VIII. The Bishopric of Orkney—1060-1469.
The origin of the bishopric of Orkney is involved in obscurity. Its early history is complicated by the fact that there were two if not three distinct successions of bishops, only one of which is recognised by the Norse writers.
The Saga statement regarding the origin of the bishopric unfortunately is lacking in precision. It is stated that Earl Thorfinn built Christ’s Kirk in Birsay, apparently after his return from his pilgrimage to Rome, and that the first bishop’s see in the Orkneys was established there. Taking this in connection with the statement that William the Old, who was bishop in 1115, when St. Magnus was murdered, was the first bishop, the inference would be that the bishopric was erected in his time. The statement regarding his tenure of office for sixty-six years is scarcely credible; but supposing it to be the fact, as he died in 1167, we obtain 1102 as the date of the erection of the bishopric.
On the other hand, Adam of Bremen states[[115]] that Thorolf was the first Bishop of Orkney, and that he was consecrated by Adalbert, Archbishop of Hamburg, in the middle of the 11th century,[[116]] and that another bishop named Adalbert succeeded him. Now, as William the Old was not consecrated before 1102, if there was a bishop in Earl Thorfinn’s time (the date of his death being 1064), it must have been this Thorolf. If Thorolf was consecrated in the middle of the 11th century, it was probably before Earl Thorfinn’s death in 1064. But it seems that the see was vacant or unoccupied before 1093.
It appears from a letter of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury (1070-1089), that Earl Paul of Orkney had sent to him a cleric whom he wished to be consecrated a bishop, and Lanfranc orders Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester, and Peter, Bishop of Chester, to go to York and assist the archbishop there at the consecration. This must refer to the Earl Paul, son of Thorfinn, who with his brother Erlend was carried to Norway by King Magnus on his second expedition to the west in 1098, and neither of them ever returned. The name of this bishop is not given in Lanfranc’s letter. But the English writers[[117]] mention that in the end of the 11th century a cleric named Ralph was consecrated Bishop of Orkney by Thomas, Archbishop of York. Thomas was archbishop from A.D. 1070 to 1100. It is mentioned that when the right of the Archbishop of York to consecrate Turgot Bishop of St. Andrews was asserted in 1109, it was proposed that he should do it by the assistance of the (English) Bishops of Scotland and of Orkney. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury (1092-1107), wrote[[118]] to Earl Hakon Palson, exhorting him and his people to obey the bishop “whom now by the grace of God they had.”
A second bishop, named Roger, was consecrated by Gerard, who was Archbishop of York in the beginning of the 12th century, from 1100 to 1108.
A third bishop, named Ralph, previously a presbyter of York, said to have been elected by the people of Orkney, was consecrated by Archbishop Thomas, the successor of Gerard. It is this Ralph who figures in the accounts of the battle of Northallerton, 1138. Pope Calixtus II. and Pope Honorius II. addressed letters to the Norwegian Kings, Sigurd and Eystein, in favour of Ralph.[[119]] In the letter of Pope Honorius it is expressly stated that another bishop had been intruded in the place of Ralph. This must refer to William the Old, whom the Sagas make bishop from the year 1102.
The explanation of all this seems to be that the Archbishops of Hamburg and York both tried in vain to secure the right of consecrating the Bishops of Orkney; the former on the ground that as the successors of St. Anschar they were primates of the Scandinavian churches, and the latter on the same ground on which they claimed the right to consecrate the Bishop of St. Andrews—viz. that their jurisdiction extended to the whole of Scotland and the Isles. In the appendix to Florence of Worcester’s Chronicle,[[120]] written in the beginning of the 12th century, it is said that “the Archbishop of York had jurisdiction over all the bishops north of the Humber, and all the bishops of Scotland and the Orkneys, as the Archbishop of Canterbury had over those of Ireland and Wales.” Meantime, however, the Norwegians made their own bishops, and these, having obtained possession of the see, were the real bishops of Orkney, though the others might enjoy the empty title.
