Thomas Sinclair
1893
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NOTE |
The myth that Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, sailed to America is not a terribly old one. In the eighteenth century, Johann Reinhold Forster proposed that a character in the Zeno Manuscript (even then suspected of being a hoax), Zichmni, was Sinclair, though he did not imagine an American voyage. A later translator of the Zeno Manuscript, Richard Henry Major, tried to place the events of the story in the Americas, a suggestion that gave rise to the Sinclair Voyage Myth. In 1893, Thomas Sinclair used this claim to assert that the Sinclair family had a duty to play in overthrowing the primacy of Columbus, then being celebrated at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, in order to promote Northern European ethnic predominance in America over undesirable Latin races. His racist defense of this position, delivered as a speech in Chicago in 1893 before being published in a longer form in 1899, is the longest and most sustained Victorian version of the Sinclair myth. It is unusual in that Thomas Sinclair favored Henry II Sinclair over his father Henry I as the adventuring earl.
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PRINCE HENRY SINCLAIR II.,
THE PRE-COLUMBIAN DISCOVERER OF AMERICA, ONE OF THE ANCESTORS OF THE CAITHNESS FAMILY.
(Read in part at the July Meetings of the Society De Sancto-Claro in Chicago during the Exposition of 1893.)
I.
I.
It would be painting the lily to go over the ground traversed by Fiske in his chapter of 108 pages, entitled “Pre-Columbian Voyages,” which forms so striking a part of his book in two volumes, published in 1892 by Macmillan of New York and London, “The Discovery of America.” Handy reference to all the best literature of the subject in various languages, is found in that work; and with an analytic vigour of the most scientific cast, and an intellectual sanity somewhat rare in historical and especially antiquarian fields, he gives the whole weight of his reputation to the view that Columbus only followed successful discovering predecessors. Fiske’s treatment of the Norse navigators who visited the American shores, from as early as the ninth century down to their farewell to them about the twelfth, is all that the most exacting or sceptical could desire. Not a word need be said as to the historical character of those events, beyond what he has written, at once so cautiously and so authoritatively. His dealing with Prince Henry Sinclair, the Second, of the Orkney principality, is equally cordial and sympathetic; the Pre-Columbian discoverer of the fourteenth century, after the Norse voyaging had ceased for more than two hundred and fifty years. In a very true sense Henry as a civilised man, in the modern sense of civilisation, was the one and only discoverer of America; historians of the future bound to come to this conclusion by all the canons of criticism. The famous little book by the Venetian noblemen and navigators, the Zenoes, of which there is a translation from Italian among the Hakluyt Society’s collection of voyages, and of which there are recent English reprints, has full discussion and complete acceptance. Major’s enthusiasm for the genuine character of the narrative, is most carefully weighed, and as soundly admitted to be wholly praiseworthy. In this field of decision also, there is little room for any new hand, the important conclusions having been unmistakably reached. With his Zeno admiral, Prince Henry first placed really civilised foot on that continent which is now the home and glory of more than fifty millions of the earth’s pick of white men and women.
If, however, nothing can be added to the question now practically settled, a fresh path of interest opens, to which Fiske’s purpose did not reach. Of the biography of his judiciously admired hero he gives only the faintest outline, but enough for the general plan of his work. It is more than probable, though his studies of English, German, Italian, French, and of Norse authorities in particular, are masterly in their width, that he had not access to materials by which he could fill in the portrait. If he had desired to accumulate biographic matter, a visit to Scotland and England would hardly have much aided, so far as the great libraries are concerned. There would be more hope in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, of securing facts about the life of one destined to bulk more and more largely to future Americans, as their typical hero primaeval. That, by various accidents and studies, knowledge of the man has accumulated in one’s hands, emboldened towards the present contribution. But it is not for a moment suggested that, should so distinguished a literary American as Fiske resolve to go into detail about Henry, Earl of Orkney, he could not amass a splendid burden of intelligence; his Scandinavian research promising much biographical fact, unknown to English and Latin survivals since the duke, prince, or earl’s time, for he is known by all these titles.
One of the minor difficulties is this alternating of titles, which a few words will explain. Henry was a Scottish subject, the baron of Roslin Castle, so famous to this hour as an ancient fortified home, with its exquisite Gothic chapel, the wonder of Europe. Situated seven miles from Edinburgh, on the steep banks of a stream whose fame of rock and wood and water is world-wide, Roslin is one of the show-places of the Scottish capital, and well known to every traveller; Sir Walter Scott’s poems and prose celebrating its history and glories by many a passage. In Henry, the the Scottish and Norse sovereignties overlapped each other, from his holding Roslin and the principality of Orkney and Shetland; which principality implied historic right, from the Scandinavian point of view, to all the western isles of Scotland, as well as to the Farce Islands, if not to Iceland. The Scotch kings and nobility, having conquered the Hebrides, which to Bute and Arran in Firth of Clyde were formerly Norwegian, held closest watch over his position and possible pretensions; who, however, seemed to be entirely loyal to his Edinburgh locality and associations, while faithful to the King of Norway, to whom he paid homage in the feudal style, as earl, duke, or prince, for his northern territories. Earl as a dignity had not the same force in Scotland and Scandinavia. The jarl or earl of the latter was higher than the duke as we have him in Britain, who is merely the first noble. Of the equivalent to a Norwegian earl, a Normandy duke is best example, who, though he swore homage to the King of France, was to all intents and purposes an independent prince, wearing a crown, waging war solely at his own will, and doing sovereign acts, with the shadowiest or no reference to his feudal superior. The history of Norway from Harold Fairhair, who became in 872 its first ruler, shows the jarl on all but equal terms with the king, and often becoming the king. As much as possible the Scottish earls, for policy, and perhaps because of natural jealousy of their countryman, obscured Henry’s position as a Norse prince, writing him down in the records of Scotland always as comes, which was the ordinary Latin for the title of count or earl as held by themselves, who were only nobles. In the position of being between two stools, Prince Henry would accept the description, as keeping down antagonisms to him, from holding a foreign dignity of the kind absolutely next to supreme. It was practically supreme, for he held a regular royal court at Kirkwall, the head town of the Orkneys, famous for its cathedral and its castles or palaces.
