It was about the time of Earl John’s visit to the court of King Hakon, on the occasion above referred to, that there occurred in Norway one of the most extraordinary instances of imposture on record. A woman appeared in Bergen, in 1300, declaring that she was the princess Margaret, daughter of King Eirik, and heiress to the crown of Scotland, who was believed by all in Norway and in Britain to have died off the coast of Orkney some ten years previously. She had come over in a ship from Lubeck,[59] and her story was that she had been “sold” or betrayed by her attendant Ingibiorg Erlingsdatter, in the interest of certain persons who wished her out of the way, and had falsely given her out for dead. Although her appearance and circumstances were strongly against the credibility of her story, it seems to have taken a strong hold of the popular mind, and not a few of the clergy and the higher classes, possibly influenced by political motives, appear to have given her countenance. She was a married woman, and was accompanied by her husband, a German. She is described by Bishop Audfinn as being well up in years, her hair was greyish, and partially whitened with age, and to all appearance she was at least twenty years older than the date of King Eirik’s marriage with Margaret of Scotland, and consequently about seven years older than King Eirik himself, who was but thirteen when he was married. “Yet,” says Munch, “though the king’s daughter Margaret had died in the presence of some of the best men of Norway, though her corpse had been brought back by the bishop and Herr Thore Hakonson, to King Eirik, who himself had laid it in the open grave, satisfied himself of the identity of his daughter’s remains, and placed them in the Christ’s Kirk by the side of her mother’s;—though this woman, in short, was a rank impostor, yet she found many among the great men to believe her story, and not a few of the priests also gave her their countenance and support. That this German woman, purely of her own accord, should have attempted to personate the princess Margaret ten years after her death, and should have ventured to appear publicly in Norway on such an enterprise, seems hardly credible. It is more likely that she may have been persuaded to it by some parties perceiving in her a certain personal resemblance, who schooled her in the story she must tell to give her personation an air of reality.” King Hakon was away from Bergen, and no action was taken in regard to her case until he returned in the early part of the winter of 1301. It was natural that he should wish personally to see and examine the impostor, and confront her with the princess’s attendants, especially to hear the testimony of Ingibiorg Erlingsdatter, before deciding on anything. There is no record of the trial, but soon after the king’s arrival the “false Margaret” was burnt at Nordness in Bergen, as an impostor, and her husband was beheaded. As