The only other of the frontier earldoms intersected by the Highland Line was that of Mar, and here, like Buchan, we are on historic ground, for a _Mormaer_ of Mar—Donald mac Emin mac Cainech—is recorded in a nearly contemporary document as having been present at the battle of Clontarff in Ireland, fought in the year 1014;[409] and Ruadri, _Mormaer_ of Mar, who is mentioned in the Book of Deer, appears among the seven earls in the reign of Alexander the First as ‘Rothri Comes.’ The line of the Celtic earls of Mar continued till the reign of Robert the Second, when it was carried by an heiress into the Douglas family, and afterwards to one of the Stewarts, by whom it was resigned to the Crown. A great part of the territory of the Celtic earls was at an early period carried off from them by the family of De Lundin or Durward, who claimed the earldom as representing the earls through a female, and were thus compensated, but this part consisted of Lowland districts, and the Highland districts of Strathdee, Braemar, and Strathdon constituted the ‘comitatus’ or demesne of the Celtic earls, and preserved their Gaelic population. [Sidenote: Ross.] The history of the _Mortuath_ or earldom of Ross is peculiar, and became eventually connected with that of the Lords of the Isles. Of the early Celtic _Mormaers_ we have no record, and the supposed connection of Macbeth with Ross as its _Mormaer_, which originated with George Chalmers, has no historic foundation. He was, as we have seen, _Mormaer_ of Moray. The name of Gillandres appears in Wyntoun as one of the earls who besieged Malcolm the Fourth in Perth in the year 1160; and the Gaelic name of the old Rosses as _Clanghillandres_ seems to connect him with this earldom, but it must have been immediately after in the Crown, for the same Malcolm undoubtedly gave it to Malcolm MacHeth, who appears as its earl, but was soon after expelled. It was afterwards bestowed by William the Lion upon a foreigner, the Count of Holland; but his successor, Alexander the Second, created Ferchard Macintaggart, the heir of a line of lay abbots of Applecross, earl of Ross, who thus united the extensive possessions of that monastery in North Argyll to the earldom, and from him the later earls are descended. It became for a time broken up, when an heiress carried the earldom to Walter de Lesly, and afterwards to Alexander Stewart, earl of Buchan, but it reverted through her daughter and heiress to the line of the Celtic Lords of the Isles. [Sidenote: The _Gallgaidheal_ and their lords.]