Six centuries of Odal sub-division had minutely intermingled the lands, rights, and privileges of every Townland. At each succession the Odalsjord was shared among the Odal-born, male and female—the Jarl claimed for himself or for the Crown all lands forfeited and unredeemed, and seized as _ultimus hæres_ every inheritance lapsed or unclaimed—the Bishop asserted the Church’s rights to the gifts of the pious, a share of the forfeits of the guilty, the teinds of all, and the _corban_ perpetuity of every indulgence once permitted to a Churchman—and Scottish settlers claimed Odal lands and Odal rights by descent, affinity, or purchase. Thus the Odalsjords and their vague and customary pertinents were mixed in alternate patches, ridges or furrows, not only with other Odals, but with the claims of Jarl, Bishop or settler, as undefined, but more arbitrarily expansive. Even before the Odallers’ final change of masters, two centuries of such foreign and native influence had prepared the way for such a revolution, by modifying his privileges, altering his customs, and effacing much even of his own memory of their origin and traditions. But his spirit was still unbroken, he was still a Thingman, his order was still that of the Gofugar and Gœdingar of the Sagas, the _proceres communitatis_, whose wealth and influence pointed them out as the mark of the oppressor. Their Odal lands, pertinents and immunities, were still the field whence lawless power could reap a golden harvest, and more than a century of Scottish oppression was still required to level the Peasant Noble of Orkney with the Tacksman or Husbandman of the Earldom or Bishopric. The only class which remains to be noticed as interested in the change of sovereignty, is the _Unfree_—that large body possessing personal freedom (for slavery had gone out with the Vikings) but no political rights as Thingmen—the Tenants of the King, Jarl, Bishop or larger Odallers. These were either BOLMEN, _tenants at will_, or LEIGU-MEN, _by tack or assedation_, paying to the proprietor a LANDSKYLLD, _land mail or rent_, and EYSETTER and LANDSETTER-KAUP, or its Scottish equivalent of _grassum_, on each renewal of their tack—with all the other burdens of Skatt, teind, &c., sometimes besides, sometimes included in their land mail of money, grain, butter or live-stock, and certain prædial and personal services of mills, peats, furing or ferrying, &c., mostly of Scottish origin, and exigible according to the caprice or wants of their master.