Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time Part 5

In 1148, Ragnvald decided to visit King Ingi in Norway, taking Harold Maddadson, then a boy of fifteen, with him.[23] There he meets Eindridi, who had been long in Micklegarth, as Constantinople was then called by the Norse, probably in the Emperor's service as one of the Varangian Guard; and s.h.i.+ps are built for a voyage to the East. But both he and Harold are wrecked in "The Help" and "The Arrow," at Gulberwick, south of Lerwick, on the Shetland coast, all on board, however, being saved, and Ragnvald, as usual, making verses and fun of it all, and of many other things.

At last in 1150 Ragnvald's and Eindridi's s.h.i.+ps are "boun"[24] for their eastern cruise, Eindridi, however, being wrecked off Shetland.

But he gets another s.h.i.+p, and, in 1151, they set sail for the East, William, the bishop of Orkney, commanding one vessel. Pa.s.sing down the east coast of England and through the Channel to France, they reach Bilbao[25] in Spain, where Ragnvald lands, and refuses to marry Queen Ermengarde. Afterwards he rounds Galicia, where Eindridi's treachery robs them of spoil in taking G.o.dfrey's castle, beats through Niorfa Sound (the Straits of Gibraltar); is deserted by Eindridi, sails along Sarkland (Barbary), captures the Saracen s.h.i.+p Dromund, and burns her, sells the prisoners in Barbary, but releases their prince, coasts along Crete, lands at Acre, and bathes in Jordan on St. Lawrence's Day, the 10th of August 1152. After a visit to Jerusalem they come at last to Constantinople, where the Varangian Guard heartily welcome them, although Eindridi, who has arrived there before him, tries to set everyone against them; and Ragnvald finally returns to Bulgaria and Apulia and Rome, and thence overland to Denmark and Norway.[26]

When Ragnvald reached Norway in 1153, he heard what had been going on at home during his absence in the east. King Eystein of Norway, King Harald Gilli's son, had seized Jarl Harold Maddadson, then a young man of twenty, at Thurso, and made him swear allegiance to himself, letting him go on his paying three marks of gold as his ransom. Then Maddad, his father, Earl of Athole, died; and the widowed Margret, Harold's mother, came north to Orkney, still dangerous, still beautiful and attractive, especially to Gunni, Sweyn's brother, by whom she had a child, for which Gunni was outlawed, a punishment which alienated his brother Sweyn from Harold Maddadson.[27]

Erlend, only son of Harald Slettmali, and really ent.i.tled to the whole earldom, obtained from his relative[28] King Malcolm, then a boy of under twelve, through his powerful kin, a grant of half of the earldom of Caithness jointly with Harold Maddadson, who objected to give him half the Orkney jarldom unless King Eystein confirmed the grant.

Erlend then went to Norway to get it confirmed. Meantime Sweyn seized a s.h.i.+p of Harold's; but, to help Erlend, tried to reconcile Harold to him, as King Eystein (said Erlend) had given him half of Orkney. And the half given to him was, he added, Harold's half.[29]

Sweyn and Erlend then force Harold, who had then just come of age, to agree to give up this half, under duress, in order to secure his own liberty, and the Orkney folk agree that Erlend shall have this half, Ragnvald having the other. This, Sweyn knew, Harold would not stand, and, as he drank at a feast with his house-carles in his castle in Gairsay,[30] the wily Viking said, slily rubbing his nose, "I think Harold is now on his voyage to the isles," a shrewd surmise which proved correct in spite of the midwinter storm then prevailing.

Harold's expedition, however, failed, and he went back to Caithness to raise a force to kill a man called Erlend the Young who had seized his mother Margret and taken her by force to Shetland, where he fortified Mousa Broch[31] and held her prisoner there. After a siege, Harold, who had followed them, at last allowed their marriage, Erlend the Young becoming his ally, and going that summer with his wife and Harold to Norway. When that was heard in the Orkneys, Sweyn and Earl Erlend went raiding off the east coast of Scotland and afterwards a-viking to North Berwick, and got much plunder, and Harold returned in the autumn to Orkney. In the winter Jarl Ragnvald came back from the east to Turfness (Burghead), whence he went about Yule 1153 to Orkney, to find that the Orkney-men want himself and Erlend, not himself and Harold, as joint jarls over them.

