffs-depute replaced the sheriff, the first being a Leslie.^{6, 83, 84, 85} The family’s charters continued to include the office, however, and the confirmation of 1859 defines the extent of its survival. It confirms ‘All and Whole the Office of Sheriff of the foresaid Sheriffdom of Fife within the whole bounds of the same, with All and Sundry fees, salaries, profits and duties of the said office, faculties, privileges and just pertinents whatsoever pertaining to the said office of Sheriff, in so far as the said Office of Sheriff and pertinents thereof are not abolished by the Act of Parliament passed in the twentieth year of the reign of his late Majesty George the Second entituled “An Act for taking away heritable Jurisdictions in Scotland”’. The infeftment of 2004 and the Lyon Court’s warrant of 2006 describe it as ‘the territorial office of Sheriff of Fife’; the entry made in the Scottish Barony Register in 2024 calls it ‘the Hereditary Office of Sheriff of Fife’.^{3, 4, 5} Its surviving character is exactly that confirmed by the Crown in 1859: a titular and historical dignity attached to the feudal earldom, without the jurisdiction removed by the Act of 1746.

XOf the ancient feudal nobility: Rothes and the Baronage of Scotland

Nobility in Scotland has always extended beyond the peerage. The lords of Parliament and the earls created by royal patent coexisted with an older and more extensive order in which rank derived from the land. A barony comprised both estate and dignity, and the Crown alone had authority to erect it. The charters of erection expressed this directly. In the Crown charter erecting the barony of Spynie in 1590, the lands were granted with the Titulum, Honorem, Ordinem et Statum liberi Baronis, namely the title, honour, rank and standing of a free baron.⁸⁶ The Rothes charters belong to the same class of instruments, though they concern a higher degree. The Crown’s recital of 1859 records that Charles II’s charter of 4 June 1663 erected ‘the Honor, Title and dignity of Rothes’, with the lands, burgh, market and office of Sheriff, into ‘a whole and free Lordship and Earldom’.³ George Joseph Bell, on whose Principles generations of Scottish lawyers relied, explained the relationship between the grades by describing lordships and earldoms of this kind as ‘nobler titles for a barony’, associated with personal dignity.⁸⁷

The realm assembled in Estates, of which the barons formed one. Parliament introduced no new principle when, in December 1567, it resolved that ‘of law and reason the barons of this realm ought to have vote in Parliament as a part of the nobility’. Sir Thomas Innes of Learney, Lord Lyon from 1945 to 1969, understood the statute as an acknowledgment of what the law of honour already assumed: the barons’ membership of the nobility in its constitutional sense.⁸⁸ The first volume of the Lyon Register recorded their place in a single section shared with baronets and knights. In the order of precedence they stood after knights and before esquires.⁸⁹

The question assumed practical importance in the twentieth century. Issued by the Lyon Court, birthbriefs are certificates of descent that Scots have long carried with them abroad. In the early decades of that century some of them described the minor barons as an ‘untitled nobility’, an expression that understated their rank. Sir Francis James Grant, Lord Lyon King of Arms, corrected the designation on 26 February 1943. His ruling on an application for a birthbrief was embodied in an interlocutor recorded in the Register of Genealogies. He found and declared that both his own court and the Court of Session had recognised Scotland’s minor barons as a ‘titled nobility’, and that the estate of the baronage, the barones minores, was ‘of the ancient Feudal Nobility of Scotland’.⁹⁰

The date of a barony’s erection, Innes of Learney argued, did not affect the standing of its holder. He returned to the question as Grant’s successor in a paper read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1945, two years after the ruling. Whatever the age of their baronies, all barons belonged to a feudal baronage in the European sense of the term and collectively formed a titled nobility.⁹¹

This tradition has retained its place in modern law. When the Scottish Law Commission prepared the abolition of feudal tenure, it identified ‘the noble quality of the feudal grant’ as ‘the essential feature of a barony title’. It also accepted that a barony’s owner could claim ennoblement through its ‘nobilitating effect’.⁹² The Act of 2000, which implemented the report, preserved the dignity along with its quality, precedence and heraldic privilege. The Lord Lyon’s classification of 2015, discussed in Part IX, placed the higher feudal dignities, including lordships and earldoms, in the same genus as the barony.^{76, 80}

In the Crown’s court of honour, practice has remained consistent with this understanding. Until the eve of abolition, the Lyon Court continued to matriculate arms with a chapeau ‘in respect of being a Minor Baron’. Eighteen such matriculations were announced together in the Edinburgh Gazette of 16 July 2002, in a single notice signed by the Lyon Clerk.⁹³ The same official newspaper of record publishes registrations from the Scottish Barony Register. Among ‘the Barons’ whose entitlement had been registered, the Custodian’s notice of 19 December 2025 includes Dario Item’s entry of 25 November 2024 for ‘Rothes (Earldom)’.⁹⁴ The arms granted to the present holder by the Lord Lyon’s warrant of 4 April 2025 bear above the shield ‘an Helm befitting his degree’. This is the Scottish heraldic formula by which the achievement is matched to its bearer’s rank.⁶⁸ Civil administration proceeds on the same basis. HM Passport Office will enter a Scottish feudal baron’s territorial designation within the surname on his passport and add an observation naming him ‘Baron of’ his barony. This requires evidence either that the Lord Lyon has recognised the dignity or that it is listed in Burke’s Peerage and Gentry.⁹⁵