His son and successor, William, Jarl or Prince of Orkney, was urged by the Stuart monarchs of Scotland, James the Second and James the Third, finally by the latter on occasion of his marriage in 1470 to Margaret of Denmark, to give up the principality for political peace between Scotland and Scandinavia; its annexation to the former kingdom taking place in 1468, preparatory to that marriage, as a dowry money pledge which, not fulfilled, makes those northern islands still technically Scandinavian territory, on payment of the sum. William, it is true, had compensation for royal acquisition of his island rights, by receiving the earldom of Caithness in 1455, and rich lands in Fifeshire, Dumfriesshire, and other counties, with a state yearly income, at the annexation; but he thus subsided from a sovereign position to that of a Scottish noble, whose lands and influence were afterwards wholly confined within the dominions of the Stuarts as kings of Scotland. The convenience of this to the latter is apparent, as it finished all potential aspirations of re-attaching to Scandinavia its former archipelago empire, which it is now known extended to Vinland or America, and which well down to King Haco’s death in 1263 at Kirkwall, occupied all the islands and much of the mainlands of Scotland and Ireland.
Torfaeus, the Scandinavian historian, who told the modern world most about Vinland, born in Iceland in 1636, and who died in 1720, one of the most learned of his period, gives the exact position to Henry, as prince of that archipelago of islands, in the following passage from his work in Latin entitled “Orcades”:—”In the year 1398, Henry Sinclair, Jarl of Orkney (being declared the next in rank to the king, by Archbishop Vinold of Nidar and the rest of the bishops and senators, with the other councillors of the Norwegian kingdom), proclaimed, by a long document, that Eric was the true heir and successor to the kingdom of Norway.” His precedence as second person in the Norwegian realm, sufficiently authenticates the standing; his sea-kingdom of the islands, in the days when ships were the wealth, making him probably the superior of his nominal sovereign in actual means.
If, however, nothing can be added to the question now practically settled, a fresh path of interest opens, to which Fiske’s purpose did not reach. Of the biography of his judiciously admired hero he gives only the faintest outline, but enough for the general plan of his work. It is more than probable, though his studies of English, German, Italian, French, and of Norse authorities in particular, are masterly in their width, that he had not access to materials by which he could fill in the portrait. If he had desired to accumulate biographic matter, a visit to Scotland and England would hardly have much aided, so far as the great libraries are concerned. There would be more hope in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, of securing facts about the life of one destined to bulk more and more largely to future Americans, as their typical hero primaeval. That, by various accidents and studies, knowledge of the man has accumulated in one’s hands, emboldened towards the present contribution. But it is not for a moment suggested that, should so distinguished a literary American as Fiske resolve to go into detail about Henry, Earl of Orkney, he could not amass a splendid burden of intelligence; his Scandinavian research promising much biographical fact, unknown to English and Latin survivals since the duke, prince, or earl’s time, for he is known by all these titles.
One of the minor difficulties is this alternating of titles, which a few words will explain. Henry was a Scottish subject, the baron of Roslin Castle, so famous to this hour as an ancient fortified home, with its exquisite Gothic chapel, the wonder of Europe. Situated seven miles from Edinburgh, on the steep banks of a stream whose fame of rock and wood and water is world-wide, Roslin is one of the show-places of the Scottish capital, and well known to every traveller; Sir Walter Scott’s poems and prose celebrating its history and glories by many a passage. In Henry, the the Scottish and Norse sovereignties overlapped each other, from his holding Roslin and the principality of Orkney and Shetland; which principality implied historic right, from the Scandinavian point of view, to all the western isles of Scotland, as well as to the Farce Islands, if not to Iceland. The Scotch kings and nobility, having conquered the Hebrides, which to Bute and Arran in Firth of Clyde were formerly Norwegian, held closest watch over his position and possible pretensions; who, however, seemed to be entirely loyal to his Edinburgh locality and associations, while faithful to the King of Norway, to whom he paid homage in the feudal style, as earl, duke, or prince, for his northern territories. Earl as a dignity had not the same force in Scotland and Scandinavia. The jarl or earl of the latter was higher than the duke as we have him in Britain, who is merely the first noble. Of the equivalent to a Norwegian earl, a Normandy duke is best example, who, though he swore homage to the King of France, was to all intents and purposes an independent prince, wearing a crown, waging war solely at his own will, and doing sovereign acts, with the shadowiest or no reference to his feudal superior. The history of Norway from Harold Fairhair, who became in 872 its first ruler, shows the jarl on all but equal terms with the king, and often becoming the king. As much as possible the Scottish earls, for policy, and perhaps because of natural jealousy of their countryman, obscured Henry’s position as a Norse prince, writing him down in the records of Scotland always as comes, which was the ordinary Latin for the title of count or earl as held by themselves, who were only nobles. In the position of being between two stools, Prince Henry would accept the description, as keeping down antagonisms to him, from holding a foreign dignity of the kind absolutely next to supreme. It was practically supreme, for he held a regular royal court at Kirkwall, the head town of the Orkneys, famous for its cathedral and its castles or palaces.
