Robert Stewart, 1st Earl of Orkney

Robert Stewart, Knt., 1st Earl of Orkney and Lord of Zetland (Shetland) (1533–4 February 1593) was a recognized illegitimate son of James V, King of Scotland, and his mistress Eupheme Elphinstone.James Balfour Paul and John Maitland Thomson, eds., The Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, A.D. 1513-1546 (Edinburgh, 1883), 360-61 (no. 1620); Original Letters of Mr John Colville, 1582-1603 (Edinburgh, 1858), 337.

In 1539 he was made Abbot of Holyrood Abbey, and Commendator of Charlieu Abbey in France by 1557.Joseph Robertson, Inventaires de la Royne d'Ecosse, Bannatyne Club (1863), xxxviii, note. He was knighted as Sir Robert Stewart of Strathdon on 15 May 1565, as part of marriage celebrations of his half-sister, Mary, Queen of Scots and Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley.Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 2, (1900), 161. In 1581 he was named, by James VI, the 1st Earl in a second creation of the Earldom of Orkney. The new earldom replaced a short-lived Dukedom of Orkney, which had been awarded in 1567 by Mary, Queen of Scots, to her notorious third husband James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell. This dukedom was forfeit later that same year after Mary was forced to abdicate and Bothwell was charged with treason. Prior to this dukedom there had existed an Earldom of Orkney that was surrendered in 1470 by William Sinclair, 3rd Earl of Orkney.

Mary wrote a will at Sheffield in 1577 ineffectually declaring his...
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