army of James II in the late seventeenth
century, and was later commander of Rothe’s Regiment of Cavalry in the Irish Brigade
in the service of France.
The Sarsfields (de Sairseil) call themselves
after a manor in Herefordshire, and came to Ireland with the Anglo-Norman invasion. The
first of the family in Ireland was Thomas de Sarsfield, chief standard bearer to King
Henry II of England, who was in Ireland in 1172. Branches of the family settled in
Counties Cork and Limerick in the twelfth century, and later a branch of the Cork family
settled in County Dublin. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century several members of the
family, representing all the branches, had successful military careers in the French
service. Patrick Sarsfield, hero of the Jacobite wars, was of the Dublin branch, and was a
great-great grandson of Sir William Sarsfield, Mayor of Dublin in 1566.
The Sinclairs (de Sincleir) derive their name
from St. Clair in the arrondissement of Pont d’Eveque, Normandy. In 1162 Henry de St.
Clair, Normandy, received a charter of the lands of Herdmanston in Haddingtonshire from
the de Morville Constable of Scotland, whose sheriff he was. The lands of Haddingtonshire
continued in this branch of the family into modern times, and one of this branch was with
Bruce at the battle of Bannockburn in 1314 (their arms difference as blue the Black Cross
of the main line of the Sinclairs). Sir William Sinclair, son of Robert de St. Clair in
Normandy by his wife, the daughter of the second Comte de Dreux, in France, was in 1280
granted the Barony of Rosslyn and other lands by Alexander III, whose favorite he was. Sir
William was Sheriff of Edinburgh, Haddington, Linlithgow and Dumfries, and also Justiciar
of Galloway, and was guardian, or foster-father, to Alexander, heir to the Kingdom of
Scots, who died in 1283 or 1284. In 1285 he went to France to escort Alexander III’s
queen-elect, the daughter of his kinsman, the fourth Comte de Dreux. Younger sons of his
line were established in Berwick and Invernesshire before the marriage of his
great-grandson to Isabel, daughter of Malise, Earl of Strathearn, Caithness, and Orkney.
Isabel was designated primary heiress for
Caithness by her father, and Henry Sinclair, their son was made Jarl (Norse equivalent of
Scottish earl or Latin comes) of Orkney by the King of Norway, under whose control Orkney
at the time was. Younger sons of this line were granted lands in Aberdeenshire, and
Henry’s grandson, William Sinclair, the last Jarl of Orkney, was granted the old
family earldom of Caithness in 1455. Orkney was resigned by him in 1470, to the King of
Norway, under pressure by the King of Scotland (sovereignty over Orkney had fallen
peacefully into the possession of the King of Denmark, who in 1469 had given it over to
James III of Scotland, when the latter married his daughter). Afterwards Orkney became
Crown property.
The Sinclairs of Caithness were a powerful
territorial family, and though many of their tenants assumed their name, the relationship
of the Sinclair earls to those vassals remained feudal, though the two were often linked
together through younger branches of the earls’ family, whose chieftans held the
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