Chapter IV: Introduction (2)

“In the same year (1196) William, King of Scots, having gathered a great army, entered Moray to drive out Harald MacMadit, who had occupied that district. But before the king could enter Caithness, Harald fled to his ships, not wishing to risk a battle with the king. Then the King of Scots sent his army to Turseha (Thurso), the town of the aforesaid Harald, and destroyed his castle there. But Harald, seeing that the king would completely devastate the country, came to the king’s feet and placed himself at his mercy, chiefly because of a raging tempest in the sea, and the wind being contrary, so that he could not go to the Orkneys; and he promised the king that he would bring to him all his enemies when the king should again return to Moray. On that condition the king permitted him to retain a half of Caithness, and the other half he gave to Harald, the younger, grandson of Reginald (Rögnvald), a former Earl of Orkney and Caithness. Then the king returned to his own land, and Harald to the Orkneys. The king returned in the autumn to Moray, as far as Ilvernarran (Invernairn), in order to receive the king’s enemies from Harald. But though Harald had brought them as far as the port of Lochloy near Invernairn, he allowed them to escape; and when the king returned late from hunting, Harald came to him, bringing with him two boys, his grandchildren, to deliver them to the king as hostages. Being asked by the king where were the king’s enemies whom he had promised to deliver up, and where was Thorfinn his son, whom he had also promised to give as a hostage, he replied, ‘I allowed them to escape, knowing that if I delivered them up to you they would not escape out of your hands. My son I could not bring, for there is no other heir to my lands.’ So, because he had not kept the agreement which he had made with the king, he was adjudged to remain in the king’s custody until his son should arrive and become a hostage for him. And because he had permitted the king’s enemies to escape, he was also adjudged to have forfeited those lands which he held of the king. The king took Harald with him to Edinburgh Castle, and laid him in chains until his men brought his son Thorfinn from the Orkneys; and on their delivering him up as a hostage to the king, Harald was liberated.

“So Harald returned to Orkney, and there remained in peace and quiet, until Harald the younger, having received a grant of the half of the Orkneys from Sverrir Birkebein, the King of Norway, joined himself to Sigurd Murt, and many other warriors, and invaded Orkney. Harald the elder, being unwilling to engage with him in battle, left the Orkneys and fled to the Isle of Man. He was followed by Harald the younger, but Harald the elder had left Man before his arrival there, and gone by another way to the Orkneys with his fleet, and there he killed all the adherents of the younger Harald whom he found in the Islands. Harald the younger returned to Caithness to Wick, where he engaged in battle with Harald the elder, and in that battle Harald the younger and all his army were slain. Harald the elder then went to the King of Scots, on the safe conduct of Roger and Reginald, the bishops of St. Andrews and Rosemarkie, and took to the king a large sum in gold and silver for the redemption of his lands of Caithness. The king said he would give him back Caithness if he would put away his wife (Gormlath), the daughter of Malcolm MacHeth, and take back his first wife, Afreka, the sister of Duncan, Earl of Fife, and deliver up to him as a hostage Laurentius his priest,[45] and Honaver the son of Ingemund, as hostages. But this Harald was unwilling to do; therefore came Reginald, son of Sumarlid, King of Man and the Isles, to William, King of Scots, and purchased from him Caithness, saving the king’s annual tribute.”

Reginald, being supplied with auxiliary forces from Ireland by his brother-in-law, John of Courcy, overran Caithness, and, returning home, left the conquered earldom in charge of three deputies. Harald procured the murder of one of them, and then, coming over from Orkney with a strong force, landed at Scrabster, where the bishop met him and endeavoured to mollify him. But Harald had a special grudge against Bishop John, which added to his rage at what he considered the defection of his Caithness subjects. The bishop had refused to collect from the people of Caithness a tax of one penny annually from each inhabited house, which Earl Harald had some years previously granted to the papal revenues. Accordingly he stormed the “borg” at Scrabster, in which the bishop and the principal men of the district had taken refuge, slew almost all that were in it, and caused the bishop to be blinded and his tongue to be cut out.[46] The two remaining deputies of King Reginald fled to the King of Scots, whose first act was to take revenge on Harald’s son Thorfinn. He was blinded and castrated after the barbarous manner of the times, and died miserably in the dungeon of Roxburgh Castle. King William, then collecting a great army, marched north to Eysteinsdal on the borders of Caithness in the spring of 1202. Though Harald had collected a force of 6000 men, he felt himself unable to cope with the king, and was obliged to sue for peace, which was obtained on the hard condition of the payment of every fourth penny to be found in Caithness, amounting to 2000 marks of silver.

Earl Harald’s career was now drawing to a close. He died in 1206, at the advanced age of seventy-three, having had the earldom for twenty years jointly with Earl Rögnvald, and forty-eight years after Rögnvald’s death.

His sons John and David succeeded him, and ruled jointly for seven years, when David died and John became sole Earl of Orkney and Caithness. The most notable event of his time was the burning of Bishop Adam at Halkirk in Caithness.

