CONTEMPORARY PRINCES
NORWAY: 1202, Hakon IV; 1204 Guttorm; 1205 Inge II; 1207 Hakon V to 1263
SCOTLAND: 1165 William the Lion; 1213 Alexander II to 1248
ENGLAND: 1209 John; 1216 Henry III
ROME: 1198 Innocent III; 1216 Honorius III; 1227 Gregory IX
PRELATES
ORKNEY: 1185 Bjarni; 1223 Jofreyr to 1247 - [See Historiettes]
CAITHNESS: 1213 John; 1221 Adam; 1223 St.Gilbert to 1244 - [See Historiettes]
David and John succeeded to the Earldoms of Orkney and Caithness, which were governed jointly for seven years. They held the land like their father as long as there was anarchy in Norway; but when advised that the kings were reconciled, they sent Bishop Bjorn to Norway. He found King Ingi and Earl Hakon in Bergen, to whom he disclosed the nature of his mission, and undertook that the earls should visit Norway the summer following to adjust matters. Some of the king's officers accompanied the Bishop on his homeward trip to the Orkneys, and he returned to Norway with the earls next summer, and the whole business was left by them to the goodwill of the king and the earl. It resulted in the Orcadian earls being doomed to pay a large sum of money; and they had also to give pledges and hostages, and swear to their faithfulness and obedience; but at last King Ingi made them his earls over Orkney and Shetland with such conditions as were afterwards kept until their deathday. [From Orkneyinga Saga]. Seven years after his accession Earl David died a natural death, and John became sole earl. He usually resided in the Castle of Brathwell, or Brawl, in Caithness.
The Earls and the Bishops of Orcadia seem to have frequently been at variance with each other. We find John becoming embroiled with the Bishop of Caithness, one Adam, a foundling, who had been so exacting to the inhabitants of his diocese that they rose en masse and proceeded to Halkirk, where he resided, demanding an abatement of his unjust impositions, but without success. The earl was in the neighbourhood, but remained neutral, so the exasperated populace first killed the episcopal adviser, one Serlo, a monk of Newbattle, and then, notwithstanding the friendly assurances of Hrafn the Lawman, burnt the Bishop himself. This was in 1222. In the quaint language of Wynton, it is related thus: -
"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".
King Alexander took a terrible vengeance for this crime. The perpetrators were mangled in limb and tortured, and those who were present, to the number of eighty, had their hands and feet hewn off, many dying in consequence. The earl was also heavily fined and deprived of Sutherland, but in a subsequent interview with the King at Forfar he bought back his lands. Fordun tells us that King William, in 1214 [Alexander, in 1224 ?], made a treaty of peace with him and took his daughter as a hostage.
In the summer of 1224, he was summoned to Norway by King Hakon, 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, "the hope of Orkney", perished at sea, presumably on the homeward voyage to the Isles. In 1231 Olaf, King of Man, touched at Orkney, and Earl John presented him with a large vessel called the "Bison". The same year John became involved with Hanef Ungi, a commissioner whom Hakon had set over the Orkneys, Snaekoll Gunnasson, grandson of Earl Rognvald, and Aniver Illteit, who suddenly attacked him in an inn at Thurso, which they fired, and slew him in the cellar before he had time to conceal himself. His assailants then fled for refuge to the castle in Weir built by Kolbein Hruga, where they were promptly besieged by the earl's friends, principal of whom was Sigvald Skralgi, who was allied to the earl. Sigvald commenced a process against all concerned in the deed, and King Hakon summoned all the accessories to Norway. Aulver, Thorkel, and Hrafn were imprisoned, while Hanef, his two brothers Andrew and Kolbein, Snaekoll, Somerled, and Andrew, the son of Rolf Keitling, were all imprisoned in the Castle of Bergen. Having brought the perpetrators to justice, Sigvald, with his retinue, which consisted of the best gentlemen in Orkney, sailed homewards, but the ship was lost, and all on board perished, and Orkney sustained such loss thereby as was not recovered for a long time thereafter. Hanef wintered at Dyniarness, in Norway, with Paul Vagashalm, and next spring obtained leave from King Hakon to return home, but being driven by a storm into the Fair Isle, died there. His brother Kolbein died in Trondbeim, but Snaekoll, son of Gunni, continued a long time with Earl Skule at his court, and thereafter at King Hakon's.
Upon the failure of heirs-male of the Atholl line of Earls, the Earldom seems to have been transmitted to the Scottish Earls of Angus.