Such were the condition and powers of Thing and Thingmen—such the land rights of King, Jarl, Bishop and Odaller, at the date of the Impignoration; and when Christian (28th May 1469) addressed a letter to the Communities of Orkney and Zetland, desiring them to pay obedience and Skatt to the King of Scots till redeemed by the King of Norway, he no doubt intended, and his subjects hoped, that it was but a temporary transfer of the sovereignty of the Islands, to return to his Crown unblemished and unchanged, like his often pawned metropolis. But the Scottish Government entertained very different views of the nature and duration of its rights and powers; and from the first, no resource of law or chicane was left untried to fortify and perpetuate its defective and redeemable title. By a series of transactions (from 17th September 1470 to 16th May 1471), the Crown in exchange of certain lands in Fife, and a pension of 40 merks, acquired from Earl William an irredeemable title to the Earldom estate, and _jus Comitatus Orchadie_—an Act of Parliament annexed to the Crown the “Erledome of Orknay and Lordship of Schetland, nocht to be gevin away in time to cum to na persain or persainis, excep alenarily to ane of the kingis sonnis of lauchful bed” (20th February 1471), and the Archbishop of St. Andrews was despatched to Rome, to invoke the solemn benediction of Pope Innocent VIII. on the Impignoration and subsequent transactions, as the seal of Heaven’s sanction upon the completed Revolution. It is a strange ingratitude in Britain to abjure the Jurisdiction of the Pope; while so many of her original titles rest solely on his authority—improved perhaps by force, as in Wales—by fraud, as in Orkney—or by a happy combination of both, as in Ireland. The Scottish Crown had now a Redeemable title to the Sovereignty of the Islands with the Skatts, Fines, Forfeits, and Jurisdictions of the Kings of Norway under Wadset, for a principal of £24,166, 13s. 4d., and subject of course to a Count and Reckoning for its intromissions, which would show how soon and how often that sum has been paid—principal and interest—by the Revenue drawn from the Islanders. It had also acquired an Absolute and Irredeemable Property in the lands, males, and services of the Earldom; but to the lands of the Bishop or Odallers it had no other pretentions than those included or implied in the rights of Sovereignty. To extend over these free domains the claims of Superiority or Property, to confound the titles Redeemable and Irredeemable, and to frustrate the power of Redemption by effacing all distinctive laws, customs and tenures, required time, patience and adroitness in invading rights and evading claims; and the gradual substitution of feudal for odal law, and the degradation of the Scandinavian Countries of Orkney and Zetland to a Scottish County and Lordship, was the stealthy process of the next century and a half.