But it must be remembered that, in the absence of records, any solution of this difficult problem at present rests on mere speculation and guesswork, and the opinions expressed here must be accepted as mere conjectures unsupported by direct contemporary evidence, and based only upon reasonable probability.
We propose to attempt to deal with this difficult subject in the next chapter.
CHAPTER IX.
The Succession to the Caithness Earldom.
After the death of Earl John in 1231, we come to a most perplexing time, and it is almost impossible to discover a way out of the maze of genealogical difficulties in which we find ourselves involved. Not only is there no chronicle of the 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 and of Harald Ungi and his sisters downwards stops also, save in the case of Ragnhild, the youngest of them, whose son Snaekoll Gunni's son is mentioned as claimant in 1231 from Earl John of certain lands in Orkney and in Caithness as well.
Attempts to clear up the mystery have been made,[2] but none of them have resulted in any certain or trustworthy conclusions. Nor can anyone now expect to fare 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 pedigree, namely that of the Angus line, which provided, from its male members, successors to the title and to a moiety of the Caithness earldom, is very obscure.
This chapter, therefore, is largely conjectural, and must be accepted as such. It deserves, and will doubtless receive, severe criticism.
So far as the Angus pedigree can be ascertained, it appears that Earl Gillebride died about 1187, leaving two sons, Adam and Gilchrist, who succeeded in turn to that earldom, and Gillebride also left a third son, Gilbert,[3] a fourth, William, and a fifth, Angus, who had a son Gillebert or Gillebryd. Gilchrist died about 1204, leaving an eldest son, Duncan, Earl of Angus, and another son called Magnus, by his two wives respectively, his second wife, from the name of Magnus given to her eldest son and to many subsequent earls of that son's line, being assumed with considerable probability to have been, not 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 became successively Earls of Angus,[4] neither of them ever became Earl of Orkney. Robertson's contention in his Early Kings of Scotland, (vol. II, p. 23 note) that they were grafted on the wrong pedigree seems justified by the discrepancy in dates; for the Icelandic Annals give only one Gibbon who died in 1256, and we know that Magnus III was earl in 1263 and till 1273. Indeed little confidence can be reposed in the Diploma of the Orkney Earls, the only authority for the existence of two Orkney Earls called Gilbert, and in the period covered by the Orkneyinga Saga, we can prove many errors in the Diploma.
Of Magnus son of Gilchrist, Earl of Angus, we know something. He was alive in 1227, when he attested the record of the perambulation of the boundaries of the lands of the Abbey of Aberbrothock,[5] and in 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 of Angus of the Erledome of South Caithness" which included Berridale and lands which Magnus' granddaughter's great-grandson Malise II conveyed to Reginald Chen III, known as "Morar na Shein," after 1340.