His ambition as a Courtier, his interest as a Churchman, his partiality as a Scotchman, and his education as a Canonist and feudal lawyer, all united to bias his decision of the questions at stake between the Scottish Crown and its Scandinavian subjects—between Feudal principles and what were to him the barbarous anomalies of Odalism. Able, subtle and plausible, he was equally conversant with every stronghold of Feudal or Canon law, and every weak point in the Odal system. Scotland could not have found a minister more skilful or less scrupulous in turning its new acquisitions to advantage. If he somewhat aggrandized his benefice at the cost of the Crown’s Estate intrusted to him, he largely enriched both at the expense of the Odaller, on whom he accumulated new burdens, teinds, services and escheats, with such ingenuity, that his successors in oppression could hardly “better the instruction” by one original idea of extortion—one impost which could not be traced to some suggestive innovation of Bishop William. The ODALLERS and ODAL-BORN were the COMMONS of Orkney and Zetland—the ROITHISMEN and ROITHISMEN’S SONS—the GÖFUGAR and GÆDINGAR, who constituted the numerical strength of the Althing. There is no class in Europe exactly analogous to this—the ODALS-MADR, BONDI or _Peasant-Noble_ of Orkney and of Norway—but perhaps the Hindustani scholar might trace some curious parallels in the Tenures and treatment of the landowners of Upper India. He was a Peasant, for he tilled his own land, and claimed no distinction among his free neighbours; but he was also Noble, for there was no hereditary order superior to his own—as an ODALS-MADR with RŒDI, EIGN and SŒMD—_Master of his Household, his Goods and his Honour_.[2] The King might wed the Odaller’s daughter or match his own daughter to the Odal-born without disparagement, for he himself was but the Odal-born of a larger Odal. The Jarl might be deemed less free and therefore less noble, for he owed something to the grace of a human superior. The Bondi in his Odal was _sui juris_, and in the one-chambered Parliament of the Althing, had a vote and voice as potential as King or Jarl, who often, when consulting the humour or will of the Odallers, were bearded and thwarted by the independence of some Thorkel Fostri, Magnus Havardson, or Sigurd of Westness. The King might enforce the military service of the Jarl—the Odallers owned none to either of them. Nothing short of actual invasion entitled the Jarl to call them to arms by the Ward-fire, and with all their passion for the sport of war, many a right and immunity they won or redeemed, as the price of their consent to some foreign Viking-för. Footnote 2: The three legal distinctions of Odal-rœd consisted of RŒDI, _dispensatio rei œconomici_; EIGN, _possessio_; and SŒMD, _honor_, _decus_—the “Royth, Ayning, and Saming,” so common in Orkneyan titles, and so puzzling to legal Antiquaries.