Ragnvald Gudrodson, it may here be noted, had, if we pass over his own illegitimacy, in the absence of direct male heirs of Earl Hakon since Erlend Haraldson's death in 1156, probably the best title to receive a grant of the jarldom of Orkney and Shetland and the earldom of Caithness of all the surviving descendants of Earl Thorfinn Sigurd's son. For Ragnvald Gudrodson was the grandson of Ingibjorg, Earl Hakon's elder daughter, while Harold Maddadson was the son of Ingibjorg's younger sister, Margret of Athole. Ragnvald Gudrodson's title was, but for his own illegitimacy (in spite of which he held his own kingdom) equal, if not superior to that of all survivors of the Erlend Thorfinnson line, which was now represented in the male line only by another Ragnvald the son of Eric Stagbrellir, who would claim, in default of male heirs of Jarl St. Magnus, through the female line of Erlend Thorfinnson, as being descended successively from Gunnhild, Erlend's daughter, her son Ragnvald Jarl and Saint, and Ingigerd his only child. And there is no proof that Ragnvald Ericson was alive at this date, or that he ever returned from Norway to prefer his claim.

Ragnvald Gudrodson forthwith collected a great army in Ireland and the Sudreys and invaded Caithness,[42] and, meeting Harold Maddadson in battle at Dalharrold,[43] where the River Naver issues from the loch, drove him northwards down the strath to the coast, whence he escaped to Orkney. The Saga says simply that Harold stayed in Orkney, and this location of the battle near Achness rests solely on tradition, which, however, in the Highlands, is often a solid enough foundation.

King William next conferred the earldom on Ragnvald Gudrodson, for, it is said, a considerable sum of money, reserving his own annual tribute.

On receiving the earldom, Ragnvald Gudrodson left in charge of Caithness six[44] stewards, of whom Lagmann Rafn was the chief, and went back to the Isle of Man. Harold had one of these stewards murdered by an assassin, and returned with a large force to Thurso to punish the Caithness folk; and, when Bishop John interceded for the people of his diocese, Harold, whom he had irritated by refusing to collect the Peter's Pence which the Earl had given to Rome, would not listen to him, but mutilated him, probably in 1201, nearly blinding him, and all but cutting out his tongue, though afterwards the bishop regained his sight and speech in some measure, and may have lived to administer his diocese till 1213. It is noteworthy that Pope Innocent III, in his letter of 1202, does not directly blame Harold for the illtreatment of the bishop, but Lumberd, a layman, whose penance the letter prescribes.

Harold then drove out the stewards, and they fled to the Scottish king, who made the best amends he could to them,[45] and Rafn, the Lawman, seems to have returned and to have lived and enforced the law in Caithness until at least 1222.[46]

To punish Earl Harold, King William at once had Harold's son Thorfinn blinded and so mutilated in Roxburgh Castle that he died there. William also collected a large army and marched in person to Eysteinsdal or Ousedale near the Ord of Caithness, and Harold, though he is said to have brought together seven thousand two hundred men, avoided battle and evaded the king's pursuit.[47] Harold also began negotiations with King John of England and received a safe conduct for a journey to England to see him.[48]

Later in the year Harold is said to have recovered his earldom through the intercession of Bishop Roger of St. Andrews, for a payment of two thousand pounds of silver, which Munch conjectures may have been handed over to Ragnvald Gudrodson to replace the sum which he had paid to the king for the earldom; and it is true that we hear no more of Ragnvald in connection with Caithness, though he lived until 1229. At the same time, we can hardly believe that Harold, as the Flatey Book says, received back "all Caithness as he had it before that Earl Harald the Young took it from the Skot-king."[49] What happened probably was, that Harold Maddadson, who had been stripped by King Sverri of Shetland in 1195,[60] was allowed by King William in 1202 to keep part of his Caithness earldom upon payment by its inhabitants of a fine of every fourth penny they possessed. Otherwise his son David could not have succeeded to any part of Caithness, as he undoubtedly did, when, four years later, in 1206, his father's long and chequered career of sixty-eight years in the earldom was closed by his death at the age of seventy-three.

Ugly of countenance, but of great bodily strength and stature, crafty, self-seeking, treacherous and wholly unscrupulous, he is still known in the North as "the wicked Earl Harold," yet the Saga classes him with Sigurd Eysteinsson and Thorfinn Sigurdson as one of the three greatest of the Jarls and Earls of Orkney and Caithness.

On the mainland, no new earldom north of the Oykel was conferred on anyone for a further period of thirty years. It was, in fact, neither the policy nor, save in very exceptional cases, the practice of the Scottish kings to grant earldoms to men with powerful followings and vast territories;[51] for these made them, especially in remote situations, almost independent rulers, and dangerous enemies, and it was undesirable to increase their importance by additional dignities. It was, on the contrary, usual by charter to create barons and other military tenants, who should hold their lands, described in their charters, by military service, in male succession direct from the Scottish Crown, and liable to forfeiture for disloyal conduct. Nowhere were military tenants so essential as they then were in the extreme north of Scotland on lands immediately adjoining the territories of Norse jarls owing double allegiance, and therefore of doubtful loyalty to the Scottish Crown. For this reason also no part of the lands of the Erlend line would be granted to the line of Paul, as an addition to their own.

From what has been above stated, it will appear that we have treated the well known history, intituled The Genealogie and Pedigree of the Earles of Southerland and written down to 1630 by Sir Robert Gordon, Baronet of Gordonstoun, and continued by Gilbert Gordon of Sallach[52] until 1651, as mere fiction as regards all persons before William, first Earl. "Alane Southerland, Thane of Southerland," Walter "first Earle," Robert, second earl, who is alleged to have founded "Dounrobin Castell" were purely fictitious persons. "Hugh Southerland, Earle of Southerland nicknamed Freskin" existed, but never was an earl, as Sir Robert well knew, because he quotes charters right up to his death, in which he was styled simply Hugo Freskyn. The Sutherland Book also wholly omits William MacFrisgyn, second Lord of Duffus and Strabroc, the son and heir of Freskyn I and the father of Hugo. A revised pedigree of the early generations of Freskyn's family will be found in an Appendix to this book, and it is believed to be correct. At the same time it is in conflict as to the first three generations with so high an authority as the late Cosmo Innes, and Sir William Fraser followed him. However this may be, it is abundantly clear, from contemporary and undoubtedly authentic records still happily extant, that in the twelfth century Freskyn de Moravia and his immediate successors were the guardians appointed by one Scottish king after another to protect the fertile coast lands of Moray and Nairn alike against the race of MacHeth from the hills and the Norse invader from the sea; and that on the extensive territories which they possessed, they built stately castles and endowed cathedrals and churches with lands and tithes, providing from their family not only high ecclesiastical dignitaries to serve them, but distinguished soldiers and administrators to give them peace; services which their successors in the thirteenth century were, in their turn, destined to repeat and continue in Sutherland, Strathnavern and Caithness, when the old Norse earldom there had been broken up and effectively incorporated in the kingdom of Scotland.



CHAPTER VIII.

Earls David and John.

On the death of Earl Harold Maddadson in 1206, he was followed in the earldom of Orkney, without Shetland, by his elder surviving son, David, who also, it would seem, was allowed to succeed to the Caithness earldom and some of its territory. But out of the Caithness earldom there had been taken the lands forming the Lordship of Sudrland or Sutherland held by Hugo Freskyn from about 1196, and this comprised, as already stated, the parishes of Creich, (then including Assynt), Dornoch, Rogart, Kilmalie (now Golspie), Clyne, Loth, and by far the greater part of the parishes of Kildonan and Lairg. Out of these lands Hugo granted, as already stated, to his relative Gilbert de Moravia, Archdeacon of Moray from 1204 till 1222, and to his heirs and assigns whomsoever, all Creich and much of Dornoch parish up to the boundaries of Ross, and the date of this grant was probably about 1211. The Mackays were beginning to occupy the western parts of Strathnavern, their title being probably their swords, and they held their lands "manu forti," their country being a refuge for their Morayshire kinsmen, the MacHeths, who were in constant rebellion. The eastern portion of Strathnavern, and particularly the neighbourhood of Loch Coire and Loch Naver, and all the Strathnaver valley were probably insecurely held by members of the Erlend and Moddan family after Harald Ungi's death at the battle of Clairdon in 1198; and Gunni, probably a grandson of Sweyn Asleifarson, who had married Ragnhild, Harald Ungi's youngest sister, after the death in the same battle of Lifolf Baldpate, her first husband, became chief of the Moddan Clan there and in Caithness. After 1200 Ragnhild had by Gunni a son called Snaekoll Gunni's son, who thus became, on his father's death, the chief representative in Scotland, both of the Moddan family and of the line of Jarls Erlend Thorfinnson, St. Magnus, and St. Ragnvald, and of Eric Stagbrellir and of Earl and Jarl Harald Ungi; and Snaekoll afterwards laid claim to their possessions in Orkney, as the sole male representative of this line. Gunni and Ragnhild must have held the Strathnaver lands, and the Moddan family lands in Caithness, formerly Earl Ottar's estates, till their deaths, and Snaekoll was their sole known male heir. The Harald Ungi share of the Caithness earldom lands, which The Flatey Book and Torfaeus state that Jarl Ragnvald had held, does not appear to have been granted to David, or to any successor to the Caithness earldom of his line, or to any other person at this time. Indeed, the line of Paul were the last persons to whom such a grant would be made.