Harold had then to fight for his own hand; and, finding that Earl Erlend and Sweyn were in Shetland, he sought them out but missed them, and afterwards, though he hated Jarl Ragnvald, tried to get him on his side.

We come to another Sutherland event, historically of the first importance to us, in 1154.[32] "Jarl Ragnvald was then up the country in Sutherland, and sat there at a wedding at which he gave his only daughter and child Ingirid or Ingigerd, to Eric Stagbrellir," who, as we have seen, as Audhild's son, had been brought up in Kildonan.

"News came to him at once that Earl Harold was come into Thurso.

Jarl Ragnvald, rode down with a great company to Thurso from the bridal.[33] Eric was Harold's kinsman and tried to reconcile the earls."

There was a fight in Thurso between their followers, Thorbiorn Klerk instigating it, no doubt because after Eric's marriage with Ingigerd, Ragnvald's daughter, he knew he could not hope to force Eric to give up the Moddan lands in Strathnavern and in the upper valleys and hills of Sudrland and Caithness, to which he had a claim. Thirteen of Ragnvald's men fell in the fray, and he himself was wounded in the face. Ultimately, the earls were reconciled on the 25th of September 1154, and about 1156 joined forces and went to Orkney against Sweyn and Erlend, who pretended they were sailing for the Hebrides, but put their s.h.i.+ps about at Store[34] Point in a.s.synt, and after all but seizing Jarl Ragnvald at Orphir in Orkney, captured his s.h.i.+ps, though he and Harold escaped, each in a small boat, across the Pentland Firth to Caithness.[35] Returning thence, in Sweyn's absence for the night they attacked Erlend, who had disregarded all Sweyn's warnings and advice to keep a good look-out, off Damsey, near Finstown. In this fight Jarl Erlend, the last descendant in the male line of Thorfinn then alive, was slain, while drunk, his body being found next day transfixed by a spear, and he left no issue to inherit his t.i.tle of earl or the other Moddan lands, left to him by Earl Ottar, which probably devolved on Eric Stagbrellir in 1156, as he could hold them against Thorbiorn Klerk.

All Erlend's success, if we are to believe the Saga, this portion of which is written largely to glorify Sweyn, probably by his relative Bishop Bjarni, had been arranged by Sweyn's really marvellous cunning; and Ragnvald, no doubt feeling how dangerous an enemy Sweyn was, and that he was backed by the Scottish king, immediately sent for him in order to reconcile him to Harold. But Harold, soon afterwards, robbed Sweyn's house in Gairsay; and Sweyn, in his turn, attacked the house where Harold was, and nearly succeeded in burning him alive. Later on Harold all but caught Sweyn off Kirkwall, but Sweyn gave him the slip, by running his s.h.i.+p into a tidal cave in Ellarholm, off Elwick in Shapinsay, in 1155, and disappearing till the coast was clear, when he got away in a small boat.

Afterwards Sweyn and Earl Harold were reconciled, and Sweyn and Thorbiorn Klerk and Eric Stagbrellir went on a viking cruise to the Hebrides, and, after a great victory at the Scilly Isles, returned with much booty to Orkney.[36]

In the year 1157 or 1158, Sweyn defeated Gilli Odran, steward of Earl Ragnvald's lands in Caithness, who had fled to the west and was caught in Murkfjord (possibly Loch Glendhu at Kylestrome in Eddrachilles) and was slain there with fifty of his men by Sweyn.[37]

In 1158, Ragnvald and Harold went, as they did every year, to hunt red deer and reindeer[38] in Caithness, their hunting ground being probably near the Ben-y-griams, which lay on the way to Kildonan, or Strathnaver, where Eric probably lived; and some think there are still remains of walls used as a pen for driven deer on Ben-y-griam Beg, though these are more probably the ancient ramparts of a hill-fort.[39] When they landed at Thurso, they heard that Thorbiorn Klerk was hiding and lying in wait in Thorsdale[40] in order to make an onslaught on Ragnvald, if he got a chance. After riding with a band of a hundred men, twenty of them mounted, they spent the night at a place where there was what the Celts call an "erg" (_airigh_) but the Norse call "setr," the modern sheiling. Next day, as they rode up along Calfdale, Ragnvald was in advance of the party, and, at a homestead called Force,[41] Halvard hailed him loudly by name.

