CONTEMPORARY PRINCES:
NORWAY: 1280 Eric II; 1299 Hakon VI
SCOTLAND: 1249 Alexander III; 1286 Margaret; 1292 John; 1295 Interregnum; 1306 Robert Bruce
ENGLAND: 1272 Edward I; 1306 Edward II
ROME: 1281 Martin IV; 1285 Adrian V, Honorius IV, John XXI; 1288 Nicholas IV; 1294 Celestin V; 1294 Boniface XIII; 1303 Benedict XI; 1305 Clement V
PRELATES:
ORKNEY: 1284 Dolgfinn; 1310 William III - [See Historiettes]
CAITHNESS: 1291 Adam; ante 1310 Andrew; 1310 Ferquhard - [See Historiettes]
As Earl of Caithness, he appears in 1289 as one of the signatories to the letter addressed by the Scottish nobles to King Edward of England, proposing that the young Prince Edward of Wales should marry Margaret, the Maid of Norway. She died at sea off the Orcadian coast on her way to Scotland in 1290.
" The north wind sobs where Margaret sleeps,
And still in tears of blood her memory Scotland steeps.
[Miss Holford]
Her remains were returned to Norway in charge of Bishop Audfinn and Herr Thore Hakonsson, whose wife, Ingibiorg, daughter of Erling, was lady-in-waiting to Margaret. On 1st September 1290, a payment appears in the Wardrobe Rolls of King Edward I to William Playfair, messenger to the Earl of Orkney, who brought letters to our Lord the King on the part of Lord John Comyn concerning the reported arrival of the Scottish princess in Orkney - by gift of the king 13 shillings and 4 pence. Two messengers were thereon sent to Wick, which they reached on the 4th October of that year. On the 13th May of the following year, 1291, Earl John of Orkney had a safe conduct to come to King Edward till the 24th June when the earl would doubtless communicate to the king all that he knew of the princess' death. The earl's name appears in the list of those summoned to attend the first Parliament of Baliol, and he swore fealty to King Edward at Murkle, in Caithness, in 1297. The seal which is affixed to the writ bears the earl's coat of arms, which was a ship with a tressure of flower-de-luce around it. In 1293 King Erick of Norway had married Isabel, daughter of Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, who, in 1297, bore him a daughter, Ingibiorg, to whom Earl John was betrothed in 1299, and from which we assume he had gone to Norway about that time. Although Ingibiorg was only two years old, it was not unusual in those times to have such a disparity of ages at the time of the betrothal, for we find King Hakon a few years later contracting his daughter - an infant of one year - to a full-grown nobleman.
In 1311 Ingibiorg of Norway was betrothed anew, and Earl John must have died before 1312, when his successor Magnus appears on record.
NOTE - Earl John II appears to have married a daughter of Graham of Lovat. See History of "The Frasers of Lovat". Earl John was apparently dead in 1303, when "La lettre Weyland de Stikelawe tesmoignant sa venue a la pees le Roi d'Enqleterre et aussint que le Roi li bailla la garde du corps Muncs fuiz et heir le Counte de Cateneys, 1an. 31", i.e., Edward I (Bishop Stapleton's Kalendar). Stickley is a Caithness place-name. There is an Orcadian family named Stickler, compare also the English Stukelys.