Thus WILLIAM THE OLD was the first of the actual bishops of Orkney of whom we have distinct record. As the Saga and the Saga of St. Magnus both state explicitly that he held the bishopric for sixty-six years, and the Annals place his death in 1168, he must have been consecrated in 1102. The see, which was first at Birsay, where Earl Thorfinn erected the Christ’s Kirk,[121] was removed to Kirkwall on the erection of the Cathedral, 1137-52. He went with Earl Rögnvald to the Holy Land in 1152. When Pope Anastasius erected the metropolitan see of Trondheim in 1154 he declared the Bishop of Orkney one of its suffragans, and Bishop William’s canonical rights were thus implicitly recognised. He died in 1168; and in 1848, when certain repairs were being executed on the cathedral, his bones were found enclosed in a stone cist thirty inches long and fifteen inches wide, along with a bone object like the handle of a staff, and a leaden plate, inscribed in characters apparently of the 13th century:— HIC REQUIESCIT WILLIALMUS SENEX, FELICIS MEMORIÆ, PRIMUS EPISCOPUS. The position in which the bones were found in the choir seems to indicate that they must have been moved from their previous resting-place. Bishop William’s bones, and the cist which contained them, were carted away with the rubbish when the church was re-seated in 1856.[122] The leaden plate and bone object which were found in the cist are preserved in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. WILLIAM II., the second bishop, is only known from the entry of his name in the list of bishops[123] (1325), and the entry of his death under the year 1188 in the Icelandic Annals.