Thorbiorn was inside the house, and burst out through an old doorway, and dealt Ragnvald a great wound, and the jarl fell, his foot sticking in his stirrup, when Stephen, an accomplice, gave him a spear thrust; whereupon Thorbiorn, after dealing him another wound, and receiving a spear thrust in the thigh himself, fled to the moor. Earl Harold at first would not interfere; and though Magnus son of Havard Gunni's son insisted, Earl Harold again declined to pursue Thorbiorn to the death, but left Magnus to besiege him at Asgrim's Ergin or s.h.i.+elings,[42] now a.s.sary, near Loch Calder, where, by setting fire to the hut in which he was, his pursuers succeeded in smoking him out and killing him.

They then brought the jarl's body from Force to Thurso, and thence took it over to Orkney, to be buried in the choir of St. Magnus'

Cathedral, which he had founded and built in his uncle's honour.

"Jarl Ragnvald's death was a very great grief, for he was very much beloved there in the Isles, and far and wide elsewhere." It took place on the 20th August 1158.

"He had been a very great helper," the Saga adds, "to many men, bountiful of money, gentle, and a steadfast friend; a great man for feats of strength, and a good skald" or poet. In 1192 he was canonised as St. Ragnvald[43] with, it is said, full Papal sanction. Save during Harold Maddadson's minority he was never Earl of Caithness, and then had the t.i.tle only as guardian of his ward Harold.

Ragnvald left a daughter, his only surviving child, Ingirid or Ingigerd, whom as we have seen, Audhild's son, Eric Stagbrellir had married four years before her father's death; and their children, who come into the story afterwards, were three sons, Harald Ungi or Harald the Young, Magnus nick-named Mangi, and Ragnvald, and three daughters, Ingibiorg, Elin[44] and Ragnhild, all of whom, so far as the Saga relates, died childless save Ragnhild, whose son by her second husband Gunni, was Snaekoll Gunni's son, who about 1230 claimed the Ragnvald lands in Orkney from Earl John, son of Earl Harold Maddadson,[45]

and complained that Earl John was keeping him out of his rights in Caithness to Ragnvald's share of the earldom lands there.

After Thorbiorn Klerk's death, Olvir Rosta being "out of the story,"

Eric's children, who were mainly Norse in blood, were the only heirs left in Caithness not only for Jarl Ragnvald's lands, but also for the upper parts of the river valleys of Strathnavern and Ness, which the Moddan family had held through the whole Norse occupation of Caithness and Sutherland, along with the hill country in Halkirk and Latheron and Strathnavern and probably also in Sutherland, lands on which few Norse place-names are found, and which came to Eric through Audhild his mother on the deaths of Earls Ottar and Erlend Haraldson without issue. These lands would of right descend to Eric's eldest son, Harald Ungi, and on his death without issue, to his brothers if alive, and, failing them, to his sisters and their heirs, as happened in the case of Ragnhild and her son Snaekoll Gunni's son, neither Ingibiorg nor Elin receiving any share of this property, for reasons now undiscoverable, but which we shall endeavour to explain later, by presuming that one of them had died unmarried, or had married abroad, while the other and her descendants were amply provided for otherwise by marriage with Gilchrist, Earl of Angus.

CHAPTER VII.

