"
One further charter has to be dealt with. In _Reg. Hon. de Morton_,
vol. I, p. xxxv, cited in _Origines Parochiales_ vol. II, p. 805, a
grant by King Alexander II, to Patrick Earl of Dunbar dated 7th July
1235 is attested by a witness, whose name or initial is illegible, but
who is styled ... _Earl_ ... _Katanay_, ... _Comite_ ... _Katanay_,
and a confident opinion is expressed in a note to the citation that
the witness was Magnus, Earl of Caithness. Now, Earl John's daughter
was taken as a hostage on August 1, 1214, and, if she was then
marriageable and was married at once, her eldest child could have been
born about May 1215, and would attain twenty-one about May 1236, but
to suppose her son of the name of Magnus to have been the ward for
whom the Earldom of Caithness was being kept till 7th July 1235 from
1232 and that he had become Earl of Caithness on the 7th July 1235
seems impossible. If the blank should be filled up with "de Anegus
et," then Malcolm Earl of Angus must still have been the guardian, and
the ward's father and mother must both have been dead by 7th October
1232. This involves three unproved assumptions, of two unrecorded
deaths and one unrecorded birth.
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