Geraldines, who, driven from Ireland, was in the following year graciously received by the king, remained at his court, and valiantly fought in the foresaid battle, and afterwards fought against the Islesmen, and was left among them in garrison.’[481] The other is a charter by King Alexander, granting, for faithful service rendered by Colin the Irishman (_per Colinum Hybernum_) to the said Colin the whole lands of Kintail as a barony. This charter bears to be granted in the sixteenth year of his reign, before the following witnesses—Archibald, bishop of Moray; Walter Stewart; Henry de Balioth, chamberlain; Arnold de Campan; and Thomas Hostiarius, sheriff of Inverness.[482] The same mistake is here committed, as is usual in manufacturing these pedigree charters, by making it a crown charter erecting the lands into a barony. Kintail could not have been a barony at that time, and the earl of Ross and not the king was superior, for in 1342 the earl of Ross grants the ten davachs of the lands of Kintail to Reginald, son of Roderick of the Isles;[483] and we find that the Mackenzies held their lands of the earl of Ross, and afterwards of the duke of Ross till 1508,[484] when they were all erected into a barony by King James the Fourth, who gave them a crown charter. An examination of the witnesses, too, usually detects these spurious charters, and in this case it is conclusive against the charter. Andrew was bishop of Moray from 1223 to 1242, and there was no bishop of that name in the reign of Alexander the Third. Henry de Baliol was chamberlain in the reign of Alexander the Second, and not of Alexander the Third. Thomas Hostiarius belongs to the same reign, and had been succeeded by his son Alan long before the date of this charter. The names of the witnesses seem to have been taken from some charter of Alexander the Second, which may have been granted in the sixteenth year of his reign. It may be said that this was a genuine charter of Alexander the Second, and that Colin Fitzgerald may have come over in his reign; but then what becomes of the fragment of the Chronicle of Icolmkill, which clearly connects him with the battle of Largs? The two must stand or fall together, and the evidence of the construction of a false legend is too palpable to be disputed.[485] The earl of Cromarty refers to tradition; but if not the actual inventor of the story, it must have taken its rise not very long before, for no trace of it is to be found in the Irish MSS., the history of the Geraldine family knows nothing of it,[486] and MacVureach, who must have been acquainted with the popular history of the western clans, was equally unacquainted with it. We have seen that in the second edition of the story the earl gives Colin a brother Galen, and he is claimed by the Macleans as their ancestor, who likewise superseded their older traditionary history by a Fitzgerald origin; but we can trace how this arose, and it will