Thus William the Old was the first of the actual bishops of Orkney of whom we have distinct record. As the Saga and the Saga of St. Magnus both state explicitly that he held the bishopric for sixty-six years, and the Annals place his death in 1168, he must have been consecrated in 1102. The see, which was first at Birsay, where Earl Thorfinn erected the Christ’s Kirk,[[121]] was removed to Kirkwall on the erection of the Cathedral, 1137-52. He went with Earl Rögnvald to the Holy Land in 1152. When Pope Anastasius erected the metropolitan see of Trondheim in 1154 he declared the Bishop of Orkney one of its suffragans, and Bishop William’s canonical rights were thus implicitly recognised. He died in 1168; and in 1848, when certain repairs were being executed on the cathedral, his bones were found enclosed in a stone cist thirty inches long and fifteen inches wide, along with a bone object like the handle of a staff, and a leaden plate, inscribed in characters apparently of the 13th century:—
Hic requiescit Willialmus senex, felicis memoriæ,
primus Episcopus.
The position in which the bones were found in the choir seems to indicate that they must have been moved from their previous resting-place. Bishop William’s bones, and the cist which contained them, were carted away with the rubbish when the church was re-seated in 1856.[[122]] The leaden plate and bone object which were found in the cist are preserved in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
William II., the second bishop, is only known from the entry of his name in the list of bishops[[123]] (1325), and the entry of his death under the year 1188 in the Icelandic Annals.
Bjarni, son of Kolbein Hruga (who built the castle on the island of Weir), was the third bishop. His mother, Herborg, was a great-granddaughter of Earl Paul.[[124]] Bjarni himself was a famous poet, and to him is ascribed the Jomsvikinga-drapa—the Lay of the Jomsburg Vikings.[[125]] A bull of Pope Innocent III., dated at the Vatican, 27th May 1198,[[126]] is addressed to him in connection with the refusal of Bishop John of Caithness to collect an annual tribute in his diocese, as noticed hereafter.[[127]] It appears from a deed of his in the Chartulary of the monastery of Munkalif at Bergen that he possessed lands in Norway, as well as his patrimonial lands in Orkney and castle in the island of Weir. By that deed he gives to the monastery, “for the souls of his father (Kolbein Hruga), his mother, his brother, his relations and friends,” the lands called Holand, near the Dalsfiord, north of Bergen. It is curious thus to find in authentic records a mortification of lands to a church in Norway to provide masses for the soul of a man who is now known in his own former home in Orkney only as Cobbie Row, “the giant,” or “goblin” of the castle, which he built and inhabited. Bishop Bjarni was present with John, Earl of Orkney, at the great assembly of nobles at Bergen,[[128]] in 1223, and died shortly thereafter.
Jofreyr, the fourth bishop, was consecrated in 1223, according to the Annals. There was a Jofreyr, Dean of Tunsberg, present at the same assembly in Bergen above referred to, and as the name is a very uncommon one, it is probable that he is the same who was made Bishop of the Orkneys. He seems to have been long an invalid, for, by a bull dated at Viterbo, 11th May 1237,[[129]] Pope Gregory IX. enjoins Sigurd, Archbishop of Nidaros (Drontheim), to move Bishop Jofreyr of Orkney, who had been paralytic and confined to bed for many years, to resign office, or, if he was unwilling to resign, to provide him with a wise and prudent helper. Jofreyr retained the see, however, for ten years after this. The Annals place his death in 1247.
Henry (I.) was the fifth bishop. A papal dispensation for the defect of his birth, by Pope Innocent IV., is dated 9th December 1247.[[130]] He was then a canon in the Orkneys. He was with King Hakon’s expedition in 1263, and died in 1269.
Peter, the sixth bishop, was consecrated in 1270. A brief of his,[[131]] dated at Tunsberg, 3d September 1278, grants forty days’ indulgence to those in his diocese who contribute in aid of the restoration of St. Swithin’s cathedral at Stavanger, which had been destroyed by fire. He died in 1284.
Dolgfinn, the seventh bishop, was consecrated in 1286. Nothing is known of him but the name. He died, according to the Annals, in 1309.
