Frasers of Philorth > Volume 2

UNCONNECTED INDIVIDUALS OF THE NAME OF FRASER. 123
A family of Eraser of Overton was extant for some generations. In the
accounts for the year 1494-5, George, Abbot of Paisley, Treasurer to King
James IV., charges himself with the sum of £50 as the " composicione maid
with Andro Douglas, for the ward and marriage of Robert Fresell of
Ouertoune, wythin the schirefdome of Roxburgh." 1 Nothing of their origin
has been discovered, but they were probably cadets of the Drumelzier or
Makarston branches, or perhaps descended from Sir Nesius Fraser.
In Robertson's Index there is a note of a confirmation by King David II.,
in the thirty-fifth year of his reign, of a charter granted by Patrick de
Dunbar, Earl of March and Moray, to Alexander de Ryklyntoun, of half the
land of Estspot, with tenandries in the vill of Quytsom, which Sir Patrick de
Eamsay, "dominus de Dalusy," resigned in the court of the Earl "apud
Quytingeham " [Whittinghame], and which had belonged to the late " Seiree
Freser." 2
The Earl's charter was not granted earlier than 1346, for he did not
assume the title of Moray until after the death of his brother-in-law, John
Randolph, Earl of Moray, at the battle of Durham, in October of that year.
It is, however, impossible to say who the " Seiree Freser," former possessor
of the half of Estspot, may have been.
" Seiree " may be a misprint, or a mistranscription, for Simone, and in
that case it may have been an outlying possession in Berwickshire, which
Sir Simon Fraser, Filius, held of the Earls of Dunbar and March, and which,
by some means, had passed into the hands of Eamsay of Dalhousie.
that held the lands of Arringrosk and Fourgy, William de Freslay was dominus de Fourgy
of which the members are always distin- 1323. Cart. Cambuskenneth, pp. ti-23.
guished by the prefix " de," showing that the T Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of
name was originally a territorial appellation, Scotland, vol. i. p. 211.
and not a surname proper like that of Fraser. 2 Robertson's Index, p. 76, No. 91.