Earlier students of the _Speculum Regale_ have believed that the author was some local chieftain, who had spent his more active days at the royal court, but who had later retired to his estates and was spending his declining years in literary pursuits. Various efforts have been made to find this chieftain,[122] but with no success; there is no evidence that the lords or crusaders who have been suggested as probable authors had any literary interests or abilities. There can be no doubt that the author was at one time a prominent member of the royal retinue; he asserts in several places that such was the case.[123] He is, furthermore, too thoroughly familiar with the organization of the royal household to have been an occasional courtier merely. At the same time it is not likely that he was a secular lord; it seems impossible that he could have been anything but a churchman. He knows the Latin language; he is well acquainted with sacred history; he has read a considerable number of medieval books. It is quite unlikely that the various types of learning that are reflected in the chapters of the _King’s Mirror_ could be found in the thirteenth century in any scholar outside the clerical profession. He could not have been one of the higher ecclesiastics, as the prelates belonged to the faction of the Croziermen. The _Speculum Regale_ was evidently written by a member of the Norwegian priesthood, though it is possible that he belonged to one of the minor orders. But at all events he was a professional churchman.[124] Footnote 122: See the Sorö edition, xxiii; Munch, _Det norske Folks Historie_, III, 399, note. Footnote 123: Cc. ii, iii, xxx. Footnote 124: Cf. Daae, “Studier angaaende Kongespeilet”: _Aarböger for nordisk Oldkyndighed_, 1896, 180-181. Daae holds that the author was a clergyman. There was an old belief in Norway that the work was written at King Sverre’s court, perhaps by the priest-king himself;[125] but this theory is wholly without foundation. Professor Ludvig Daae, believing that only a few Northmen possessed the necessary qualifications for the authorship of such a work as the _King’s Mirror_, concluded that it must have been written by Master William, one of the chaplains at the court of Hakon IV.[126] Master William was evidently a man of some erudition; he held a degree (_magister_) from a European university; he must have traveled abroad and was no doubt a man of experience; he lived and flourished in the period when the work must have been composed. But there is no shred of evidence that Master William actually wrote the _King’s Mirror_ or that he was interested in the problems that are discussed in this work. Footnote 125: _Ibid._, 1896, 178. Footnote 126: