[53]. The Scala Cronica says off the coast of Buchan. “One Master Weland, a clerke of Scotlande, sent yn to Norway for Margaret, dyed with her by tempeste on the se cumming oute of Norway to Scotland yn costes of Boghan.” (Scala Cronica, Mait. Club, pp. 110, 282.) Wyntoun says she was “put to dede by martyry,” and assigns as the reason that the Norwegians would not have one who was of another nation and a female to be heir to the throne of Norway, though their laws allowed it. He had probably heard the story of the “false Margaret.” (See p. [lii].)
[54]. In the Wardrobe Rolls of King Edward I. (1290) the following payments occur:—“Sept. 1.—To Lord Eli de Hamville going by the king’s orders with the Lord Bishop of Durham towards Scotland to meet the messengers of the King of Norway and the princess, and was to return with the news to the king. To John Tyndale, the messenger from the Bishop of St. Andrews, who brought letters from his master to the king concerning the rumours of the arrival of the Princess of Scotland in Orkney—by gift of the king, xxsh. To William Playfair, messenger of 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, xiiish. 4d.” There is also a detailed account of the expenses of two messengers who left Newcastle on the 15th September, were at Haberdene on the 23d, at the Meikle Ferry in Sutherland on the 30th, where they met the messengers from Scotland, then proceeded by Helmsdale and Spittal to Wick, which they reached on the 4th October. They left Wick on the 6th October, and arrived at Norham on the 21st November. 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’s death.
[55]. This letter was dated 1st February 1320, and the substance of it is given by Suhm, vol. xii. p. 29. It does not seem to be known from the original document however, but from a later “paraphrase,” as Munch calls it, preserved in the Royal Library at Stockholm. (Det Norske Folks Historie, vol. iv. part 2, p. 348.)
[56]. Under the date 1293 the following entry occurs in the Chronicle of Lanercost:—“Dominica etiam post festum Sancti Martini (Nov. 15) desponsata est filia Roberti de Carrick regi Norwagiae Magno.” (Chron. de Lanercost, p. 155.) Magnus is plainly a mistake for Eirik, the son of Magnus, who reigned from 1280 to 1299.
[57]. Rymer’s Fœdera, Syllabus I. p. 114.
[58]. Det Norske Folks Historie, vol. iv. part 2, p. 202.
[59]. Munch, Det Norske Folks Historie, vol. iv. part 2, pp. 195, 344.
[60]. Haflidi Steinson died nearly nineteen years after this as priest of Breidabolstad in Iceland. The Iceland Annals, recording his death in 1319, recount the story as if this were the real Margaret (whose death they record in 1290), and add that “to this Haflidi himself bore witness when he heard that this same Margaret had been burnt at Nordness.” (See Wyntoun’s Statement, p. 1, note 1.)
[61]. On the 2d April 1320 Bishop Audfinn writes to the Archbishop that on the 1st February he had issued a prohibition against the bad custom of making pilgrimages to Nordness, and offering invocations to the woman who had been burnt many years ago for giving herself out as King Eirik’s daughter. He also complains to the archbishop that opposition had been offered to the reading out of the prohibition in the Church of the Apostles of Bergen. (Munch, Det Norske Folks Historie, iv. part 2, p. 348.)
[62]. This noble document was signed by eight earls and thirty-one barons of Scotland, at the abbey of Aberbrothock on the 6th April 1320. After asserting the legitimate claims of King Robert the Bruce, and narrating his struggles in the cause of Scottish independence, it goes on to say that “If he were to desist from what he has begun, wishing to subject us or our kingdom to the King of England or the English, we would immediately endeavour to expel him as our enemy, and the subverter of his own rights and ours, and make another king who should be able to defend us. For so long as a hundred remain alive, we never will in any degree be subject to the dominion of the English. Since not for glory, riches, nor honour, we fight, but for liberty alone, which no good man loses but with his life.” The duplicate, preserved in the General Register House, is printed in facsimile in the National Manuscripts of Scotland, published under the superintendence of the Lord Clerk Register.