It was, therefore, to a very much reduced territory and earldom that David succeeded in 1206, as Earl of Caithness. We hear almost nothing of him, save that for the latter part of the eight years of his rule,[1] more or less inefficient probably through ill health, he shared the earldom and what had been left to him of its lands with his younger brother John. David died without issue in 1214[2] probably soon after Hugo Freskyn, and David was succeeded by his brother John in the jarldom of Orkney and in the reduced earldom of Caithness as sole jarl and earl.

Immediately after David's death, King William the Lion, who had, in 1211, suppressed a rebellion in Moray of the Thanes of Ross under Guthred son of Donald Ban MacWilliam whom a few years later he captured and beheaded,[3] came to Moray again; and, about the 1st of August 1214, King William demanded, and received[4] Earl John's daughter, whose name is not known, as a hostage for her father's loyalty, and a guarantee of the peace then made, under which John was probably recognised as earl and as entitled to his reduced territory. His daughter may, at this time, have been her father's sole heiress, although she did not remain so, because we find that he had a son who lived till 1226, called Harald. Meantime Bishop Adam, after the death in 1213 of Bishop John, his half-blinded and mutilated predecessor, succeeded to the Episcopal See of Caithness,[5] and seems to have reversed Bishop John's policy of leniency to his flock by exacting from them heavier and heavier tithes, as years went by.

In 1217, King Hakon's rival, Jarl Skuli, thought Earl John so promising a traitor as to send him letters forged with the Norse king's seal.[6] In 1218 John was present at Bergen to witness the ordeal successfully undergone by King Hakon's mother in order to prove that king, then a boy, to be her son by the late King Hakon Sverri's son, and so rightly entitled to the Norwegian crown.[7]

After Earl John's return from Norway, the bishop's exactions of tithes of butter reached such a pitch that the Caithness folk met near his house at Halkirk, and demanded that the earl should protect them against the bishop's rapacity, and, either at the earl's suggestion or without any opposition on his part, they attacked the bishop in his house, which was close to Breithivellir (now Brawl) Castle, where John lived. The Saga gives the following description of this affair:—[8]

"They then held a Thing on the fell above the homestead where the earl was. Rafn the Lawman was then with the bishop, and prayed the bishop to spare the men; also he said he was afraid how things might go. Then a message was sent to Earl John with a prayer that he would reconcile the bishop and the freemen; but the earl would come never near the spot. Then the freemen ran down from the fell and fared hotly and eagerly. And when Rafn the Lawman saw that, he bade the bishop devise some plan to save himself. He and the bishop were drinking in a loft, and when the freemen came to the loft, the monk went out at the door; and was straightway smitten across the face, and fell down dead inside the loft. And when the bishop was told that, he answered, 'That had not happened sooner than was likely, for he was always making our matters worse.' Then the bishop bade Rafn tell the freemen that he wished to be reconciled with them. But when this was told to the freemen, all those among them who were wiser were glad to hear it. Then the bishop went out and meant to be reconciled. But when the worse kind of men saw that, those who were most mad, they seized Bishop Adam, and brought him into a little house and set fire to it. But the house burned so quickly that they who wished to save the bishop could do nothing. Thus Bishop Adam died, and his body was little burnt when it was found. Then a fitting grave was bestowed on it,[9] and a worthy burial. But those who had been the greatest friends of the bishop, then sent men to find the King of Scots. Alexander was then King of Scots, the son of King William the Saint. But when the king was ware of these tidings" (he took it) "so ill that men have those miseries in mind which he wrought after the burning of the bishop, in maiming of men and manslaying, and loss of goods and banishment out of the land."

From the above account of the matter, it appears that Earl John, who was responsible for law and order in Caithness at the time, although invited by Rafn the Lawman to intervene, and although he was on the spot, did nothing, saying "he could give no advice" and "that he thought it concerned him very little," and adding that "two bad things were before them, that it was unbearable" and that "he could suggest no other choice,"[10] that is, but to pay the bishop's tithes, however exorbitant, or not pay them, or possibly to make an end of him. It is clear also that the monk who was with the bishop was to blame for his exactions. But there is some excuse in the fact that Bishop John had been censured by Rome for his neglect in collecting the dues of Rome or Peter's Pence as greatly as Bishop Adam was blamed by the people of Caithness for his greediness. There is no need to brand Bishop Adam as a voluptuary for excessive drinking and immorality.[11]

These events took place in 1222, and King Alexander, urged by the remainder of the bishops in Scotland, at once marched into Caithness with an army, and took vengeance on the bishop's murderers by mutilating a large number of those concerned and seizing their lands,[12] while in 1223 the Pope excommunicated them and also interdicted them from their lands.

The Annals of Dunstable, however, paint Earl John in much blacker colours, and state that he himself caused the bishop, who was escaping from the fire, to be cast into it again, and the bodies of two others previously slain, his nephew and the monk, to be thrown upon him, and that King Alexander forfeited half John's earldom.[13]

The Saga says that the king forfeited Earl John's lands for the murder of the bishop. Wyntoun, however, states that afterwards, at Christmas festivities at Forfar,

"Thare borwyd that erle than his land That lay unto the Kyngis hand Fra that the byschape of Cateness, As yhe before herd, peryst wes."[14]

By this "borrowing," however, Earl John recovered only the reduced earldom above described, that is without the Lordship of Sutherland, to which William de Moravia, Hugo's son, had succeeded between 1211 and 1214, and without that south-western portion of it, which, as stated, had been given to Gilbert de Moravia by Hugo in 1211, and without the Moddan family's lands near Loch Coire and in Strathnaver and Caithness, and without Harald Ungi's moiety or half share of the Caithness earldom; and, as already stated, the lands appertaining to this share were probably occupied by his family as represented by Gunni and Ragnhild, Eric Stagbrellir's youngest daughter, and by the members of the Moddan clan, and the retainers of the Erlend line.

In 1223, Earl John was again at Bergen, with Bishop Bjarni of Orkney and others, to consider the rival claims of King Hakon and Jarl Skuli to the Norse crown,[15] and in 1224 he went thither again to leave his only son, Harald, as a hostage for his own loyalty.[16] In 1226, Harald was drowned at sea, probably on his return voyage, thus leaving John without any male heir, and save for his nameless hostage daughter or her children, if any, without any direct lineal heirs for the jarldom and earldom of Orkney and of Caithness respectively.

In 1228 John sent presents to the Norse king, and received in return a good long-ship and many other gifts; and in 1230 John is found aiding Olaf, King of Man, a friend of the Norse king, by giving him a like vessel, "The Ox," to enable him to complete his voyage back from Norway to his own kingdom, and in the same year John rendered assistance to the Norse expedition, which had attacked the South Hebrides, by harbouring its ships in Orkney on their voyage back to Norway.[17]

From the above facts it is clear that Earl John, though he owed allegiance to both kings, was more inclined to favour Norway than Scotland, and that he was more constantly in attendance at the Norse, than at the Scottish Court. At the same time it became more and more likely that he would have to choose between his two masters, as war for the Sudreyar or Hebrides was already certain to break out between the two countries, and, save for civil war in Norway, would have broken out at once.

Snaekoll[18] Gunni's son, as the sole male representative of the Erlend Thorfinnson, St. Magnus, St. Ragnvald, Eric Stagbrellir and Harald Ungi line remaining in Scotland, who had probably about this time succeeded, or at least was recognised as next heir to the Moddan family estates in Strathnaver and Caithness, approached Earl John in 1231, and demanded from him Jarl Ragnvald's lands in Orkney. But the earl, who held Orkney in its entirety as the representative of the line of Paul and of Harold Maddadson, who had seized it when Jarl St. Ragnvald died in 1158, refused to give Snaekoll any part of those lands; and Snaekoll, failing to obtain any redress, sought the aid of Hanef, formerly a page, but now Commissioner in Orkney, of the Norse King, and demanded his help in recovering his lands there. Snaekoll and Hanef with a large following accordingly crossed the Pentland Firth to Thurso to enforce the claim, but the earl again angrily refused to restore the lands in Orkney, and it would seem that he was also unwilling to let Snaekoll have his rights in Caithness.[19]

Each party occupied separate lodgings in Thurso with their separate followings, and Hanef and his friends, warned by a messenger of the earl's reported design of killing them, forestalled it by attacking the earl first, and they slew him with nine wounds in the cellar of his lodgings. After the affray they crossed over to Orkney, where they fortified the small but massive castle[20] or tower of Kolbein Hruga or Cobbie Row, in the Island of Vigr or Wyre, now called Veira, near Rousay in Orkney, and provisioned it for a siege, which lasted the whole winter, and was raised only after both sides had come to an agreement that all questions arising out of the earl's death at Thurso, should be referred, not to the Scottish courts, but to the Norse king, Hakon, in Bergen.

