Early in April, and shortly after the Council of Nottingham, William met the king of England at Clipston, passing the remainder of the month in his company. He soon found an opportunity for urging a restoration of the dignities and honors which had belonged, as he maintained, to his predecessors, putting forward a formal claim upon the earldom of Northumberland, and the Honor of Lancaster, together with the counties of Cumberland and Westmoreland—the whole territory, in short, which had once been held by his father, Earl Henry. Richard returned an evasive answer, alleging that he must consult his barons: and after the council held at Northampton, in Easter week, he replied that, in his present circumstances, it was impossible to listen to William’s demands; as concession on his part would be attributed to his fear of the French war, rather than to his affection for the Scottish king. As a set off to a reply which was tantamount to a refusal, he conferred upon William a charter of privileges, specifying that whenever the king of Scotland attended the English court, the whole of his expenses should be defrayed out of the English exchequer; and providing that he should be escorted, both in arriving and on his return, by the bishops and sheriffs of the different dioceses and counties, through which it was necessary for him to pass in the course of his progress. William was obliged to be satisfied with this concession; and he assisted, in token of amity, at the second coronation of Richard, bearing, upon this occasion, the principal sword of state.[452]
Another opportunity soon occurred for again advancing his claims. After the conclusion of the coronation, the bishop of Durham resigned his earldom of Northumberland into the hands of Richard, and the king was on the point of transferring it to Hugo Bardolf, when William hastened to offer 15,000 marks for the fief. The magnitude of the sum tempted Richard, who was seldom proof against an offer of this description, and, after a short deliberation, he consented to grant the earldom without the castles—or, in other words, the pecuniary, but not the political, advantages of the fief—a compromise which did not accord with the views of William. He made a final effort to obtain his object a few days before the departure of Richard for Normandy, but equally without success, for the latter would only hold out the hope that he might take the matter into consideration on his return from his expedition into France; and the Scottish king, towards the close of the month, retraced his steps towards the north in bitter chagrin at his failure.[453]
A. D. 1195.
In the course of the following year, William was seized with an alarming illness at Clackmannan, and, in the momentary expectation of death, assembling his leading nobles, he made known his intention of declaring as his successor Otho of Saxony, a son of Henry the Lion, and subsequently emperor of Germany, on the stipulation that the prince should marry his eldest daughter Margaret. The proposal was but coldly received by many of his nobility; Earl Patrick of Dunbar, as the spokesman of the dissentient party, maintaining that it was contrary to the custom of Scotland for the crown to descend in the female line, as long as there was a brother, or nephew, in the succession.[454] The question was terminated for the time by the recovery of the king; but he did not relinquish his purpose, and, at Christmas, he gave an audience at York to the archbishop of Canterbury, who was empowered by Richard to conduct the negotiations connected with the marriage in question. Lothian was to be the dowry of the Scottish princess, and the castles of that province were to be made over to the keeping of the English king; whilst Richard engaged to bestow the earldoms of Carlisle and Northumberland upon his nephew the Saxon prince, and to place all the castles of those fiefs in the hands of William.[455] But this convention was never destined to be carried out; the return of health, and the hopes of an heir, induced William to procrastinate; and the reasons which influenced him in entering upon the negotiation were finally removed, three years afterwards, when his queen presented him with a son.
It was in the year following this abortive negotiation about the marriage of his eldest daughter with the Prince of Saxony, that the attention of the king was directed to renewed commotions in the north; but, to explain the origin of these disturbances, it will be necessary to revert once more to the history of the Orkneys.
Paul and Erlend, the joint earls, who were deposed and sent prisoners to Norway by Magnus Barefoot, never revisited their native land. They died in exile; A. D. 1199. and about two years after Magnus lost his life in Ireland, Hacon, the son of Paul, who had rendered good service in the Irish expedition, A. D. 1105. obtained from the sons of the deceased king a grant of the earldom of the Orkneys. The sons of Erlend had been also carried off by the Norwegian king; but Magnus Erlendson, taking advantage of a moment, when he was unobserved, to plunge into the sea, swam to the neighbouring shore of Scotland, and thus escaped; whilst his brother Erlend, who remained on board, lost his life subsequently in battle.[456]
Magnus Erlendson remained quietly at the Court of Scotland until the departure of Sigurd Magnusson for Norway, when he sailed for the Orkneys to claim his share in the earldom. Hacon viewed his arrival with displeasure, but as the feeling of the islanders was in favour of his cousin, he consented to abide by the decision of the Norwegian Court, and Magnus was shortly afterwards confirmed in the possession of his father’s portion of the earldom. Little cordiality existed between the earls, and they were at length upon the brink of an open rupture, when it was agreed that they should meet upon the small islet of Egillsey for the arrangement of their mutual differences. To this spot, accordingly, Magnus repaired upon the appointed day, and, faithful to the conditions of the meeting, he brought with him only a few unarmed friends. Hacon arrived soon afterwards with a squadron of eight ships, filled with the rovers of the sea; and as the armed crews stepped upon the shore, the son of Erlend foresaw his doom. He met it with fortitude and resignation; his head was severed from his body; and the islanders, horror stricken at the perfidious murder, long venerated their favourite earl as a martyr and a saint.[457]
Success affording leisure for repentance, Hacon sought to expiate his crime by a pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and upon his death, some years afterwards, the earldom was divided between his two sons by different marriages, who were known respectively as Paul the Silent, and Harald the Eloquent. The latter, who was the younger, appears in some of the Scottish charters as earl of Caithness, a province which then, and long afterwards, seems to have extended as far as Dingwall.[458] The usual jealousy existed between the brothers, ceasing only with the life of Harald, who is said to have met his death in a mysterious and unaccountable manner, and, as was generally supposed, through wearing, by mistake, a poisoned garment intended for his half-brother Paul, who was an object of hatred and aversion to Helga and her sister Frakarka, the mother and aunt of Harald. The opportunity was not lost upon the surviving earl, who, very easily convinced of the guilt of Helga, banished her immediately from the islands. Her brother Ottir was lord of Thurso, and her sister also held large possessions on the mainland. To them accordingly she repaired, with her grandson Erlend Haroldson and her daughter Margaret, who was soon afterwards married to Madach, Earl of Atholl, one of the greatest nobles of the day, and a first cousin of David, who, at this period, occupied the throne of Scotland.[459]
Earl Paul was not destined to hold for any length of time undisputed possession of the whole earldom, for a competitor arose in the person of a descendant, and heir to the claims, of Erlend Thorfinson. In one of his numerous conflicts in the western seas, Magnus Barefoot lost an attached and faithful follower of the name of Kali, upon whose son he conferred large possessions in the Orkneys and elsewhere, with the hand of Gunhilda, the daughter of the elder Erlend. Gunhilda, after the death of her brothers, became the heiress of her father’s rights; and it was her son who now demanded his share of the earldom from the surviving son of Hacon. His real name was Kol, the same as that of his father, but he assumed the name of Rognwald, which was popular amongst the Orkneymen, from his supposed resemblance to Rognwald Brusison, who is said to have still lingered in the recollection of an aged Norwegian queen as the handsomest man of her time.[460]
Paul refused to listen to the claims of Rognwald, though they were supported by the authority of the Court of Norway; but Frakarka and her sister Helga willingly agreed to further his cause, promising to attack the earl from the mainland, whilst Rognwald assailed him from the sea. But Paul was on the alert, holding his ground successfully against both attacks; nor was it until some years later that Rognwald, to whom the Shetlanders steadily adhered, A. D. 1135. was enabled to extend his authority over the whole of the Orkneys, through the surprise and capture of Paul by the contrivance of the Earl of Atholl.[461]