Origins The office of
mormaer is first mentioned in the context of the
Battle of Corbridge in 918, where the
Annals of Ulster describe how the men of the
Kingdom of Alba "did not lose a king or mormaer". Another three
mormaers are named, though without their provinces being specified, in the
Annals of Tigernach, which listed them as fighting in Ireland in 976. The first individual named
mormaer was
Dubacan of Angus, one of the companions of Amlaib, the son of King
Causantín II (Constantine II). Dubacan's death at the
Battle of Brunanburh in 937 is recorded in the
Chronicle of the Kings of Alba, where he is described as
Mormaer of Angus (Gaelic:
Mormair Oengusa, or
Mormaer Óengus), the first
mormaer to be documented in connection to a specific province.
Domnall mac Eimín is described as
Mormaer of Mar in the
Annals of Ulster recording his death at the
Battle of Clontarf in 1014. By the 10th century the
mormaer was established as the leading figure of each of the
provinces of the
Kingdom of Alba. This remained their primary role, with military, fiscal and judicial elements, until the late 12th century. The
mormaer was responsible for raising and leading the army of the province, offered protection to those within the province beyond that afforded by their kin-groups, heard and decided upon accusations of theft, and had the right to collect
tribute (
càin) from settlements within the province as a source of revenue for their activities. Although the
mormaer was the ultimate head of the provincial community and a focal point of its power, his authority was not absolute and could only be exercised in cooperation with other powerful local figures, including
thanes,
bishops and
tòiseach, the leaders of powerful local kin-groups. The role of
mormaer at this time does not appear to have been
hereditary: although sons did sometimes succeed their fathers, often they did not, and the position seems to have been occupied by the most powerful member of the most powerful kin-group within a province, sometimes alternating between different branches of a family or switching between different kin-groups. The
Leges inter Brettos et Scottos – a law code reflecting customs in the Kingdom of Alba in the 10th or 11th centuries – lists socio-legal ranks within society and their
cro, the payments due in
kine to the kin of a victim of that rank in the event of a killing. A
mormaer is listed at 150 kine, behind a king at 1,000 kine and equal to the value of a king's son, but only 50% higher than that of a thane at 100 kine. While this implies that a
mormaer was behind only the King of Scots in rank, it also shows that they were closer in status to a thane than to a king, and that both
mormaer and thane were considered to be a noble rank, neither were simply royal officials. Despite being the leading power within their province, the
mormaer did not necessarily hold a large proportion of the land within the province in their own right: land was also held by the King, was granted out by the King to secular vassals, or was held by large religious foundations or other powerful lords. Land held by a
mormaer could derive either from their status as
mormaer, or from their role of leader of their own kin-group. In Latin the ''mormaer's
provincia
– the broad regional division of the kingdom that the mormaer
led – was distinguished from his comitatus'' – the land he controlled directly.
Territorial earldoms The role of the
mormaer changed dramatically over the course of the late 12th century, and by the early 13th century the position had evolved into one that was inherited, normally through the male line, and whose power was largely limited to a territorial "earldom", managed and exploited in a manner similar to that of other lords, and not coterminous with the
province of the same name. The 13th century also saw the
Scots term
earl increasingly used at the expense of the
Gaelic term
mormaer, as Scots gradually replaced Gaelic as the dominant vernacular language. By 1221
mormaers held their earldom from the King and were not permitted to enter the land of any other lord. An exception was made for the
Earl of Fife, but this right was expressly separated from his role as
mormaer, being held "not as an earl but as the king’s third
maer of Fife". The rise of
patrilinear inheritance meant that succession to
mormaership became linear and stable; a ''mormaer's
estates, previously split between those he controlled as head of a kindred and those controlled in his capacity as mormaer
, came to be viewed as a single entity; and land rather than kinship became the main determinant of secular power. The proportion of a province directly controlled by a mormaer'' could vary considerably: by 1286 for example, the
Earldom of Atholl covered most of
Atholl, while the
Earldom of Angus covered only a small proportion of
Angus. The earliest
mormaers of each province are generally only hazily, if at all, known until the 12th century, by which time
mormaer is being referred to in
Latin documents as
comes. Prior to the 12th century, there were four 'ancient'
mormaer dynasties: Cataidh/Caithness, Charraig/Carrick, Dunbarra/Dunbar and Moireabh/Moray. After the 12th century, eight other dynasties are known to be hereditary, continuous and no longer fragmentary. ==Role==