Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time; or, The Jarls and The FreskynsGray, James
History
Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time; or, The Jarls and The Freskyns
Gray, James
Caithness (Scotland) -- History; Freskin family; Sutherland (Scotland) -- History
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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