Both parties, with their witnesses, accordingly crossed the North Sea in 1232, and Hakon heard the case, and punished the partisans of Snaekoll, some with death and others with imprisonment. Snaekoll himself, who, as the heir of Jarl Ragnvald, was too valuable a pawn to be sacrificed, was retained, and lived long in Norway with Earl Skuli, and afterwards with King Hakon.[21] It is noteworthy that a gaedinga ship (no Jewish Ship,[22] as Torfaeus states, but a ship of the gaedingar or lendirmen of the Earl of Orkney) was, on the return voyage, lost at sea; and, bearing in mind the large number of Orkney notables who had been slain at the battle of Floruvagr in Norway in 1194, men of means and standing must have been scarce in Orkney for long after this time.

There is a tradition mentioned by Alexander Pope of Reay,[23] the translator of the Orcades of Torfaeus, that Snaekoll, being deprived of his rights in Orkney by King Hakon, returned late in life to Caithness, where the Norse King could not deprive him of anything, and lived in that county at Ulbster. If so, why did he return?

The answer brings us to a mysterious lady, who is known to us through a charter[24] of May 1269 preserved in the Registrum Episcopatus Moraviensis or Chartulary of the Bishopric of Moray, and who is called therein nobilis mulier domina Johanna, the then deceased wife of Freskin de Moravia, Lord of Duffus, who had died before her. From her name of Johanna this lady is stated to have been a daughter of Earl John, amongst others by so eminent an authority as the late Mr. William F. Skene in a paper "on the Earldom of Caithness," first read to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland on the 11th March 1878, which is reprinted as Appendix V to the Third Volume of his Celtic Scotland at pages 448 to 453, and the lady is generally known as Lady Johanna de Strathnavir; and on her descent much subsequent history depends.

Skene's conclusion is that the half of Caithness which afterwards belonged to the Angus earls was that half usually possessed by the line of Erlend Thorfinnson, and that Joanna (or Johanna) was Earl John's daughter, and, as such, inherited the Paul share of the earldom and brought it to Freskin de Moravia, when he married her, without the title.

We doubt the accuracy of this conclusion, for reasons which, however, rest not on direct evidence, but, like those given in Mr. Skene's paper, on mere probabilities; and we hold that the converse is true, and that Johanna was no daughter of John, and that it was the Erlend half of the Caithness earldom lands that went to her and her husband Freskin de Moravia of Duffus, while the moiety of Paul, in our opinion, remained with a nameless daughter of John, and went along with the title of Earl of Caithness, to her husband Magnus, and so to the Angus earls of Caithness, though the lands which went with it were then much curtailed in extent.

But it must be remembered that, in the absence of records, any solution of this difficult problem at present rests on mere speculation and guesswork, and the opinions expressed here must be accepted as mere conjectures unsupported by direct contemporary evidence, and based only upon reasonable probability.

We propose to attempt to deal with this difficult subject in the next chapter.



CHAPTER IX.

The Succession to the Caithness Earldom.

After the death of Earl John in 1231, we come to a most perplexing time, and it is almost impossible to discover a way out of the maze of genealogical difficulties in which we find ourselves involved. Not only is there no chronicle of the period, but there are hardly any records at all to help us. The pedigree of the descendants of Earl Harold Maddadson, and particularly of his daughters, who are named in the Orkneyinga Saga, ceases;[1] and that of Earl John's family and of Harald Ungi and his sisters downwards stops also, save in the case of Ragnhild, the youngest of them, whose son Snaekoll Gunni's son is mentioned as claimant in 1231 from Earl John of certain lands in Orkney and in Caithness as well.

Attempts to clear up the mystery have been made,[2] but none of them have resulted in any certain or trustworthy conclusions. Nor can anyone now expect to fare much better; for not only are authentic pedigrees of the Caithness earls and the materials for framing them undiscovered or non-existent, but yet another pedigree, namely that of the Angus line, which provided, from its male members, successors to the title and to a moiety of the Caithness earldom, is very obscure.

This chapter, therefore, is largely conjectural, and must be accepted as such. It deserves, and will doubtless receive, severe criticism.

So far as the Angus pedigree can be ascertained, it appears that Earl Gillebride died about 1187, leaving two sons, Adam and Gilchrist, who succeeded in turn to that earldom, and Gillebride also left a third son, Gilbert,[3] a fourth, William, and a fifth, Angus, who had a son Gillebert or Gillebryd. Gilchrist died about 1204, leaving an eldest son, Duncan, Earl of Angus, and another son called Magnus, by his two wives respectively, his second wife, from the name of Magnus given to her eldest son and to many subsequent earls of that son's line, being assumed with considerable probability to have been, not a sister of Earl John, but a sister of Harald Ungi, either Ingibiorg or Elin. Duncan died about 1214, and left a son, Malcolm, Earl of Angus, whose sole heiress was a daughter, Matilda, who, about 1240, married, first, John Comyn, who was killed in France shortly after the marriage, without leaving issue to inherit. As her second husband, Matilda, Countess of Angus married Gilbert d'Umphraville, Lord of Prudhoe and Redesdale in Northumberland in 1243; and their son, also named Gilbert d'Umphraville, was born about 1244, and succeeded his father as Earl of Angus in 1267, and though both these Gilberts became successively Earls of Angus,[4] neither of them ever became Earl of Orkney. Robertson's contention in his Early Kings of Scotland, (vol. II, p. 23 note) that they were grafted on the wrong pedigree seems justified by the discrepancy in dates; for the Icelandic Annals give only one Gibbon who died in 1256, and we know that Magnus III was earl in 1263 and till 1273. Indeed little confidence can be reposed in the Diploma of the Orkney Earls, the only authority for the existence of two Orkney Earls called Gilbert, and in the period covered by the Orkneyinga Saga, we can prove many errors in the Diploma.

Of Magnus son of Gilchrist, Earl of Angus, we know something. He was alive in 1227, when he attested the record of the perambulation of the boundaries of the lands of the Abbey of Aberbrothock,[5] and in the List of the Oliphant family charters dated 1594 in the Register House in Edinburgh there is an entry of "Ane charter under the Great Seill made be Alexr to Magnus sone to Gylcryst sometime Earle of Angus of the Erledome of South Caithness" which included Berridale and lands which Magnus' granddaughter's great-grandson Malise II conveyed to Reginald Chen III, known as "Morar na Shein," after 1340.

It has been suggested that after Earl John's death in 1231, the successor to the earldom of Caithness was a minor, which Earl Gilchrist's son, Magnus, could not have been in 1231, and that this minor and ward was a son of Magnus, and bore the same name as his father.

The wardship seems at first sight to be proved in Robertson's Early Kings,[6] and the proof is to the following effect:—Malcolm of Angus attested a charter in Earl John's lifetime on 22nd April 1231, using his own title of "Angus" only. After John's death, Malcolm attested another charter on 7th October 1232 as "M. Comite de Anegus et Katania,"[7] using, in addition to his own title of Angus, as was customary, the title of a ward, who was heir to another earldom, in this case that of Caithness. But on 3rd July 1236, Malcolm Earl of Angus, who lived till 1237 if not longer, attested a third charter using his own title of "Angus" only, without the addition "and of Caithness." These facts can be explained by his ward's having attained his majority and entered upon his earldom of Caithness between 7th October 1232 and 3rd July 1236. They cannot be explained by saying that "M" was not Malcolm, but Magnus, and that "M" stands for Gilchrist's son Magnus, who had become Earl of Caithness. For there was no "M. Comes de Angus" at the time save Malcolm, and Malcolm was therefore for about four years Earl of Caithness as well as of Angus.

Robertson's explanation is that Malcolm was Earl of Caithness only as guardian of a ward entitled to that earldom. The question then arises, as Robertson puts it, "who was the heir?" and he answers it, "certainly not his[8] uncle Magnus, son of Gillebride,[9] but very probably the son of Magnus by Earl John's daughter; the supposed grant of the Earldom to this Magnus being probably grounded upon his real marriage with the heiress," and he adds "If, on the death of Earl John in 1231, his grandson was an orphan and a minor, his wardship would naturally have been granted to the next of kin, his cousin the Earl of Angus."

One further charter has to be dealt with. In Reg. Hon. de Morton, vol. I, p. xxxv, cited in Origines Parochiales vol. II, p. 805, a grant by King Alexander II, to Patrick Earl of Dunbar dated 7th July 1235 is attested by a witness, whose name or initial is illegible, but who is styled ... Earl ... Katanay, ... Comite ... Katanay, and a confident opinion is expressed in a note to the citation that the witness was Magnus, Earl of Caithness. Now, Earl John's daughter was taken as a hostage on August 1, 1214, and, if she was then marriageable and was married at once, her eldest child could have been born about May 1215, and would attain twenty-one about May 1236, but to suppose her son of the name of Magnus to have been the ward for whom the Earldom of Caithness was being kept till 7th July 1235 from 1232 and that he had become Earl of Caithness on the 7th July 1235 seems impossible. If the blank should be filled up with "de Anegus et," then Malcolm Earl of Angus must still have been the guardian, and the ward's father and mother must both have been dead by 7th October 1232. This involves three unproved assumptions, of two unrecorded deaths and one unrecorded birth.

