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.