Malise Graham

Malise Graham (1st Earl of Menteith) (1416–1490) was a 15th-century Scottish magnate, who was the heir to the Scottish throne between 1437 and 1451, if Elizabeth Mure's children were not counted as lawful heirs (a question that hadn't been addressed).

By 1437, all the male descendants of Elizabeth Mure had been executed, or had otherwise died, except for the king himself, James II, leaving only the heirs general. Robert II had married Elizabeth Mure in a manner that was considered uncanonical, making the legitimacy of his children by her questionable. A 1373 Act of the Scottish Parliament avoided this issue by expressly putting the sons and their own heirs male into the succession, but it did not answer the question of whether the female descendants of Elizabeth Mure counted as lawful heirs.

Malise was the Robert II's grandson, and senior heir, by his second wife, about whom the canonicity of the marriage was undoubted. He was also the most senior male heir (regardless of the legitimacy of Elizabeth Mure's marriage).

He is the first of his name to have borne the title of Earl of Menteith in his own right. He was the only son of Sir Patrick Graham of Kincardine. Patrick was the younger brother of Sir Robert Graham; both of them being sons of Sir Patrick Graham, ancestor of the Earls and Dukes of Montrose. They are believed to have been direct descendants of John de Menteith, laird of Ruskie, younger son of Mary I, Countess of Menteith and her husband, Walter "Bailloch" Stewart. Sir John Menteith had become infamous for handing over Sir William Wallace to the English during the Wars of Scottish Independence after he was betrayed by his servant Jack Short. The younger Sir Patrick Graham married Euphemia Stewart, Countess Palatine of Strathearn, and became in her right Earl of Strathearn. Their son Malise, whose name was an anglicisation of the Gaelic name Maol Íosa, was born about 1407, or perhaps later. It is through his mother that he descends from Robert II.

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