On the whole, therefore, we believe that there is another and simpler explanation, and it seems probable that there was in this case no wardship, or if there was, that there was a great deal more, and that Malcolm held the earldom of Caithness as Custos or administrator or trustee for the Crown for four years after Earl John's death till the succession was settled, and till all Caithness except Sutherland was parcelled out among three claimants, namely the two heirs, each of one of two sisters of Harald Ungi, and the hostage daughter of Earl John.

When all this was settled, Magnus, as the son of one of the two elder sisters of Harald Ungi, and also as the husband of Earl John's daughter, would be entitled on Earl John's death, jure maritae, in Orkney, to a grant from the Norse king of the Orkney jarldom, and also, in Caithness, first, jure maritae, to a grant from the Scottish king in or after 3rd July 1236, of the North Caithness earldom and lands held by Earl John, which Dalrymple in his Collections (p. lxxiii) states positively, without quoting his authority, that Magnus had for a payment of L10 per annum, and, secondly, jure matris (Ingibiorg or Elin) to a grant, also from the Scottish king, of the earldom of South Caithness, which by the Charter of Alexander "under the greit Seill," above alluded to, Magnus also got.

The other moiety of the Caithness earldom lands would be fairly given to Johanna as heiress of Ragnhild, Harald Ungi's youngest sister, and we know that Johanna got that other moiety, because we find that her descendants inherited it, and conveyed it or parts of it by writs still extant, by the description of "half Caithness."

There are, however, other views. Skene's opinion on the subject of the succession, in his very able paper (given in Appendix V, vol. iii, pp. 449-50 of his Celtic Scotland), is as follows:—

"Earl Harald died in 1206, and was succeeded by his son David, who died in 1214, when his brother John became Earl of Orkney and Caithness. Fordun tells us that King William made a treaty of peace with him in that year, and took his daughter as a hostage, but the burning of Bishop Adam in 1222 brought King Alexander II down upon Earl John, who was obliged to give up part of his lands into the hands of the king, which, however, he redeemed the following year by paying a large sum of money, and by his death in 1231 the line of Paul again came to an end.

"In 1232, we find Magnus, son of Gillebride, Earl of Angus, called Earl of Caithness, and the earldom remained in this family till between 1320 and 1329, when Magnus Earl of Orkney and Caithness, died; but during this time it is clear that these earls only possessed one half of Caithness and the other half appears in the possession of the De Moravia family, for Freskin, Lord of Duffus, who married Johanna, who possessed Strathnaver in her own right, and died before 1269, had two daughters, Mary, married to Sir Reginald Cheyne, and Christian, married to William de Fedrett; and each of these daughters had one fourth part of Caithness, for William de Fedrett resigns[11] his fourth to Sir Reginald Cheyne,[12] who then appears in possession of one-half of Caithness (Chart. of Moray; Robertson's Index). These daughters probably inherited the half of Caithness through their mother Johanna. Gillebride[13] having called one of his sons by the Norwegian name of Magnus, indicates that he had a Norwegian mother. This is clear from his also becoming Earl of Orkney, which the king of Scots could not have given him. Gillebride died in[14] 1200, so that Magnus must have been born before that date, and about the time of Earl Harald Ungi, who had half of Caithness, and died in 1198. Magnus is a name peculiar to this line, as the great Earl Magnus belonged to it, and Harald Ungi had a brother Magnus. The probability is that the half of Caithness which belonged to the Angus family was that half usually possessed by the earls of the line of Erlend,[15] and was given by King Alexander with the title of Earl to Magnus, as the son of one of Earl Harald Ungi's sisters, while Johanna, through whom the Moray family inherited the other half, was, as indicated by her name, the daughter of John, Earl of Caithness of the line of Paul, who had been kept by the king as a hostage, and given in marriage to Freskin de Moravia."

Sir William Fraser[16] in a note to the Sutherland Book—a mere obiter dictum, however—doubts Skene's suggestions "that Johanna, Lady of Strathnaver, who married Freskin de Moravia, Lord of Duffus, about 1240, was the daughter of John Haraldson," that is Earl John, and that "Magnus of Angus was the son of a sister of a former Earl of Caithness," and states that "Skene's arguments are plausible, but there is no very good evidence in support of them." Skene's argument rests mainly on the names "Johanna" and "Magnus," by itself an insecure foundation, and one which it is hoped to explain or remove, adopting the argument from "Magnus," a name which constantly recurs, and rejecting the argument from "Johanna," a name which never again appears, in this family.

A century or more after the death in 1231 of Earl John, we find Reginald Chen III, known as Morar na Shein or "Lord" Schen, in possession of a moiety of the Caithness earldom, without the title, and living in Latheron and Halkirk parishes, while the other moiety was held by the Caithness Earls of the line of Angus, and in 1340 we find Reginald More, Chamberlain of Scotland, ancestor of the Crichton or Sinclair Earls of Caithness, acquiring from Malise II, one of the Stratherne Earls of Caithness and a descendant of the line of Paul and also of the line of Erlend, part of south Caithness (including Berridale), which therefore Reginald Chen III did not then own or acquire, though he owned half Caithness. But Reginald Chen III did acquire Berridale and other lands later in David II's reign according to Origines Parochiales, II, p. 764.

Now it is known from other sources that Reginald Chen III was a grandson of Johanna of Strathnaver, the mysterious lady of unrecorded parentage already referred to, who owned land in "Strathnauir," and who was dead in 1269, and who had married, at a date which we hope to fix, Freskin de Moravia, Lord of Duffus, then also dead, and had had by him two daughters, Mary and Christian, who were married respectively to Reginald Chen II and William de Federeth I (whose sons respectively were Reginald Chen III and William de Federeth II) and these ladies succeeded each to one fourth of Caithness; and a grant,[17] which was made in David II's time by William de Federeth II in favour of Reginald Chen III, placed him in possession of William de Federeth II's quarter of Caithness. Reginald Chen III thus had all the half share of Caithness which was held by his grandmother, Johanna of Strathnaver. We also know that by another grant in 1286[18] William de Federeth I had already conveyed to Reginald Chen II four davachs of land in Strathnaver and all his other lands there; and, besides these grants, we have authentic record in May 1269, which recites that Lady Johanna had before that date granted a considerable part of her lands in Strathnaver to the Bishop of Moray for the maintenance of two chaplains to minister in the Cathedral of Elgin.

By the above record, which is a regrant of the Strathnaver lands by Archebald Bishop of Moray in May 1269 to Reginald Chen II, not only is his marriage before that date to Mary daughter of Johanna by Freskin de Moravia proved, but the lands in Strathnaver are identifiable. They were "Langeval and Rossewal, tofftys de Dovyr, Achenedess, Clibr', Ardovyr and Cornefern," which now are known in part as Langdale, Rossal, Achness, Clibreck and Coire-na-fearn, while "tofftys" are "tofts," and "Dovyr" and "Ardovyr" are respectively old Gaelic for "water" and for "upper water." "Dovyr" would denote the River Naver and loch of that name, and "Ardovyr" would mean Loch Coire and the Mallard River, that is the "Abhain 'a Mhail Aird" of the Ordnance Map (whatever that may mean),[19] which rises in Loch Coire, and, after a course of six miles from its upper valley, falls about 330 feet below its source into the River Naver at Dalharrold. These lands of the Lady Johanna lay partly to the south of Loch Naver, extended southwards nearly to Ben Armine, and stretched westwards to Loch Vellich or Bealach and the Crask and Mudale, eastwards to Loch Truderscaig, and northwards down the valley of the Naver at least as far as Syre. Part of them, close to Achness,[30] is to this day known locally as Kerrow-na-Shein, or Chen's Quarter, either after Johanna's son-in-law, Sir Reginald Chen II, or after her grandson of the same name, the great "Morar na Shein," about whom so many legends still survive in Cat. These lands in Strathnaver are roughly hatched on the map of Cat in this volume, and, as she gave them away in charitable trust, they probably formed only a small part of her whole estate after her marriage with Freskin de Moravia, which probably comprised the old Parish of Farr, now divided into Tongue, Farr, and Reay.

It is suggested that the ownership of these lands in Strathnaver and of the other upland territories in Halkirk and Latheron parishes, held by her descendants and sequels in all her estate, the Chens, connects the Lady Johanna with the family of Moddan "in dale" in Caithness and with Earl Ottar, and with Frakark and Audhild her niece, and that Johanna was entitled to these lands in their entirety in her own right as the sole descendant remaining in Scotland after 1232 of Harald Ungi's younger surviving sister Ragnhild, possibly through her son Snaekoll by Gunni, and that Snaekoll was next heir to these lands before he went abroad, and either that he was Johanna's father, or that she became Ragnhild's heir in his place. In this way Johanna would have a good right, especially if Magnus, son of Gilchrist, had been compensated for his mother's share by receiving a grant of South Caithness and its earldom, to receive a grant of the rest of the Harald Ungi half share of the Caithness earldom, lands previously held by Jarls and Earls St. Magnus and Erlend Thorfinn's son or some lands of equal value, and the reason why she had such very large estates as those which she brought to her husband and the Chen family as their successors would be made clear. For she would have completed her title to a large share of the Erlend lands, and also to the Moddan lands which Gunni and Ragnhild had entered upon and held after the elder sister of Ragnhild had left Caithness on her marriage with Gilchrist Earl of Angus.