Bishop Adam was a man of low birth. According to the Saga he was a foundling, and had been exposed at a church door. Previous to his consecration to the see of Caithness, in 1214, he had been Abbot of Melrose.[47] He arbitrarily increased the exaction of the bishop’s seat to such an extent that the populace rose in a body, and proceeding tumultuously to Halkirk, where he was residing, demanded abatement of the unjust exactions. Earl John, who was in the neighbourhood at the time, declined to interfere, and the exasperated populace, finding the bishop indisposed to treat them more liberally, first killed his adviser, Serlo, a monk of Newbottle, and then burnt the bishop. In the quaint language of Wyntoun—

“Thre hundyre men in cumpany
Gaddyrt on hym suddanly,
Tuk hym owt quhare that he lay
Of his chawmyre befor day,
Modyr naked hys body bare;
Thai band hym, dang hym, and woundyt sair
In-to the nycht or day couth dawe.
The monk thai slwe thare, hys falawe,
And the child that in hys chawmyr lay,
Thare thai slwe hym before day.
Hymself bwndyn and wowndyt syne
Thai pwt hym in hys awyn kychyne,
In thair felny and thare ire
Thare thai brynt hym in a fyre.”

The Saga tells that when the tidings of this outrage reached King Alexander he was greatly enraged, and that the terrible vengeance he took was still fresh in memory when the Saga was written. Fordun states that the king had the perpetrators of this deed mangled in limb and racked with many a torture. The Icelandic Annals are more precise. They say that he caused the hands and feet to be hewn from eighty of the men who had been present at the burning, and that many of them died in consequence.

With this tragic and ill-omened event the chequered history of the line of the Norse Earls draws to a close. Earl John sought to clear himself from the guilt of complicity in the murder of the bishop by the testimony of “good men” that he had no hand in it; but seeing that he had neither assisted the bishop nor sought to punish his murderers, he was heavily fined by King Alexander, and deprived of part of his Scottish earldom. Subsequently he had an interview with the king at Forfar, and bought back his lands. In the summer of 1224 he was summoned by King Hakon to Norway, having fallen under suspicion of a desire to aid the designs of Earl Skule against Hakon’s power in Norway; and after a conference with the king at Bergen he returned to Orkney, leaving his only son Harald behind him as a hostage. In 1226 Harald was drowned at sea, probably on his passage home from Norway. In 1231, Earl John having become involved in a feud with Hanef Ungi, a commissioner whom King Hakon had sent over to the Orkneys, Snækoll Gunnason, grandson of Earl Rögnvald (Kali Kolson), and Aulver Illteit, they attacked him suddenly in an inn at Thurso, set fire to the house, and slew him in the cellar, where he had sought to conceal himself.

Thus the ancient line of the Norse Earls, that had ruled the Orkneys since 872—a period of 350 years—became extinct, and the earldom passed into the possession of the house of Angus.

V. THE EARLDOM IN THE ANGUS LINE—1231-1312.

On the failure of the line of the Norse Earls by the death of Earl John in 1231, King Alexander II. of Scotland, in 1232, granted the earldom of North Caithness to Magnus,[48] the second son of Gilbride, Earl of Angus. Sutherland, or the southern land of Caithness, was now made a separate earldom, and given to William, son of Hugh Freskyn, who was thus the first of the Earls of Sutherland.

Magnus seems to have been confirmed in the earldom of Orkney by the King of Norway; but from this time the notices of Orkney and its earls in the Icelandic or Norwegian records are so few and obscure, that but little is to be gathered from them. The Iceland Annals, however, record the death of Magnus, Earl of Orkney, in 1239.

In the Diploma of Bishop Thomas Tulloch, drawn up _circa_ 1443,[49] it is stated that this Magnus was succeeded by Earl Gilbride, to whom succeeded Gilbride his son, who held both the earldoms of Orkney and Caithness in Scotland. The Annals only notice one Gilbride, whom they call “Gibbon, Earl of Orkney.” His death is placed in the year 1256.

According to the Diploma, Gilbride had one son, Magnus, and a daughter, Matilda. This Magnus is mentioned in the Saga of Hakon Hakonson as accompanying the ill-fated expedition of that monarch against Scotland in 1263. “With King Hakon from Bergen went Magnus, Earl of Orkney, and the king gave him a good long-ship.” Pilots had previously been procured from the Orkneys, and the fleet, after being two nights at sea with a gentle wind, put into Bressay Sound in Shetland, where they remained nearly half a month. Then they sailed for the Orkneys, and lay for some time in Elwick Bay, opposite Inganess, near Kirkwall. Then they moved round South Ronaldsay, and lay some time in Ronaldsvoe, while men were sent over to Caithness to levy a contribution from the inhabitants,[50] of which the scald sings that “he imposed tribute on the dwellers on the Ness, who were terrified by the steel-clad exactor of rings.” Ordering the Orkneymen to follow him as soon as they were ready, the king sailed south to Lewis and Skye, where he was joined by Magnus, King of Man. The fleet, which now consisted of more than a hundred vessels, for the most part large and all well equipped, was divided into two squadrons, one of which, consisting of fifty ships, plundered the coasts of Kintyre and Mull, rejoining King Hakon at Gigha. A detached squadron now plundered Bute, and the fleet cast anchor in Arran Sound, from which King Hakon sent Gilbert, Bishop of Hamar, and Henry, Bishop of Orkney, with three other envoys, to treat for peace with the Scottish King. The negotiations failed, and soon after the fleet was disabled by a storm, and the power of the Norwegian King utterly broken in the battle of Largs. King Hakon, gathering together the shattered remnants of his fleet and army, retired slowly northwards, meeting with no impediment until they arrived off Durness, in Sutherlandshire, when the wind fell calm, and the fleet steered into the sound, where seven men of a boat’s crew, who had been sent ashore for water, were killed by the Scots. In passing through the Pentland Firth one vessel went down with all on board in the “Swelkie,” a dangerous whirlpool in certain states of the tide, and another was carried by the current helplessly through the Firth, and made straight for Norway. King Hakon laid up his fleet in Midland Harbour and Scapa Bay. He then rode to Kirkwall, and lay down to die. He was lodged in the bishop’s palace, and after having been confined to his bed for some days, he recovered so much that he attended mass in the bishop’s chapel, and walked to the cathedral to visit the shrine of St. Magnus. But there came a relapse, and he was again laid prostrate. He caused the Bible and Latin books to be read to him to beguile the tedium of the sick bed, until he was no longer able to bear the fatigue of reflecting on what he heard; and then he desired that Norwegian books should be read to him night and day—first the Sagas of the Saints, and then the Chronicles of the Kings, from Halfdan the Black through all the succession of the Kings of Norway. Then he set his affairs in order, caused his silver plate to be weighed out to pay his troops, and received the sacrament. He died at midnight on Saturday, 15th December 1263. On Sunday the corpse, clothed in the richest garments, with a garland on the head, was laid in state in the upper hall of the palace. The king’s chamberlains stood round it with tapers, and all day long the people came to view the remains of their king. The nobles kept watch over the bier through the night; and on Monday the royal remains were borne to St. Magnus’ Cathedral, where they lay in state all that night. On Tuesday they were temporarily interred in the choir of the church, near the steps leading to the shrine of St. Magnus. Before his death the king had given directions that his body should be carried east to Norway, and buried beside the remains of his father and his relatives in Bergen. In the month of March the corpse was exhumed and conveyed to Scapa, where it was placed on board the great ship in which he had sailed on the unfortunate expedition to Largs, and taken to Bergen, where it was interred in the choir of Christ’s Church.

