The first notice of the reputed charter to Colin Fitzgerald is in the manuscript history of the Mackenzies, by George, first Earl of Cromartie, already quoted, written about the middle of the seventeenth century. All the later genealogists appear to have taken its authenticity for granted, and quoted it accordingly. Dr Skene, the most learned and accurate of all our Highland historians, expresses his decided opinion that the charter is forged and absolutely worthless as evidence in favour of the Fitzgerald origin of the clan. At pages 223-25 of his 'Highlanders of Scotland,' he says - "The Mackenzies have long boasted of their descent from the great Norman family of Fitzgerald in Ireland, and in support of this origin they produce a fragment of the Records of Icolmkill, and a charter by Alexander III. to Colin Fitzgerald, the supposed progenitor of the family, of the lands of Kintail. At first sight these documents might appear conclusive, but, independently of the somewhat suspicious circumstance that while these pages have been most freely and generally quoted, no one has ever seen the originals, and the fragment of the Icolmkill Record merely says that among the actors in the battle of Largs, fought in 1263, was `Peregrinus et Hibernus nobilis ex familia Geraldinorum qui proximo anno Hibernia pulsus apud regni benigne acceptus hinc usque in curta permansit et in praefacto proelio strenue pugnavit,' giving not a hint of his having settled in the Highlands, or of his having become the progenitor of any Scottish family whatever while as to the supposed charter of Alexander III., it is equally inconclusive, as it merely grants the lands of Kintail to Colin Hiberno, the word `Hiberno' having at the time come into general use as denoting the Highlanders, in the same manner as the word 'Erse' is now frequently used to express their language; but inconclusive as it is, this charter," he continues, "cannot be admitted at all, as it bears the most palpable marks of having been a forgery of a later time, and one by no means happy in its execution. How such a tradition of the origin of the Mackenzies ever could have arisen, it is difficult to say but the fact of their native origin and Gaelic descent is completely set at rest by the Manuscript of 1450, which has already so often been the means of detecting the falsehood of the foreign origins of other clans."