Ross, Scotland-Cedar Herald Index

Ross () is a region of Scotland. One of the provinces of Scotland from the 9th century, it gave its name to a later earldom and to the counties of Ross-shire and, later, Ross and Cromarty. The name Ross allegedly derives from a Gaelic word meaning "headland", perhaps a reference to the Black Isle. Another possible origin is the West Norse word for Orkney – Hrossey – meaning horse island; the area once belonged to the Norwegian (West Norse) earldom of Orkney. Ross is a historical comital region, perhaps predating the Mormaerdom of Ross. It is also a region used by the Kirk, with the Presbytery of Ross being part of the Synod of Ross, Sutherland and Caithness.

History

Excavations of a rock shelter and shell midden at Sand, Applecross on the coast of Wester Ross have shown that the coast was occupied by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.

Ross, Scotland

Ptolemy's 2nd century Geography lists a tribe called the Decantae occupying the area that would later become Easter Ross. It may be doubted whether the Romans ever effected even a temporary settlement in the area of the modern county. In Roman times, and for long afterwards, the land was occupied by Picts, who, in the 6th and 7th centuries, were converted to Christianity by followers of Saint Columba. Throughout the next three centuries the natives were continually harassed by Norwegian Viking raiders, of whose presence tokens have survived in several place-names (Dingwall, Tain, and others). At this time the country formed part of the great province of Moray (Latin: Moravia), which then extended as far as the Dornoch Firth and the Oykel, and included practically the whole of Ross and Cromarty.

Ross, Scotland

Ross is first recorded as a territorial unit in a hagiography of the Scottish-born saint Cathróe of Metz, written in Metz shortly after the saint's death between 971 and 976.

Ross, Scotland

William, the 4th Earl of Ross, was present with his clan at the Battle of Bannockburn (1314), and almost a century later (1412) the castle of Dingwall, the chief seat on the mainland of Donald, Lord of the Isles, was captured by Donald just before the battle of Harlaw in Aberdeenshire, which Donald fought because the ambitious Stewarts, governing in the absence of James I, rejected his wife Mariota's rightful claim to the earldom. After the battle, the people of Ross embraced Donald and Mariota as rightful rulers of the earldom notwithstanding the Duke of Albany (a Stewart) purporting to give it to his son. Donald died in 1423 and in 1424 the earldom reverted to the crown, but James I soon afterwards restored it to Mariota, wife of Donald Macdonald, and the heiress of the earldom. She was the mother of Alexander Macdonald, Lord of the Isles, who thus became the 11th Earl.

In consequence, however, of the treason of John Macdonald, 4th and last Lord of the Isles and 12th Earl of Ross, the earldom was again vested in the crown (1476). Five years later James III bestowed it on his second son, James Stewart, whom he also created Duke of Ross in 1488.

By the 16th century the whole area of the county was occupied by different clans. The Rosses held what is now Easter Ross; the Munros the small tract around Ben Wyvis, including Dingwall; the Macleods Lewis, and, in the mainland, the district between Loch Maree and Loch Torridon; the Macdonalds of Glengarry, Coigach, and the district between Strome Ferry and Kyle of Lochalsh, and the Mackenzies the remainder.

The county of Ross was constituted in 1661, and Cromarty in 1685 and 1698, both being consolidated into the present county in 1889.

Apart from occasional conflicts between rival clans, the only battles in the county were at Invercarron, at the head of Dornoch Firth, when Montrose was crushed by Colonel Archibald Strachan on 27 April 1650; and at Glenshiel, where the Jacobites, under the Earl of Seaforth, aided by Spaniards, were defeated by a force under the command of General Joseph Wightman on 10 June 1719.

Geography

Ross lies south of Sutherland and the Dornoch Firth, west of the North Sea and the Moray Firth, north of the Beauly Firth and Inverness-shire and east of The Minch. There are also a number of small islands off the area's west coast, among which are: