In the meantime, Lord Robert’s feu of Orkney (though not expressly revoked) was presumed to have fallen by its own inherent nullity, and he would probably never have resumed the attempt to make it effectual, but for an opportunity of making it doubly profitable. Bishop Adam was a Lord of Session, and had left the spiritual duties of his See to the superintendent, Mr. James Annan, while he contented himself with receiving its temporalities. By a mutually convenient exchange of these temporalities for those of the Abbey of Holyrood (30th September 1568), the Feuar of the Earldom of Orkney became also Commendator of the Bishopric, with the combined powers of both, strengthened by the countenance of his brother the Regent. To “stress the Odallers” was henceforth the unchanging object of Lord Robert, by aggravating their burdens in Weights and Measures of his own standard, increasing their liabilities to Crown and Kirk in a Coinage of his own valuation, multiplying the civil and criminal grounds of escheit and fine by Enactments of his own, and finally, litigating the very title of the impoverished Odal before Courts and Judges of his own appointment. As Feuar of the Earldom, and Commendator of the Bishopric, he exercised all the powers of an arbitrary landlord, by raising the rents to the limits of the tenants’ endurance, with aggravations and breaches of the triennial contract, feelingly detailed in the Complayntis. He oppressed Churchmen and others into a compulsory surrender of their lands and rights—suppressed the burghal liberties of Kirkwall and burned its archives—aggravated the evils of Odal subdivision, by extending the Sister’s part to a share even of the Head-Bu—abolished the little Odal mills still traceable on every burn or VATN, and astricted all to his own mills, with new Scottish burdens. Claiming the whole Commonties, fisheries and sea-beach, he punished all use of them by native or Stranger as a trespass—laid heavy Tolls and Customs on the numerous fleet of Dutch fishermen and the Norwegian traders whose traffic to and from the Islands interfered with his own monopoly, and found other illicit profits in the sale of remissions for crimes, permissions for single combat, and Licenses for exclusive traffic—in secret encouragement and partnership with pirates, and in prohibiting assistance to wrecks as an infringement of his pretended droits of Admiralty. But a richer, if not a wider field for his cupidity, was offered in the iniquitous grant of superiority over the _libere tenentes_, and the power of subjecting the Odallers to all the lucrative claims and casualties of feudal tenure. Every exaction of former Rentals was enforced, every parish tax became a household or poll tax on each parishioner, every occasional or special payment (such as Bothwell’s forced contributions of sheep and oxen) was made an annual burden, every service ever claimed from a tenant, and many new forms of Scottish