_Harold Maddadson and the Freskyns._

After the death of Jarl Ragnvald in 1158, Harold Maddadson at the age of twenty-five "took all the isles under his rule, and became sole chief over them."[1] Ever since 1139 he had been sole Earl of Cat save for Erlend Haraldson's grant,[2] though Jarl Ragnvald seems to have had a share of its lands and managed the Earldom of Caithness for Harold during his minority, bearing the t.i.tle of his ward till the latter attained his majority in 1154. Harold had married Afreka, daughter of Duncan, Earl of Fife, one of the most loyal supporters of the Scottish kings, and their children were two sons, Henry, who afterwards claimed Ross, and of whom we hear no more, and Hakon, Sweyn Asleifarson's foster-child, and two daughters, Helena and Margret, of whom we hear nothing save their names. Hakon, from boyhood, went with Sweyn on all his spring and autumn "vikings" or piratical cruises, undertaken every year to the Hebrides, Man, and Ireland, in one of which Sweyn took two English s.h.i.+ps near Dublin, and returned to Orkney laden with broadcloth, wine, and English mead.[3] Sweyn's life is thus described in c. 114 of the _Orkneyinga Saga_. "He sat through the winter at home in Gairsay, and there he kept always about him eighty men at his beck. He had so great a drinking-hall that there was not another as great in all the Orkneys. Sweyn had in the spring hard work, and made them lay down very much seed, and looked much after it himself. But when that toil was ended, he fared away every spring on a Viking-voyage, and harried about among the southern isles and Ireland, and came home after midsummer. That he called spring-viking. Then he was at home until the cornfields were reaped down, and the grain seen to and stored. Then he fared away on a viking-voyage, and then he did not come home till the winter was one month spent, and that he called his autumn-viking." At last, in a cruise to Dublin, which he captured, Sweyn was killed by stratagem on landing to receive payment of its ransom from the town, and the boy Hakon probably fell there with him in 1171. "And," the Saga adds, "it is the common saying of Sweyn that he was the most masterful man in the western lands, both of yore and now-a-days, among those men who had no higher rank than himself."

Sweyn was, in fact the greatest man of his time. For he robbed whom he pleased, made and undid jarls and earls as he chose, and was the friend or tool of more than one Scottish king.

Earl Harold had put his wife Afreka away, and probably after Sweyn's death formed a union, at a date which it seems impossible to fix, with Hvarflod or Gormflaith, daughter of Malcolm MacHeth of Moray, who was in rebellion in 1134, and was imprisoned in Roxburgh Castle until 1157, when he was released and created Earl of Ross, so that Gormflaith, who could hardly have been born during her father's imprisonment, must have been born either before 1135 or after 1157.

Harold and Gormflaith's children were Thorfinn, who predeceased him, and also David and John, both afterwards in succession earls of Caithness and jarls of Orkney, and three daughters, Gunnhilda, Herborga, and Langlif; and of the daughters the Saga-writers tell us nothing, except that the Icelander Saemund, Magnus Barelegs' grandson, wished to marry Langlif but did not do so;[4] and her son Jon Langlifson, according to the Saga of Hakon was in 1263 a spy on the Norse side.

Here the _Orkneyinga Saga_ ends. But additions to its generally received text are found in the _Flatey Book_,[5] and the additions are by no means so trustworthy as the Saga proper. From these we learn that of Eric Stagbrellir and Ingigerd's children, who were settled in Sutherland, the sons, Harald Ungi, Magnus, and Ragnvald Eric's son, fared east to Norway to King Magnus Erling's son, where young Magnus Eric's son fell with that king in the battle of Norafjord in Sogn in 1184.[6] Probably some of them were, on Eric Stagbrellir's death, subjected to exactions in respect of their lands by Harold Maddadson.

Having arrived, under the guidance of the _Orkneyinga_, at the closing years of the 12th century, so far as the affairs of Orkney and Shetland and Sutherland and Caithness are concerned, it remains for us to turn and observe the tide of civilisation and order which under our Scottish kings was now setting strongly northwards and ever further north in each successive reign, the Catholic Church and the feudal baron being the chosen instruments of national organisation and discipline, and the charter being the method of establis.h.i.+ng them in the land.

To this tide the Pictish and Columban Churches, and the Province of Moray and its Maormors had formed the main barriers and obstacles; and the Saxon n.o.bility, introduced by the elder sons of Malcolm Canmore's second queen, St. Margaret, had proved quite unable to break them down. The Pict of Moray was obstinately hostile to the Scots, and his leaders and rulers aspired to, and claimed the crown of Scotland itself. Rebellion after rebellion took place, and it was not until King David I had introduced the feudal baron with his mail-clad tenants, and settled them on the land by charter, that any success in establis.h.i.+ng peace and civil order was achieved in the vast Pictish province of Ross and Moray, which stretched across Scotland from the North Sea to the Minch, and whose people resisted to the utmost.

It is not part of our purpose to treat generally of the feudal and largely Norman families, which gradually a.s.serted their power over the Picts in the north, and were accepted as Chiefs, such as were the Umphraville Earls of Angus, the Roses of Kilravock, the Chisholms of Strath Farrer, the Bissets and Fresels or Frasers of Beauly, the Grants of Moray and Inverness, and the Comyns of Badenoch; for none of these held land north of the Oykel. But later on in the thirteenth century we shall have more particularly to note the Chens or Cheynes in Caithness, and the Scottish or Pictish family of Freskyn of Strabrock and Moray, in its two branches, that of Hugo of Sutherland and that of his grandson Freskin the younger in Sutherland and Caithness.