In support of Johanna's title it is to be observed that neither Magnus II, nor his wife, is recorded to have claimed any part of the Strathnaver lands, a fact which indicates that Johanna and her predecessors had acquired an independent title to them, and that, too, a title not derived through Earl John. Again, (though in a time when records fail us, the argument proves little) Johanna, although from her probable date she might have been so, is not recorded to have been a daughter of John. Further, to be of suitable age[21] to marry Freskin she must have been born long after any known child of Earl John, even his son Harald who had died in 1226. Lastly, neither Johanna nor her husband Freskin nor any descendant of hers ever claimed either the whole of or any share in the Orkney jarldom,[22] which Earls Harald Maddadson, David and John had held in its entirety, and to which Johanna, had she been Earl John's only daughter, or her husband Freskin would have been entitled to claim to succeed as sole heir; while if John had had two daughters, and Johanna had been one of them, she or her husband Freskin would have been entitled to claim a grant of some share at least of the lands appertaining to the Orkney jarldom.

It was, however, Earl Magnus who made such claims, and with success, and he may well have obtained the Orkney jarldom and lands, and part of the Caithness earldom as well, with the title, not only as being the son of the elder of Harald Ungi's sisters, but as the husband of Earl John's nameless daughter, while his name of Magnus, afterwards so often repeated in the Angus line, came into that line obviously through his mother at his baptism, and not through his wife at his marriage.

The name of Johanna, on which Skene mainly founds his assertion that Johanna of Strathnaver was Earl John's daughter, is just as easily explicable, and with equal verisimilitude, if she was not. Snaekoll went to Norway in 1232, leaving behind him, on our hypothesis, one child, an infant daughter of tender years, or possibly as yet unborn. The child of a younger child of Ragnhild would probably be still younger. Heiress to very large landed estates and justly entitled to claim a moiety of the Erlend Thorfinnson half of Caithness and all the Moddan territories, this child would be made by the king of Scotland a ward, to be married, if female, in due course to a suitable husband. The Queen of Scotland, who in 1232 had been childless for eleven years and never had any children afterwards, was an English princess who was married to Alexander II on 19th June 1221, and lived till 4th March 1237-8, a period which would cover all Johanna's early years. The queen's name was Joanna, and Johanna of Strathnaver may have been called after her, as Earl John had possibly been called after her father King John of England, the friend of Earl John's father, Harold Maddadson.

We now have to fix the date of Freskin de Moravia, nephew of William, dominus Sutherlandiae since about 1214. Freskin, as stated, was undoubtedly the husband of Johanna of Strathnaver, and became on his marriage owner of her lands there as well as of a moiety of the Caithness earldom lands.

Freskin was, as also stated, the eldest son of Walter de Moravia of Duffus, second son of Hugo Freskyn of Strabrock, Duffus and Sutherland by Walter's marriage with Euphamia, probably, from her name, a daughter of Ferchar Mac-in-tagart, who became Earl of Ross.[23] As Ferchar granted[24] certain lands at Clon in Ross about the year 1224 to Freskin's father Walter de Moravia of Duffus without pecuniary or other valuable consideration, it has been concluded, probably correctly, that this grant was made on the occasion of the marriage of Walter to Ferchar's daughter Euphamia; and Freskin, their heir, was born in or after 1225, and had become dominus de Duffus by 1248 on his father's death. Johanna, on our hypothesis, would have to be born by 1232 at latest, that is, before or soon after her supposed father Snaekoll went to Norway, and from her supposed father's date she could hardly have been born before 1225. Snaekoll's date can be ascertained with comparative accuracy. For his mother lost her first husband, Lifolf Baldpate, only in 1198, at the battle of Clairdon, and she can hardly have married Snaekoll's father, Gunni, much before 1200. From these dates Snaekoll could have been born by 1201, and married in Scotland between 1224 and 1231, and Freskin and Johanna would thus be of very suitable ages to marry each other, and their marriage therefore would take place after 1245, or possibly as late as 1250. If Johanna was the daughter of a younger child of Ragnhild, she might be born later than 1225.

This would involve a long minority for Johanna, and by reason of her marriage with Freskin de Moravia in 1245 or later, we suspect that Freskin's uncle, William dominus Sutherlandiae, whose territories were bounded on the north and east by her lands, was her guardian, an office whose duties the head of the powerful and loyal House of Sutherland alone could efficiently perform in the troublous and turbulent times of her minority.

From Bain's Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland[25] we know that Freskin was one of the signatories of the National Bond of mutual alliance and friendship with Sir Llewelin son of Griffin, Prince of Wales, and other leading Welshmen on the 18th of March 1259. Freskin would not have been asked to sign a document of such international importance unless, like another of its signatories, Sir Reginald Chen I (whose son of the same name, Reginald Chen II, married Freskin's daughter, Mary of Duffus, later on) he had been one of the leading men of his time in Scotland. We also find that his rights were saved in a charter of 11th April 1260 and that on 13th October 1260 he was one of the three vice-gerents of Alexander Comyn, Earl of Buchan, Justiciar of Scotland, present in Court at Perth on that date.[26]

On the 16th March 1262-3 from a grant of two chaplains[27] for the weal of the soul of the deceased Freskin of Moray, Lord of Duffus, we know that he had died before that date, that is, probably before his fortieth year. Freskin, then, died after 13th October 1260 and before 16th March 1262-3, and was buried in the chapel of St. Lawrence in the Church of Duffus, which he had founded and endowed with lands at Dawey in Strath Spey, and Duffus. His wife Johanna ("quondam sponsa" "quondam Friskyni de Moravia") was certainly dead in May 1269 (Reg. Morav., ch. 126, p. 139).

They left no male heir, but they left two daughters, Mary and Christian, both minors at their father's death and probably too young to have been married in August 1263, when, as we shall find, their lands and their half share of the Caithness earldom sadly needed defenders from Norse invaders.

Owing to subsequent additions of territory, it is impossible at the present time to say exactly what all the lands owned by an independent title by Lady Johanna of Strathnaver were, but some guidance towards the further identification of her lands in Caithness is found in the fact that later charters give the names of the lands which her sequel in all her estate, Reginald Chen III, known as "Lord Schein" or "Morar na Shein" held,[28] and that he lived in and hunted from a castle at the exit of the river Thurso from Loch More above Dirlot or Dilred in Strathmore in Halkirk parish, but never owned Brawl, a capital residence of the Caithness earls, but did own to the end of his life "half Caithness," and acquired South Caithness after 1340 by purchase. Adding to this the facts, indications, and probabilities alluded to in this and preceding chapters as to the position of lands in Caithness variously owned, we are able to venture to come to a general conclusion as to the devolution of the Caithness earldom and lands.

This conclusion is, that what may be termed the shares of the respective lines of Paul and Erlend, the sons of Earl Thorfinn and others, in the Caithness earldom lands probably went respectively between 1231 and 1239 and afterwards in the following manner.

The right to succeed to the share of Paul passed, on his descendant Earl John's death in 1231, to Earl John's only child then alive, the nameless hostage daughter, who, according to our theory, had after 1st August 1214 married Magnus, son of Earl Gilchrist of Angus by his second marriage with either Ingibiorg or Elin, both sisters of Harald Ungi, and both older than Ragnhild. But the title of Earl of Caithness and the enjoyment of the whole earldom was on Earl John's death temporarily conferred, in addition to his title of Earl of Angus, on Malcolm, Earl of Angus, and nephew of Magnus the husband of John's hostage daughter, as being the head of the Angus family and one of the most powerful earls in Scotland, pending a general settlement of the affairs of Sutherland and Caithness; and Malcolm held his own Earldom of Angus, and, in addition, for the Crown, as Custos, trustee, or administrator pendente lite, held Caithness after 22nd April 1231 and certainly at 7th October 1232, possibly till 3rd July 1236, when the following settlement was made.

Caithness, without Sutherland, was with the title of Earl of Caithness, North and South, confirmed to Earl Magnus II by two grants, the one of North Caithness in right of his wife and the other of South Caithness in right of his mother. The estate of Sutherland was after 10th October 1237 erected into an earldom in the person of William, who was the eldest son of Hugo Freskyn, and was then owner of the estate, this earldom being, as stated in the Diploma of the Orkney Earls, "taken away from Magnus II" in his lifetime, possibly out of South Caithness, by Alexander II.

