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.