His son and successor, William, Jarl or Prince of Orkney, was urged by the Stuart monarchs of Scotland, James the Second and James the Third, finally by the latter on occasion of his marriage in 1470 to Margaret of Denmark, to give up the principality for political peace between Scotland and Scandinavia; its annexation to the former kingdom taking place in 1468, preparatory to that marriage, as a dowry money pledge which, not fulfilled, makes those northern islands still technically Scandinavian territory, on payment of the sum. William, it is true, had compensation for royal acquisition of his island rights, by receiving the earldom of Caithness in 1455, and rich lands in Fifeshire, Dumfriesshire, and other counties, with a state yearly income, at the annexation; but he thus subsided from a sovereign position to that of a Scottish noble, whose lands and influence were afterwards wholly confined within the dominions of the Stuarts as kings of Scotland. The convenience of this to the latter is apparent, as it finished all potential aspirations of re-attaching to Scandinavia its former archipelago empire, which it is now known extended to Vinland or America, and which well down to King Haco’s death in 1263 at Kirkwall, occupied all the islands and much of the mainlands of Scotland and Ireland.
Torfaeus, the Scandinavian historian, who told the modern world most about Vinland, born in Iceland in 1636, and who died in 1720, one of the most learned of his period, gives the exact position to Henry, as prince of that archipelago of islands, in the following passage from his work in Latin entitled “Orcades”:—”In the year 1398, Henry Sinclair, Jarl of Orkney (being declared the next in rank to the king, by Archbishop Vinold of Nidar and the rest of the bishops and senators, with the other councillors of the Norwegian kingdom), proclaimed, by a long document, that Eric was the true heir and successor to the kingdom of Norway.” His precedence as second person in the Norwegian realm, sufficiently authenticates the standing; his sea-kingdom of the islands, in the days when ships were the wealth, making him probably the superior of his nominal sovereign in actual means.
II.
Before noting further biography of Prince Henry, let mention be made of a notable piece published in the United States, December, 1892, entitled “Honours for Seven,” by Marie de Sancto Claro, and also an article in the Boston Transcript of 12th September, 1892, over the signature Mary Whitney Emerson, Morgan City, Louisiana; both papers the work of the secretary of the De Sancto Claro Society. She brilliantly makes a Pleiades of discoverers of America, namely, the five Norse rovers from the ninth century, Henry Sinclair, Prince of the Norseland Isles, and, lastly, Columbus. What is even more striking, is her very original idea that all those daring adventurers, except Columbus, the Italian, were of the blood royal of Rollo, Duke of Normandy. This Norseman finally established himself in that fairest province of France as sovereign, in 912, by a treaty with King Charles, who gave him his daughter in marriage to clinch the bargain. Their meeting, backed by armies, took place at St. Clair Castle on the river Epte, the ruins of which still top a conical hill commanding a view of the richest landscape in Gaul, as is testified from actual examination during a long summer day. When so extraordinary a theory was realised, which made Prince Henry the sixth of his relatives who touched at, and resided during intervals in, Vineland or North America, one thought only would come, namely, that the moral courage, as well as the quick insight, belongs especially to woman, and that in genealogical and historical studies she has fresh fields and pastures new to conquer. The point is so startling, but withal probable, that the masculine mind dare not, till after much slow plodding, say a word about it. Should the De Sancto Claro Society establish such a sweeping and marvellous conclusion, by many years’ study, that of itself would give reason for its existence. The Norse discoverers, especially the pink of them, Prince Henry, would completely take the wind out of the brave enough sails of Columbus; though detracting nothing from his essentially heroic spirit and labours. Henceforth he, however, would be considered a follower and not a leader; a thought not in any degree novel, because it has been frequently stated that he gained his knowledge of the existence of the American continent during a voyage to Iceland; the statement prevalent long before rivalry with him as the discoverer, true or pretended, had developed. In civilised periods, Prince Henry of the Orkneys preceded him there by more than a century, aided by the keen Italian intellect, the source then of so many novelties, though the prince was himself the daring Æneas in search of new kingdoms.
The secretary of the society is Mrs. May St. Clair Whitney-Emerson, only daughter of Levi St. Clair Whitney, whose mother was Mary St. Clair, descended from John Sinclair of Lybster, Reay, fraternal nephew of George, fifth Earl of Caithness. John went from Leith to Exeter, New Hampshire, America, in 1655; and well is he represented by his Emerson descendant among his other kin there. The society by enlarging its borders, on scientific principles of fairness towards feminine descent, to many surnames, does away with a sameness which dims the attractions of British clan societies, such as the Mackay, Fraser, Cameron, and others. Republican generosity towards men and women generally, as equals before God and the law, is not offended by genealogical superiorities of catholic width, founded on actual attainments by energy, blood, or even chance, which rules proverbially in human affairs. It is a parallel that a Lord Provost of Edinburgh, John Sinclair, a famous brewer in Leith, the forefather and first baronet, 1636, of the family of Stevenston, Haddingtonshire, and since 1765 also of Murkle in Caithness-shire, founded a Sinclair society about 16:20, noted as extant well on in the eighteenth century. He died in 1648. A Scotch song entitled “The Clouting of the Cauldron” was made about the brewer, who was son of George, the second son of Matthew of Longformacus, who flourished in 1567, an early offshoot from the Roslin stem, the lairds of Longformacus baronets till their extinction at the beginning of the nineteenth century. If, as Hay says, James of Longformacus who, with his son John, fought at the battle of Homildon Hill in 1401, was the son of the discoverer of America, the brewer had good traditions from the Longformacus Berwickshire lairds. Another son he supposes to have been the Sir Walter who was killed in that fight, so fatal to Scots. In 1388, at the battle of Chevy Chase or Otterburne, Sir Walter and Sir John, brothers, it is thought, received the last breath of their relative the Douglas, of which scene of sorrowful affection Froissart, the French chronicler, tells; “Hotspur” Percy their beaten opponent. Sir John was brother of Prince Henry.'
