Clan Gunn Society North America - Westford Knight myth I have dealt with the ridiculous idea of Sir James Gunn Crowner of Clyth being the Westford knight before - see http://clangunn.weebly.com/on-a-gunn-helping-discover-north-america---sir-james-gunn-of-clyth-crowner-of-caithness-and-the-westford-knight-myth.html but I note the Clan Gunn Society of North America website has a page supporting him - see http://www.clangunn.us/knight.htm accessed 14 December 2014.
Most of the points in the Clan Gunn Society North America page I have dealt with in my previously mentioned entry, but I have found an excellent essay by Brian Smith which also deals with this topic. He writes - Earl Henry Sinclair's fictitious trip to America Henry Sinclair, an earl of Orkney of the late fourteenth century, didn't go to America. ... It wasn't until 500 years after Henry's death that anybody suggested that he did. The sixteenth century text that eventually gave rise to all the claims about Henry and America certainly doesn't say so. What it says, in so many words, is that someone called Zichmni, with friends, made a trip to Greenland. None of Henry Sinclair's contemporaries or near-contemporaries ever claimed that he went to America; and none of the antiquaries who wrote about him in the seventeenth century said so either, although they made other absurd claims about him. The story is a modern myth, based on careless reading, wishful thinking and sometimes distortion, and during the past five years or so it has taken new outrageous forms. http://www.alastairhamilton.com/sinclair.htm accessed 14 December 2014 I recommend a full read of the rest of the essay. How can anyone give any credence to this story as history? Obviously, the Clan Gunn Westford knight story is also a myth as if Sinclair did not make it to America then 'Gunn' could not have gone with him. Just one of the many Clan Gunn myths that masquerade as Clan Gunn history...
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