Beginning with the north, we find in the great province of Moray and Ross but one thanage situated north of the Moray Firth, that of Dingwall; but we have merely a mention of its name in 1382 and 1383, when Euphame, lady of Ross, resigned the thanage and castle of Dingwall in the hands of the king for a re-grant.[314] Of the mythic thanage of Crumbachtyn or Cromarty, with which Wynton invests the usurper Macbeth, we find no trace whatever. Proceeding to the southern shores of the Moray Firth, we find a belt of thanages extending from the river Nairn to the Spey. Between the river Nairn and the burn of Lethen, which falls into the Findhorn near its junction with the sea, lay the four thanages of Dyke, Brodie, Moyness, and Cawdor. In a charter by Alexander the Second to the bishop of Moray, in the twenty-fourth year of his reign (1238), he grants twenty-four marks of the feu-duty (_feodofirma_) of Moythus or Moyness and sixteen marks of the feu-duty of Dike and Brothyn, by the hands of his _feodifirmarii_ of these lands.[315] In an Extent of the lands of Kylravoc and Estir Gedeys in 1295, William, thane of Moythes, and Donald, thane of Kaledor or Caldor, are among the jurors; and in 1311 Michael, son of Malcolm, thane of Dyke and Brodie, is mentioned; but it is only with regard to the thanedom of Caldor that we have any information beyond the mere mention of the name. There is preserved at Caldor an original charter by Robert the First to William, thane of Caldor, in which he grants to him in feu-farm (_ad feodofirmam_) the whole thanage of Caldor, with its pertinents, for an annual payment of twelve marks, as was wont to be paid in the time of Alexander, king of Scotland, our predecessor last deceased, to be held by him and his heirs of us and our heirs heritably in feu-farm, rendering to us the service due and wont to be rendered in the time of King Alexander.[316] This charter refers back to the time before the war of independence, when the thanage-tenure was still preserved intact. The thanage appears afterwards to have been held of the earls of Ross, but in the forfeiture of the earl of Ross in 1475 it fell once more to the Crown, and is confirmed by King James the Second to William, thane of Caldor; and his whole lands are erected of new into a thanage, with the privileges of a barony, and the feudal holding by ward and relief is combined with the customary annual payment,—thus retaining the name of a thanage while the character of the tenure is altered.[317] Among the lands incorporated in the new thanage were lands in the parish of Urquhart in the Black Isle, detached from the old thanage, and they afford a curious instance of the retention of the old Celtic name by a Gaelic-speaking population, for these lands became known by the term of _Fearintosh_ or the _Toishach’s_ land. Between the Lethen Burn and the Lossie lay the extensive thanage of Moravia or Moray, of which the