The secretary of the society is Mrs. May St. Clair Whitney-Emerson, only daughter of Levi St. Clair Whitney, whose mother was Mary St. Clair, descended from John Sinclair of Lybster, Reay, fraternal nephew of George, fifth Earl of Caithness. John went from Leith to Exeter, New Hampshire, America, in 1655; and well is he represented by his Emerson descendant among his other kin there. The society by enlarging its borders, on scientific principles of fairness towards feminine descent, to many surnames, does away with a sameness which dims the attractions of British clan societies, such as the Mackay, Fraser, Cameron, and others. Republican generosity towards men and women generally, as equals before God and the law, is not offended by genealogical superiorities of catholic width, founded on actual attainments by energy, blood, or even chance, which rules proverbially in human affairs. It is a parallel that a Lord Provost of Edinburgh, John Sinclair, a famous brewer in Leith, the forefather and first baronet, 1636, of the family of Stevenston, Haddingtonshire, and since 1765 also of Murkle in Caithness-shire, founded a Sinclair society about 16:20, noted as extant well on in the eighteenth century. He died in 1648. A Scotch song entitled “The Clouting of the Cauldron” was made about the brewer, who was son of George, the second son of Matthew of Longformacus, who flourished in 1567, an early offshoot from the Roslin stem, the lairds of Longformacus baronets till their extinction at the beginning of the nineteenth century. If, as Hay says, James of Longformacus who, with his son John, fought at the battle of Homildon Hill in 1401, was the son of the discoverer of America, the brewer had good traditions from the Longformacus Berwickshire lairds. Another son he supposes to have been the Sir Walter who was killed in that fight, so fatal to Scots. In 1388, at the battle of Chevy Chase or Otterburne, Sir Walter and Sir John, brothers, it is thought, received the last breath of their relative the Douglas, of which scene of sorrowful affection Froissart, the French chronicler, tells; “Hotspur” Percy their beaten opponent. Sir John was brother of Prince Henry.'
III.
The way is now open to exhibit passages from the life of, at any rate, by far the greatest of the discoverers, as the world ordinarily calculates greatness; and perhaps according to such special worlds as those of history, literature, and science. In discussing the narrative by the Zeno brothers from Venice, Fiske says Sir Nicholas Zeno arrived in his ship at the Faroe Isles, north of Orkney and Shetland, in 1390, only to be shipwrecked. Prince Henry, who had been invested with his principality by Hacon VI. of Norway in 1379, was there with thirteen vessels, and succoured the strangers generously, communicating by speech with them, the narrative says, in Latin. Sir Antonio Zeno arrived at the Orkneys in 1391, and did not return to Venice till 1406, during which time the American expeditions took place. A letter from Sir Antonio to the ambassador, Sir Carlo, another brother in Italy, describes their kind lord as “a prince as worthy of immortal memory as any that ever lived, for his great bravery and remarkable goodness.” The above dates authenticate the particular Henry of the Roslin family’s lineage who is meant; for there are several of this first name in the line, and like him, men of the highest mark in the affairs of states especially of the north of Europe. He was grandson of Henry the first prince of Orkney of his surname.
His grandfather married Elizabeth, daughter of Julius Sparre, Prince of Orkney, Earl of Caithness, and Earl of Stratherne, through which marriage that Henry became prince. Father Hay, born at Edinburgh, 16th August, 1661, the historian of the family, who was a relative, his mother Jean Spottiswood being first Mrs. Hay, and then lady of the laird of Roslin, had access to the charters of Roslin Castle, and says the prince had power to stamp coin within his dominions, to make laws, and to remit crimes. “He had his sword of honour carried before him wherever he went; he had a crown in his armorial bearings; and he bore a crown on his head when he constituted laws.” But Hay’s next statement is still more important, the quotation already given from Torfaeus about the grandson, the hero of discovery, corroborated:—“In a word, he was subject to none, except that he held his lands from the kings of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and paid homage. To him also it belonged to crown the kings, so that in all those parts he was esteemed second person to the king. He built Kirkwall Castle [demolished 1615], Orkney, and proved valiant in all his doings.” The famous letter of the Scotch nobility had his signature at Arbroath in 1320, asking the pope to acknowledge Robert Bruce as king; and he is designed there as Panetarius Scotiae, that is, royal or chief baker of Scotland, a household office of state understood by reference to the same under the Pharaoh kings of Egypt. He was governor of the kingdom’s corn trade thus. Of the dignity, no easier proof can be given than that Sir Andrew Murray, when husband of a daughter of Robert I., was Panetarius Scotiae before it became hereditary to the Earls of Orkney. In Dr. Joseph Anderson’s 1873 edition of the “Orkneyinga Saga,” with introduction and notes discussing these subjects extensively, there is one piece of information which attaches the discoverer’s line early and directly to Caithness events. An Alexander Brown who was an enemy of King Robert Bruce had fled to Orkney, and in 1321 “Henry Sinclair, the king’s bailie in Caithness,” was commissioned to secure him. This is the Panetarius Scotiae, and his crown factorship perhaps explains the first arrival of the Roslins in the regions of the Pentland Firth. Rymer’s “Foedera” mentions him as one of the twelve earls of Scotland, “Scotland” then not implying the Orkneys, whose signature Edward II. of England asked in 1323 to the truce of thirteen years between himself and King Robert Bruce; but if, as this implies, and as is said, he had a charter of Caithness, it was resumed by David II. or Robert II., whose son David Stuart had the peerage before 1378. Henry being king’s chamberlain of the county, promotion to its earldom was almost a corollary, despite Sir Robert Gordon’s weak carping, his wishes the fathers to his thoughts.
