History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 61

Lothian. His heraldic device was that of a second son of Boulogne, so David Oliphant
was of the family of Lens like Queen Maud.

SETON
The name derived from the Yorkshire small harbour village of Staithes, nine miles
north of Whitby and was in the 1lth century called Seaton Staithes. It was a stronghold
for the Seatons. After Domesday but before the end of the 11th century the family
name had been drawn inland, most portentously to Rutland, where at the new manor
of Seaton the Lady Maud de Lens and her sister Alice were spending the betrothal
period before their marriages. Maud’s Scottish son, Prince Henry, would pass the
name to Seaton, Cumbria, where he established a cell of his abbey at Holmcultram.
Earlier than either of these moves, it went to the Firth of Forth where Queen Maud’s
premier Flemish relative, her uncle Seier “de Seton” built his great place for the
protection of herself and her heirs. As their own distinctive crescents show, Seier de
Seton and his brother Walter sprang from a second son of the house of Boulogne,
Count Lambert de Lens who was the grandfather of Scotland’s Queen Maud. On the
Firth of Forth, Seier was called Dougall or “the dark stranger”, a nickname which was
also given to his son Walter
STEWART
The descent of this family from the Breton, Alan Fitz Flaald, is well known and need
not be re-told here but the significant ancestry enjoyed by his son Walter, founder of
Paisley Abbey and steward to Scottish kings, came through his mother, Avelina de
Hesdin. It was the blood of the counts of Hesdin which was venerated in Flanders, and
it was that noble heritage which persuaded those Flemings who had made their home
and their patrimony in Scotland, to allow Walter’s descendants to occupy its throne.
But Alan Fitz Flaald himself possessed a thought-provoking ancestry which it would be
unwise to ignore. The Breton Count of Dol appointed his forebear Flaald or Flathauld
(? or Fleaunce) to the position of steward or dapifer in his Celtic household. The
legend of Banquo’s murder by Macbeth and the flight of his son, Fleaunce, southward,
was well known in Scotland long before Shakespeare’s day; the playwright’s
information was drawn from Scottish histories. What has never been explored by this
legend’s detractors is the close connection between medieval Wales, to which
Fleaunce had immediately fled, and Brittany, to whose charters Flaald and his family
were contributing in the second half of the 11th century. Church paths - the so-called
“saints’ paths” between Wales and Brittany were very well trodden in the 11th century,
and the inhabitants of the two countries could speak each other’s language. Alan Fitz
Flaald’s descent from Banquo, thane of Lochaber, need not be summarily dismissed;
its attractiveness to those who wish to retain Scotland as a wholly Celtic monarchy is
understandable.

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