Of Freskyn or Fretheskin I, the founder of the line, we have no mention in any charter direct to him,[7] either of his Linlithgows.h.i.+re lands at Strabrock, or of his estate near Spynie in Moray with its Castle at Duffus.

To us he is as Melchizedek; for neither his father nor his mother is known. We believe him to have been born before 1100, and so to have been a contemporary of Frakark, Thorbiorn Klerk, and Olvir Rosta, of Jarl Ragnvald, of Margret of Athole, Erlend Haraldson and Sweyn, and also of Harold Maddadson; and to have won his Duffus estate, as an addition to his lands at Strabrock, about 1120 or at latest 1130, before or after the crus.h.i.+ng defeat, at Stracathro, of the Picts of Angus and Moray; and between these dates to have built the Castle of Duffus on the bank of Loch Spynie, in order to check Norse raids on the Moray coast while the Norse held Turfness or Burghead; and we know that he entertained King David I there during the whole summer of 1150, while that king was superintending the building of the Abbey of Kinloss. From notices in a charter of King William the Lion granting and confirming to Freskyn's son, William, his father's lands of Strabrock in West Lothian and of Duffus, Roseisle, Inchkeile, Macher and Kintrai,[8] forming almost the whole parish of Spynie, we believe him to have been dead by 1166, or, at the latest, 1171, the year of Sweyn Asleifarson's death, and we know that he held all these lands from David I, with probably many more in Moray. Contrary to the general impression, it seems probable that Freskyn had not one son, but two sons, William above mentioned and also Hugo, who witnessed a charter, not necessarily spurious, granting Lohworuora, now Borthwick, Church to Herbert, bishop of Glasgow, about 1150. But of this Hugo's existence we have no definite record, and of him we know nothing more than that he witnessed the doc.u.ment above referred to, and one other about 1195, namely, a Charter of Strathyla, in which the words occur "Willelmo filio Freskyn, Hugone filio Freskyn" quoted by Shaw, page 406, App. No. xxvii, in the edition of 1775. This Hugo thus seems to have been uncle of, and not identical with Hugo de Moravia, grantee of Sutherland, known as Hugo Freskyn.

William, son of Freskyn, held those lands in West Lothian and Moray probably until near the end of the twelfth century; and this William, son of Freskyn, had at least three sons,[9] (1) Hugo Freskyn, the ancestor of the de Moravias, or Murrays, of Sutherland, (2) William of Petty, and (3) Andrew, parson[10] of Duffus, who appears in a writ as a son of Freskyn, and as a brother of Hugo Freskyn of Sutherland.[11]

Andrew was alive in 1190, and lived probably till 1221, and has been taken to have been the same person as Andrew Bishop of Moray who built Elgin Cathedral. More probably he was that Bishop's uncle, and refused the bishopric of Ross. He witnessed the great Charter of Bishop Bricius founding the Cathedral at Spynie between 1208 and 1215. (Reg.

Morav. c. 39).

William, son of Freskyn, probably had several other sons from one of whom were descended the Earls of Atholl.[12]

William, son of William, and so grandson of Freskyn, with whom, as he was not interested in Caithness or Sutherland, we have nothing to do, frequently appears as witness to charters in and after 1195 along with his elder brother Hugo, whom in one charter, William being the younger, is reported to call "his lord and brother."[13] This William, son of William son of Freskyn, was lord of Petty, near Fort George, and of Bracholy, Boharm, and Artildol, and died before 1226, leaving an eldest son Walter of Petty, a cousin of Sir Walter of Duffus, and from Walter of Petty are descended the great family, notorious in Orkney, of Bothwell, his great-great-grandson having been Sir Andrew of Bothwell, Wardane of Scotland, who died in 1338. William of Petty, to whom and whose descendants we now bid adieu, was probably sheriff of Invernarrin or Invernairn in 1204,[14] and uncle of another William who became first earl of Sutherland.

