The next heir to the Earldom, after the death of Isabel, was Janet, grand-daughter of Gratney, eleventh Earl of Mar. This lady had married Sir Thomas Erskine, the proprietor of the Barony of Erskine, on the Clyde, the property of the family during many ages; and she expected, on the death of the Countess of Mar, to succeed to the honours which had descended to her by the female line. By a series of unjust and rapacious acts on the part of the Crown, not only did Robert, Lord Erskine, her son, fail in securing his rights, but her descendants had the vexation of seeing their just honours and rights revert to the King, James the Third, who bestowed them first upon his brother, the accomplished and unfortunate John Earl of Mar, who was bled to death in one of the houses of the Canongate, in Edinburgh; and afterwards, upon Cochrane, the favourite of James the Third. The Earldom of Mar was then conferred on Alexander Stewart, the third son of King James; and after his death, upon James Stewart, Prior of St. Andrews, who had a charter from his sister, Queen Mary, entitling him to enjoy the long contested honour. But he soon relinquished the title, to assume that of Moray, which had also been bestowed upon him by the Queen: and in 1565 Mary repaired the injustice committed by her predecessors, and restored John Lord Erskine to the Earldom of Mar. The house of Erskine, on whom these honours now descended, has the same traditional origin as that of most of the other Scottish families of note. In the days of Malcolm the Second, a Scottish man having killed with his own hand Enrique, a Danish general, presented the head of the enemy to his Sovereign, and, holding in his hand the bloody dagger with which the deed had been performed, exclaimed, in Gaelic, "Eris Skyne," alluding to the head and the dagger; upon which the surname of Erskine was imposed on him. The armorial bearing of a hand holding a dagger, was added as a further distinction, together with the motto, _Je pense plus_, in allusion to the declaration of the chieftain that he intended to perform even greater actions than that which procured him the name which has since been so celebrated in Scottish history. The crest and motto are still borne by the family. This anecdote has, however, been rejected for the more probable conjecture that the family of Erskine derived its appellation from the estate of Erskine on the Clyde:[7] yet it is not impossible but that tradition may, in most cases, have a deeper source than we are willing to allow to it. "There are few points in ancient history," observes a modern writer, "on which more judgment is required than in the amount of weight due to _tradition_. In general it will be found that the tradition subsisting in the families themselves has a true basis to rest upon, however much it may be overloaded with collateral matter which obscures it."[8]