In the course of the following year, William was seized with an alarming illness at Clackmannan, and, in the momentary expectation of death, assembling his leading nobles, he made known his intention of declaring as his successor Otho of Saxony, a son of Henry the Lion, and subsequently emperor of Germany, on the stipulation that the prince should marry his eldest daughter Margaret. The proposal was but coldly received by many of his nobility; Earl Patrick of Dunbar, as the spokesman of the dissentient party, maintaining that it was contrary to the custom of Scotland for the crown to descend in the female line, as long as there was a brother, or nephew, in the succession.[454] The question was terminated for the time by the recovery of the king; but he did not relinquish his purpose, and, at Christmas, he gave an audience at York to the archbishop of Canterbury, who was empowered by Richard to conduct the negotiations connected with the marriage in question. Lothian was to be the dowry of the Scottish princess, and the castles of that province were to be made over to the keeping of the English king; whilst Richard engaged to bestow the earldoms of Carlisle and Northumberland upon his nephew the Saxon prince, and to place all the castles of those fiefs in the hands of William.[455] But this convention was never destined to be carried out; the return of health, and the hopes of an heir, induced William to procrastinate; and the reasons which influenced him in entering upon the negotiation were finally removed, three years afterwards, when his queen presented him with a son. It was in the year following this abortive negotiation about the marriage of his eldest daughter with the Prince of Saxony, that the attention of the king was directed to renewed commotions in the north; but, to explain the origin of these disturbances, it will be necessary to revert once more to the history of the Orkneys. Paul and Erlend, the joint earls, who were deposed and sent prisoners to Norway by Magnus Barefoot, never revisited their native land. They died in exile; [Sidenote: A. D. 1199.] and about two years after Magnus lost his life in Ireland, Hacon, the son of Paul, who had rendered good service in the Irish expedition, [Sidenote: A. D. 1105.] obtained from the sons of the deceased king a grant of the earldom of the Orkneys. The sons of Erlend had been also carried off by the Norwegian king; but Magnus Erlendson, taking advantage of a moment, when he was unobserved, to plunge into the sea, swam to the neighbouring shore of Scotland, and thus escaped; whilst his brother Erlend, who remained on board, lost his life subsequently in battle.[456]