In Hugo, the elder son of William son of Freskyn, we are deeply interested. For, if his father "William son of Freskyn" had no grant of Sutherland, Hugo Freskyn certainly had not only such a grant but possession as well. Two Charters, the _Carta de Suthirland_ and _Alia Carta Suthirlandiae_ appear in the list of doc.u.ments in the Treasury of Edinburgh in 1282, and one or both of these may have been the original grant or grants of his Sutherland estate.[15] They may, on the other hand, have been the later grants of the earldom, or still later charters relating to it. They have, however, disappeared.

Notwithstanding their disappearance, ample evidence of the tenure of the estate of Sutherland by Hugo Freskyn has been preserved until the present day in the Charter-room at Dunrobin; and the doc.u.ments are happily as legible as they were over 700 years ago.

By a charter,[16] dated about 1211, Hugo granted to Master Gilbert, Archdeacon of Moray and to those heirs of his family whom he should choose and their heirs, all his land of Skelbo in Sutherland and of Fernebuchlyn and Inner-Schyn, and also his whole land of Sutherland towards the west which lay between the aforenamed land and the marches of Ross, to be held to himself and to his own heirs for ever from the granter and his heirs, performing for such lands the service of one bowman and the forinsec service due to the king in respect of such lands; and this grant was confirmed by King William the Lion (who died in December 1214) on the 29th of April, probably in 1212, at Seleschirche, now Selkirk, and was also confirmed by Hugo's son William, Lord of Sutherland, about 1214.[17] This renders it certain that Hugo himself had died before December 1214, the latest possible limit of the date of this charter. He was buried in the Church of Duffus, as the Register of Moray states,[18] and he can hardly have been the Hugo who witnessed the Charter of the Church of Lohworuora sixty-two years at least before, to which Prince Henry, who died in 1152, was a witness.[19] For Hugo of Sutherland would then have been too young to have been selected as a witness, and he was not Hugo, son of Freskyn (Hug. filio Fresechin), but Freskyn's grandson.

Hugo Freskyn of Sutherland had three sons, (1) William, great-grandson of the original Freskyn, _dominus_ or Lord of Sutherland, and afterwards first earl, (2) Walter, who succeeded to Strabrock in Linlithgows.h.i.+re and to Duffus and the family estates in Moray, which were thus severed in owners.h.i.+p from Sutherland, and (3) Andrew. Walter of Duffus married Euphamia, daughter of the most able and renowned general of his time, Ferchar Mac-in-Tagart, Earl of Ross;[20] and Walter was known as Sir Walter de Moravia, and lived till 1243, but was dead by 1248, his widow surviving him, and later on we shall come to another Freskin, their eldest son, (who was _dominus de Duffus_ on 20th March 1248), in Strathnaver and Caithness. Hugo's third son, Andrew, was the parson of Duffus[21] who became Bishop of Moray, and moved the see from Spynie to Elgin, where he erected a specially beautiful Cathedral, the predecessor of that whose splendid ruins still stand. According to the Chronicle of Melrose he died in 1242.

Hugo Freskyn's eldest son, William, Lord of Sutherland, was simply "William de Sutherlandia" on the 31st August 1232, and "W. de Suthyrland" appears as a witness to a grant of a mill on 10th October 1237. But William, Hugo's son, was by Alexander II created Earl of Sutherland, as we hope to show, soon after 1237, probably as a reward for long and loyal service to William the Lion and to Alexander II, between the year 1200 and the date of his creation, in the various difficulties and rebellions in Moray and Caithness, between which two centres of disaffection his territory of Sutherland lay.[22] For William's family had then its "three descents" and more, and its chief had a sufficient body of retainers settled on the land to ent.i.tle him to the dignity of an earldom. That he was earl there is no doubt, because a deed of 1275 settling litigation between the Earl William of that date and the Bishop of Caithness refers to William of glorious memory and William his son, _earls of Sutherland, n.o.biles viros, Willelmum clare memorie et Willelmum ejus filium, comites Sutthirlandie_, (c.f. The Sutherland Book, p. 7).