This first Prince Henry’s son William, was father of the discoverer. William married the eldest daughter of Malise Grahame; from which family came two of Scotland’s greatest men, the Marquis of Montrose and Viscount Dundee. Through her, Camden the great antiquary says in his Latin work “Britannia,” William, grandson of this William, obtained the earldom of Caithness in 1455; and he is described as regius panetarius, the royal baker; the earldom, it would seem, a resumption rather than a new grant. The Grahame earls of Strathernc had rights over Caithness and over lands in Orkney, through marriage with one of the Sparre women, just like the Sinclairs; and they were all near relatives accordingly, with involved positions, some of the male Sparres long contesting the standing of the heiresses, their husbands, and descendants.
His grandfather married Elizabeth, daughter of Julius Sparre, Prince of Orkney, Earl of Caithness, and Earl of Stratherne, through which marriage that Henry became prince. Father Hay, born at Edinburgh, 16th August, 1661, the historian of the family, who was a relative, his mother Jean Spottiswood being first Mrs. Hay, and then lady of the laird of Roslin, had access to the charters of Roslin Castle, and says the prince had power to stamp coin within his dominions, to make laws, and to remit crimes. “He had his sword of honour carried before him wherever he went; he had a crown in his armorial bearings; and he bore a crown on his head when he constituted laws.” But Hay’s next statement is still more important, the quotation already given from Torfaeus about the grandson, the hero of discovery, corroborated:—“In a word, he was subject to none, except that he held his lands from the kings of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and paid homage. To him also it belonged to crown the kings, so that in all those parts he was esteemed second person to the king. He built Kirkwall Castle [demolished 1615], Orkney, and proved valiant in all his doings.” The famous letter of the Scotch nobility had his signature at Arbroath in 1320, asking the pope to acknowledge Robert Bruce as king; and he is designed there as Panetarius Scotiae, that is, royal or chief baker of Scotland, a household office of state understood by reference to the same under the Pharaoh kings of Egypt. He was governor of the kingdom’s corn trade thus. Of the dignity, no easier proof can be given than that Sir Andrew Murray, when husband of a daughter of Robert I., was Panetarius Scotiae before it became hereditary to the Earls of Orkney. In Dr. Joseph Anderson’s 1873 edition of the “Orkneyinga Saga,” with introduction and notes discussing these subjects extensively, there is one piece of information which attaches the discoverer’s line early and directly to Caithness events. An Alexander Brown who was an enemy of King Robert Bruce had fled to Orkney, and in 1321 “Henry Sinclair, the king’s bailie in Caithness,” was commissioned to secure him. This is the Panetarius Scotiae, and his crown factorship perhaps explains the first arrival of the Roslins in the regions of the Pentland Firth. Rymer’s “Foedera” mentions him as one of the twelve earls of Scotland, “Scotland” then not implying the Orkneys, whose signature Edward II. of England asked in 1323 to the truce of thirteen years between himself and King Robert Bruce; but if, as this implies, and as is said, he had a charter of Caithness, it was resumed by David II. or Robert II., whose son David Stuart had the peerage before 1378. Henry being king’s chamberlain of the county, promotion to its earldom was almost a corollary, despite Sir Robert Gordon’s weak carping, his wishes the fathers to his thoughts.
This first Prince Henry’s son William, was father of the discoverer. William married the eldest daughter of Malise Grahame; from which family came two of Scotland’s greatest men, the Marquis of Montrose and Viscount Dundee. Through her, Camden the great antiquary says in his Latin work “Britannia,” William, grandson of this William, obtained the earldom of Caithness in 1455; and he is described as regius panetarius, the royal baker; the earldom, it would seem, a resumption rather than a new grant. The Grahame earls of Strathernc had rights over Caithness and over lands in Orkney, through marriage with one of the Sparre women, just like the Sinclairs; and they were all near relatives accordingly, with involved positions, some of the male Sparres long contesting the standing of the heiresses, their husbands, and descendants.
IV.
Grahame by his mother, Prince Henry, the navigator to America, has the following written of him by Father Hay:—“He was Prince of Orkney, Lord Sinclair, Lord Zetland, the Lord Chief Justice of Scotland [an office obtained hereditarily by his grandfather], Admiral of the Scottish seas, Lordwarden of the three marches, Lord Nithsdale, baron of Roslin, Pentland, Cousland, Cardan, Hcrbertshire, Hcctfoord, Grahameshaw, Kirkton, and Cavers. He was also Great Protector, Keeper, and Guardian of the Prince of Scotland [as his grandfather was in his time, and his father Prince William, if such care of the crown-prince was hereditary]. He married Egidia Douglas, daughter to Sir William [and niece of one of the several Archibalds who were Earls of Douglas]. The fair Egidia excelled all in her time, grand-daughter to King Robert the Second. Her beauty so dazzled the eyes of beholders that they became presently astonished, but recovered in admiring this princess. Through the marriage, the Prince of Orkney obtained great lands and authority, all the lordship of Nithsdale, the wardenry of the three marches between England and Scotland, the baronies of Hectford, Herbertshire, Grahameshaw, Kirkton, Cavers, and Roxburgh, the sheriffship of Nithsdale, with the provostship of the town of Dumfries. He was a valiant prince, well-proportioned, of middle stature, hasty, and stern.”
