Sutherland and Caithness in Saga-Time

n to the Cait

he 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 an

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 pedi

al, and must be accepted as such. It deserves

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 b

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 o

of Caithness was a minor, which Earl Gilchrist's son, Magnus, could not have been in 1231

e 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 enter

ainly not his8 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 w

n 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 ti

t 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,

nd 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, t

ld Ungi's youngest sister, and we know that Johanna got that other moiety, because we find that her descendan

of the succession, in his very able paper (given in Appendix V

ty 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 p

s, for William de Fedrett resigns11 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. Gillebride13 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 in14 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

arl 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" an

ithness 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

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.

aver 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

g 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 prev

probable date she might have been so, is not recorded to have been a daughter of John. Further, to be of suitable age21 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

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

bably 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 childre

about 1214. Freskin, as stated, was undoubtedly the husband of Johanna of Strathnaver, and becam

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 h

s uncle, William dominus Sutherlandiae, whose territories were bounded on the north and east by her lands, was her guardian, an office whose dut

in 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 lead

ly 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 foun

er's death and probably too young to have been married in August 1263, when, as we shall find, the

quel 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 li

l and Erlend, the sons of Earl Thorfinn and others, in the Caithness earldom lands pr

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

er 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, an

ss 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 Magn

ly 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 titl

hout 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,

to prove our conjectures to

e probable situation of the lands owned by the parent lines and the families known afterwards to have held them, namely, the fami

r for footnote 10 of the chapt