Earl of Fife
noble title
The Earl of Fife or Mormaer of Fife was the ruler of the province of Fife in medieval Scotland, which encompassed the modern counties of Fife and Kinross. Due to their royal ancestry, the earls of Fife were the highest ranking nobles in the realm, and had the right to crown the king of Scots.
Held by the MacDuff family until it passed by resignation to the Stewarts, the earldom ended on the forfeiture and execution of Murdoch Stewart in 1425. The earldom was revived in 1759 with the style of Earl Fife for William Duff, a descendant of the MacDuffs. His great-great-grandson, the 6th Earl Fife, was made Earl of Fife in 1885 and Duke of Fife in 1889.
Medieval earldom
Mormaer of Fife
The mormaers of Fife, by the 12th century, had established themselves as the highest ranking native nobles in Scotland. The earliest certain mormaer of Fife was Causantín or Constantine (fl. 1095–1128). The mormaers frequently held the office of Justiciar of Scotia – highest brithem in the land - and enjoyed the right of crowning the kings of the Scots. The Mormaer's function, as with other medieval Scottish lordships, was partly kin-based. Hence, in 1385, the earl of Fife, seen as the successor of the same lordship, is called capitalis legis de Clenmcduffe ('Lord of the Law of the Children of Macduff'), and was often but not always also the chief of Clan MacDuff.
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This entry incorporates text from “Earl of Fife” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.