Ho had nine sisters, the eldest the Countess of Douglas, the second married to Ramsay of Dalhousie, the third to the laird of Calder, the fourth to Forrester of Corstorphine, the fifth the Countess of Errol, her husband Lord High Constable of Scotland, the sixth wedded to Tvveedie of Drumelzier, the seventh to Cockburn of Stirling, the eighth to Herring of Mareton, and the ninth to Lord Somerville. His eldest daughter was Countess of March, and his daughter Beatrix was wife of James, the seventh Earl of Douglas, mother of two Earls of Douglas, of Archibald Douglas the Earl of Murray, of Hugh Douglas the Earl of Ormond, of John Douglas the Lord Balveny, Henry Douglas the Bishop of Dunkeld; her daughters, Margaret, Lady Dalkeith, Janet, Lady Fleming, and Elizabeth Douglas, wife of John Stuart of the royal family, Earl of Buchan and Constable of France. Beatrix’s Latin epitaph is extant. Her father, the discoverer, had the greatest part of the nobility his vassals, under bond of manrent, as Lords Salton, Chrichton, Seaton, Dirlton, Halifexburn, Livingstone, Fleming, Borthwick, and Dalkeith, with Foster of Westendry, Preston of Craigmillar, Herring of Gilmerton, Sinclair of Herdmanston, Wauohope of Niddry, and the lairds of Edmiston, Pennycook, Henderleith, Douglas of Pumpherston, and many others. Except Earl Douglas and the Earl of March, most of the Scottish landholders were bound to him.
“He had continually in his house,’’ says Hay, “300 riding gentlemen, and his princess had 55 gentlewomen, of whom 35 were ladies. He had his dainties tasted before him. When he went to Orkney, he had meeting him 300 men with scarlet gowns and coats of black velvet. It was he who built the great dungeon of Roslin Castle, and several walls there. He made parks for fallow and red deer. By King Robert [Stuart] the Third he was much esteemed, and therefore had Prince James, the first of that name, in keeping, lest he should be assassinated by the treason of Robert, Duke of Albany, Earl of Fife and Menteith, who had the whole government of the kingdom. After the king his brother’s death, Albany aimed at the crown, for by treason he had slain the king’s eldest son, and had thought to do the same to Prince James. Robert the Third, however, before his death, wrote letters to the kings of France and England, stating that his son was to go to the former country for his education; and he entrusted him, with young Percy, nephew of the Earl of Northumberland, to the Prince of Orkney in 1405 to pass the seas.”
“The Book of Cowper,” that is, Fordun, says, “The crown-prince stayed at a certain place a short time, when, behold his father the king secretly resolved to send away his dear son, consulting for his safety with a noble man, Henry, Earl of Orkney, and of an honourable family.” Leslie in his “History” states that Henry and some other earls were attached to this voyage. Buchanan’s account is:--“The ship having been equipped at the Bass, a rock rather than an island [in the Firth of Forth], and Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, appointed its captain, Prince James embarked, and while the vessel hugged the shore near Flamborough Head [in Yorkshire], either forced by stress of weather, or whether the youth wished to be refreshed a little from sea-sickness, he landed, and was seized by the English; and, while their king should decide what was to be done about him, he was retained in his palace.” Boethius says, “A ship having been made ready, and letters of commendation sent to both kings, that fortune might be met whatever should happen, they set sail from the very strong Bass Castle, under command of Henry, Earl of Orkney, with other nobles accompanying him.” King Robert III., reputed bastard like William the Conqueror, is said to have died of grief at the news of the capture and perfidious retention of his son James Stuart in England. But Henry Fourth, the Usurper, had the grace to educate the youth to the highest possible point; favoured in this by the splendid grounding he had under the hereditary tutor of royalty, Henry, Earl of Orkney, whose castles of Roslin and Kirkwall were historically-acknowledged centres of learning. At Kirkwall Castle particularly, with its neighbouring huge cathedral of St. Magnus and the Bishop’s Palace, the crown-prince of Scotland had till his twelfth year the noblest initiation. That he afterwards became the author of “The King’s Quhair,” a poem hardly second to the best efforts of his contemporary Chaucer, is no wonder at all with such luck of early and later education. The discoverer had all the tales of America to tell to his beloved pupil, for whom he supplied masters in learning of the first European quality. That Henry could speak to the Zonoes in Latin, was indication of at least one section of his scholarly faculty.
But if the future king could be retained in the English court, his guardian was not the man to hug chains of the most gilded kind, but escaped from England. John Robison, indweller at Pentland, and tenant to the Prince of Orkney, came to where his master was imprisoned; and there he played the fool so cunningly, that without any suspicion he was allowed to enter the prison [probably the Tower of London], as often as he pleased. Watching his opportunity, he conveyed the Prince of Orkney outside the gates in disguised apparel prepared for the purpose. They stopped not till they reached a thick forest, where they hid next day, continuing their journey by night, lest they should be taken by their pursuers. They reached the Borders, though the king had put his officers everywhere on the alert. Two southerns there insulted them by asking them to hold their horses, both of whom Prince Henry struck lifeless to the ground [no doubt, after blows on each side in the usual manner of armed quarrel]. When they arrived at Roslin Castle, Robison would take no reward for his devotion. The two other magnates of Scotland, Archibald the Earl of Douglas and George Dunbar the Earl of March, together with all his vassal nobles, at once visited Prince Henry on his return, to congratulate him on his gallant escape. But Robert Stuart, Duke of Albany, the governor of the kingdom, because of hatred for saving the heir to the throne from his hands, accused him of betraying James to the English, and appointed a court to try him for treason, to involve his life and fortunes. Prince Henry promptly met the trick, indignant at such a forged accusation. Collecting great forces, especially from the Zetland and the Orkney isles, he sent an answer to the summons of Regent Albany, that he would certainly appear on the day appointed for his trial, but that one town could not contain them both, without special preparations of lodging for men and stabling for horses. The regent was so offended at this threat and pleasantry, that he had 10,000 men ready in Edinburgh for the day, so as to deal with Prince Henry by force. Having 40,000 men, the latter capped Duke Albany’s efforts, who, with three of his officials, fled to Falkland Castle, Fifeshire, where David, Earl of Rothesay, the heir to the throne, Prince James’s eldest brother, lost his life. Sinclair, Douglas, and Dunbar then constituted a parliament to depose Albany, and to impeach him for treason as murderer of David, the story running that he had starved him to death. But the regent sent imploring letters and messengers to the triumvirate, who, for the public weal, restored him to office, his skill as a ruler generally admitted, and his crime, if he did it, not provable; a parliamentary document having pronounced him not responsible for his nephew’s death, his enemies ascribing such a finding to the general dread of his ability.
