_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 title 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 ships 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 Sæmund, 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 establishing 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 nobility, 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
establishing 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 asserted 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 Linlithgowshire
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 crushing 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 document 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 documents 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 documents 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
Linlithgowshire and to Duffus and the family estates in Moray, which
were thus severed in ownership 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 entitle
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, nobiles
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.
The diocese of Caithness, which then was co-terminous with the earldom
and comprised all the above districts which now form the modern
counties of Caithness and Sutherland, had in 1165 been in existence
for about thirty-five years; its chief church being at first at
Halkirk in Caithness and thereafter being the old Church of St. Bar
at Dornoch, but it was scantily endowed, and therefore its clergy were
but few.[31] Its Bishop was Andrew, a Culdean monk of Dunfermline,
and probably Abbot of Dunkeld, who had been promoted to the see of
Caithness before 1146, and died at Dunfermline on the 30th December
1184. Ingigerd, Earl Ragnvald's daughter, would at this time be
a young wife and mother living with some of the elder of her six
children, probably near Loch Naver, on part of the Moddan family lands
there with her husband, Audhild's son Eric Stagbrellir, until their
sons, Harald Ungi, Magnus, and Ragnvald, should grow up. But these
sons, possibly on their father's death, and certainly before 1184,
when young Magnus Mangi was killed[32] at the battle of Norafjord,
emigrated to Norway to obtain the Orkney jarldom about ten or fifteen
years after King William's accession; while of Ingigerd's daughters,
Ingibiorg, Elin, and Ragnhild, nothing is recorded at this time,
though Ragnhild appears later on, and one of her sisters is believed
to have married Gilchrist, Earl of Angus during the last twenty years
of the twelfth century. The other may have married in Norway, or died
young and unmarried.
All these children and their descendants successively according to
sex and seniority would have claims as being of the line of Erlend
Thorfinnson, to half the Caithness earldom and Jarl Ragnvald's lands
there, claims which, however, it would be impracticable, while Harold
Maddadson lived, to enforce.
Harold Maddadson's children by his first wife, namely Henry of Ross,
Hakon, Helena and Margaret would, in 1165, all be born, but would be
well under twenty-one, while of his second family, if Gormflaith was
born by 1135, which is unlikely, his eldest son, Thorfinn could have
been born, and some of the others. Thorfinn is mentioned by name in
a grant[33] of a silver mark per annum to the Church of Scone issuing
out of Harold's lands, of which the date is after 1166, but no one can
say how much before the 30th December 1184, the date of the death of
one of its witnesses, Andrew, Bishop of Caithness.
If the union with Gormflaith took place after 1174, no child of that
union would exist until 1175. That this is in fact true is rendered
more probable because their union is not mentioned in the _Flatey
Book_ until after the death of Sweyn in 1171. But the passage is of
doubtful authenticity, (see Rolls Edition p. 224), and inconclusive
even if genuine. From the various allusions to Harold's union with
Gormflaith, it would seem that Harold lived with her before he married
her for many years, but married her legally after his first wife
Afreka's death after 1198 when William the Lion stipulated that he
should take Afreka back, and the subsequent legal marriage might
in those days, under the Canon and Roman law, suffice to make
Gormflaith's children, though born in adultery, legitimate and capable
of succeeding to the earldom (see Dalrymple's Collections, p. 221).
In 1165 Sweyn Asleifarson, the great Viking, would be cruising on the
northern and western coasts with Harold's son, Hakon, on board, until
their deaths in Dublin in 1171.
As for those in authority, Harold Maddadson would have as
contemporaries, Freskyn of Duffus till his death between 1166 and
1171, and his son William till his death near the end of the 12th
century, when Hugo, son of William, would succeed to the Morayshire
estates, though probably he had previously obtained a grant of the
land then known as Sudrland or Sutherland, which is defined above.
