The marriage condition on Clancharlie’s succession

The marriage condition on Clancharlie’s succession was the royal arrangement that made Lord David Dirry-Moir’s inheritance of the Clancharlie peerage and estates dependent on marrying Duchess Josiana when she reached marriageable age. It placed Josiana between the grant and its intended male peer: she held the peerage and lands provisionally, while the marriage was to establish David as Baron Clancharlie.

Background and Royal Settlement

After the death of Linnæus, Lord Clancharlie, reports circulated that he had married Ann Bradshaw in exile, and that a son had been born to them. The account stresses that these stories were vague rumours, not established facts. King James II ended their immediate force by declaring Lord David Dirry-Moir sole heir in default of legitimate issue and recording the grant’s patents in the House of Lords.

The royal settlement treated the absence of another heir as established, but it did not give David an unconditional succession. The patents made his position depend on marrying Josiana, who was then only a few months old, once she became old enough to marry. Thus a disputed family history was answered not by waiting for uncertainty to resolve itself, but by a royal grant that specified both the heir and the marriage through which he was to take the title.

Josiana’s Interim Position

The king had created the infant Josiana a duchess, though the account remarks that the reason was not officially clear. The Clancharlie peerage was granted to her until there should be a peer; the peer, in the arrangement, was to be her husband. She was therefore not merely the future bride named in David’s succession terms: she was the interim holder of the peerage while the designated marriage remained in the future.

The structure distinguished temporary possession from the intended eventual status. Josiana was a peeress until a peer existed, and the settlement anticipated that her husband would occupy that position. The arrangement made her both the holder through whom the peerage was preserved and the person whose marriage would determine its next holder.

Titles, Lands, and the Marriage’s Effect

The Clancharlie inheritance comprised the baronies of Clancharlie and Hunkerville. By royal licence, the barons of Clancharlie also held the title of Marquis of Corleone in Sicily, a distinction attached to an ancient feat of arms. The grant therefore concerned a bundle of ranks and privileges, not simply a single title.

The estates attached to the peerage included lands, burghs, bailiwicks, fiefs, rents, freeholds, and domains. These lands were all classified as noble and belonged provisionally to Josiana. The king declared that, once David married her, he should be Baron Clancharlie. Marriage was consequently the stipulated transition from Josiana’s temporary possession of the inheritance to David’s designated position as peer and holder of the Clancharlie barony.

Significance of the Condition

The arrangement joined inheritance to a royal decision about marriage. David’s succession was secured against the rumours of a legitimate child, yet the patents made his elevation depend on a future union with a child who could not yet consent to marriage. Josiana’s temporary title and control of the estates gave her a formal place in the succession, while the provision defined the expected outcome in advance: upon the required marriage, David was to become Baron Clancharlie.

The condition thus operated as both an inheritance rule and a dynastic settlement. It specified who would hold the titles in the interim, who was to inherit them through marriage, and the estates and distinctions encompassed by that transfer.