“This name does not appear in Normandy; it was of Touraine, where René Frezel, about 1030, was a benefactor to Notre Dame des Noyers. He had issue: 1. René, living 1084, who was ancestor of the house of Fréseau, Marquises of La Frezelière; 2. Simon (Des Bois). The latter came to England at the Conquest. His descendants, bearing the name of Fresel, or Fressel, long continued in England, and temp. David I. Simon Fresel settled in Scotland, and about 1150 granted the church of Keith to Kelso (Chart. Kelso).” —The Norman People. The Peerage genealogy, being much puzzled with this name, has no better hypothesis to offer than a legend that one Julius de Berri presented a dish of strawberries to Charles the Simple, King of France, and had his name changed from De Berri to Fraisier, fraises, or strawberry flowers, being assigned to him as his coat of arms 1 But this punning derivation is simply the invention of some sixteenth or seventeenth century herald, who chose to convert the silver roses or cinquefoils of the Frasers into strawberry flowers. That they were never so interpreted in earlier times is evident from the Roll of Carlaverock, where, among the knights present at that famous siege in 1300 we find “Symon Fresel, de cele gent, Le ot noire à rosettes de argent:”

and they are still locally known as “Lochaber roses.” The badge of the Lords Saltoun - a strawberry - is, however, clearly allusive to the name.

Sir Simon Fresel, or Fraser, under David I., “enjoyed half the territory of Keith in East Lothian, called after him Keith-Symon,” but left only a daughter, Eda, married to Hervey, the King’s mareschal, from whom came the great house of the Earls Marischal of Scotland. Another branch of the Frasers had settled in the same county as vassals of the Earls of March; and in the reign of Alexander II., Bernard Fraser, the chief of this family, '‘raised himself by his talents, from being a vassal of a subject, to be tenant-in-chief of the King.” He is a frequent witness to the Royal charters of the time, and was made Sheriff of Stirling in 1234. Richard Fraser, in 1292, was one of the nominees on the part of Baliol in the competition for the throne of Scotland, and twice swore fealty to Edward I. On the other hand, Simon Fraser, though he served at Carlaverock, was in arms against him as early as 1303, and after the defeat of Robert Bruce, was taken prisoner, carried to London, and there executed by order of the King in 1306; his head being “placed on the point of a lance, near the head of William Wallace.” His brother and heir, Sir Alexander, more fortunate, fought by Bruce’s side at the victory of Bannockburn, and received from him large grants of lands in Stirling and Kincardine, with the hand of his widowed sister, Lady Mary. He was Great Chamberlain of Scotland from 1325 till the death of his Royal brother-in-law, and “died fighting valiantly” at the battle of Duplin in 1332. His grandson and namesake married a co-heiress of the Earl of Ross, and through her acquired a share—which would seem to have been considerable —of that Earldom. “The whole of these lands went under the name of the barony of Philorth:” which, according to the words of Thomas the Rhymer: “While there is a thistle in the North, There shall be a Frazer at Philorth,”

is still the seat of his descendant, Lord Saltoun. This title was brought into the family eight generations later by another Sir Alexander, whose wife, Margaret, was the eldest daughter of George, seventh Lord Abernethy of Saltoun. Their son succeeded his cousin, Alexander, 9th Lord, as “heir of line” in 1669; and the title and dignity of Lord Saltoun was confirmed to him by Charles II. in the following year. During the Civil War he had done and suffered much in the Royal cause; advancing large sums of money to the King, and raising a regiment at his own expense for the expedition into England. From him the present and eighteenth Lord is directly derived.