Hugo probably received this grant after William the Lion's first
conquest of Sutherland and Caithness in 1196, shortly before the time
when, as we shall see, Harald Ungi obtained in right of his mother a
grant of half Orkney from the Norse king, and another from the king of
Scotland of half Caithness, and probably a confirmation of his title
to the Moddan lands in Strathnaver and in Halkirk and Latheron, to
which he was heir in right of his father and grandmother Audhild of
the Moddan line. But this half of Caithness would be conferred on
Harald Ungi subject to the prior grant of Sudrland to Hugo Freskyn.
For Harold Maddadson must, in the opinion of so eminent an authority
as Lord Hailes, have been forfeited in 1196, if not earlier, for
both he and his son Thorfinn were then in open rebellion against the
Scottish Crown.[34]
Further deprivations of lands, it is conjectured, must have attended
Harold Maddadson's later rebellions, and the events which must have
led to those deprivations may now be recounted, though it is very
difficult to reconcile Scottish and Norse records during the period.
In 1179 King William the Lion had marched an army into Ross, and
subdued it to his sway; and, ere he left it, caused two castles of
Eddirdovir on the site of Redcastle in the Black Isle on the Beauly
Firth, and of Dunskaith[35] on the northern Suter of Cromarty, which
is full of Norse remains, to be built, to enable him to hold his
conquests.
Two years later he made war on Donald Ban MacWilliam, who claimed the
Scottish Crown itself, as the third son of William FitzDuncan only
son of Duncan II, who was himself the eldest son of Malcolm Canmore by
Malcolm's first marriage, so productive of civil war in Scotland, with
Ingibjorg, widow of Earl Thorfinn. Civil war ensued, and lasted for
six or seven years, when, by good luck, Roland of Galloway fell in
with a force of the rebels at an unknown spot called Mamgarvie near
Inverness, and routed them, killing Donald Ban MacWilliam there on the
31st July 1187.[36]
In 1196, Harold Maddadson, who through the ambition of Gormflaith
had, as we have seen, designs on Ross and Moray, sent an expedition
southwards to occupy those districts, of which probably Gormflaith's
father, Malcolm MacHeth, had been Earl at his death after 1160. But
William collected an army,[37] and, after defeating Harold's son
Thorfinn near Inverness, crossed the Oykel, entered Sutherland,
subdued it and Caithness, and pursued Harold up to his castle at
Thurso, and destroyed it in his sight. Harold then submitted, and
promised to surrender his son and heir, Thorfinn, as a hostage, with
others of his friends to be delivered to the king at Nairn. Harold
left all his hostages close by at Lochloy, and went alone to the king
at Nairn, and endeavoured to excuse himself by offering two grandsons
to the king and stating that Thorfinn was his heir[38] and could not
therefore be given up; but was taken prisoner himself and lodged in
Edinburgh Castle, till his son Thorfinn came to take his place. On
this occasion Harold Maddadson was deprived of Sudrland or Sutherland,
which had been given to Hugo Freskyn; and in the next year, or soon
after, half of the earldom of Caithness, which the _Flatey Book_
states Jarl Ragnvald had held,[39] was conferred by King William the
Lion on Harald Ungi or The Young, as grandson of Jarl Ragnvald, and
son of Eric, who, however, had to make good the grant by conquest.
Harald Ungi had, as stated above, already obtained a grant from King
Sverri of half Orkney by a visit to the Norwegian Court.
In order to enforce his rights under both these grants, Harald
Ungi collected a force, and, together with Sigurd Murt, and Lifolf
Baldpate, the first husband of his youngest sister Ragnhild, invaded
Orkney, while Harold the Old fled to the Isle of Man; but, on his
namesake following him thither, he doubled back to Orkney, and,
after killing all the adherents of his enemies there, crossed over to
Caithness with a strong force. In a pitched battle "near Wick," said
to have been fought at Clairdon near Thurso, he slew Harald Ungi,
and utterly defeated his army, in 1198.[40] Harold the Old then
endeavoured to make terms with the king, and offered him a large
sum for the redemption of Caithness. The king, however, attached as
conditions to any regrant, that the earl should put away Gormflaith,
the daughter of MacHeth, and take back his wife, Afreka of Fife, and
deliver up Laurentius, his priest, and Honaver, son of Ingemund,
as hostages.[41] The earl, on his part, refused the terms; and,
the earldom thus remaining forfeited, King William at once invited
Ragnvald Gudrodson, the great Viking king of the Sudreys and Man, and
then his friend and ally, to assemble a force and drive Harold out
of Caithness, promising to confer that earldom upon his general, if
successful in the campaign.