On Magnus' death in 1239, Gillebryd or Gillebride, called in the Icelandic Annals Gibbon, who was either a son or younger brother of Magnus, succeeded Magnus II in the Orkney and Caithness titles and in the Paul share of the Caithness earldom, and it appears from a grant of the advowson of Cortachy on 12th December 1257 that Matilda daughter of Gillebert, "then late Earl of Orkney," married Malise Earl of Stratherne. On Gillebride's death in 1256, his son Magnus III succeeded to Orkney and to the share of Paul in the Caithness earldom, as held by Earl Magnus II and Earl Gillebride his successor, that is without the Sutherland earldom, and without Freskin and Johanna's share of Caithness.

The right to succeed to the other share of Caithness, that of Erlend Thorfinnson, which, according to The Flatey Book had belonged to Jarl Ragnvald, and had been conferred on Harald Ungi by William the Lion in 1197, passed through Ragnhild, another and the youngest sister of Harald Ungi, and then through a child of hers, possibly Snaekoll Gunni's son, the only known male representative of this line at the time, or through Snaekoll's younger brother or sister, along with the Moddan estates in Strathnaver and in various highland and Celtic parishes in Caithness, to Johanna of Strathnaver as Ragnhild's heir; but this share did not carry with it the title of Countess. It was held for her in wardship, but it was not formally granted and confirmed by the Crown to her or her husband Freskin de Moravia, who had become Lord of Duffus by 1248, until their marriage, in or after 1245, or even later, and when the settlement was made, possibly South Caithness was taken partly out of it.

If Earl John had left no daughter at all, the result in Caithness might well have been much the same; for in that case the Caithness title and lands might well have been conferred as to the title and a share of the earldom lands on the elder surviving sister of Harald Ungi, Ingibiorg or Elin, and her heir, while the other share without the title would go to the heir of the younger sister Ragnhild. But Magnus, if he had not married John's daughter, would not have got North Caithness, and it seems essential that Magnus should have married into the line of Earl John, in order to found a claim on his part to the Jarldom of Orkney, which Harold Maddadson, David, and John (with whom Magnus had no relationship at all, so far as is known) had held in its entirety, in spite of the grant of a moiety of it to Harald Ungi, ever since Harald Ungi's death in 1198, and to the exclusion of the Erlend line from all share in Orkney, (save for Harald Ungi's grant) ever since Jarl Ragnvald's death in 1158.

But who will find evidence to prove our conjectures to be even approximately true?

Till this is done, these matters rest upon mere conjecture, based mainly upon known Scottish policy, the name of "Magnus," and the probable situation of the lands owned by the parent lines and the families known afterwards to have held them, namely, the families of Cheyne, Federeth, Sutherland, Keith, Oliphant, and Sinclair, among whose writs or inventories of them search might be made.



CHAPTER X.

King Hakon and the North of Scotland.

We can now turn with some sense of relief from the intricate maze of the genealogy of the Caithness earls to the more open ground of Scottish history, which we left at the date of the death of William the Lion in December 1214, when he was succeeded on the throne of Scotland by his son, Alexander II, a youth who had then just entered his seventeenth year. We can then work the results of our genealogical conjectures into the general history of the northern counties.

Alexander II, like his predecessors, was in the year after his accession immediately confronted with a revolt headed by Donald Ban MacWilliam the younger, another of the descendants of Ingibjorg of Orkney, widow of Earl Thorfinn and first wife of Malcolm Canmore. The scene of the rising was, as usual, Moray; and Donald was aided not only by the inhabitants of that province, but also by a large force of Irish mercenaries. This rebellion, however, was speedily crushed by Ferchar Mac-in-tagart of the family of the Lay Abbots of Applecross in the west of Ross, a county to which Henry, the eldest son of Harold Maddadson had in vain laid claim.

Differences which threatened to break out between Scotland and England were speedily settled, and the young king, as we have seen, married Joanna, sister of King Henry III of England, in 1221. Alexander next conquered the district of Argyll in 1222, and in the same year reduced Caithness to subjection on the occasion of Bishop Adam's murder, and he shortly afterwards put down two rebellions, the one in Moray, as above stated, and the other in Galloway, a district which, however, he did not finally conquer till 1235, although Mac-in-tagart was knighted for a victory there in 1215, and soon after, by 1226, became Earl of Ross.[1] In 1236, as a punishment for burning to death the Earl of Atholl, in revenge for the defeat of a member of their family at a tournament, the Bissets were deprived of their estates near Beauly, and fled to England, where they endeavoured to embroil that country again with Scotland. In this they failed, and a treaty was signed between the two nations that neither should make war on the other unless it were first attacked itself.[2]

Argyll, Galloway, and Moray being subdued and settled, and the old Earldom of Caithness broken up, and divided among trustworthy feudal tenants holding their lands by military service from the Scottish king, the whole of the mainland of Scotland may now be said to have been effectively incorporated into one kingdom under the Scottish Crown. Ecclesiastically, also, the whole realm was divided into dioceses, whose bishops were appointed by consent of the king.

The dream of Malcolm II at last was realised.

The western islands of the Hebrides, however, still owed allegiance to the king of Norway, who was till 1240 engaged in civil war with Duke Skuli in his own kingdom. Alexander II therefore equipped a naval expedition to reduce the islands, but, soon after he had embarked, he sickened and died on the island of Kerrera, near Oban, in 1249, leaving as his successor, his son Alexander III, then only in his eighth year, who was married in 1251, before his eleventh year, to Margaret, daughter of Henry III of England, then a child of about the same age as himself. The marriage was followed by a nine years' struggle between the rival factions of Alan Durward, Justiciar of Scotland, and of Walter Comyn, Earl of Menteith, in which England constantly interfered, till the Comyn, or Scottish, faction finally gained the upper hand. In 1261, Alexander III's only child Margaret, who afterwards became Queen of Norway, was born.

Between 1242 and 1245 two Scottish bishops had been sent to Norway by Alexander II to induce King Hakon to give up the Hebrides to Scotland, and now his son Alexander III sent another embassy of an Archdeacon and a Scot, called in the Saga Misel, but more probably Frisel or Fraser, who, being found to be spies, tried to escape, but were caught and made to witness the young King Magnus' coronation in his father's lifetime.[3] These embassies, though backed by offers of money compensation, were wholly unsuccessful.

Meantime affairs in Sutherland and Caithness had been pursuing an orderly course for nearly forty years. William, eldest son of Hugo Freskyn, had succeeded his father in Sutherland before 1214, the year of Earl David's death, and had in or after 1237 become its first Earl, and three years afterwards, according to tradition, though probably this event happened later, with the aid of Richard of Moray, Bishop Gilbert's brother, a Norse landing at Unes or Little Ferry is said to have been repulsed in a battle at Embo, near Dornoch in Sutherland. In this battle Richard fell, and the Norse Prince was also killed, the Ri-Crois at Embo, which has disappeared long ago, being erected in memory of the latter.[4] Earl William had died in 1248, and had been buried in the Cathedral at Dornoch, which Bishop Gilbert had founded close to and west of the site of the older Church of St. Bar, and which he had dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary in or after 1222.

The Bishop had given to his diocese of Caithness[5] the Constitution which is still extant at Dunrobin. This Constitution, like that of Elgin, was in the main based on that of Lincoln. But the Bishop was to be Primus and above all other dignitaries of the Cathedral. For it was ordained that instead of the one priest who had previously officiated, there should be ten Canons with the Bishop as their head, five of them holding the dignities of Dean, Precentor, Chancellor, Treasurer, and Archdeacon, each of them during residence to minister there daily, as well as the Abbot of Scone, who was a Canon, but had a Vicar to perform his duties in his absence. The teinds (or tithes) of certain parishes were allocated to each member of the Chapter; and lands, residences, and prebends were assigned to them, provision also being made from the teinds of other parishes for the lighting and services of the Church. Bishop Gilbert built and completed the Cathedral, making, it is said, the glass for its windows at Sidera, from sand taken from near the howe of the first Jarl Sigurd, a worshipper of Odin.[6]

Bishop Gilbert had also translated the Psalms into Gaelic; and, having set his diocese of Caithness, comprising the modern counties of Sutherland and Caithness, in good working order, and having re-buried his predecessor Adam, with a stately funeral, at Dornoch in 1239, had made his will in 1242, and died in the episcopal palace at Scrabster, near Thurso, in 1245. It was probably during his episcopate that King Alexander II gave his open letter,[7] directed to the sheriffs, bailies, and other good men of Moray and Caithness, and enjoining them to protect the ship of the Abbot and Convent of Scone and their men and goods from injury, molestation or damage in their journeys to the north. Bishop Gilbert was buried at Dornoch, and was succeeded by Bishop William,[8] and he in his turn, in 1261, by Bishop Walter de Baltroddi, who doubtless suffered from King Hakon's fines levied in Caithness in 1263, and whose daughter the Chief of the Mackays is said to have married after that date.