Magnus Gilbride’s son, who was Earl of Orkney at the time of King Hakon’s expedition, died (according to the Annals) in 1273.

He was succeeded by a son of the same name. The Annals have the entry under the year 1276:—“Magnus, King of Norway, gave to Magnus, son of Earl Magnus of Orkney, the title of Earl, at Tunsberg.” He appears also as Earl of Orkney in the document, dated 5th February 1283, declaring Margaret, the Maiden of Norway, the nearest heir to the Scottish throne.[51] The death of Earl Magnus, Magnus’ son, is recorded in the year 1284,[52] along with that of Bishop Peter of Orkney and Sturla the Lawman. The Diploma states that he died without issue, and was succeeded by his brother John in the earldom of Orkney and Caithness.

John, as Earl of Caithness, appears in 1289 as one of the signatories to the letter addressed by the nobles to King Edward of England proposing that the young Prince Edward should marry Margaret, the Maid of Norway. His name also occurs in the list of those summoned to attend the first parliament of Balliol. He swore fealty to King Edward at Murkle in Caithness, in 1297.

King Eirik of Norway in 1281 had married the Scottish princess Margaret, daughter of Alexander III. She died in 1283, leaving one daughter, Margaret, “the Maid of Norway,” who became sole heiress to the crown of Scotland, and in 1289 was formally betrothed to Prince Edward of England. She died at sea off the coast of Orkney,[53] on her way to Scotland, in September or October 1290. There is no record of the circumstances of her death,[54] but we learn from a letter of Bishop Audfinn of Bergen,[55] written twenty years after the event in connection with the case of the false Margaret, who was burned at Bergen in 1301 (as will be detailed hereafter), that her remains were brought back to Bergen in charge of the Bishop (most probably of the Orkneys) and Herr Thore Hakonson, whose wife, Ingibiorg Erlingsdatter, was Margaret’s attendant on the voyage. In 1293 Eirik married Isabel, who is styled in the Iceland Annals “daughter of Sir Robert, son of Robert, Earl of Brus.”[56] It appears that on the 24th of July of that year King Edward gave permission to Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, the father of Isabella Bruce, to go to Norway,[57] and to remain there for a time; and Munch, the Norwegian historian, conjectures that he had then brought over his daughter, and stayed till the marriage took place,[58] and that King Eirik may have hoped by this alliance to bring the crown of Scotland once more into the possession of a branch of his own royal line. In 1297 Isabella bore him a daughter named Ingibiorg. King Eirik died 13th July 1299, and was succeeded by his brother Hakon (Magnusson).

John, Earl of Orkney, seems to have gone to Norway to take the oath of allegiance to King Hakon immediately after his accession, for we find in the Icelandic Annals that he was betrothed to King Eirik’s daughter in 1299. The statement is explicit, and though it may seem strange to us that an infant scarcely two years of age should be betrothed to a man of forty, Munch makes the remark that such unlikely contracts were by no means so unusual in those days as to oblige us to discredit the statement. In fact, we find this same King Hakon betrothing his own daughter when an infant of one year to a man who, though he was much younger than Earl John, was nevertheless a full-grown man. But Earl John seems to have died shortly after the betrothal, for we find that Ingibiorg was betrothed anew in 1311, and John’s successor in the earldom appears on record in 1312, with Ferquhard, Bishop of Caithness, witnessing the confirmation by King Robert I. and Hakon V. (at Inverness, 28th October) of the prior treaty executed at Perth, 6th July 1266, between King Alexander III. and Magnus IV. (the son of the unfortunate Hakon), by which the Kings of Norway ceded for ever the Isle of Man and all the other islands of the Sudreys, and all the islands in the west and south of the great Haf, except the isles of Orkney and Shetland, which were specially reserved to Norway. In consideration of this the King of Scotland became bound to pay to the King of Norway and his heirs for ever an annual sum of 100 marks, within St. Magnus’ church, in addition to a payment of 4000 marks to be paid within the space of four years.

