In whatever way these apparently contradictory statements are to be reconciled, the statement of the Diploma that Henry St. Clair was the first of the line who enjoyed the title of Earl of Orkney is undoubtedly borne out by the records. In the summer of 1379 he passed over to Norway and received formal investiture from King Hakon of the earldom of Orkney and also of the lordship of Shetland,[[89]] which, since the time of its forfeiture to King Sverrir by Earl Harald Maddadson, had been in the possession of the crown of Norway. The conditions on which he accepted the earldom are set forth at length in the deed of investiture, and contrasting them with the semi-independence of the ancient earls a recent writer has remarked that they left him little more than the lands of his fathers.[[90]] Although the Earls of Orkney had precedence of all the titled nobility of Norway, and their signatures to the national documents stand always after the Archbishops, and before the Bishops and nobles, though the title was the only hereditary one permitted in Norway to a subject not of the blood royal, yet it was now declared to be subject to the royal option of investiture. The earl was to govern the Islands and enjoy their revenues during the king’s pleasure, but he was taken bound to serve the king beyond the bounds of the earldom, with a hundred men fully equipped, when called on by the king’s message; he was to build no castle or place of strength in the Islands, make no war, enter into no agreement with the bishop, nor sell or impignorate any of his rights, without the king’s express consent; and moreover he was to be answerable for his whole administration to the king’s court at Bergen. At his death the earldom and all the Islands were to revert to the King of Norway or his heirs, and if the earl left sons they could not succeed to their father’s dignity and possessions without the royal investiture. At the following Martinmas he was taken bound to pay to the king 1000 English nobles.[[91]] It was part of the compact also that Malise Sperra, son of Guthorm Sperra, should depart from all his claims to the earldom in right of his mother;[[92]] and he left with King Hakon, as hostages for the due fulfilment of his share of the contract, the following from among his friends and followers:— William Daniel, knight, Malise Sperra, and David Crichton.
But King Hakon died in the year after Earl Henry’s investiture, and the events that took place in the Orkneys during the reign of King Olaf, his successor, are entirely unknown to the Norwegian chroniclers. Earl Henry seems neither to have courted the favour of his suzerain nor to have stood in awe of his interference. He built the castle of Kirkwall in defiance of the prohibition contained in the deed of his investiture, and seems to have felt himself sufficiently independent to rule his sea-girt earldom according to his own will and pleasure.
The fact that King Hakon’s investiture of Earl Henry took him bound not to enter into any league with the bishop nor to establish any friendship with him without the king’s express consent, shows us that the bishop was then acting in opposition to the king and the representatives of the civil power. The likelihood is that Earl Henry found this opposition of the bishop favourable to his own design of making himself practically independent, and represented it as the excuse for the erection of the castle of Kirkwall, contrary to the terms of his agreement with the crown. Munch attributes the discord to the growing dislike of the Norwegian inhabitants of the Islands to Scotsmen, whose numbers had been long increasing through the influence of the Scottish family connections of the later earls. Whatever may have been its origin, the end of it was that in some popular commotion, of which we have no authentic account, the bishop was slain in the year 1382.[[93]]
Malise Sperra appears to have endeavoured to establish himself in Shetland[[94]] in opposition to Earl Henry. He had seized, it is not stated upon what grounds, the possessions in Shetland which had belonged to Herdis Thorvaldsdatter, and of which Jón Hafthorson and Sigurd Hafthorson were the lawful heirs. It seems as if a court had been about to be held by the earl to settle the legal rights of the parties concerned. The court would be held at the old Thingstead, near Scalloway, but a conflict took place, the dispute was terminated by the strong hand, and Malise Sperra was slain.[[95]] As a number of his men were slain with him, it seems probable that he had been the aggressor. As both he and the earl are among those who were present at the assembly of nobles at Helsingborg, on the accession of King Eirik of Pomern in September 1389, and the Iceland Annals place the death of Malise Sperra in this same year, it is probable that the earl landed in Shetland on his way home from Norway for the express purpose of seeing justice done in the cause of the heirs of Thordis. In 1391, by a deed executed at Kirkwall (and subsequently confirmed by King Robert III.), he dispones the lands of Newburgh and Auchdale in Aberdeenshire,[[96]] to his brother David for his services rendered, and in exchange for any rights he may have to lands in Orkney and Shetland, derived from his mother Isabella St. Clair. In 1396 a deed was executed at Roslin by John de Drummond of Cargyll, and Elizabeth, his wife, in favour of Henry, Earl of Orkney, Lord Roslyn, “patri nostro,” by which they renounce in favour of the earl’s male issue, and for them and their heirs, all claims to the earl’s lands “infra regnum Norvagie.”[[97]]
The Diploma states that after the death of the first Henry St. Clair, his mother, the daughter of Malise,[[98]] came to Orkney, and, outliving all her sisters and all their sons and daughters, became the only heiress of the earldom. It is added that of this thing there were faithful witnesses still living who had seen and spoken with the mother of Henry the first.
Her grandson Henry, son of the first Henry, succeeded to the earldom, but there seems to be no record of his investiture by the Norwegian king. In 1404 he was entrusted with the guardianship of James I., and on his way to France with the young prince, for whose safety it was judged necessary that he should be removed from Scotland, he was captured by the English off Flamborough Head, and retained some time in captivity.[[99]] In 1412 he went to France with Archibald Douglas to assist the French against the English.[[100]] In 1418 John St. Clair, his brother, swears fealty to King Eirik at Helsingborg for the king’s land of Hjaltland, and becomes bound to administer the Norse laws according to the ancient usage, and it is stipulated that at his death Shetland should again revert to the crown of Norway.[[101]] It seems from this that Earl Henry must have been dead in 1418, though Bower in his continuation of Fordun says that he died in 1420.[[102]] A dispensation was granted for his widow’s marriage in 1418.[[103]]
Henry was succeeded by his son William, the last of the Orkney earls under Norwegian rule. But the investiture of the new earl did not take place till 1434, and for a period of fourteen years the administration of the Islands was carried on by commissioners appointed by King Eirik.
On the death of Earl Henry, Bishop Thomas Tulloch was appointed commissioner in 1420. He swore fealty to King Eirik in the church of Vestenskov in Laland, undertaking the administration of the Islands according to the Norsk law-book and the ancient usages.[[104]] On 10th July 1422 he received as a fief from the king “the palace of Kirkwall and pertinents, lying in Orkney, in Norway, together with the lands of Orkney and the government thereof.”[[105]]
In 1423 the administration of the Orkneys and Shetland was committed to David Menzies of Wemyss by King Eirik. In 1426 a complaint was sent to the king by the inhabitants, setting forth that they had been subjected to oppression and wholesale spoliation during the period of his administration.[[106]] Among the accusations preferred against him it was asserted that he diminished the value of the money by one-half, that he threw the Lawman of the Islands into prison unjustly, and illegally possessed himself of the public seal and the law-book of the Islands, which the Lawman’s wife had deposited on the altar of the Church of St. Magnus for their security; that he exacted fines and services illegally and with personal violence, and was guilty of many other illegal acts of tyrannical oppression.
The government of the Islands seems to have been again entrusted to Bishop Tulloch[[107]] until 1434, when the young earl received his formal investiture.[[108]]