ve founded "Dounrobin
Castell" were purely fictitious persons. "Hugh Southerland, Earle of
Southerland nicknamed Freskin" existed, but never was an earl, as Sir
Robert well knew, because he quotes charters right up to his death,
in which he was styled simply Hugo Freskyn. The _Sutherland Book_ also
wholly omits William MacFrisgyn, second Lord of Duffus and Strabroc,
the son and heir of Freskyn I and the father of Hugo. A revised
pedigree of the early generations of Freskyn's family will be found
in an Appendix to this book, and it is believed to be correct. At the
same time it is in conflict as to the first three generations with
so high an authority as the late Cosmo Innes, and Sir William Fraser
followed him. However this may be, it is abundantly clear, from
contemporary and undoubtedly authentic records still happily extant,
that in the twelfth century Freskyn de Moravia and his immediate
successors were the guardians appointed by one Scottish king after
another to protect the fertile coast lands of Moray and Nairn alike
against the race of MacHeth from the hills and the Norse invader from
the sea; and that on the extensive territories which they possessed,
they built stately castles and endowed cathedrals and churches
with lands and tithes, providing from their family not only high
ecclesiastical dignitaries to serve them, but distinguished soldiers
and administrators to give them peace; services which their successors
in the thirteenth century were, in their turn, destined to repeat and
continue in Sutherland, Strathnavern and Caithness, when the old Norse
earldom there had been broken up and effectively incorporated in the
kingdom of Scotland.

CHAPTER VIII.

_Earls David and John._

On the death of Earl Harold Maddadson in 1206, he was followed in
the earldom of Orkney, without Shetland, by his elder surviving
son, David, who also, it would seem, was allowed to succeed to the
Caithness earldom and some of its territory. But out of the Caithness
earldom there had been taken the lands forming the Lordship of
Sudrland or Sutherland held by Hugo Freskyn from about 1196, and this
comprised, as already stated, the parishes of Creich, (then including
Assynt), Dornoch, Rogart, Kilmalie (now Golspie), Clyne, Loth, and
by far the greater part of the parishes of Kildonan and Lairg. Out of
these lands Hugo granted, as already stated, to his relative Gilbert
de Moravia, Archdeacon of Moray from 1204 till 1222, and