Lord Maxwell

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Lord Maxwell was a hereditary British title in the Peerage of Scotland .

Ancestral seat of the Lords was Caerlaverock Castle in the west of the Scottish Borders in the area Dumfries and Galloway . The respective Lord Maxwell was also chief of Clan Maxwell .

History of the title

The title was awarded on July 3, 1445 to Sir Herbert Maxwell , who at that time had been a member of the Scottish Parliament for several years.

His great-great-great-great-grandson, John Maxwell, 7th Lord Maxwell , obtained in 1581 that the lands of his maternal uncle James Douglas, 4th Earl of Morton , who was executed and expropriated in the same year for high treason, were granted to him. On October 29, 1581 he was given the title of Earl of Morton . The next male heir of that uncle, Archibald Douglas, 8th Earl of Angus , obtained in 1585 that those lands were taken from John and given to Archibald, who in 1586 was also restored to the title of 5th Earl of Morton.

After the 7th Lord was killed in a feud in 1593, his eldest son, John Maxwell, 8th Lord Maxwell , came into conflict with the Douglas over the title of Earl of Morton and the lands belonging to it. Because he opposed the orders of the parliament, he was ostracized in 1609 and his titles were revoked and was finally executed in 1613. His brother Robert Maxwell obtained that the title of lord was restored in his favor in 1617 and that in 1620 his de jure claim to the title Earl of Morton was confirmed and this was in fact renamed Earl of Nithsdale in order to no longer deal with the parallel claim the Douglas overlap. The Lordship of Maxwell has since been a subordinate title of the respective earl.

At the death of his son, the 2nd Earl of Nithsdale , in 1667, his title fell to his cousin John Maxwell, 7th Lord Herries of Terregles , who already held the title of Lord Herries of Terregles .

His grandson, the 5th Earl , took part in the First Jacobite Rebellion in 1715 and was therefore ostracized for high treason on January 19, 1716, and all of his titles were revoked. Only the hereditary title Lord Herries of Terregles , which was also hereditary in the female line , was restored in 1858; the titles Earldom of Nithsdale and Lord Maxwell have expired.

List of Lords Maxwell (1445)

In the literature there are also different ways of counting with regard to the ordinal number of the respective lord. Sometimes the son of the 2nd lord, who temporarily took over the duties of his father but died before his father, is included or the 6th lord, since he died underage, is left out.

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