Her grandson Henry, son of the first Henry, succeeded to the earldom,
but there seems to be no record of his investiture by the Norwegian
king. In 1404 he was entrusted with the guardianship of James I., and on
his way to France with the young prince, for whose safety it was judged
necessary that he should be removed from Scotland, he was captured by
the English off Flamborough Head, and retained some time in
captivity.[99] In 1412 he went to France with Archibald Douglas to
assist the French against the English.[100] In 1418 John St. Clair, his
brother, swears fealty to King Eirik at Helsingborg for the king’s land
of Hjaltland, and becomes bound to administer the Norse laws according
to the ancient usage, and it is stipulated that at his death Shetland
should again revert to the crown of Norway.[101] It seems from this that
Earl Henry must have been dead in 1418, though Bower in his continuation
of Fordun says that he died in 1420.[102] A dispensation was granted for
his widow’s marriage in 1418.[103]
Henry was succeeded by his son William, the last of the Orkney earls
under Norwegian rule. But the investiture of the new earl did not take
place till 1434, and for a period of fourteen years the administration
of the Islands was carried on by commissioners appointed by King Eirik.
On the death of Earl Henry, Bishop Thomas Tulloch was appointed
commissioner in 1420. He swore fealty to King Eirik in the church of
Vestenskov in Laland, undertaking the administration of the Islands
according to the Norsk law-book and the ancient usages.[104] On 10th
July 1422 he received as a fief from the king “the palace of Kirkwall
and pertinents, lying in Orkney, in Norway, together with the lands of
Orkney and the government thereof.”[105]
In 1423 the administration of the Orkneys and Shetland was committed to
David Menzies of Wemyss by King Eirik. In 1426 a complaint was sent to
the king by the inhabitants, setting forth that they had been subjected
to oppression and wholesale spoliation during the period of his
administration.[106] Among the accusations preferred against him it was
asserted that he diminished the value of the money by one-half, that he
threw the Lawman of the Islands into prison unjustly, and illegally
possessed himself of the public seal and the law-book of the Islands,
which the Lawman’s wife had deposited on the altar of the Church of St.
Magnus for their security; that he exacted fines and services illegally
and with personal violence, and was guilty of many other illegal acts of
tyrannical oppression.
The government of the Islands seems to have been again entrusted to
Bishop Tulloch[107] until 1434, when the young earl received his formal
investiture.[108]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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