Talk:Patrick IV, Earl of March

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It was this Earl who was the Competitor, not his father. For more on this see the recent thread on soc-genealogy-medieval or the rootslist list GEN-MEDIEVAL-L, also archived.

[edit] Numbering

Please state what source you are using to renumber the Earls. Thank you. Wjhonson 16:24, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Several, including Alastair J.Macdonald, , "King's of the Wild Frontier? The earls of Dunbar or March, c. 1070-1435", in Steve Boardman and Alasdair Ross (eds.), The Exercise of Power in Medieval Scotland, (Portland/Dublin, 2003), pp. 139-58 & index. The numbers being used were actually inaccurate, even within the cumbersome and anachronistic "X, nth Earl of Y" system. Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 17:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Isn't there a problem in that both the Complete Peerage and Scottish Peerage use these numbers? Wouldn't you say these are more well-known works than "King's of the Wild Frontier" ? Wjhonson 18:27, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Countless works refer to Patrick as Patrick IV. Besides, those works you mention are not relevant anyways; aside from being pretty crappy, the earls of March were not peers; the peerage system did not exist in Scotland until the 1440s - little would you know that from Complete Peerage. Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 18:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not disputing that he was Patrick IV, only that he is more commonly known as Patrick, the 8th Earl of Dunbar. Or alternatively as both. I think it is confusing to mask a name under which most people would recognize him. There should at least be a mention of the naming issue citing SP since SP is the pre-eminent authority on the Scottish Peerage and how it evolved. Wjhonson 07:52, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Like I said, Patrick IV has nothing to do with peerage. He was not, in point of fact, a "peer", since as I said there was no such thing in Scotland until the 1440s. 8th earl? Patrick IV would be 7th "earl of dunbar" and 5th earl to be called "earl of Dunbar"; ie the former title of this article was simply inaccuratel. Though not in this case, in the other Scottish cases the style of numbering you seem to be supporting ignores the fact that the earliest "earls" are not even known by name, so numbering like that is impossible. Trust me, the "8th/7th earl system" does not work for Scottish magnates; it's confusing and misleading. Even some of the historians who used these designations get them wrong. And those peerage books become more and more useless the further one goes back from the 16th century. No serious historian would consult them for this period, and if an undergraduate did, the undergraduate would get told off for it. As Adomnán likes to say, "need I say more"? PS, I'd have serious issues with the assertion that "most people would recognize him"; 99.9% of people have prolly never heard of him. Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 08:05, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

It's a bit beside-the-point to say the Peerage system did or didn't exist. I'm not claiming it did or didnt exist. I'm stating that Scottish Peerage has sections on these people. Saying they "weren't peers" is a red herring, since I'm not saying they were. I'm saying these are in these works, which are still the most widely consulted reference works for the "peerage" (with a small p) of Scotland at this time. The name given to the group of people isn't what's important. If a person were to come here to wikipedia and look for Patrick 7th Earl of Dunbar they wouldn't find anything on the person. So they might accidently start a new article thinking we didn't have anything. That's my only point. That a person should be linked as the various names by which they are called. And I agree that 99% of people have never heard of him. I was referring to those people who have heard of him, would most likely have heard of him from one of the encyclopaedic works, or one of the large databases. If these cite to Scottish Peerage or Complete Peerage, they are going to call him the 7th Earl of Dunbar. Wjhonson 17:55, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

You say all this now that I've told you. Frankly, I'd rather hope that people who only consult those books didn't open articles here. But that aside, I doubt your concerns will be a problem; the names of these earls are clearly lain out on the Earl of Dunbar page, which anyone creating an article would likely find. Plus there are redirects from the other names. Anyways, I don't see why this would be any more of an issue here than with more famous characters such as King William the Conqueror of England or Emperor Napoleon of France. Calgacus (ΚΑΛΓΑΚΟΣ) 18:27, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate the creation of the redirects. That's very helpful. Wjhonson 20:32, 2 December 2006 (UTC)