Though it is hard to believe Sir Thomas Urquhart's assertion that the connexion of the Urquharts with the north-west of Scotland dates as far back as the year B.C. 554, when an ancestor of his named Beltistos crossed over from Ireland, and built a castle near Inverness, the family was of considerable antiquity, and for many generations was one of the most distinguished in that part of the country. Nisbet, the great authority on heraldry, says that "they enjoyed not only the honourable office of hereditary Sheriff-Principal of the Shire of Cromartie, but the far greater part, if not the whole of the said shire did belong to them, either in property or superiority, and they possessed a considerable estate besides in the Shire of Aberdeen."[1] The admiralty of the seas from Caithness to Inverness also belonged to them.
The Urquharts were not, however, the earliest to bear rule in the part of Scotland with which their name is connected. Cromartie was originally the Crwmbawchty (or Crumbathy) of which Macbeth was reputed thane, before he became king. Wyntown in his _Cronykil_ relates Macbeth's dream that he was first Thane of Cromartie, then Thane of Moray, and then King of Scotland.[2] After the first and second titles had been conferred upon him, he took steps to secure the third. Probably the mote-hill of Cromartie was the site of his official residence as thane of the district when he was at the beginning of his ambitious career.
In the thirteenth century the family of Mouat (then _de Monte Alto_) were in possession,[3] but early in the following century the estate had accrued to King Robert the Bruce, probably because the Mounts had submitted to the English king, Edward I. King Robert granted Cromartie to Sir Hugh Ross, eldest son of William, Earl of Ross, in 1315, and by him it was afterwards, in the reign of King David Bruce (1329-70), given to an Adam of Urquhart ("de Vrquhartt"),[4] with whose descendants it remained for many generations. In 1357 he got from the Crown the hereditary sheriffdom of Cromartie, and eight years later the same Hugh Ross gave him the estate of Fisherie, in King-Edward, Aberdeenshire. This Adam is the first of the family to emerge from the darkness of antiquity into the light of history, and probably his name, as the founder of the Urquhart fortunes, suggested the still more famous progenitor to whom our Sir Thomas traced back his pedigree link by link, as our readers will afterwards hear.