Reginald, being supplied with auxiliary forces from Ireland by his brother-in-law, John of Courcy, overran Caithness, and, returning home, left the conquered earldom in charge of three deputies. Harald procured the murder of one of them, and then, coming over from Orkney with a strong force, landed at Scrabster, where the bishop met him and endeavoured to mollify him. But Harald had a special grudge against Bishop John, which added to his rage at what he considered the defection of his Caithness subjects. The bishop had refused to collect from the people of Caithness a tax of one penny annually from each inhabited house, which Earl Harald had some years previously granted to the papal revenues. Accordingly he stormed the “borg” at Scrabster, in which the bishop and the principal men of the district had taken refuge, slew almost all that were in it, and caused the bishop to be blinded and his tongue to be cut out.[46] The two remaining deputies of King Reginald fled to the King of Scots, whose first act was to take revenge on Harald’s son Thorfinn. He was blinded and castrated after the barbarous manner of the times, and died miserably in the dungeon of Roxburgh Castle. King William, then collecting a great army, marched north to Eysteinsdal on the borders of Caithness in the spring of 1202. Though Harald had collected a force of 6000 men, he felt himself unable to cope with the king, and was obliged to sue for peace, which was obtained on the hard condition of the payment of every fourth penny to be found in Caithness, amounting to 2000 marks of silver. Earl Harald’s career was now drawing to a close. He died in 1206, at the advanced age of seventy-three, having had the earldom for twenty years jointly with Earl Rögnvald, and forty-eight years after Rögnvald’s death. His sons John and David succeeded him, and ruled jointly for seven years, when David died and John became sole Earl of Orkney and Caithness. The most notable event of his time was the burning of Bishop Adam at Halkirk in Caithness. Bishop Adam was a man of low birth. According to the Saga he was a foundling, and had been exposed at a church door. Previous to his consecration to the see of Caithness, in 1214, he had been Abbot of Melrose.[47] He arbitrarily increased the exaction of the bishop’s seat to such an extent that the populace rose in a body, and proceeding tumultuously to Halkirk, where he was residing, demanded abatement of the unjust exactions. Earl John, who was in the neighbourhood at the time, declined to interfere, and the exasperated populace, finding the bishop indisposed to treat them more liberally, first killed his adviser, Serlo, a monk of Newbottle, and then burnt the bishop. In the quaint language of Wyntoun—