Not long after these events a dispute arose between Henry and his relation Archibald, Earl of Douglas, about the sheriffship of Nithsdale, various lands, and the wardenry of the marches, which he had by his beautiful wife, Egidia Douglas. It rose to such a pitch that Prince Henry would not allow Earl Douglas to ride through his Roslin estates, on his way to the court or capital, Edinburgh. But, says Hay, ”for all this, there was no slaughter.” There is a complaint in Latin by the princess, as late as 1428, then a dowager, telling the king that she had been despoiled of Nithsdale and its pertinents. She is called the noble and venerable lady, Egidia, Countess of Orkney and Lady of the Vale of Xith; her son, Prince William of Orkney, backing up the complaint, her brave husband the discoverer then dead.
To return to him, he had his victuals brought by sea from the north, in great abundance, to Roslin Castle. His house was free for all men, so that there was no poor person of his friends who did not receive food and raiment, and no tenant rented to a degree that did not leave him prosperous. “In a word, he was a pattern of piety to all his posterity.” To the abbey of Holyrood House, Edinburgh, he gave lands which could support 7000 sheep; and to the service of God, in many churches, he bountifully presented gold, silver, silks, and other materials necessary for beauty of worship. His own relatives were well provided for. his legally able brother John, who married Ingeberg, daughter of Waldemar, King of Denmark, receiving Kirkton, Loganhouse, Earncraig, East and West Summer-Hopes, with other lands. One of his daughters married Dunbar, Earl of March. Beatrix his daughter has been mentioned as Countess of Douglas.
A “History of Sutherland,” quoted by Hay, says Henry was Prince of Orkney and Shetland, Duke of Oldenburg in Denmark, Lord Sinclair, Knight of the Cockle of France, Knight of the Order of St. George of England, though it is noted that he is not so enrolled in the register of St. George knights at Windsor. His son William added to these titles Knight of the Golden Fleece of Spain, Lord Chancellor of Scotland, till, by accumulation of an able line, their titles might “weary a Spaniard,” as the author carps.
Many further details can be gathered about the discoverer from the “Genealogy” by Father Richard Augustine Hay, Prior of St. Pierremont, France, which work includes in it the chartulary or charters of Roslin. Henry’s birth is supposed to have taken place about 1345, and his death certainly was between 1417 and 1428, by two charters recorded in the chartulary, though a nearer dating than this can be fixed gradually hereafter.
Ho had nine sisters, the eldest the Countess of Douglas, the second married to Ramsay of Dalhousie, the third to the laird of Calder, the fourth to Forrester of Corstorphine, the fifth the Countess of Errol, her husband Lord High Constable of Scotland, the sixth wedded to Tvveedie of Drumelzier, the seventh to Cockburn of Stirling, the eighth to Herring of Mareton, and the ninth to Lord Somerville. His eldest daughter was Countess of March, and his daughter Beatrix was wife of James, the seventh Earl of Douglas, mother of two Earls of Douglas, of Archibald Douglas the Earl of Murray, of Hugh Douglas the Earl of Ormond, of John Douglas the Lord Balveny, Henry Douglas the Bishop of Dunkeld; her daughters, Margaret, Lady Dalkeith, Janet, Lady Fleming, and Elizabeth Douglas, wife of John Stuart of the royal family, Earl of Buchan and Constable of France. Beatrix’s Latin epitaph is extant. Her father, the discoverer, had the greatest part of the nobility his vassals, under bond of manrent, as Lords Salton, Chrichton, Seaton, Dirlton, Halifexburn, Livingstone, Fleming, Borthwick, and Dalkeith, with Foster of Westendry, Preston of Craigmillar, Herring of Gilmerton, Sinclair of Herdmanston, Wauohope of Niddry, and the lairds of Edmiston, Pennycook, Henderleith, Douglas of Pumpherston, and many others. Except Earl Douglas and the Earl of March, most of the Scottish landholders were bound to him.
“He had continually in his house,’’ says Hay, “300 riding gentlemen, and his princess had 55 gentlewomen, of whom 35 were ladies. He had his dainties tasted before him. When he went to Orkney, he had meeting him 300 men with scarlet gowns and coats of black velvet. It was he who built the great dungeon of Roslin Castle, and several walls there. He made parks for fallow and red deer. By King Robert [Stuart] the Third he was much esteemed, and therefore had Prince James, the first of that name, in keeping, lest he should be assassinated by the treason of Robert, Duke of Albany, Earl of Fife and Menteith, who had the whole government of the kingdom. After the king his brother’s death, Albany aimed at the crown, for by treason he had slain the king’s eldest son, and had thought to do the same to Prince James. Robert the Third, however, before his death, wrote letters to the kings of France and England, stating that his son was to go to the former country for his education; and he entrusted him, with young Percy, nephew of the Earl of Northumberland, to the Prince of Orkney in 1405 to pass the seas.”
