Chapter VII
Reading edition
Harold Maddadson and the Freskyns.
Having arrived, under the guidance of the Orkneyinga, at the closing years of the 12th century, so far as the affairs of Orkney and Shetland and Sutherland and Caithness are concerned, it remains for us to turn and observe the tide of civilisation and order which under our Scottish kings was now setting strongly northwards and ever further north in each successive reign, the Catholic Church and the feudal baron being the chosen instruments of national organisation and discipline, and the charter being the method of establishing them in the land.
To this tide the Pictish and Columban Churches, and the Province of Moray and its Maormors had formed the main barriers and obstacles; and the Saxon nobility, introduced by the elder sons of Malcolm Canmore's second queen, St. Margaret, had proved quite unable to break them down. The Pict of Moray was obstinately hostile to the Scots, and his leaders and rulers aspired to, and claimed the crown of Scotland itself. Rebellion after rebellion took place, and it was not until King David I had introduced the feudal baron with his mail-clad tenants, and settled them on the land by charter, that any success in establishing peace and civil order was achieved in the vast Pictish province of Ross and Moray, which stretched across Scotland from the North Sea to the Minch, and whose people resisted to the utmost.
It is not part of our purpose to treat generally of the feudal and largely Norman families, which gradually asserted their power over the Picts in the north, and were accepted as Chiefs, such as were the Umphraville Earls of Angus, the Roses of Kilravock, the Chisholms of Strath Farrer, the Bissets and Fresels or Frasers of Beauly, the Grants of Moray and Inverness, and the Comyns of Badenoch; for none of these held land north of the Oykel. But later on in the thirteenth century we shall have more particularly to note the Chens or Cheynes in Caithness, and the Scottish or Pictish family of Freskyn of Strabrock and Moray, in its two branches, that of Hugo of Sutherland and that of his grandson Freskin the younger in Sutherland and Caithness.
Notwithstanding their disappearance, ample evidence of the tenure of the estate of Sutherland by Hugo Freskyn has been preserved until the present day in the Charter-room at Dunrobin; and the documents are happily as legible as they were over 700 years ago.
The first four generations of the Freskyn family seem to be also clearly proved in one line of a grant by William the Lion to Gaufrid Blundus, burgess of Inverness, of 2nd May (year omitted) which is attested "Willelmo filio Freskin Hugone filio suo et Willelmo filio ejus," which is strange Latin, but embraces all four generations. It is quoted in the New Spalding Club's Records of Elgin, p. 4, as from Act Parl. Scot, vol. 1, p. 79. The Charter is dated at Elgin probably near the end of the twelfth century, when William Mac-Frisgyn, Hugo, and William of Sutherland were all alive. Not a single member of the family was, as every Fleming was, styled "Flandrensis" in any charter or writ, and Fretheskin is probably a Gaelic name, of which the latter part may mean "knife" or "dagger." The name does not mean Flemish or Frisian.
Having now introduced the various prominent persons in the north of Scotland over seven hundred years ago, both on the Norse and on the Scottish sides, let us now look more closely and in detail at the main events which had been taking place there and elsewhere since the end of the reign of David I, when his grandson Malcolm IV, known as The Maiden, succeeded in 1153.
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.
All these children and their descendants successively according to sex and seniority would have claims as being of the line of Erlend Thorfinnson, to half the Caithness earldom and Jarl Ragnvald's lands there, claims which, however, it would be impracticable, while Harold Maddadson lived, to enforce.
If the union with Gormflaith took place after 1174, no child of that union would exist until 1175. That this is in fact true is rendered more probable because their union is not mentioned in the Flatey Book until after the death of Sweyn in 1171. But the passage is of doubtful authenticity, (see Rolls Edition p. 224), and inconclusive even if genuine. From the various allusions to Harold's union with Gormflaith, it would seem that Harold lived with her before he married her for many years, but married her legally after his first wife Afreka's death after 1198 when William the Lion stipulated that he should take Afreka back, and the subsequent legal marriage might in those days, under the Canon and Roman law, suffice to make Gormflaith's children, though born in adultery, legitimate and capable of succeeding to the earldom (see Dalrymple's Collections, p. 221).
In 1165 Sweyn Asleifarson, the great Viking, would be cruising on the northern and western coasts with Harold's son, Hakon, on board, until their deaths in Dublin in 1171.
Further deprivations of lands, it is conjectured, must have attended Harold Maddadson's later rebellions, and the events which must have led to those deprivations may now be recounted, though it is very difficult to reconcile Scottish and Norse records during the period.
Ragnvald Gudrodson, it may here be noted, had, if we pass over his own illegitimacy, in the absence of direct male heirs of Earl Hakon since Erlend Haraldson's death in 1156, probably the best title to receive a grant of the jarldom of Orkney and Shetland and the earldom of Caithness of all the surviving descendants of Earl Thorfinn Sigurd's son. For Ragnvald Gudrodson was the grandson of Ingibjorg, Earl Hakon's elder daughter, while Harold Maddadson was the son of Ingibjorg's younger sister, Margret of Athole. Ragnvald Gudrodson's title was, but for his own illegitimacy (in spite of which he held his own kingdom) equal, if not superior to that of all survivors of the Erlend Thorfinnson line, which was now represented in the male line only by another Ragnvald the son of Eric Stagbrellir, who would claim, in default of male heirs of Jarl St. Magnus, through the female line of Erlend Thorfinnson, as being descended successively from Gunnhild, Erlend's daughter, her son Ragnvald Jarl and Saint, and Ingigerd his only child. And there is no proof that Ragnvald Ericson was alive at this date, or that he ever returned from Norway to prefer his claim.
King William next conferred the earldom on Ragnvald Gudrodson, for, it is said, a considerable sum of money, reserving his own annual tribute.
Ugly of countenance, but of great bodily strength and stature, crafty, self-seeking, treacherous and wholly unscrupulous, he is still known in the North as "the wicked Earl Harold," yet the Saga classes him with Sigurd Eysteinsson and Thorfinn Sigurdson as one of the three greatest of the Jarls and Earls of Orkney and Caithness.