Ragnvald Gudrodson, it may here be noted, had, if we pass over his own
illegitimacy, in the absence of direct male heirs of Earl Hakon since
Erlend Haraldson's death in 1156, probably the best title to receive
a grant of the jarldom of Orkney and Shetland and the earldom of
Caithness of all the surviving descendants of Earl Thorfinn Sigurd's
son. For Ragnvald Gudrodson was the grandson of Ingibjorg, Earl
Hakon's elder daughter, while Harold Maddadson was the son of
Ingibjorg's younger sister, Margret of Athole. Ragnvald Gudrodson's
title was, but for his own illegitimacy (in spite of which he held his
own kingdom) equal, if not superior to that of all survivors of the
Erlend Thorfinnson line, which was now represented in the male line
only by another Ragnvald the son of Eric Stagbrellir, who would claim,
in default of male heirs of Jarl St. Magnus, through the female line
of Erlend Thorfinnson, as being descended successively from Gunnhild,
Erlend's daughter, her son Ragnvald Jarl and Saint, and Ingigerd his
only child. And there is no proof that Ragnvald Ericson was alive at
this date, or that he ever returned from Norway to prefer his claim.
Ragnvald Gudrodson forthwith collected a great army in Ireland and the
Sudreys and invaded Caithness,[42] and, meeting Harold Maddadson in
battle at Dalharrold,[43] where the River Naver issues from the loch,
drove him northwards down the strath to the coast, whence he escaped
to Orkney. The Saga says simply that Harold stayed in Orkney, and this
location of the battle near Achness rests solely on tradition, which,
however, in the Highlands, is often a solid enough foundation.
King William next conferred the earldom on Ragnvald Gudrodson, for,
it is said, a considerable sum of money, reserving his own annual
tribute.
On receiving the earldom, Ragnvald Gudrodson left in charge of
Caithness six[44] stewards, of whom Lagmann Rafn was the chief,
and went back to the Isle of Man. Harold had one of these stewards
murdered by an assassin, and returned with a large force to Thurso to
punish the Caithness folk; and, when Bishop John interceded for the
people of his diocese, Harold, whom he had irritated by refusing to
collect the Peter's Pence which the Earl had given to Rome, would not
listen to him, but mutilated him, probably in 1201, nearly blinding
him, and all but cutting out his tongue, though afterwards the bishop
regained his sight and speech in some measure, and may have lived to
administer his diocese till 1213. It is noteworthy that Pope Innocent
III, in his letter of 1202, does not directly blame Harold for the
illtreatment of the bishop, but Lumberd, a layman, whose penance the
letter prescribes.
Harold then drove out the stewards, and they fled to the Scottish
king, who made the best amends he could to them,[45] and Rafn, the
Lawman, seems to have returned and to have lived and enforced the law
in Caithness until at least 1222.[46]
To punish Earl Harold, King William at once had Harold's son Thorfinn
blinded and so mutilated in Roxburgh Castle that he died there.
