The book Arran; - Cook Clan

36 THE BOOK OF ARRAN
have been in the ownership of the Comyn Earl Walter, whose
death without issue brought about a curious law-case, which
was settled by a division of the lands,' one half going to the
claimant Walter the Steward with the title, the other to
a William Cumyn who also left no children. ^ As the parts
are not specified, nothing more definite can be said. By a
marriage of a younger son of Walter Stewart with the Comyn
heiress the lands were once more consolidated, and the son
of this marriage received the earldom : his younger brother
is the notorious John (Stewart) of Menteith, unhappily
associated with Wallace. Apparently, as the earldom was
allotted to a younger son of the High Steward, so Arran and
Knapdale, in their turn, were transferred to a younger branch
of the earl's family. Younger sons of noble families must
be appropriately provided for ; a master fact in the workings
of history. Thus the island was probably, after Bruce's
establishment, in possession of the above Sir John, but it
is his son who first appears on record as ' Lord of Knapdale
and Arran,' ^ in which capacity he makes grant to Gillespie
Campbell of Lochawe of a ' pennyland ' of ' Clachelane '
(Clachland), of ' Kilbryde,' and another of ' Kinlochorednesey
' (Kinlochranza), which we shall meet again in the
translated form of ' Lochede ' or Loch-head. This Sir John
dying before 1344,^ it is his son, last male of the race and last
of the Menteith lords, who in 1357 grants to the monastery
of Kilwinning the churches of St. Mary and St. Brigit in
Arran, with their chapels and the lands pertaining, present
and future.* This grant will come up in another connection.
A much more important transaction now falls to be
recorded. The mother of the last Sir John was a daughter
of the Earl of Mar, of the older line, and his sister's daughter
married Sir Thomas Erskine, whose son, the first Lord Erskine,
initiated the claim on the now vacant earldom of Mar, which
' The, Bruces and the Cumyns, p. 403. ' -Argyll Charters.
^ Scots Peerage. * Registrum Magni Sigilli, i. No. 86.