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Earl Harold had put his wife Afreka away, and probably after Sweyn's death formed a union, at a date which it seems impossible to fix, with Hvarflod or Gormflaith, daughter of Malcolm MacHeth of Moray, who was in rebellion in 1134, and was imprisoned in Roxburgh Castle until 1157, when he was released and created Earl of Ross, so that Gormflaith, who could hardly have been born during her father's imprisonment, must have been born either before 1135 or after 1157.
This war was put an end to by the release of Malcolm MacHeth, who was created Earl, probably of Ross, 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.
The king, however, attached as conditions to any regrant, that the earl should put away Gormflaith, the daughter of MacHeth, and take back his wife, Afreka of Fife, and deliver up Laurentius, his priest, and Honaver, son of Ingemund, as hostages.
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.
He found his opportunity in the rising of Malcolm MacHeth, Earl of Moray. To this rising we have already referred in the Introduction. It was the greatest effort made against the innovations of the anti-national sons of Malcolm Canmore, and its leader, Malcolm MacHeth, was the representative of a rival line of kings.
Nor must we forget that a large area of the modern county of Sutherland, consisting of part of the present parishes of Eddrachilles and Durness and some part of Tongue and Farr in Strathnavern, was constantly used as a refuge by Pictish refugees of the race of MacHeth or MacAoidh, displaced and frequently driven forth from Moray after the bloody defeat of Stracathro in 1130 and in later rebellions as part of the policy of the Scottish kings, and first known as the race of Morgan and then to us as the Clan Mackay.
He had probably put away his first wife Afreka of Fife about 1165, but he afterwards lived with Gormflaith, the daughter of Malcolm MacHeth from a date which cannot be fixed with certainty.
The most notable of these was the rebellion of MacHeth, Mormaor of Moray, about 1134.
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.
The province of Moray made a final effort on behalf of Donald Mac Malcolm MacHeth, the son of the Malcolm MacHeth of the previous reign, and of a sister of Somerled of Argyll, the ancestor of the Lord of the Isles.
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