The Scottish nobility accordingly comprises two orders, both noble in character, though distinct in origin and in their rules of descent. The peerage, a nobility of creation, originates in the Sovereign’s patent or charter and descends by blood under the grant’s limitations. The baronage is a nobility of the fief, deriving from the Crown’s erection of lands into baronies, lordships and earldoms. Its dignities accompanied those lands for some eight centuries; since 2004 they have passed by inheritance or by deed under statutory protection. Following the Union of 1707, the dividing line between the orders was the right to sit in the House of Lords or, for the peers of Scotland, to elect sixteen of their number to that House. The next part examines how little of this distinction now survives.

Rothes provides an instance of the two orders under a single name. Since its creation by James II, the peerage earldom has descended through twenty-two holders of Leslie blood. The earldom erected by Charles II in 1663 belongs to the baronage, where its grade as an earldom places it above the barony and the lordship. It has included the office of Sheriff of Fife since that charter. In 2006, the Lord Lyon used the designation ‘Feudal Earl of Rothes’ for the then holder;⁴ the present holder belongs, in the language of 1943, to ‘the ancient Feudal Nobility of Scotland’.⁹⁰

XIThe two earldoms today

The creation of 1457–58 gives the parliamentary Earl of Rothes, styled ‘The Right Honourable’, his rank among the earls of Scotland and is one of the oldest creations still extant. The dignity cannot be alienated; its descent is governed by the charter of 1663. It has carried no seat at Westminster since 29 April 2026. The same Act also ended the House of Lords’ determination of claims to hereditary peerages.⁶⁰

In the Baronage of Scotland, the Earl of Rothes holds a dignity of feudal origin belonging to the genus of noble feus under the old law. Section 63 of the Act of 2000 preserves it with its ‘quality or precedence’. The dignity passes to his heirs but may also be conveyed by deed during his lifetime to a successor whom he selects, as Sir Christopher Ondaatje did in 2024. The holder is an armiger subject to the Lord Lyon’s jurisdiction. Debrett’s records ‘The Much Honoured’ as the style used for such a holder in the Scottish baronage, and both Burke’s Peerage and Debrett’s list this earldom among the earldoms of the Baronage of Scotland. Ambassador Item’s diplomatic office entitles him to the style ‘His Excellency’.^{76, 80, 66, 67, 96}

The Crown is the source of both dignities. The parliamentary earldom derives from the king’s creation of 1457–58; the feudal earldom rests on the Crown charters of 1457–58, 1663 and 1859 and is preserved by the statute of 2000. Both constitute titles of nobility under Scots law, although their modes of descent differ: the peerage passes by blood alone, while the feudal earldom, as a dignity of feudal origin, may pass by inheritance or by deed. With the hereditary seats at Westminster now abolished, precedence and ceremony constitute the substantial difference between an earl in the peerage and an earl in the baronage. Each dignity is fully constituted within its own order. Their continuance preserves, in the twenty-first century, the name of Rothes and its associations with the castle on the Spey, the palace at Leslie, the sheriffs of Fife, the Covenanter, the Chancellor and the countess at the tiller of Lifeboat 8.

TablesTables of succession

The Earls of Rothes in the Peerage of Scotland

Dates from the Scots Peerage (to 1910), the Dictionary of National Biography, the History of Parliament and Burke’s Peerage (2003); ‘×’ marks a date known only within limits.^{13, 38, 2}

The feudal Earldom of Rothes since 1859

The entries for 1919–2004 rest on the title deeds in the holder’s possession; those for 2004–2006 on the Lyon Court’s published Note; that for 2024 on the Assignation and on the Register’s certificate reproduced on this site.^{47, 4, 65, 5}

AppendixThe Charter of Confirmation of 19 October 1859

The Register of the Great Seal preserves the charter in the clerk of Chancery’s copy, entered as no. 4 on folios 8 to 12 of the volume now catalogued as C2/262. The transcription below uses the certified copy issued by the National Archives of Scotland. Its spelling and capitalisation have been retained, with punctuation lightly supplied. Square brackets identify the folio for each passage; ‘[?]’ indicates an uncertain reading of a place-name in the copy, and ‘[sic]’ an apparent error by the copyist. At the head of folio 9, where a passage is blurred in the copy, the transcription follows the text that remains visible.³