second Sir Malcolm, died in 1348, leaving three sons, John, Maurice, and Walter. His daughter Margaret married, first, Sir John Logie; secondly, David II in 1363, very shortly after the death of his first wife, Joanna, daughter of Edward II. From David she was divorced by the Scottish bishops in 1370. She appealed to the pope, but the terms of his sentence, if pronounced, are not known. This marriage, deemed discreditable probably from her having been the king's mistress before the death of her first husband, brought the Drummonds into royal favour, and among other gifts was the grant through the queen of the lands of Stobhall, Cargill, and Kynloch to Malcolm de Drummond, her nephew, in 1368 (Exchequer Rolls, ii. 298). Sir John, by his marriage to Mary, heiress of Sir William de Montefex, acquired other estates, Kincardine and Auchterarder in Perthshire, and had by her four sons (Sir Malcolm, who married Isobell, countess of Mar, but left no issue; Sir John, who succeeded to the family estates; William, who married the heiress of Airth and Cumnock, the ancestor of the Drummonds of Cumnock and Hawthornden; Dougal, bishop of Dunblane) and three daughters, of whom the eldest was Annabella.
Her family, which had thus grown in importance by alliance with royal and other noble houses, was at the height of prosperity in the second half of the fourteenth century. In 1367 Annabella married John Stewart of Kyle (afterwards Robert III), the eldest son of Robert the high steward, who was created in 1367 Earl of Atholl, and next year Earl of Carrick. Four years before her aunt Margaret Logie married David II. The double connection of the aunt with the king and her niece with the son of the presumptive heir produced jealousy, and, according to Bower, the high steward and his three sons were cast into separate prisons at the suggestion of the queen. Her divorce led to their release and restoration to their former favour (Fordun, Bower's Continuation, xiv. 34).
In 1370 Robert the steward, grandson of Bruce, by his daughter Marjory, succeeded to the crown as Robert II on the death of David II. John, earl of Carrick, the husband of Annabella, eldest son of the steward by his first wife, Elizabeth Mure of Rowallan, was born about 1337. Tall and handsome in person, but inactive by disposition, and lamed by a horse's kick, the Earl of Carrick was even less fitted to be a king than his father. He allowed the reins of government during his father's life as well as his own to fall into the hands of his ambitious brother, Robert, earl of Fife; while his younger brother, Alexander, earl of Buchan, the Wolf of Badenoch, earned that name by his lawless rapacity in the district of Moray. During the reign of his father the Earl of Carrick was keeper of Edinburgh Castle, for which he had five hundred merks a year as salary (Exchequer Rolls, 1372, ii. 393, iii. 66–87). In this capacity he continued the buildings of David's tower, begun in the former reign, and received payments for munitions and provisions, which point to his personal residence with Annabella in the Castle. Annabella received during her father-in-law's reign payment of several sums for ward of land, probably assigned to her as her marriage portion. In 1384 her husband was invested by parliament with authority to enforce the law, owing to the incapacity of his father, and in April of the following year he was directed to inflict punishment on the Katherans of the north; but at a council in Edinburgh on 1 Dec. 1388 he was superseded by his brother, the Earl of Fife, already chamberlain and keeper of Stirling Castle, who was elected guardian of the kingdom, with the power of the king, until Robert's eldest son, the Earl of Carrick, should recover health, or his (the earl's) son and heir become of an age fit for governing. This son was David, afterwards Duke of Rothesay, a boy of ten, to whom Annabella, after a long period of marriage without issue, gave birth in 1378 (Act Parl. i. 555–6). Robert II dying twelve years after, the Earl of Carrick succeeded, exchanging his name of John, of ill omen through the recollection of Baliol and John of England, for that of Robert III. Robert II was buried at Scone on 13 Aug. 1390; on the 14th Robert III was crowned; on the 15th, the feast of the Assumption, Annabella was crowned queen; and on the 16th the oaths of homage and fealty were taken by the barons, a sermon being each day preached by one of the bishops, that on the queen's coronation by John of Peebles, bishop of Dunkeld. In the parliament of the following March 1391 an annuity of 2,500 merks was granted to the queen from the counties of Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Perth, Linlithgow, Dundee, and Montrose, and another of 640l. was then or soon after settled on her son David, earl of Carrick (Exchequer Records, iii. 252, 288). During the first eight years of Robert III, Scotland, having been included in the truce of Lenlingham, was at peace with England, and the chief power was retained by the Earl of Fife, but as his salary for the office of guardian of the kingdom does not appear in the records after 1392, it is possible that he may have ceased to hold it and the king attempted to govern. In 1394 Queen Annabella appears on the scene in a
