Earl of Carrick

The Earl of Carrick was the head of a comital lordship of Carrick in southwestern Scotland. The title emerged in 1186, when Donnchad, son of Gille Brigte, Lord of Galloway, became Mormaer or Earl of Carrick in compensation for exclusion from the whole Lordship of Galloway. The title has been recreated several times in the Peerage of Scotland.

Donnchadh's granddaughter Marjorie (Marthoc, Martha, Margaret), who later held the title in her own right, married Robert de Brus, who later became Lord of Annandale. Their son, also named Robert and known as "Robert the Bruce", would later rule Scotland as King Robert I, causing the earldom to merge into the Crown. Robert was also created a baron in the Peerage of England by writ of summons in 1295 as Baron Bruce of Anandale; the title became abeyant with the death of his son David II in 1371. Thereafter, successive Kings of Scots re-created the Earldom several times, but made it non-heritable, specifying that the earldom would revert to the Crown upon the death of the holder. Thus several creations ended with a reversion to the crown or with the holder becoming King.

In 1469, the Scots Parliament passed an Act declaring that the eldest son of the King and heir to the throne would hold the Earldom, along with the Dukedom of Rothesay. After the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England, the Dukedom and Earldom have been held by the eldest son and heir of the Kings of England and Scotland, later the Kings of Great Britain, and finally the Kings of the United Kingdom. The current earl is HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales.

King James VI and I created John Stuart "Earl of Carrick", in Orkney, in the Peerage of Scotland. He had already been made Lord Kincleven in 1607, also in the Peerage of Scotland. Stuart was a younger son of Robert Stewart, 1st Earl of Orkney, illegitimate son of King James V of Scotland. He was granted title to the island of Eday in 1632 and he constructed a substantial mansion house at Calfsound on its northern shores shortly thereafter. He also had property in Ayrshire and hankered after the prestigious title of Earl of Carrick. King James allowed him to name his new Eday property "Carrick House" enabling him to have the style, if not the substance of this title. Lord Carrick had no legitimate male issue and the titles became extinct on his death in 1652.

In 1897 The Ayrshire Yeomanry Cavalry, a British Yeomanry Cavalry Regiment, adopted the sub-title Earl of Carrick's Own in honour of the future King Edward VII.