THE HAYS OF ERROLL.
TITHE origin of the Hays-now represented by three peerages-
Erroll, Kinnoull, and Tweeddale, is lost in obscurity. The family legend is a manifest attempt to explain the name and arms. According to it, at the battle of Loncarty, in Perthshire, about the year 980, between the Scots and the Danes, the former were in full flight when they were stopped in a narrow pass by a countryman of great strength and courage and his two sons, armed with the yokes of their ploughs. With these they turned back the tide of flight, discomfited the Danes, and obtained from the King (Kenneth M.) as much land in the came of Gowrie as a falcon flew over before she settled, which proved to be six miles in length, and was afterwards called Erroll. As the old countryman lay on the ground after the battle wounded and fatigued, he cried out " Hay ! Hay ! " and thus gave the new family their name. All this is an interpretation of the three shields in the Hay arms, their crest of a falcon, and their supporters-two men in country habits holding the yoke of a plough over their shoulders, with the motto "Serve jugum." A more probable origin is that which makes them a branch of the Anglo-Norman family of Haye, which enjoyed baronial rank in England in the reigns of Henry I. and Henry U., and died out there in the latter reign in heiresses. In the reign of Henry I. the lordship of Hahnaker in Sussex was united to that of Boxgrove in that county, and given to Robert de Haia or De Haye. Half a mile to the south of Halmaker are the ruins of the priory of Boxgrove, founded by this Robert de Haye for three monks of the Benedictine Order. He made it a cell to the abbey of L'Assay, L'Essay, or Exaqino, in Normandy, and nobly endowed it. Not im- probably this points to the neighbourhood whence the family were derived in Normandy. Robert de Haye died before the year 1165, and his son Richard, who succeeded him as an English baron, died before 1185, leaving his three daughters his coheiresses. In Lothian we find settled in the end of the twelfth century a WILLIAM DE HAYA or HAY as Pincema Domini Regis, or King's butler, during the reigns of Malcolm IV. and William the Lion. He is witness to several charters, and died about the year 1170, having married Juliana de Soulis, daughter of Raulph de Soulis, Lord of Liddes- dale. He is said to have had two sons, William and Robert. It is not an improbable conjecture that he was of the family of Robert de Haye of Boxgrove, and possibly a son of that Anglo-Norman baron. At any rate the Norman names of William and Robert point in this direction. Robert the younger son is identified by genealogista with the ancestor of the Marquis of Tweeddale. William, the elder, is the ancestor of the Erroll family. Whether the two families are really thus related, or indeed related at all, is quite uncertain, and we may therefore treat them in succession, as two distinct families, taking first the HAYS OF ERROLL.
William de Haya inherited his father's lands, witnessed several charters of William the Lion, and was one of the hostages for him when he was released from captivity by Henry II. in 1174. William made him a grant of the extensive manor of Herrol, now ERROLL, in Perthshire, for the services of two soldiers, with all the privileges of a barony. This grant must have been between the years 1178 and 1188, and William de Hay gave out of this grant the lands of Ederpolls to the monastery of Coupar, for the good of the souls of King Malcolm and of Raulph de Soulis, his uncle. He married a lady of the name of Eva, with whom he obtained the lands of Petenalin, which they granted to the priory of St. Andrew's. They had six sons, the third of whom, John, was ancestor of the Hays of Naughton, in Fifeshire. David, the eldest son, obtained from King William the Lion a charter of the barony of Erroll, and made a donation to the convent of Coupar of a fishing in the Tay and three acres of arable land. He was knighted, and married
Helen, daughter of Gilbert, Earl of Strathern, by whom he had two, sons, the younger of whom, William, is ancestor of the Earls of Kinnoull. The elder, Gilbert, who succeeded to the principal estates, was appointed one of the Regents of the kingdom and guardian to the King and Queen at Roxburgh, September 20, 1255, during the minority of Alexander III., and re-appointed in 1258. He had two sons, the elder of whom, Nicholaus de Haya, of Erroll, was one of the Scottish nobles who in the Parliament held at Scone, February 5, 1284, bound themselves to acknowledge Margaret, Princess of Norway, as their Sovereign in case of the death of Alexander III., and he was also one of those who at Brigham assented to her proposed marriage with Prince Edward of England, July 18, 1290. He was one of Bruce's nominees in the contest for the succession, but had a charter from King John Baliol, August 1, 1294, erecting his lands of Erroll, Inchyra, Kilspindie, Dronlaw, Pethponts, Cassingray, and Fossy in free warren. He had a charter of the lands of Dronlaw from Donald, Earl of Mar, before 1295. He was one of those who swore fealty to Edward I. in 1296, and died about the year 1302. His third son, Hugh, was one of the first associates of Robert Bruce, and his eldest son, Sir Gilbert de Haya, was one of those who adhered faithfully to that King from his first assumption of the title in March, 1306. Bruce gave him as a reward the lands of Slanys or Swims, in Aberdeenshire, and bestowed on him the office of Constable of Scotland, to descend hereditarily in his family, November 12, 1314. A Constable's baton, said to be the identical one thus presented to Sir Gilbert, has been preserved by the Erroll family, and is said to have never been allowed to be taken from Scotland, substitutes for it being employed at the coronations in England. He signedthe letter of