The Lords Lovat descend from Simon Fraser, slain at Halidon Hill in 1333, whose exact relationship to the elder line is not known. “The received opinion is, that he and James Fraser (who also fell at Halidon Hill) were sons of Sir Alexander Fraser, slain at Duplin, and the nephews of Robert I. by their mother. Mary Bruce. But this,” adds Sir Charles Douglas, “is contrary to chronology:" and they were more probably brothers of Sir Alexander. He married Margaret, one of the heirs of the Earl of Caithness, and thus obtained a great territory in the Highlands, and became the chief of a powerful clan that took its name from him. Simon’s son, Hugh, who was left an orphan in the cradle, is styled Dominus de Lovat as early as 1367; but it was not till the following century that another Hugh Fraser was created a “lord of parliament” by James I. of Scotland, with whom he was high in favour. On the death of the tenth Lord (who left no son) in 1696, his daughter Amelia assumed the title of Baroness of Lovat and inherited the estate. The heir male of the family, at that time, was the notorious Simon Fraser of Beaufort, who paid assiduous court to the young lady, and persuaded her to elope from her mother’s house of Castledownie, under the conduct of Fraser of Tenechiel, “their mutual confidant” But Tenechiel, either dreading the consequences, or hoping for a reward from her relatives, refused to proceed with the abduction of the heiress, disclosed the plot to her mother, and forcibly carried back the unwilling damsel to her home. She made no further attempt to wed her kinsman, and gave her hand in due time to Mr. Mackenzie, of Prestonhall. Thus foiled with the daughter, Simon seized upon the mother—this time dispensing with any preliminary formality of courtship - carried her off by open violence, forced the unhappy Dowager to marry him, and took possession of the Lovat property. It speaks volumes as to the difficulty of meddling with a great Highland chieftain at that period, that though the Edinburgh courts fulminated edict after edict against Simon Fraser - sentencing him to execution, forfeiture, and outlawry - he actually underwent no punishment of any sort, except a few months’ banishment, for any of his misdeeds. His subsequent career need scarcely be recapitulated here. Every one has read of the crafty traitor, who, by alternately selling the secrets of either party, obtained all that he wanted from both: the Lovat lands and his acknowledgment as Lord Lovat from King George, and the Dukedom of Fraser from King James; who sent his son to head his clan in the battlefield whilst he kept himself out of danger, and at last died on the scaffold - fearlessly enough - a hated and unpitied old man, of whom “nobody ever knew any good.” Chambers tells a characteristic story of his second marriage to Miss Primrose Campbell, a sister of the fourth Duke of Argyll. She was staying with her sister, Lady Rosebery, at Barnbougle Castle (a few miles from Edinburgh), when Lord Lovat first paid his addresses to her. Knowing his bad character, and how he had treated his first wife, she rejected him with abhorrence. He then forged a letter, as from her mother, announcing that she had arrived at Edinburgh, and entreating Primrose to come at once to a lodging in the Lawnmarket, which was particu­larly described, where she was lying dangerously ill. Lady Rosebery hurriedly desired the carriage to be got ready for her, and the poor girl drove to the place appointed, and finding the house lay down a close, and could only be reached on foot, she alighted at the entrance to this wynd, where she found a servant ready to receive her luggage, and dismissed her sister’s coach. But no sooner had she set foot in the house where she was to meet her sick mother, than she found herself a prisoner in the hands of Lord Lovat, who coolly told her she had no alternative but to become his wife, “as she was now in a house of bad fame, from which, after it should be known in whose company she had been, it would be impossible again to go forth into decent society.” She pleaded and protested, with many tears, and held out bravely for a while, "till a hopeless confinement of several days reduced her to despair, and she at last consented to the match.” She brought him a son, in addition to the two sickly boys he had by his first marriage; and whenever he went away to the Lowlands, he used to tell her “that, if he found either of the boys dead when he returned, he would shoot her through the head.” She herself was never allowed to leave the Highlands, but was kept in strict durance within his castle walls, unable to communicate with any one, and it was only by a stratagem that she finally succeeded in making her pitiable case known. She rolled up a letter in a clew of yam, and managed to drop it from her window into the hands of a trusty messenger, who conveyed it to her family. A separation was then arranged, and she lived in peace to a great age, honoured and beloved for her goodness, and a Lady Bountiful on her meagre jointure of £190 a year.

Lord Lovat’s eldest son, Simon, who had been unwillingly forced into rebellion by his father, received a free pardon in 1750, “and every act of his future life justified the favour of government.” He refused a commission under the King of France, and after having served long and honourably in the English army, his forfeited estates were restored to him in 1774. The barony was given back in 1837 to Thomas Alexander Fraser, the grandfather of the present and seventeenth Lord.

It is believed that the family still exists in France. While the grandfather of the present Lord Saltoun was serving in the army of occupation at Paris (after Waterloo) he was struck by seeing a carriage drive by on which he recognised his own coat of arms, and found, on inquiry, that it belonged to the Baron de Frezel.

There were Frezels remaining in England for at least three centuries after the Conquest Walter Frezel, of Great Saxham, in Suffolk, held Frezel’s manor 14 Edward I. Sir Robert Frezel was knight of the shire 24 Edward III. and bore Gules fretty Or, on a chief Argent two mullets Sable, as appears by his seal His daughter and heiress Agnes was the wife of Simon Saxham, from whom the estate passed by another heiress to the Drurys.—Gage's Suffolk.