Abducted to Minnesota in 1352?

Uilleam’s son Aodh [Hugh], the Fourth Mormaer of Ross, (born 1276) lived and died in a manner that surely gratified the shades of his forefathers.

There was renewed conflict with the English whose King Edward III was a far more determined man than his father. The Battle of Halidon Hill (1333) was a horrible massacre. Wikipedia sums up Aodh’s fate: “Scots honour was saved by the Earl of Ross and his Highlanders, who fought to the death in a valiant rearguard action.”

His wife Margaret Graham died the same year; if she still were alive at the time of the battle, his fate wouldn’t have surprised her. For generations the main functions of the Scots nobility had been to fight the English and to fight each other. I’ve noticed our titled ancestors often were elderly when they led their clansmen into battle, fully anticipating that death, not victory, awaited them.

Aodh’s children soldiered on. His main heir was known as ”Uilleam de Ross, Fifth Mormaer of Ross, Justicar of Scotia”. A daughter outdid this, becoming Queen Consort of Scotland.

We are descended from a “lesser” son, Jean de Ross. All we know about him is he married the noblewoman Margaret Comyn and fathered a daughter Ena.

The Kensington Rune Stone, found in Minnesota by a farmer, Olaf Ohlman in 1898.
Source of the photo: Kensington Rune Stone Museum.

Online records hint at a very odd fate for Jean: ”died 3 December 1352 in Minnesota, USA”. Some gullible soul must have come up with this after watching preposterous programs on the History Channel.  This place and date indicates our Jean was a Knight Templar (or a Viking) on a secret mission to the New World accompanied by Sir William Sinclair (right after he built Rosslyn Chapel) to secrete the Holy Grail. Or perhaps it was the Ark of the Covenant, and/or establish an enormous land claim.  He might have been traveling with (or captured by) a band of itinerant Norse warriors and dropped dead after helping carve the Kensington Rune Stone. And let us not exclude the possibility of abduction by a UFO…

Saner suggestions have him dying in Scotland or England. 

Switching Sides

Fearchar’s son Uilleam (William) de Ross was born in 1220, and was even more aggressive than his father. This Second Mormaer of Ross instigated a campaign to reconquer the Hebrides by eliminating its Norwegian settlers. A Norse record takes terse note of this: “In the previous summer [1295] letters came east from the Hebrides…and they brought forward much about the dispeace that the Earl of Ross…and other Scots, had made in the Hebrides, when they went out to Skye and burned towns and churches, and slew very many men and women…They said that the Scottish king intended to lay under himself all the Hebrides.”

The Mormaer was rewarded for his victory with the Isles of Skye and Lewis. The earldom of Ross had grown a wee bit.

His son Uilleam II de Ross (born 1249) found Scottish politics to be a double edged sword: he was in danger from the blade no matter which direction he brandished it. In 1294 he joined with other Scots noblemen like Sir Patrick Graham of Kincardine in acknowledging little Margaret of Norway as the heir of King Alexander. Also like Sir Patrick, he fought in the Battle of Dunbar where he was taken into English custody.

Uilleam’s forbears had all married noblewomen who today are little more than names jotted down on paper. These dutiful creatures main functions were to bear heirs and keep their highborn mouths shut. But when Uilleam wed Euphemia de Berkeley (her family still exists as Barclay. As in Bank.) he got more than a submissive womb. Evidently Euphemia was raised to have a mind of her own. She defied her in-laws’ chest thumping and openly supported the English cause. She convinced Edward I to release her husband and appoint him warden of Scotland north of the Grampians.

Now officially pro-English, Uilleam became one of Robert Bruce’s earliest enemies. When a band of Bruce’s supporters and family members sought sanctuary in St. Duthac’s chapel in Tain, Uilleam arrested them and handed them over to the English crown.

Historic Tain, Scotland

In 1306 Bruce’s fortunes took an upturn, and his men attacked Uilleam’s holdings in the south and west. By 1308 the Mormaer of Ross was forced to submit to Bruce, who graciously rewarded his acquiescence with a pardon and the restoration of his title and territories. This bribe and the realities of power kept Uilleam in the Bruce camp.

Uilleam fought alongside Bruce in the Battle of Bannockburn, and signed the Declaration of Arbroath a few years later.

Descendants of Lady Macbeth

Sir David Graham’s bonnie daughter Margaret (born 1305) married a man by the name of Aodh (we English-corrupted offspring say “Hugh”) de Ross, Fourth Mormaer of Ross, whose background was every bit as distinguished, and as violent, as her own.

His earldom had been minted by Fearchar mac an t-sacairt (Son of the Priest), First Mormaer of Ross. In spite of his name, Fearchar’s parentage wasn’t at all scandalous. His father had been the hereditary Abbot of Applecross, a lay position of power and influence. These men took no vows of abstinence and were as free to marry as any other nobles. They were descended from King Kenneth III of Alba (“Scotland” per se didn’t yet exist) through the King's granddaughter Gruoch ingen Boedhe Mac Cenaeda mhic Dubh. Today she’s known as Lady Macbeth.

Fearchar was an extremely powerful Celtic nobleman from the Ross area who benefitted by upholding the authority of the King of Scots. He emerged from obscurity as a local warlord in 1215 to crush a large scale uprising against King Alexander II.

The Chronicle of Melrose reports that: “Machentager attacked them and mightily overthrew the king’s enemies; and he cut off their heads and presented them as gifts to the new king…And because of this, the lord king appointed him a new knight.”

“Mormaer” indicates more than a mere knighthood. It means something like “Great Steward”; later centuries replaced it with the West German term “Earl”.

Ross was a breathtakingly magnificent tract of land. Its million-and-a-half mainland acres ran along the north rim of the Great Glen from sea to sea, and it reached out to embrace numerous small islands off its west coast. It was truly a jewel in the royal crown; well worth fighting for, and evidently worth killing for.

The Declaration of Arbroath

Sir Patrick Graham's son, Sir David Graham of Kincardine (born 1260) was captured and taken to England as a prisoner-of-war. He was released a year later on condition that he would fight for Edward I in foreign wars.

He gratefully returned to Scotland, where the new king, Robert the Bruce rewarded his “good and faithful service” with several land grants. Sir David also traded his holdings in Dunbartonshire for lands in Old Montrose in Forfarshire.

Mugdock Castle in Old Montrose. Source: Pinterest.com 

At this place and time, loyalties slid around as easily as carved figurines on a chessboard. And the more Sir David dealt with the English invaders, the angrier he got.

In 1320, along with fifty other “magnates and nobles”, he signed the Declaration of Arbroath. It was sent to Pope John XXII and was nothing less than an avowal of Scottish independence. In part it reads, “…for, as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, that we are fighting, but for freedom…for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”

Believing he was ending hostilities, Sir David was a guarantor of a treaty with England in 1322. But the unstable and ineffective King Edward II declared the treaty illegal and downright treasonous. It took a few more years, and the loss of many more lives, for “proud Edward” to “think again,” withdraw his troops, and forsake all pretenses to the Scottish throne.