came to a similar conclusion, and expresses it even more strongly
than Dr Skene. At pages 392-3, Vol. II., he says "The lands of
Kintail are said to have been granted by Alexander III. to Colin, an
Irishman of the family of Fitzgerald, for services done at the battle
of Largs. The charter is not extant, and its genuineness has been
doubted." In a footnote, this learned antiquarian gives the text of
the document, in the same terms as those in which they have been
already quoted from another source, and which, he says, is "from
a copy of the 17th century." "If the charter be genuine," he adds,
"it is not of Alexander III., or connected with the battle of Largs
(1263). Two of the witnesses, Andrew, Bishop of Moray, and Henry de
Baliol, Chamberlain, would correspond with the 16th year of
Alexander II." He further says that "the writers of the history of
the Mackenzies assert also charters of David II. (1360) and of
Robert II. (1380) to `Murdo filius Kennethi de Kintail,' but without
furnishing any description or means of testing their authenticity.
No such charters are recorded."

This is emphatic enough and to every unprejudiced mind absolutely
conclusive. The sixteenth year of the reign of Alexander II. was
1230; for he ascended the throne in 1214. It necessarily follows that
the charter, if signed at all, must have been signed thirty-three
years before the battle of Largs, and thirty-six years earlier than
the actual date written on the document itself. If it had any
existence before it appeared in the Earl of Cromartie's manuscript
of the seventeenth century, it must have been written during the
lives of the witnesses whose names attest it. That is, according to
those who maintain that Colin Fitzgerald was the progenitor of the
Mackenzies, thirty-one years before that adventurer ever crossed the
Irish Channel, and probably several years before he was born, if he