casualties, and renew the tenures by a mutual recognition as Superior and Vassal. _The Uthell Buik of Orkney_ (16th March 1601–2) records every Odal land as “feuit to the Udallers paying their Scatts and Dewties according to the Rentale, with dew service usit and wount”—and how profitable these new bargains were to the Earl’s revenue, is shown by the important “Rentale pro Rege et Episcopo,” compiled about this time by Dishington. By the subserviency of the Sheriff and his subordinate staff of Things (no longer composed of Odallers, but of Servants and Tenants), and by the abuse or perversion of the Law Book, the Justiciar had no difficulty in multiplying enactments, penalties and convictions for the most trivial causes or impossible crimes. If evidence was insufficient, and bodily torture had failed, confession was extorted by the agonies of the victim’s dearest objects of affection, and the judicial murder was consummated by gibbet, fire or water, on Thieves holm, or before the window of the Earl’s hall. Confiscation for his benefit was the object and consequence of every such conviction, and the Law Book when it had served, and could no longer serve his purpose, disappeared for ever. His droits and jurisdiction as Admiral were made equally profitable by means equally nefarious. As Patron he appropriated all vacant benefices, or sold them to his dependents, and as Lord Paramount, he claimed the sole disposal of the commons, harbours, ferries and fisheries, even in the ocean, and every other right not feudally secured. But by his assumption of a more than kingly prerogative of arbitrary and general Taxation, to the extent of 20,000 marks in 1594, and £40,000 in 1595–6, and by the addition of a third to every Standard of weight and measure, and consequently to every Teind and Duty, he touched the interests, and roused the active opposition of a class less patient and more powerful than the Odaller, whom he had learned to coerce or crush at pleasure—the larger Feuars of the Kirk lands, the old opponents of his father. Confident in their Island strongholds and in their Crown Charters, titulars of their own Teinds, with independent jurisdictions and other rights as well defined as his own, and less precarious, they opposed his usurpations, defied his power, retorted his injuries, and even protected his victims. One after another he had long waged against them a desultory war of law and violence. For the siege and capture of Noltland Castle, and imprisonment of the Laird of Monquhannie (1592), the Court of Session had punished him with escheit and heavy damages; and in defiance of his edicts against suing in any Court beyond the bounds of Orkney and Zetland, Mudy of Breckness, Bellenden of Evie, the Goodman of Eday, and even his own brothers, had carried to the Supreme Court similar complaints with similar results; and the Earl could only vent his rage upon the servants who had convoyed their masters beyond reach of his jurisdiction.