It was about the time of Earl John’s visit to the court of King Hakon, on the occasion above referred to, that there occurred in Norway one of the most extraordinary instances of imposture on record. A woman appeared in Bergen, in 1300, declaring that she was the princess Margaret, daughter of King Eirik, and heiress to the crown of Scotland, who was believed by all in Norway and in Britain to have died off the coast of Orkney some ten years previously. She had come over in a ship from Lubeck,[59] and her story was that she had been “sold” or betrayed by her attendant Ingibiorg Erlingsdatter, in the interest of certain persons who wished her out of the way, and had falsely given her out for dead. Although her appearance and circumstances were strongly against the credibility of her story, it seems to have taken a strong hold of the popular mind, and not a few of the clergy and the higher classes, possibly influenced by political motives, appear to have given her countenance. She was a married woman, and was accompanied by her husband, a German. She is described by Bishop Audfinn as being well up in years, her hair was greyish, and partially whitened with age, and to all appearance she was at least twenty years older than the date of King Eirik’s marriage with Margaret of Scotland, and consequently about seven years older than King Eirik himself, who was but thirteen when he was married. “Yet,” says Munch, “though the king’s daughter Margaret had died in the presence of some of the best men of Norway, though her corpse had been brought back by the bishop and Herr Thore Hakonson, to King Eirik, who himself had laid it in the open grave, satisfied himself of the identity of his daughter’s remains, and placed them in the Christ’s Kirk by the side of her mother’s;—though this woman, in short, was a rank impostor, yet she found many among the great men to believe her story, and not a few of the priests also gave her their countenance and support. That this German woman, purely of her own accord, should have attempted to personate the princess Margaret ten years after her death, and should have ventured to appear publicly in Norway on such an enterprise, seems hardly credible. It is more likely that she may have been persuaded to it by some parties perceiving in her a certain personal resemblance, who schooled her in the story she must tell to give her personation an air of reality.” King Hakon was away from Bergen, and no action was taken in regard to her case until he returned in the early part of the winter of 1301. It was natural that he should wish personally to see and examine the impostor, and confront her with the princess’s attendants, especially to hear the testimony of Ingibiorg Erlingsdatter, before deciding on anything. There is no record of the trial, but soon after the king’s arrival the “false Margaret” was burnt at Nordness in Bergen, as an impostor, and her husband was beheaded. As she was being taken through the Kongsgaard gate to the place of execution, she is reported to have said—“I remember well when I as a child was taken through this self-same gate to be carried to Scotland. There was then in the High Church of the Apostles an Iceland priest, Haflidi[60] by name, who was the court priest of my father King Eirik; and when the clergy ceased singing, then Sir Haflidi struck up with the ‘Veni Creator,’ and the hymn was sung out to the end just as I was being taken on board the ship.” Notwithstanding the manifest nature of the imposture she was regarded by the multitude as a martyr; a chapel was erected on the spot where she suffered, and the number of pilgrimages made to it increased to such an extent that Bishop Audfinn interfered and forbade them.[61]

Earl John’s successor in the earldom of Orkney and Caithness was his son Magnus, the fifth of the name, and last of the Angus line. He first appears on record in 1312 in the treaty between King Robert Bruce and Hakon Magnusson, concluded at Inverness. In 1320, as Earl of Caithness and Orkney, he subscribed the famous letter to the Pope, asserting the independence of Scotland.[62] It seems as if he had been dead in 1321, for in a document addressed by King Robert Bruce to the “ballivi” of the King of Norway in Orkney, and dated at Cullen, 4th August 1321, he complains that Alexander Brun, “the king’s enemy,” convicted of _lese majestatis_, had been received into Orkney and had been refused to be given up, though instantly demanded by “our ballivus in Caithness, Henry St. Clair.” He was certainly dead in 1329, for in that year Katharina, as his widow, executes two charters in her own name as Countess of Orkney and Caithness, by which she purchases from the Lord High Steward (Drottset), Herr Erling Vidkunnson, certain lands in Rögnvaldsey, including the Pentland Skerries.[63] In one of these documents she speaks of Earl John as he from whom her husband had inherited his possessions which he left to her, thus corroborating the statement of the Diploma that Magnus was the son of John.[64]

VI. THE EARLDOM IN THE STRATHERNE LINE—1321-1379.

The Diploma states that the earldom now passed by lineal succession to Malise, Earl of Stratherne, Magnus V. having left no male issue. In 1331 Malise, Earl of Stratherne, possessed lands in Caithness,[65] doubtless in right of his wife, probably a daughter of Magnus V. Malise fell in the battle of Halidon Hill in 1333, and was succeeded by his son, also named Malise, who became heir to the three earldoms of Stratherne, Caithness, and Orkney.

