Menteith

History

In medieval Scotland, Menteith was a stewartry, and later an earldom, ruled by the earls of Menteith. Gilchrist is the first known earl. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Menteth (sic) is one of the "noblemen of Scotland" appearing in Act V who allies himself with Malcolm and others to oppose Macbeth's usurpation. The lands and the earldom passed to Walter Comyn (d. 1258) in right of his wife Isabella; then, through Isabella's sister Mary, to the Stewarts; and finally to the Grahams. One notorious relative of the earls of Menteith was John de Menteith who betrayed William Wallace to the English. The earldom became extinct in 1694, but because sheriffdoms had previously been introduced into Scotland, sheriffs were a ready-made alternative source of authority: Menteith was covered by the sheriffdom based at Perth. When local government reforms in the mid-19th century replaced the ancient provinces with new counties (shires) that were coextensive with the sheriffdom boundaries, Menteith became the south-western portion of the newly created county, Perthshire.