The first four generations of the Freskyn family seem to be also clearly proved in one line of a grant by William the Lion to Gaufrid Blundus, burgess of Inverness, of 2nd May (year omitted) which is attested "Willelmo filio Freskin Hugone filio suo et Willelmo filio ejus," which is strange Latin, but embraces all four generations. It is quoted in the New Spalding Club's Records of Elgin, p. 4, as from Act Parl. Scot, vol. 1, p. 79. The Charter is dated at Elgin probably near the end of the twelfth century, when William Mac-Frisgyn, Hugo, and William of Sutherland were all alive. Not a single member of the family was, as every Fleming was, styled "Flandrensis" in any charter or writ, and Fretheskin is probably a Gaelic name, of which the latter part may mean "knife" or "dagger." The name does not mean Flemish or Frisian.

Having now introduced the various prominent persons in the north of Scotland over seven hundred years ago, both on the Norse and on the Scottish sides, let us now look more closely and in detail at the main events which had been taking place there and elsewhere since the end of the reign of David I, when his grandson Malcolm IV, known as The Maiden, succeeded in 1153.

The first event in the brilliant reign of this boy king was the invasion and plundering of Aberdeen by Eystein king of Norway about 1153,[23] in repelling which the feudal Barons of Moray and Angus, including the first Freskyn of Duffus and his son William MacFrisgyn, must have been of service. In the same year Somarled of Argyll and the sons of MacHeth engaged in a joint rebellion, which lasted three years until the eldest of them, Donald, was taken and placed as a prisoner with his father in Roxburgh Castle, leaving Somarled to continue the war alone. This war was put an end to by the release of Malcolm MacHeth, who was created Earl, probably of Ross,[24] after another civil war in Somarled's own country had called Somarled back to the Isles; and the young king Malcolm joined Henry II of England in his wars in France. During King Malcolm's absence abroad Fereteth, Earl of Stratherne, and five other earls, of whom Harold Maddadson was probably one, rebelled in 1160; and, on failing in an attempt to kidnap the young king, who had returned to quell the disturbance, the six earls were reconciled to him; and in the same year he subdued another rising in Galloway, and yet another in Moray. The subjugation of Moray is said to have been carried out with the greatest severity.

According to Fordun[25] the king "removed the rebel nation of Moray men and scattered them throughout the other districts of Scotland, both beyond the hills and this side thereof," though Robertson in his _Early Kings_ expresses the opinion that this clearance took place in the reign of David his predecessor.[26] He is probably right, but whenever it took place, it doubtless gave Sutherland the first of its Mackays, originally MacHeths, who were at first refugees from Moray, and ultimately in the thirteenth century are found settled in Durness in the north-western parts of the modern county of Sutherland. It was at this time, too, that the Innes family, afterwards so well known in Caithness and Sutherland, were, in the person of Berowald the Fleming, given their lands in Moray,[27] William MacFrisgyn, Freskyn's eldest son, and father of Hugo Freskyn of Sutherland, witnessing the charter, a neighbourly turn which has ever since caused some to believe wrongly that the Freskyns were Flemings.

Malcolm next defeated another rising by Somarled, who was killed in 1164, by treachery or surprise, in a skirmish at Renfrew,[28] and was not Somarled the freeman, who is said in the _Orkneyinga Saga_ to have been slain by Sweyn in the Isles, in his pursuit and defeat of Gilli Odran in the Myrkfjord about seven years earlier.[29]

Then King Malcolm, after a short but brilliant reign, died in his 24th year. He was succeeded by his brother William the Lion, who was forthwith crowned at Scone on Christmas Eve 1165 in his twenty-second year.

We may now try to state how things stood in the north at the date of his accession. Soon after this time his grandfather's friend, the first Freskyn, died between 1166 and 1171, and was succeeded by his son William MacFrisgyn, whose son Hugo would then be quite young.

Harold Maddadson had in 1165 been for twenty-six years Earl of Caithness, and Jarl of Orkney and Shetland for nineteen years jointly with Ragnvald, and for seven years sole jarl of those islands.[30] He had probably put away his first wife Afreka of Fife about 1165, but he afterwards lived with Gormflaith, the daughter of Malcolm MacHeth from a date which cannot be fixed with certainty. Led by her, it is said, Harold was openly hostile to the Scottish king, of whom, however, he held the earldom of Caithness, which at that time included not only the parishes of Creich, Dornoch, Rogart, Kilmalie or Golspie, Clyne, Loth, and most of Kildonan and of Lairg, then called by the Norse Sudrland, but also the districts of Strathnavern, Eddrachilles, and Durness (where Mackay refugees had not yet permanently settled) as well as Ness, which is now known as the County of Caithness.