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Of the many trouble-makers who in the late fourteenth century desturbed the peace of the realm, none was more notorious than the Regent Albany's brother, Robert II's fourth son, Alexander Stewart Earl of Buchan and Justiciary of the Northern Lowlands, known, with good reason, as the Wolf of Badenoch.
In 1390, after the Bishop of Moray had dared excommunicate him for deserting his wife in favour of his mistress, the Wolf showed his displeasure at the Bishop's insolence by burning to the ground, with the ready help of a band of "wild, wykked Heland-men", both his Cathedral of Elgin and the neighbouring town of Forres. By some it is claimed that after a period of richly deserved imprisonment the Wolf in the end mended his ways. Be that as it may, a handsom black marble monument, standing immediately behind the altar in Dunkeld Cathedral, to this day euphemistically describes him as being "bonae memoriae", of good memory.
Of the Wolf's numerous bastards the most famous was Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, a worthy son of his father who had won the Earldom of Mar by first murdering the heiress's husband and then besieging her in her castle and forcibly making her his wife. The time was propitious for men of his stamp and he was later to prove himself a not ineffective military leader.
From the Wolf's various other bastards are descended numerous well regarded families of Stewarts still living in Atholl, Aberdeenshire, Banffshire and Moray.
