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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1995-08 > 0807377999


From: "William A. Reitwiesner" <>
Subject: Re: Stewart claimant
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 1995 10:39:59 -0500


(Govind III Rashtrakut) said:

>William A. Reitwiesner <> wrote:
>
>>Any pedants out there willing to take a stab at why I said "from 1390"?
>
>Was 1390 the year James I was born??? If so it could be a smart alecy
>comment on the inactivity of Robert II and III in their reigns. Robert
>Duke of Albany was the effective ruler in the reigns with a three year
>interregenum for the regency of David Duke of Rothesay.

Actually it was the year Robert II died. Robert II married twice. His
first union, with Elizabeth Mure, was invalid (there was some sort of
impediment). This was not corrected until a dispensation was granted, and
then Robert II and Elizabeth married. This was *after* all of their
children were born. Elizabeth then died and Robert II remarried, and this
time the paperwork was handled up front. So it can be said that the only
legitimate children of Robert II, King of Scots, were his children by his
second wife.

Robert II's oldest son by Elizabeth Mure, John Stewart, succeeded him as
King of Scots (changing his name to Robert III in the process) because the
Scottish Parliament specifically set the succession on Robert II's sons, by
name, and their male line descendants, then to the heir of line. The
reason that James V was succeeded by his daughter (Mary Queen of Scots) was
that James V's uncle had died a few years earlier. If the uncle had
survived he would have succeeded.

The descendants of Robert II's second marriage have, at several different
times, attempted to lay claim to the Scottish throne. They've apparently
forgotten about it for the past 200 or so years. See Cokayne's *Complete
Peerage* and Balfour Paul's *Scots Peerage* under titles of Strathearn,
Menteith, and Airth.

William Addams Reitwiesner

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