theScottish noblesto the Pope, April 6, 1320, asserting the independency of Scotland, and died in 1330. His son and successor, Sir David de Hay, of Erroll, Constable of Scotland, fell at the battle of Durham, October 17, 1346, leaving by his wife, daughter and heiress of Sir John Kett of Inner- peffer, a son, Sir Thomas Hay of Erroll, who was a Commissioner in 1353 to treat for the release of King David, and a hostage for his ransom in 1354. He acted as Constable of Scotland at the corona- tion of Robert II., March 26, 1371, and married the Lady Elizabeth, that King's third daughter by his first wife, Elizabeth Mure, and had from him a charter, November 7, 1372, of an an- nual rent of eighteen marks sterling out of the lands of Inchtul- tryll, in Perthshire. He had all his lands erected into a free barony by a charter, June 30, 1378, and had 400 francs out of the 40,000 francs sent by the King of France to be divided among the prin- cipal persons in Scotland. He had also a charter from King Robert III. of the lands of Galbrydstoun and the barony of Caputh. He was one of the Council named to advise the young Duke of Rothe- say when he was nominated Lieutenant of the Kingdom in 1398. Sir Thomas Hay died in 1406. His eldest son and successor, Sir William Hay of Erroll, seems not to have been on good terms with his father, as he obtained from his uncle, King Robert III., March 19, 1393, an engagement not to ratify or affirm any alienations, that might be made by his father without his consent and that of the King's Council. On his succession to the property Robert Duke of Albany gave him an acquittance of the usual " relief " due to the Crown, and on the 14th of May, 1415, the• Duke gave him a charter of the barony of Cowie, Kincardineshire. He was one of the Commissioners to treat with the English for the release of James I. in 1423, and was knighted at the coronation in/ 1424. Soon afterwards, however, he was arrested, and committed to prison, along with the family and chief adherents of Albany. but we find him nominated, with four others who had fared similarly, to act on the jury for the trial of Walter, Albany's eldest. son, only two months after. He was appointed one of the Wardens• of the Marches in 1430, and tiled in 1436. His elder son and succes- sor, Gilbert Hay, went to England in 1412 as hostage for Murdac, son of the Regent Albany, and in 1424 was one of the hostages for the release of James I., when (during his father's life- time) his income was estimated at 800 marks. He died a hostage in England about the year 1426. His second son had the lands; of Ury, in Kincardineshire The elder William Hay of Erroll, succeeded his grandfather in 1436. He came forward in support. of the Crown in the great rebellion which led to the downfall of the Douglases, and as a reward was created Earl of Erroll, March 17, 1453, and was one of the Commissioners to treat with, the English in 1457, dying soon afterwards. His eldest son, Nicholas, who succeeded as second Earl of Erroll, had a charter to himself and his wife Elizabeth of the lands of Ergaith and Lerbury, in Perthshire, in January, 1467, but died without issue in 1470. William, his brother, who succeeded as third Earl of Erroll, wan a Privy Councillor to James III. and a Commissioner for the
castle of Edinburgh for "papistry," but soon released. He con- tinued his correspondence with Spain, and was called to surrender himself on January 8, 1593, and on his refusal denounced as a rebel on February 8. He appeared, however, in the King's pre- sence on October 17, 1593, along with the Earls of Huntley and Angus, and offered to submit to a legal trial. A day was accord- ingly fixed, but the Earls summoned their followers to attend and support them by arms at the trial. The Kirk remonstrated at such a mockery of justice, and demanded their punishment. As a mean the trial was postponed, and it was finally declared by the King (November 26) that the Earls should be exempted from prosecution for their Spanish correspondence (of which they were formally absolved), but that before the 1st of February they should either submit to the Church and renounce the errors of Popery, or remove out of the kingdom. They refused to submit to these conditions, and Huntley and Erroll levied a body of men, with which they defeated the Earl of Argyll (through treason in his camp) at Glenlivet, October 3, 1594. Erroll, who commanded the vanguard, was seriously wounded in the engagement in the arm and thigh. While he was still suffering from his wounds, the King advancing in force against the Earls, they were deserted by their followers, and after being hunted from place to place for some months by the Royalists, and their messenger to ask assist- ance from Spain being seized, and making full confession, they lost heart, and quitted the kingdom, Erroll embarking for the Con- tinent at Peterhead on the 17th of March, 1595, and Huntley two days afterwards. Their baronial seats were completely de- stroyed, the castle of Slains being reduced to a ruin, at the insti- gation, it is said, of Lord Lindsay. It is now rebuilt, and is " a spacious, quadrangular edifice, which stands on the edge of a crag, so that the castle wall seems only to be the continuation of a perpendicular rock, the foot of which is beaten by the waves. The Earl's next neighbour on the north-east is the King of Den- mark, whose subjects, it is said, claim a right of sepulture in the adjoining kirkyard,' which they periodically visit to renew the gravestones of their brethren who are so often drowned on this fearful coast, and so desolating is the sea breeze as to prevent Slains Castle from being adorned by a single tree, a character- istic in which, as the residence of a Scottish nobleman, it is happily singular."
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