In 1261 the Hebrides had been harried by William, MacFerchar, Earl of Ross and uncle of Freskin de Moravia the younger, with great cruelty and barbarity, and King Hakon in 1263 began to collect and equip a fleet with a view to revenging the injury done to his subjects in the west.[9] In the preparation for this in the spring of 1263, we find Jon Langlifson, whose mother Langlif was Harold Maddadson's youngest daughter, and who was thus himself a nephew of Earl John, sent over with Henry Skot to Shetland to obtain pilots for King Hakon,[10] while Dougal of the Isles met them in Orkney, and was let into the secret of Hakon's intended expedition.

Meantime Earl Magnus II, being, according to our conjectures, a member of the Angus line, whose mother was an elder sister of Harald Ungi, and being also the husband of Earl John's daughter, had become entitled to the earldom of Orkney soon after Earl John's death in 1231, and probably since 1236 had held part of Caithness as Earl, by heirship, and by charter from the Scottish King. Magnus II, soon after the earldom of Sutherland had been taken away from him, had died in 1239. Gillebride had then succeeded to both the reduced Scottish earldom of Caithness and the whole of the Orkney jarldom as successor in the Angus line of Magnus II; and Gillebride had died in 1256 leaving a son Magnus III. Like his predecessors, Magnus III seems to have found himself in the awkward position of being bound to serve two masters who were rapidly approaching a state of war with each other. Freskin de Moravia, dominus de Duffus by 1248, who about that date had married the Lady Johanna, had with her obtained not only her lands in Strathnaver and Caithness, but also the bulk of the Erlend share of the earldom lands of Caithness, while Magnus held the rest of Caithness, and William, second Earl of Sutherland, then a mere boy, had succeeded to that earldom on his father's death in 1248.[11]

As already stated, Alexander II's attempt on the Sudreys had proved abortive through his death in 1249, and the further attacks on them in Alexander III's reign by William, son of Ferchar Mac-in-tagart, and Earl of Ross, had been made in 1261; and by 1262 or 1263, Freskin had died, leaving two daughters Mary and Christian, both minors and unmarried, to inherit his share of Caithness, as co-parceners, each entitled to one quarter of that county.

Early in 1263 Magnus III of Orkney and Caithness, was in Bergen with King Hakon. For the Saga says,[12] "with him from Bergen came Magnus, Jarl of Orkney, and the king gave him a good long-ship."

Sailing from Norway in the end of July 1263, King Hakon found a fair wind, and crossed in two days to Shetland, where he lay for a fortnight assembling his fleet in Bressay Sound off Lerwick. While he was here Jon Langlifson, son of Langlif, the youngest daughter of Earl Harold Maddadson, brought the disappointing news that King John of the Sudreys had gone over to the side of the Scottish king, but the news was disbelieved, and Hakon, at the time, had every reason to think that, while he was sure of the support of the Orkneymen and their earl, the western islanders would support him to a man. Quitting Shetland, therefore, he sailed to Orkney, and his fleet lay first at Ellidarvik or Ellwick in The String off the south of Shapinsay, a few miles from Kirkwall. While it was here, King Hakon conceived the idea of sending a squadron of his ships to raid the shores of the Moray Firth, and there is little doubt that this project was aimed at the lands of the families of De Moravia in Sutherland and Moray. The question, however, was submitted to a council of the freemen of the fleet, who proved to be unwilling that any of them should leave their king and decided that the fleet should not be divided, but that the original object of the expedition, the reconquest of the Western Isles and West of Scotland, should be adhered to instead. What Earl Magnus' feelings on the subject were is not recorded, but it can hardly have been pleasing to him to find that his people in Caithness were to be subjected to a fine by his suzerain in Orkney, though, probably by his advice, the Caithness folk paid the fine exacted from them,[13] and had hostages taken from them, in consequence, by the Scottish king.

Hakon's fleet then sailed round the Mull of Deerness into the roadstead of Ragnvaldsvoe, in the north of South Ronaldsay, which is now known either as St. Margaret's Hope or possibly as Widewall Bay in Scapa Flow, and it was while it was there that the annular eclipse of the sun, ascertained by astronomical calculation[14] to have taken place on the 5th August 1263, was reported by the writer of the Saga to have been seen by him. While the fleet was here, it appeared that the Orkney contingent of ships which Hakon had commanded to join him, were not "boun" or ready for sea, and Jarl Magnus accordingly "stayed behind" with his people in Orkney under orders to follow the main fleet.

On St. Lawrence's day, the 10th of August 1263, Hakon weighed anchor without the jarl, or his men, and the fleet, the largest then ever seen in these waters, sailed from Ragnvaldsvoe into the Pentland Firth, and, rounding Cape Wrath on the same day, anchored in Asleifarvik, now corruptly called Aulsher-beg or Old-shore, on the west coast of the parish of Durness[15] in Sutherland. Thence the fleet ran across to the Lewis, whence it proceeded on a southerly course by Rona, into the Sound of Skye, and brought up at the Carline, now the Cailleach, Stone, in Kyleakin or the Kyle of Hakon. The Norse King was soon joined by King Magnus of Man, and Erling Ivar's son, and Andres Nicholas' son, and Halvard and Nicholas Tart, the last having made no land since he left Norway till he sighted the Lewis. Dougal, king of the Sudreys also joined King Hakon, and the fleet shortly afterwards reached Kerrera, near Oban in the Sound of Mull. The events which followed are recounted, in considerable detail and with much exaggeration on both sides, by Scottish and Norse chroniclers, but it is impossible to reconcile their different versions of the story of the battle of Largs. Nor does such detail, save in the result, affect Sutherland or Caithness. Suffice it to say, then, that after much fruitless negotiation between the two kings, purposely prolonged by the Scottish monarch, a severe and protracted October storm drove many of the Norse ships ashore near Largs, where the Scots attacked their crews; and five days later King Hakon withdrew, and sailed with the remnants of his starving and shattered fleet northwards by the Sound of Mull and Rum and Loch Snizort in Skye, and thence round Cape Wrath, to the Goa-fiord or Hoanfiord, which we know as Loch Erriboll, reaching it on Sunday, October 28th, 1263, in a profound calm.

On their way south, Erling Ivar's son, Andrew Nicolas' son, and Harvard the Red had[16] "sailed into Scotland under Dyrnes, from which they went up country, and destroyed a castle and more than twenty hamlets." But on the return voyage the children of Heth were waiting for the invaders, and on the day[17] "of St. Simon and St. Jude, when Mass had been sung, some Scottish men, whom the Northmen had taken, came. King Hakon gave them peace and sent them up into the country; and they promised to come down with cattle to[18] him; but one of them stayed behind as a hostage. It happened that day that eleven men of the ship of Andrew Kuzi landed in a boat to fetch water. A little after, it was heard that they called out. Then men rowed to them from the ships, and there two of them were taken up, swimming much wounded, but nine were found on land all slain. The Scots had come down on them, but they all ran to the boat, and it was high and dry, and they were all weaponless, and there was no defence. But as soon as the Scots saw the boats were rowing up, they ran to the woods, but the Northmen took the bodies with them.

"On Monday King Hakon sailed out of the Goa-fiord and let the Scottish man be put on shore, and gave him peace."[19]

Such is the story, so far as Sutherland and Caithness are concerned, of Hakon's expedition as told in his Saga, which adds that after losing one ship in the Pentland Firth, while another was all but sunk in the Swelchie near Stroma, he sheltered for the night in the Sound north of Osmundwall, and finally landed again near Ragnvaldsvoe and went to Kirkwall. Retaining twenty of his ships, he let such of the rest of them as had not already gone home sail for Norway.

Deserted by his Jarl, the aged king found a home in the Palace of the faithful bishop, Henry of Orkney, who, alone of all Orkney men, had followed the fortunes of the fleet. Then King Hakon's health gradually failed, and after laying up his ships in Scapa Flow, and seeing to the welfare of his men, he lay down to die of a broken heart, listening as he sank to Masses indeed, but afterwards with greater joy to the Sagas of the Norse kings. "Near midnight" on the 15th of December "Sverri's Saga was read through. But just as midnight was past Almighty God called King Hakon from this world's life."

His body lay in state, first in the Palace and then in the Cathedral of St. Magnus, where after a Solemn Mass it was temporarily buried in the Choir, and it was removed in his flag-ship to Christ Church in Bergen three months afterwards.[20]

The consequence of King Hakon's failure was the immediate conquest of the Isle of Man and of the Hebrides by Alexander III.

Sutherland and Caithness were saved for Scotland, it would seem, only by the vote of King Hakon's freemen before sailing for Largs, while the defeat of his fleet there led directly to the cession by King Magnus, his successor, under the treaty of Perth in 1266, of all the Western Highlands and Islands, for a payment of 4000 marks down and of 100 marks a year, and the treaty also secured their permanent political union with Scotland.

Orkney and Shetland, however, remained part of Norway for two hundred years more, and have since 1468 been held by Scotland and afterwards by the United Kingdom only under a wadset or mortgage securing 58,000 crowns, the unpaid balance of the dower of Margaret, wife of James III of Scotland and daughter of King Christian of Norway. The right to redeem them was frequently though fruitlessly claimed by Norway and Denmark in succession until the reign of Charles II and even later; and possibly this right remains, to the legal mind, open until the present day.