William also collected a large army and marched in person to
Eysteinsdal or Ousedale near the Ord of Caithness, and Harold, though
he is said to have brought together seven thousand two hundred men,
avoided battle and evaded the king's pursuit.[47] Harold also began
negotiations with King John of England and received a safe conduct for
a journey to England to see him.[48]
Later in the year Harold is said to have recovered his earldom through
the intercession of Bishop Roger of St. Andrews, for a payment of
two thousand pounds of silver, which Munch conjectures may have been
handed over to Ragnvald Gudrodson to replace the sum which he had paid
to the king for the earldom; and it is true that we hear no more of
Ragnvald in connection with Caithness, though he lived until 1229. At
the same time, we can hardly believe that Harold, as the _Flatey
Book_ says, received back "all Caithness as he had it before that
Earl Harald the Young took it from the Skot-king."[49] What happened
probably was, that Harold Maddadson, who had been stripped by King
Sverri of Shetland in 1195,[60] was allowed by King William in 1202 to
keep part of his Caithness earldom upon payment by its inhabitants of
a fine of every fourth penny they possessed. Otherwise his son David
could not have succeeded to any part of Caithness, as he undoubtedly
did, when, four years later, in 1206, his father's long and chequered
career of sixty-eight years in the earldom was closed by his death at
the age of seventy-three.
Ugly of countenance, but of great bodily strength and stature, crafty,
self-seeking, treacherous and wholly unscrupulous, he is still known
in the North as "the wicked Earl Harold," yet the Saga classes him
with Sigurd Eysteinsson and Thorfinn Sigurdson as one of the three
greatest of the Jarls and Earls of Orkney and Caithness.
On the mainland, no new earldom north of the Oykel was conferred on
anyone for a further period of thirty years. It was, in fact, neither
the policy nor, save in very exceptional cases, the practice of the
Scottish kings to grant earldoms to men with powerful followings
and vast territories;[51] for these made them, especially in remote
situations, almost independent rulers, and dangerous enemies, and it
was undesirable to increase their importance by additional dignities.
It was, on the contrary, usual by charter to create barons and other
military tenants, who should hold their lands, described in their
charters, by military service, in male succession direct from the
Scottish Crown, and liable to forfeiture for disloyal conduct. Nowhere
were military tenants so essential as they then were in the extreme
north of Scotland on lands immediately adjoining the territories of
Norse jarls owing double allegiance, and therefore of doubtful loyalty
to the Scottish Crown. For this reason also no part of the lands of
the Erlend line would be granted to the line of Paul, as an addition
to their own.
From what has been above stated, it will appear that we have treated
the well known history, intituled _The Genealogie and Pedigree of the
Earles of Southerland_ and written down to 1630 by Sir Robert Gordon,
Baronet of Gordonstoun, and continued by Gilbert Gordon of Sallach[52]
until 1651, as mere fiction as regards all persons before William,
first Earl. "Alane Southerland, Thane of Southerland," Walter "first
Earle," Robert, second earl, who is alleged to have founded "Dounrobin
Castell" were purely fictitious persons. "Hugh Southerland, Earle of
Southerland nicknamed Freskin" existed, but never was an earl, as Sir
Robert well knew, because he quotes charters right up to his death,
in which he was styled simply Hugo Freskyn. The _Sutherland Book_ also
wholly omits William MacFrisgyn, second Lord of Duffus and Strabroc,
the son and heir of Freskyn I and the father of Hugo. A revised
pedigree of the early generations of Freskyn's family will be found
in an Appendix to this book, and it is believed to be correct. At the
same time it is in conflict as to the first three generations with
so high an authority as the late Cosmo Innes, and Sir William Fraser
followed him. However this may be, it is abundantly clear, from
contemporary and undoubtedly authentic records still happily extant,
that in the twelfth century Freskyn de Moravia and his immediate
successors were the guardians appointed by one Scottish king after
another to protect the fertile coast lands of Moray and Nairn alike
against the race of MacHeth from the hills and the Norse invader from
the sea; and that on the extensive territories which they possessed,
they built stately castles and endowed cathedrals and churches
with lands and tithes, providing from their family not only high
ecclesiastical dignitaries to serve them, but distinguished soldiers
and administrators to give them peace; services which their successors
in the thirteenth century were, in their turn, destined to repeat and
continue in Sutherland, Strathnavern and Caithness, when the old Norse
earldom there had been broken up and effectively incorporated in the
kingdom of Scotland.