Separated in part by the river Dee and in part by the great chain of the Mounth, and extending south as far as the Firth of Tay, lay the great province of Angus and Mearns. The latter earldom, which was much the smaller of the two, seems from an early period to have fallen to the Crown, and upwards of two-thirds of its territory was composed of thanages. These form two groups. The first extended from the river Dee to the Eastern Sea at Stonehaven, cutting off the north-east corner of the earldom, and consisted of the two thanages of Durris and Colly or Cowie. Both thanages were in the Crown as early as 1264, when we find the sheriff of Kincardine charging the expense of repairing the houses of Collyes and Durris, and both possessed forests which had become royal forests, for we find John, earl of Buchan, _custos_ or keeper of these forests in 1292.[337] The earl of Buchan was forfeited in 1305, and twenty years after, in 1328, King Robert the First grants to Sir Alexander Fraser and his son John, the king’s nephew, the forest of Cragy, in the thanage of Cowie, afterwards called the forest of Cowie, and in the same year there is the note of a missing charter to Sir Alexander Fraser of the thanage of Cowie.[338] There is also a notice of a missing charter of King David the Second to William Fraser and Margaret Murray his spouse of the thanage of Durris and thanage of Collie, which thanage of Collie was Alexander Fraser his father’s, with the lands of Eskyltul, in Kincardine. In 1359 we find the bishop of St. Andrews accused of having unjustly obtained the _Cans_ of the kirkton of Durris, but the sheriff, William de Keth, charges himself with the _firma_ of the thanages of Colly and Durris, but not the forest of Colly, which is said to be in his hands by concession of the king.[339] In 1369 King David II. grants to Alexander Fraser the lands of the thanage of Durris, which is erected into a barony,[340] and the thanage of Cowie shared the same fate, as, though no charter is extant, Alexander Fraser, lord of the baronies of Colly and of Durris, grants in 1400 a charter in favour of his son of certain lands in the barony of Durris, which is confirmed by the king.[341] Robert de Keith, son of William de Keith and Margaret Fraser, gets a charter from Robert II. of ‘the forest of Colly, the forest called the forest of the Month, the lands of Ferachy, Glastolach, Cragy, Clochnahull, whilk of old was of the thanage of Colly and vicecom. Kincardin.’[342]