On the 20th February 1471 the Earldom of Orkney and Lordship of Shetland were, by an Act of the Scottish Parliament, finally annexed to the Scottish Crown. But Norse law and usages and the Norse language long lived on in Orkney and longer still in Shetland.



CHAPTER XI.

Results and Conclusion.

Restless energy, and a religion that taught its followers that death in combat alone conferred on the happy warrior a title to immortal glory and a perpetual right to the unbroken joy of battle daily renewed in Valhalla drove the Viking to war.

Headed off on the south by the vast army and feudal system of Charlemagne, this energy in war could be exercised, and its religious aims achieved, solely on the sea, which skill in shipbuilding and in navigation as well had converted from a barrier into a highway to the west.

As already stated, over-population in the sterile lands of Norway, and famine probably increased by immigration from the east and south, drove its people "at times in piracy and at times in commerce"[1] forth from the western fjords and The Vik across the North Sea to the opposite coasts of Scotland, and so to its western lochs and to Ireland, where they found cattle to slaughter on the nesses, stores of grain, and other booty.

War, in fact, paid; and, after generations of harrying, many of the raiders concluded that the western lands in Britain were fairer and more fertile than their native shores, and desired to settle in the west.

Finally the feudalism of Charlemagne was imitated by Harald Harfagr in Norway; and, against that, Norse independence revolted and rebelled. The true Viking would be no other man's man, and to secure Harald's feudal power he was driven forth from Norway by an organised navy manned by those of his countrymen who had agreed to accept King Harald as feudal overlord and to pay him tribute. Defeated, as we have seen, at the naval battle of Hafrsfjord in 872, the rebel remnant of the Vikings found their return to Norway barred; and those of them who became pirates in Orkney and Shetland and raided Norway as such, were, in their turn, assailed in these islands by King Harald, and destroyed. Others of them colonised Ireland, the Hebrides, and the Faroes; and from all these islands as well as from Scotland and Norway issued the swarms that settled in Iceland, and afterwards gave us a code of law, our system of trial by jury, much of our legal procedure, and, when crossed with Gaelic blood, produced the glorious literature of the Sagas. But in their exodus, whencesoever they started, what all alike sought was liberty; which, for them, meant the right to do exactly as they pleased to others, and freedom from paying "scat" or dues to a superior lord.

When the Vikings came, they came as worshippers of Thor and Odin and the old Teutonic gods. To them the Christianity of the Pict was "a weak effeminate creed." They, therefore, slew its followers, plundered its shrines, and drove its clergy south from Orkney, from north-east Caithness and the coasts of Sutherland, and from the seaboard of Ross and Moray, and for a century and a half Christianity was uprooted and almost wholly expelled. No jarl before Sigurd Hlodverson was a Christian, and he was baptized by force, and died fighting for Odin at Clontarf. With all "the fury of an expiring faith, its last lambent flickering flame, against a creed that seemed to contradict every article of the old belief,"[2] wherever they came, they destroyed the cult and culture of Columba, which it had taken several centuries to establish in the north and west of Alban.

When the conquerors settled in the land, they enslaved such of its inhabitants as remained among them for a time, and gave to the best coastal lands and lower valley farms the Norse names which they still bear, but they left the heads of the river valleys and the hills mainly to the Moddan family and their Pictish followers and clansmen, who held them tenaciously and extended their holdings, as the Norse became less hostile through inter-marriage, or less strong. Once settled, the Norse exerted such steady pressure on their southern Pictish neighbours in Ross and Moray, and kept them so fully occupied in war or by the constant menace of it from the north, that successive Scottish kings were in their turn left comparatively free, on their own northern frontier, from Pictish attacks, and were therefore enabled to consolidate their own kingdom in the south of Scotland and to beat the English back to the line of the Tweed. Afterwards they were able to turn their attention to the consolidation of the mainland north of the Grampians,[3] by first overcoming the Picts in Moray, and then the Norse in Cat, and establishing the feudal system and the Catholic Church.

Worshipping, as the Vikings did, amongst others, the "fair white god Baldr of golden beauty," and accounting as base-born "hellskins" those of darker hue, it seems strange that they should so soon have taken to themselves Celtic wives. But we have seen that they came by sea and that no Norse women were allowed in Viking ships,[4] and thus it was Celtic mothers alone that perpetuated the race. They also taught the children the Gaelic tongue, and, on the mainland in all Sutherland and Caithness save the north-eastern portions of the latter, Gaelic soon became again the only spoken language.

But the language was Gaelic with a difference. As already stated, it contained, especially in connection with the sea, and ships, gear, and tackle, many old Norse words,[5] and, in the Gaelic of Sutherland, as in the English of Orkney and Shetland and of Caithness and Moray the Old Norse roots remain. Nor need we believe that every Magnus or Sweyn, or Ragnvald was a pure Norseman. For their Celtic mothers often preferred to give their children Old Norse names.

The Norse place-names,[6] too, have been faithfully preserved by Gaelic inhabitants, and are still with us; and despite their varying spellings in documents of title and maps of different dates, these names generally yield up the secret of their original meanings when they can be traced back to the earliest charters, especially if they can be compared with the corresponding Gaelic versions of them in use at the present time. For Gaelic was ever a trustworthy vehicle of the original Norse. The Norse place-names too are found in the same spots on which the remains of brochs exist, that is, on the best land at the lowest levels which the Picts had already cultivated, and which the Norse invaders seized. Such names are also found on the eastern coast as far south as Dingwall, both in Ross and Cromarty. They were never imposed on the Moray seaboard, which was not permanently held by the Norse. Freskyn and his descendants saw to that. His fortress at Duffus checked all raids from their fort at Burghead.

Of outward and visible monuments, save here and there a howe or grave-mound, the Vikings, unlike their Pictish predecessors, have left us little or nothing on the mainland. In Iceland the skali[7] or farm-house of the Norseman was built with some stone and turf below, and a superstructure of wood which has long ago perished,[8] and but slight traces of foundations are visible on the surface there. From the frequent burnings in the Saga we know that such houses were of highly inflammable materials which would soon perish. The place-name, "Skaill," remains both in Sutherland and Caithness. But no skilled antiquary, has as yet laid bare by excavation the secrets of likely sites of Norse dwellings in these counties, as Mr. A.W. Johnston has done at The Jarls' Bu at Orphir, in Orkney.[9] And yet, if Drumrabyn or Dunrabyn, Rafn's Ridge or Broch, be the true derivation of Dunrobin (and the name is found at a time when as yet no Robin had inhabited the place) possibly the Norse Lawman Rafn had a house of consequence there like his Pictish predecessors, if, indeed, he did not inhabit the Pictish broch whose foundations were found on or under the present castle's site. There was also a castle of note on the northern shore of the modern port of Helmsdale, which is probably the castle of Sorlinc of Mr. Collingwood's William the Wanderer, also called Surclin, both words being a corrupt form, it is suggested, of Scir-Illigh, the old name of the parish of Kildonan.

In Caithness especially, we have many a Norse castle site, such as Earl Harold's borg at Thurso, and Lambaborg, the modern Freswick, which we know to have been inhabited by noted Norsemen, while, in Sutherland, Borve near Farr, and Seanachaistel on the Farrid Head near Durness seem to be ideal Viking sites. Breithivellir[10] or Brawl Castle was a known residence of Earl John and later earls, and search for foundations might well be made on the coasts of Caithness, and round Tongue and at the mouths of the Naver and of the Borgie and other rivers, and at or near Unes or Little Ferry, possibly at Skelbo, (Skail-bo) and in Kildonan at Helmsdale. That the Norsemen used many of the Pictish brochs as dwelling-places is more than probable, and is proved by the Sagas in certain instances.[11] At the same time few articles used distinctively by Norsemen have been found in them.

No stately church like the Cathedral of St. Magnus at Kirkwall, itself the finest specimen of Norman architecture in Scotland, survives on the mainland from Viking days; nor, so far as is known, was any such edifice built there by any Norseman; but the original High Church of Halkirk, and also the old church of St. Bar at Dornoch, which preceded and is believed to have occupied a site immediately to the east of St. Gilbert's later Cathedral, may have been used by the later jarls, and a few miles south of Halkirk are the foundations of the Spittal of St. Magnus,[12] part of which, and of St. Peter's Church at Thurso may be Norse.

Though the towns of Wick and Thurso[13] are frequently mentioned in the Orkneyinga Saga, and earls and jarls stayed at both, no Sutherland village (if any save Dornoch existed) is named in it; but the site of modern Golspie (Gol's-by) appears in ancient charters as Platagall, "the Flat of the Stranger."[14]

If in his outward and visible man the Norseman has all but faded away in Sutherland, he remains more in evidence in Caithness, in spite of Celtic mothers and successive waves of Scottish immigration. The high Norse skull, the tall frame with broad shoulders and narrow hips,[15] the fair hair and skin, the sea-blue eyes and sound teeth are still to be seen; and from time to time, amid greatly preponderating Celtic types, we are startled by coming across some perfect living specimen of the pure Viking type almost always on or near the coast.