William (III.) was the eighth bishop. He was consecrated in 1310. At the Provincial Council held at Bergen, in 1320, there were several complaints made by the archbishop against William, Bishop of Orkney.[[132]] Kormak, an archdeacon of the Sudreys, and Grim Ormson, prebendary of Nidaros, had been sent by the archbishop on a visitation of the diocese of Orkney, and had reported that William had squandered the property of the see, that he had bestowed the offices of the church on foreigners and apostates, that he had compromised his dignity as a prelate of the church by participation in the boisterous pastime of hunting and other unseemly diversions, that he had been careless and lukewarm in the exercise of his spiritual office, and had not sought out those who practised idolatry and witchcraft, or who were heretics or followed ungodly ways. Moreover, he had imprisoned Ingilbert Lyning, a canon of Orkney, whom the archbishop had sent to make inquiry into the collection of the Peter’s pence, and had deprived him of his prebendary and all his property. He had also clandestinely appropriated to himself during fifteen years a portion of the church dues, amounting to the value of 53 marks sterling, and he had refused to permit the removal of the corpse of a woman from Orkney, although her will had been that she should be interred in the cathedral of Trondheim. He was suspended in the following year (1321) by the archbishop, but in 1324 we find him assisting at the consecration of Laurentius, Bishop of Hole.[[133]] By a deed,[[134]] dated at Bergen, 9th September 1327, he mortgages his dues of Shetland to his metropolitan, Eilif, Archbishop of Nidaros, for the payment of 186 marks sterling, which he should have paid the archbishop for six years’ teinds. By another document of the same year,[[135]] Bishop Audfinn of Bergen requests Bishop William of Orkney to assist his priest Ivar in the collection of the Sunnive-miel—a contribution which the inhabitants of Shetland had paid from old time to the shrine of St. Sunniva at Bergen. The date of this bishop’s death has not been ascertained.
William (IV.), ninth bishop, succeeded him, sometime after the year 1328. There is extant an agreement between him and Hakon Jonsson, dated at Kirkwall, 25th May 1369.[[136]] The next mention we have of him is the entry in the Annals, under the date 1382—“Then was heard the mournful tidings that Bishop William was slain in the Orkneys.”
William (V.), tenth bishop, appears only in a record of the time of King Robert III. of Scotland. Munch supposes that he may have been the William Johnson who appears as Archdeacon of Zetland, in a Norse deed dated at Sandwick in Shetland, March 4, 1360.
Henry (II.), eleventh bishop, according to Torfæus, appears in a record of 1394.
John, twelfth bishop, appears in the Union Treaty of Calmar in 1397.
Patrick, thirteenth bishop, appears in an Attestation by the Lawman of Orkney, two canons of the church of St. Magnus, and four burgesses of Kirkwall, of the descent and good name of James of Cragy, laird of Hupe.[[137]] He is otherwise unnoticed, but as he is there referred to by his canonical title, and the many losses, injuries, and disquietudes which he endured at the hands of his adversaries, are specially alluded to, there seems to be no doubt that he held the bishopric between the death of John and the incumbency of Thomas de Tulloch.
Thomas de Tulloch, fourteenth bishop, first appears in existing records in 1418. He seems to have been previously Bishop of Ross.[[138]] On 17th June 1420, at the church of Vestenskov in Laland, he gives his pledge to King Eirik and his successors, and undertakes that he will hold the crown lands of Orkney committed to him, for the Kings of Norway, promising at the same time to give law and justice to the people of Orkney according to the Norsk law-book and the ancient usages.[[139]] In 1422 he receives the palace and pertinents of Kirkwall—“thet slot oc faeste Kirkqwaw liggende j Orknoy j Norghe meth landet Orknoy,” etc.—as a fief from King Eirik. A record of the set of the threepenny lands of Stanbuster, in the parish of St. Andrews, executed by him on 12th July 1455, and confirmed by his successor in 1465, is preserved at Kirkwall. His death took place before 28th June 1461, when we find his successor in office.[[140]]
William (VI.) de Tulloch, the last bishop during the dominion of Norway in the Orkneys, was bishop in June 1461, and tendered his oath of allegiance in 1462.
A bull of Pope Sixtus IV., dated at the Vatican, 17th August 1472, placed the see of the Orkneys under the metropolitan Bishop of St. Andrews.