Malise (the younger) styles himself Earl of Stratherne, Caithness, and Orkney, in a document dated at Inverness in 1334,[66] in which he grants his daughter Isabella in marriage to William, Earl of Ross, granting her also the earldom of Caithness failing heirs male of himself and his wife Marjory.[67]

William, Earl of Ross, succeeded his father Hugh, who fell at Halidon Hill in 1333, but it is stated that he was not confirmed in the earldom for three years, on account of his absence in Norway.[68]

It seems that Earl Malise must have passed over to Norway about the same period, in all probability to obtain formal investiture of the earldom of Orkney from the Norwegian King Magnus, and William, Earl of Ross, may have accompanied his father-in-law. There is no record of Malise’s movements, but we learn incidentally that he had betaken himself to his northern possessions,[69] when he lost the earldom of Stratherne, which was declared forfeited by King Edward and given to John de Warrenne, Earl of Surrey. It is stated that Malise, apparently seeking to preserve the earldom in a branch of his own family, gave one of his daughters in marriage to John de Warrenne, and that King David then declared the earldom forfeited,[70] and bestowed it on his nephew, Maurice de Moravia,[71] son of Sir John de Moravia of Abercairny, who had married Malise’s sister Mary.[72]

Malise appears to have made an effort to recover the earldom of Stratherne in 1334. In that year King Edward, by a letter dated 2d March, directed Henry de Beaumont, Earl of Boghan, not to allow any process to be made before him respecting the earldom of Stratherne forfeited for treason by Earl Malise. He also wrote a letter of the same date to Edward Balliol, stating that he has heard that Malise, Earl of Stratherne, claims the county of Stratherne, which he had granted to John de Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, and requesting Balliol to act with deliberation.[73]

The Diploma states that Malise was first married to Johanna, daughter of Sir John Menteith, and that by her he had a daughter Matilda, married to Wayland de Ard. But there is a record of a confirmation by Robert I. (1306-1329) of a grant of the lands of Carcathie (Cortachy) in Forfarshire, and half of Urkwell in the earldom of Stratherne, by Malise, Earl of Stratherne, to his wife Johanna, daughter of the late John de Monteith.[74] As Malise the younger only became Earl of Stratherne on the death of his father in 1333, if the confirmation be correctly ascribed to Robert I., this must refer to the Malise who was earl previous to 1333, and who had a daughter Matilda contracted to Robert de Thony in 1293, “being not yet in her 20th year.”[75]

The Diploma further states that Malise (the younger) was married the second time to a daughter of Hugh, Earl of Ross, consequently a sister of William, Earl of Ross, who married Malise’s daughter Isabella. From the deed of 1334 we learn that Malise’s wife’s name was Marjory. In a deed of 1350 we find William, Earl of Ross, styling his sister Marjory Countess of Caithness and Orkney,[76] and with her consent appointing his brother Hugh his heir in the event of his own death without male issue. From this it would appear that Malise was then dead. He must have been dead before 1353, when his son-in-law, Erngils Suneson, obtained the title of Earl of Orkney from the King of Norway. He is mentioned as dead in 1357 and 1358,[77] and the Earl of Ross is then said to have entered to his lands in Caithness, doubtless in right of his wife Isabella, and in terms of that deed of 1334 previously noticed.[78]

While Malise was in Norway and Sweden two of his daughters had been married to Swedish noblemen—one to Arngils[79] or Erngisl, son of Sune Jonsson, and another to Guttorm Sperra.[80] On the death of Malise, or shortly thereafter, Erngisl Suneson claimed his wife’s share of the earldom. In the year 1353 we find him executing a deed on the 10th April as plain Erngisl Suneson, and on the 6th May thereafter his signature appears to a document drawn up at Vagahuus concerning the queen’s dowry, occupying the foremost place among the nobles of Norway, and with the title of Earl of Orkney.[81] Although the Diploma states that he held only his wife’s share of the earldom, it is plain from this document that he must have received the title of Earl of the Orkneys from the King of Norway. He soon became involved with the Swedish party in favour of King Eirik of Pomern, and in 1357 King Magnus sequestrated his estates in Norway, and declared his title forfeited. His right to the earldom would have lapsed with the death of his wife, who died childless before 1360.[82] Nevertheless he continued to style himself Earl of Orkney during his lifetime.[83] He died in 1392.

On the sequestration of Erngisl’s rights by the king, a certain Duncan Anderson, who appears to have been a Scotchman, and probably agent for Alexander de Ard, the son of Matilda, called the eldest daughter of Malise, issued a manifesto, notifying to the inhabitants of Orkney that he has the true and legitimate heir of Earl Malise, the former Earl of Orkney, under his guardianship; that this heir has now the full and undeniable right to the earldom; and that, as he has heard that the King of Norway has recently sequestrated the revenues of the earldom, he warns the inhabitants not to allow these revenues to be taken furth of the land till the true heir be presented to them, which will be ere very long, if the Lord will. The inhabitants, who seem to have been somewhat disquieted by the missive, sent a representation on the subject to the court of Norway. It would seem that a representation must have been made by the court of Norway to the Scottish King regarding the troubling of the islands by the claimants or their friends in Scotland, for an edict was issued by King David from Scone, in 1367, forbidding any of his subjects, of whatever rank or condition, to pass into Orkney, or frequent its harbours, on any other errand than that of lawful commerce.

In 1375, King Hakon of Norway granted the earldom of Orkney for a single year till next St. John’s Day to Alexander de Ard,[84] naming him, however, in the document not as Earl but simply as Governor and Commissioner for the King, and declaring, in the document addressed to the Islanders, that this grant is given provisionally until the said Alexander shall establish his claim to the earldom. He seems not to have been regarded with much favour by the king, for this grant was not renewed, and in 1379 Henry St. Clair and Malise Sparre preferred their claims to the earldom.

