King William next conferred the earldom on Ragnvald Gudrodson, for, it is said, a considerable sum of money, reserving his own annual tribute. On receiving the earldom, Ragnvald Gudrodson left in charge of Caithness six[44] stewards, of whom Lagmann Rafn was the chief, and went back to the Isle of Man. Harold had one of these stewards murdered by an assassin, and returned with a large force to Thurso to punish the Caithness folk; and, when Bishop John interceded for the people of his diocese, Harold, whom he had irritated by refusing to collect the Peter's Pence which the Earl had given to Rome, would not listen to him, but mutilated him, probably in 1201, nearly blinding him, and all but cutting out his tongue, though afterwards the bishop regained his sight and speech in some measure, and may have lived to administer his diocese till 1213. It is noteworthy that Pope Innocent III, in his letter of 1202, does not directly blame Harold for the illtreatment of the bishop, but Lumberd, a layman, whose penance the letter prescribes. Harold then drove out the stewards, and they fled to the Scottish king, who made the best amends he could to them,[45] and Rafn, the Lawman, seems to have returned and to have lived and enforced the law in Caithness until at least 1222.[46] To punish Earl Harold, King William at once had Harold's son Thorfinn blinded and so mutilated in Roxburgh Castle that he died there. William also collected a large army and marched in person to Eysteinsdal or Ousedale near the Ord of Caithness, and Harold, though he is said to have brought together seven thousand two hundred men, avoided battle and evaded the king's pursuit.[47] Harold also began negotiations with King John of England and received a safe conduct for a journey to England to see him.[48] Later in the year Harold is said to have recovered his earldom through the intercession of Bishop Roger of St. Andrews, for a payment of two thousand pounds of silver, which Munch conjectures may have been handed over to Ragnvald Gudrodson to replace the sum which he had paid to the king for the earldom; and it is true that we hear no more of Ragnvald in connection with Caithness, though he lived until 1229. At the same time, we can hardly believe that Harold, as the _Flatey Book_ says, received back "all Caithness as he had it before that Earl Harald the Young took it from the Skot-king."[49] What happened probably was, that Harold Maddadson, who had been stripped by King Sverri of Shetland in 1195,[60] was allowed by King William in 1202 to keep part of his Caithness earldom upon payment by its inhabitants of a fine of every fourth penny they possessed. Otherwise his son David could not have succeeded to any part of Caithness, as he undoubtedly did, when, four years later, in 1206, his father's long and chequered career of sixty-eight years in the earldom was closed by his death at the age of seventy-three.