Frasers of Philorth > Volume 2

174 THE FKASEES LORDS LOVAT.
There is, however, no ground for considering the marriage thus suggested
to have been that of Sir Simon Fraser, either with Margaret, daughter of an
Earl of Caithness, or with Julia, a daughter of an Earl of Eoss, or that of
Alexander Fraser with a daughter of Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell ; and,
indeed, as Hugh Fraser was a younger son, any elder brother of his would
have been more likely to inherit property acquired by their father or grand-
father, and therefore the conclusion appears reasonable that it could only
have been Hugh Fraser himself who contracted the marriage, and thus
acquired Lovat and the other estates in Inverness-shire, and the appearance
of his name without any designation as a witness to Sir Walter de Leslie's
charter in 1367, while on the 12th of September in the same year he is
found as " dominus de Lowet et portionarius terrarum de Ard," seems to
point to the actual period of that acquisition.
There is even less information to be found as to the time at which, or the
way in which, this branch of the race obtained the barony of Kinnell, in
Forfarshire.
Hugh Fraser was dominus de Kinnell in or about the year 1390, and is
the first of the name found in that position ; but in the charter which he gave
to William de Camera, he says that for stronger evidence and additional secu-
rity, the seal " domini mei " John Dunbar, Earl of Moray, is also affixed. The
seal of the Earl of Moray shows, Couchd, a shield bearing three cushions within
the royal tressure ; crest, a stag's head ; supporters, two lions sejant regard-
ant ; Hugh Fraser's crest was the same, and he probably adopted it from
that of his feudal superior, as was not unusual.
The Dunbars, Earls of Moray, were, therefore, overlords of Kinnell, and
this branch of the Frasers held that estate of them about the year 1390,
though, from the absence of all earlier record respecting it, the time at which
it passed into the possession of the former, and whether it was granted by
John Dunbar, Earl of Moray, to Hugh Fraser himself, or by a former Earl to
one of Hugh's predecessors, cannot be ascertained.
Attention may now be directed to the four generations of the family of Lovat
immediately succeeding the above Hugh Fraser, with the view of correcting
some errors into which genealogists appear to have fallen respecting them.
The comparatively modern genealogists who have given the most detailed