Alexander de Ard had succeeded to the earldom of Caithness by the law and custom of Scotland, in right of his mother as heir to Earl Malise. In 1375 he resigned the castle of Brathwell (Brawl), and all the lands in Caithness or any other part of Scotland which he inherited in right of his mother, Matilda de Stratherne, to King Robert II., who bestowed them on his own son, David Stewart.

Earl David Stewart appears in 1377-78 as Earl Palatine of Stratherne and Caithness. King Robert III. gave the earldom of Caithness to his brother, Walter Stewart, of Brechin, who held it till about 1424. He then resigned it to his son Alan, who was slain at Inverlochy in 1431. The earldom reverted to his father, who in 1437 was forfeited for his share in the murder of King James I. The earldom remained in possession of the crown till 1452, when it was granted by King James II. to Sir George Crichtoun, Admiral of Scotland. On his death in 1455 King James granted the earldom of Caithness to William St. Clair, then Earl of Orkney, in whose line it has continued till the present day.

VII. THE EARLDOM IN THE LINE OF ST. CLAIR—1379-1469.

The genealogical questions connected with the succession of the St. Clairs of Roslin to the earldom of Orkney are involved in apparently inextricable confusion.

So early as 1321 we find a Henry St. Clair acting as the “ballivus” of King Robert Bruce in Caithness,[85] and in 1364 we also find a Thomas St. Clair installed at Kirkwall as the “ballivus” of the King of Norway, an Alexander St. Clair, and a Euphemia de Stratherne, styling herself one of the heirs of the late Malise, Earl of Stratherne.[86]

The Diploma states explicitly that one of the four daughters of Malise, Earl of Stratherne,[87] by his wife Marjory, daughter of Hugh, Earl of Ross, was married to William St. Clair. This must be William St. Clair, son of the Sir William St. Clair who fell with the Douglas in Spain fighting against the Saracens in 1330.[88] The Diploma goes on to narrate that Henry St. Clair, the son of William St. Clair and this daughter of Malise, succeeded to the earldom of Orkney apparently in right of his mother. We know from the deed of investiture that his accession to the earldom took place in 1379.

In a charter of 1391 Earl Henry names his mother Isabella St. Clair. It is usually said that his father, William St. Clair, married Isabella, daughter of Malise, Earl of Stratherne. But, as we have seen from the deed of 1334, Isabella was married to William, Earl of Ross, not to William, Earl of Roslin. Yet it appears from the deed of 1391 that Henry’s mother’s name was Isabella, and though he does not style her a daughter of Malise, the terms of the document imply that she was heiress to lands in Orkney and Shetland. The Diploma only mentions one of the Earls Malise, and it may be that the Isabella whom William St. Clair married was the daughter of the elder and sister of the younger Malise of Stratherne.

If he had married one of the four daughters of the younger Malise it seems unaccountable why he did not claim his wife’s portion of the earldom. We find that the representatives of the other sisters were claimants, and that one of them, Erngisl Suneson, actually received his wife’s share, and enjoyed the title of Earl of Orkney, while Alexander de Ard is said to have succeeded to the earldom of Caithness in virtue of a similar claim, and had his rights to the earldom of Orkney so far recognised by the King of Norway on the forfeiture of Erngisl Suneson. The Earl of Ross, as we have seen, also succeeded to the share falling to his wife Isabella. But no claim seems to have been made for the Isabella who is said to have been married to William St. Clair. If she had been a daughter of the younger Malise it can scarcely be doubted that such a claim would have been made, and if made, established as readily as that of the other sisters. William St. Clair was alive in 1358, five years after the claim of the sister married to Erngisl Suneson had been made good, and one year after Erngisl’s title to the earldom had been declared forfeited.

But a more fatal objection to the statement of the Diploma, that William’s wife was a daughter of the younger Malise, arises from the fact that in the attestation by the Lawman and Canons of Orkney in favour of James of Cragy (1422) it is expressly certified that Henry Sinclair was himself married to a daughter of the younger Malise, styled “Elizabeth de Stratherne, daughter of the late reverend and venerable Malise, Earl of Orkney,” and that by her he had a daughter, Margaret, who was married to James of Cragy. The Diploma, on the other hand, states that Henry was married to Janet Haliburton, daughter of Walter Haliburton of Dirleton, and by her had a son Henry, who succeeded him. It is quite possible, however, that both these statements might be true, the attestation in favour of James of Cragy having no reason to mention the second wife, and the Diploma having no special reason to mention the first wife in connection with the succession which it derives through the mother, making her, moreover, such a remarkable instance of longevity that she survived her husband, her son, and all her younger sisters, and all their sons and daughters, and became sole heiress to the earldom after Earl Henry’s death, although he left a son who ought to have succeeded him, but who, according to the Diploma, succeeded to her, his grandmother.

