To oppress the udallers so as to compel them to accept feus from him was the unvarying object of Earl Robert’s policy. He aggravated the burdens of the islanders by making them use weights and measures of his own devising, and increased their liabilities to him by a coinage of his own valuation. He raised the rents of the tenants to the limits of endurance, made every occasional or special payment an annual burden, imposed parish taxes as household taxes, and by pretended decrees of the Thing, or council, evicted many udallers without a show of justice. Heavy tolls and duties were laid on all fishermen and traders who came to the islands, and secret encouragement was given to pirates, whose booty was shared by the earl. The more bitter the complaints of the islanders, the more grievous became their oppression. To prevent these complaints reaching the ears of the authorities in Edinburgh, the earl forbade any one to cross the firths or ferries without his permission. It began also to be whispered that Earl Robert was plotting to sever once more the connection between Orkney and the Scottish crown. He had made additions to the old palace at Birsay, and on a stone over the principal gate he had caused to be inscribed: DOMINUS ROBERTUS STEWARTUS FILIUS JACOBI QUINTI REX SCOTORUM HOC OPUS INSTRUXIT—that is, “Earl Robert Stewart, son of James the Fifth, King of the Scots, erected this building.” Those who know a little Latin will observe that by his using the nominative case _rex_, it is Earl Robert himself and not James the Fifth whom he describes as “King of the Scots.” This was probably a mere mistake in the earl’s Latin, but a much graver meaning was attached to it by the Scottish King and Parliament when the whisper of treason somehow reached their ears. The complaints of the udallers might be unheeded, but the accusation of treason was a much more serious matter. The earl was summoned to Edinburgh to answer the charges against him. He was kept for some time a prisoner in Linlithgow Castle, but the storm quickly blew over. No trial ever took place. That ordeal Earl Robert escaped by the help of his powerful friends and relatives; and not only so, but in 1581 he was once more granted the Earldom of Orkney and Shetland, with extended powers. When Robert Stewart died, the islands were granted to his son, Patrick Stewart, the most cruel oppressor of all. Skilful in tyranny and extortion as Earl Robert had been, his son showed still more ability and ingenuity in his evil courses. The multiplication of enactments and penalties for the most trivial offences, confiscation, torture, and judicial murder—these were the additions Earl Patrick made to the machinery of oppression used by his father. He had palaces built for him at Scalloway and at Kirkwall by the same forced labour that had already reared Earl Robert’s palace in Birsay. But Earl Patrick’s career is best described in the words of Mackenzie:—