In whatever way these apparently contradictory statements are to be reconciled, the statement of the Diploma that Henry St. Clair was the first of the line who enjoyed the title of Earl of Orkney is undoubtedly borne out by the records. In the summer of 1379 he passed over to Norway and received formal investiture from King Hakon of the earldom of Orkney and also of the lordship of Shetland,[89] which, since the time of its forfeiture to King Sverrir by Earl Harald Maddadson, had been in the possession of the crown of Norway. The conditions on which he accepted the earldom are set forth at length in the deed of investiture, and contrasting them with the semi-independence of the ancient earls a recent writer has remarked that they left him little more than the lands of his fathers.[90] Although the Earls of Orkney had precedence of all the titled nobility of Norway, and their signatures to the national documents stand always after the Archbishops, and before the Bishops and nobles, though the title was the only hereditary one permitted in Norway to a subject not of the blood royal, yet it was now declared to be subject to the royal option of investiture. The earl was to govern the Islands and enjoy their revenues during the king’s pleasure, but he was taken bound to serve the king beyond the bounds of the earldom, with a hundred men fully equipped, when called on by the king’s message; he was to build no castle or place of strength in the Islands, make no war, enter into no agreement with the bishop, nor sell or impignorate any of his rights, without the king’s express consent; and moreover he was to be answerable for his whole administration to the king’s court at Bergen. At his death the earldom and all the Islands were to revert to the King of Norway or his heirs, and if the earl left sons they could not succeed to their father’s dignity and possessions without the royal investiture. At the following Martinmas he was taken bound to pay to the king 1000 English nobles.[91] It was part of the compact also that Malise Sperra, son of Guthorm Sperra, should depart from all his claims to the earldom in right of his mother;[92] and he left with King Hakon, as hostages for the due fulfilment of his share of the contract, the following from among his friends and followers:— William Daniel, knight, Malise Sperra, and David Crichton.

But King Hakon died in the year after Earl Henry’s investiture, and the events that took place in the Orkneys during the reign of King Olaf, his successor, are entirely unknown to the Norwegian chroniclers. Earl Henry seems neither to have courted the favour of his suzerain nor to have stood in awe of his interference. He built the castle of Kirkwall in defiance of the prohibition contained in the deed of his investiture, and seems to have felt himself sufficiently independent to rule his sea-girt earldom according to his own will and pleasure.

The fact that King Hakon’s investiture of Earl Henry took him bound not to enter into any league with the bishop nor to establish any friendship with him without the king’s express consent, shows us that the bishop was then acting in opposition to the king and the representatives of the civil power. The likelihood is that Earl Henry found this opposition of the bishop favourable to his own design of making himself practically independent, and represented it as the excuse for the erection of the castle of Kirkwall, contrary to the terms of his agreement with the crown. Munch attributes the discord to the growing dislike of the Norwegian inhabitants of the Islands to Scotsmen, whose numbers had been long increasing through the influence of the Scottish family connections of the later earls. Whatever may have been its origin, the end of it was that in some popular commotion, of which we have no authentic account, the bishop was slain in the year 1382.[93]

Malise Sperra appears to have endeavoured to establish himself in Shetland[94] in opposition to Earl Henry. He had seized, it is not stated upon what grounds, the possessions in Shetland which had belonged to Herdis Thorvaldsdatter, and of which Jón Hafthorson and Sigurd Hafthorson were the lawful heirs. It seems as if a court had been about to be held by the earl to settle the legal rights of the parties concerned. The court would be held at the old Thingstead, near Scalloway, but a conflict took place, the dispute was terminated by the strong hand, and Malise Sperra was slain.[95] As a number of his men were slain with him, it seems probable that he had been the aggressor. As both he and the earl are among those who were present at the assembly of nobles at Helsingborg, on the accession of King Eirik of Pomern in September 1389, and the Iceland Annals place the death of Malise Sperra in this same year, it is probable that the earl landed in Shetland on his way home from Norway for the express purpose of seeing justice done in the cause of the heirs of Thordis. In 1391, by a deed executed at Kirkwall (and subsequently confirmed by King Robert III.), he dispones the lands of Newburgh and Auchdale in Aberdeenshire,[96] to his brother David for his services rendered, and in exchange for any rights he may have to lands in Orkney and Shetland, derived from his mother Isabella St. Clair. In 1396 a deed was executed at Roslin by John de Drummond of Cargyll, and Elizabeth, his wife, in favour of Henry, Earl of Orkney, Lord Roslyn, “patri nostro,” by which they renounce in favour of the earl’s male issue, and for them and their heirs, all claims to the earl’s lands “infra regnum Norvagie.”[97]

The Diploma states that after the death of the first Henry St. Clair, his mother, the daughter of Malise,[98] came to Orkney, and, outliving all her sisters and all their sons and daughters, became the only heiress of the earldom. It is added that of this thing there were faithful witnesses still living who had seen and spoken with the mother of Henry the first.

Her grandson Henry, son of the first Henry, succeeded to the earldom, but there seems to be no record of his investiture by the Norwegian king. In 1404 he was entrusted with the guardianship of James I., and on his way to France with the young prince, for whose safety it was judged necessary that he should be removed from Scotland, he was captured by the English off Flamborough Head, and retained some time in captivity.[99] In 1412 he went to France with Archibald Douglas to assist the French against the English.[100] In 1418 John St. Clair, his brother, swears fealty to King Eirik at Helsingborg for the king’s land of Hjaltland, and becomes bound to administer the Norse laws according to the ancient usage, and it is stipulated that at his death Shetland should again revert to the crown of Norway.[101] It seems from this that Earl Henry must have been dead in 1418, though Bower in his continuation of Fordun says that he died in 1420.[102] A dispensation was granted for his widow’s marriage in 1418.[103]

Henry was succeeded by his son William, the last of the Orkney earls under Norwegian rule. But the investiture of the new earl did not take place till 1434, and for a period of fourteen years the administration of the Islands was carried on by commissioners appointed by King Eirik.

On the death of Earl Henry, Bishop Thomas Tulloch was appointed commissioner in 1420. He swore fealty to King Eirik in the church of Vestenskov in Laland, undertaking the administration of the Islands according to the Norsk law-book and the ancient usages.[104] On 10th July 1422 he received as a fief from the king “the palace of Kirkwall and pertinents, lying in Orkney, in Norway, together with the lands of Orkney and the government thereof.”[105]

In 1423 the administration of the Orkneys and Shetland was committed to David Menzies of Wemyss by King Eirik. In 1426 a complaint was sent to the king by the inhabitants, setting forth that they had been subjected to oppression and wholesale spoliation during the period of his administration.[106] Among the accusations preferred against him it was asserted that he diminished the value of the money by one-half, that he threw the Lawman of the Islands into prison unjustly, and illegally possessed himself of the public seal and the law-book of the Islands, which the Lawman’s wife had deposited on the altar of the Church of St. Magnus for their security; that he exacted fines and services illegally and with personal violence, and was guilty of many other illegal acts of tyrannical oppression.

The government of the Islands seems to have been again entrusted to Bishop Tulloch[107] until 1434, when the young earl received his formal investiture.[108]

William, the last of the Orkney earls under Norwegian rule, succeeded to his father Henry, and received investiture on terms nearly similar to those imposed upon his grandfather. Moreover, he was to hold for the king and his successors the castle of Kirkwall, which his grandfather had built without the king’s consent. He had taken the title before he received investiture from King Eirik, for in 1426 he appears as Earl of Orkney on the assize at Stirling, for the trial of Murdoch, Duke of Albany.[109] In 1435, as Lord High Admiral of Scotland, he had command of the fleet that conveyed the Princess Margaret to France. In 1446 he was summoned by the Norwegian Rigsraad to appear at Bergen on next St. John’s Day,[110] to take the oath of allegiance to King Christopher, the successor of Eirik of Pomern. In 1460 the king’s commissioners in Kirkwall certify to King Christian I. that John of Ross, Lord of the Isles, has for a long time most cruelly endeavoured to depopulate the Islands of Orkney and Shetland by burning the dwellings and slaying the inhabitants, and that in these circumstances Lord William St. Clair, the Earl of Orkney and Caithness,[111] had been prevented from coming to the king.[112] On 28th June 1461 Bishop William of Orkney writes to the king from Kirkwall excusing the earl for not having come to take the oath of allegiance, because in the month of June of that year he had been appointed one of the regents of the Kingdom of Scotland on account of the tender years of the prince (King James III.), and therefore was personally resident in Scotland. The bishop also repeats the complaint against John of Ross, Lord of the Isles, and the bands of his Islesmen, Irish, and Scots from the woods, “who came in great multitudes in the month of June, with their ships and fleets in battle array, wasting the lands, plundering the farms, destroying habitations, and putting the inhabitants to the sword, without regard to age or sex.”[113] Tradition still points in several parts of the Islands to “the Lewismen’s graves,” probably those of the invaders who were killed in their plundering expeditions through the Islands.

On the 8th September 1468 a contract of marriage was signed between James III. of Scotland and Margaret, daughter of King Christian I. of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, by which, after discharging the arrears of the tribute due by Scotland for Man and the Hebrides,[114] King Christian engaged to pay a dowry of 60,000 florins with his daughter, stipulating for certain jointure lands (including the palace of Linlithgow and the castle of Doune), and her terce of the royal possessions in Scotland if left a widow. Of the dowry 10,000 florins were to be paid before the princess’s departure, and the Islands of Orkney were pledged for the balance of 50,000 florins. Only 2000 florins of the 10,000 promised were paid, and the Islands of Shetland were pledged for the remainder. The amount for which the whole of the Islands of Orkney and Shetland were thus impignorated was 58,000 florins of 100 pence each, or about £24,000.

In 1471 King James III. gave William, Earl of Orkney, the castle and lands of Ravenscraig in Fife in exchange for all his rights to the earldom of Orkney, and an Act of Parliament was passed on the 20th of February of the same year annexing to the Scottish Crown “the Erledome of Orkney and Lordship of Schetland, nocht to be gevin away in time to cum to na persain or persainis, excep alenarily to ane of the king’s sonnis of lauchful bed.”

VIII. THE BISHOPRIC OF ORKNEY—1060-1469.

The origin of the bishopric of Orkney is involved in obscurity. Its early history is complicated by the fact that there were two if not three distinct successions of bishops, only one of which is recognised by the Norse writers.

The Saga statement regarding the origin of the bishopric unfortunately is lacking in precision. It is stated that Earl Thorfinn built Christ’s Kirk in Birsay, apparently after his return from his pilgrimage to Rome, and that the first bishop’s see in the Orkneys was established there. Taking this in connection with the statement that William the Old, who was bishop in 1115, when St. Magnus was murdered, was the first bishop, the inference would be that the bishopric was erected in his time. The statement regarding his tenure of office for sixty-six years is scarcely credible; but supposing it to be the fact, as he died in 1167, we obtain 1102 as the date of the erection of the bishopric.

On the other hand, Adam of Bremen states[115] that Thorolf was the first Bishop of Orkney, and that he was consecrated by Adalbert, Archbishop of Hamburg, in the middle of the 11th century,[116] and that another bishop named Adalbert succeeded him. Now, as William the Old was not consecrated before 1102, if there was a bishop in Earl Thorfinn’s time (the date of his death being 1064), it must have been this Thorolf. If Thorolf was consecrated in the middle of the 11th century, it was probably before Earl Thorfinn’s death in 1064. But it seems that the see was vacant or unoccupied before 1093.