“The Book of Cowper,” that is, Fordun, says, “The crown-prince stayed at a certain place a short time, when, behold his father the king secretly resolved to send away his dear son, consulting for his safety with a noble man, Henry, Earl of Orkney, and of an honourable family.” Leslie in his “History” states that Henry and some other earls were attached to this voyage. Buchanan’s account is:--“The ship having been equipped at the Bass, a rock rather than an island [in the Firth of Forth], and Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, appointed its captain, Prince James embarked, and while the vessel hugged the shore near Flamborough Head [in Yorkshire], either forced by stress of weather, or whether the youth wished to be refreshed a little from sea-sickness, he landed, and was seized by the English; and, while their king should decide what was to be done about him, he was retained in his palace.” Boethius says, “A ship having been made ready, and letters of commendation sent to both kings, that fortune might be met whatever should happen, they set sail from the very strong Bass Castle, under command of Henry, Earl of Orkney, with other nobles accompanying him.” King Robert III., reputed bastard like William the Conqueror, is said to have died of grief at the news of the capture and perfidious retention of his son James Stuart in England. But Henry Fourth, the Usurper, had the grace to educate the youth to the highest possible point; favoured in this by the splendid grounding he had under the hereditary tutor of royalty, Henry, Earl of Orkney, whose castles of Roslin and Kirkwall were historically-acknowledged centres of learning. At Kirkwall Castle particularly, with its neighbouring huge cathedral of St. Magnus and the Bishop’s Palace, the crown-prince of Scotland had till his twelfth year the noblest initiation. That he afterwards became the author of “The King’s Quhair,” a poem hardly second to the best efforts of his contemporary Chaucer, is no wonder at all with such luck of early and later education. The discoverer had all the tales of America to tell to his beloved pupil, for whom he supplied masters in learning of the first European quality. That Henry could speak to the Zonoes in Latin, was indication of at least one section of his scholarly faculty.
But if the future king could be retained in the English court, his guardian was not the man to hug chains of the most gilded kind, but escaped from England. John Robison, indweller at Pentland, and tenant to the Prince of Orkney, came to where his master was imprisoned; and there he played the fool so cunningly, that without any suspicion he was allowed to enter the prison [probably the Tower of London], as often as he pleased. Watching his opportunity, he conveyed the Prince of Orkney outside the gates in disguised apparel prepared for the purpose. They stopped not till they reached a thick forest, where they hid next day, continuing their journey by night, lest they should be taken by their pursuers. They reached the Borders, though the king had put his officers everywhere on the alert. Two southerns there insulted them by asking them to hold their horses, both of whom Prince Henry struck lifeless to the ground [no doubt, after blows on each side in the usual manner of armed quarrel]. When they arrived at Roslin Castle, Robison would take no reward for his devotion. The two other magnates of Scotland, Archibald the Earl of Douglas and George Dunbar the Earl of March, together with all his vassal nobles, at once visited Prince Henry on his return, to congratulate him on his gallant escape. But Robert Stuart, Duke of Albany, the governor of the kingdom, because of hatred for saving the heir to the throne from his hands, accused him of betraying James to the English, and appointed a court to try him for treason, to involve his life and fortunes. Prince Henry promptly met the trick, indignant at such a forged accusation. Collecting great forces, especially from the Zetland and the Orkney isles, he sent an answer to the summons of Regent Albany, that he would certainly appear on the day appointed for his trial, but that one town could not contain them both, without special preparations of lodging for men and stabling for horses. The regent was so offended at this threat and pleasantry, that he had 10,000 men ready in Edinburgh for the day, so as to deal with Prince Henry by force. Having 40,000 men, the latter capped Duke Albany’s efforts, who, with three of his officials, fled to Falkland Castle, Fifeshire, where David, Earl of Rothesay, the heir to the throne, Prince James’s eldest brother, lost his life. Sinclair, Douglas, and Dunbar then constituted a parliament to depose Albany, and to impeach him for treason as murderer of David, the story running that he had starved him to death. But the regent sent imploring letters and messengers to the triumvirate, who, for the public weal, restored him to office, his skill as a ruler generally admitted, and his crime, if he did it, not provable; a parliamentary document having pronounced him not responsible for his nephew’s death, his enemies ascribing such a finding to the general dread of his ability.
Not long after these events a dispute arose between Henry and his relation Archibald, Earl of Douglas, about the sheriffship of Nithsdale, various lands, and the wardenry of the marches, which he had by his beautiful wife, Egidia Douglas. It rose to such a pitch that Prince Henry would not allow Earl Douglas to ride through his Roslin estates, on his way to the court or capital, Edinburgh. But, says Hay, ”for all this, there was no slaughter.” There is a complaint in Latin by the princess, as late as 1428, then a dowager, telling the king that she had been despoiled of Nithsdale and its pertinents. She is called the noble and venerable lady, Egidia, Countess of Orkney and Lady of the Vale of Xith; her son, Prince William of Orkney, backing up the complaint, her brave husband the discoverer then dead.
To return to him, he had his victuals brought by sea from the north, in great abundance, to Roslin Castle. His house was free for all men, so that there was no poor person of his friends who did not receive food and raiment, and no tenant rented to a degree that did not leave him prosperous. “In a word, he was a pattern of piety to all his posterity.” To the abbey of Holyrood House, Edinburgh, he gave lands which could support 7000 sheep; and to the service of God, in many churches, he bountifully presented gold, silver, silks, and other materials necessary for beauty of worship. His own relatives were well provided for. his legally able brother John, who married Ingeberg, daughter of Waldemar, King of Denmark, receiving Kirkton, Loganhouse, Earncraig, East and West Summer-Hopes, with other lands. One of his daughters married Dunbar, Earl of March. Beatrix his daughter has been mentioned as Countess of Douglas.
A “History of Sutherland,” quoted by Hay, says Henry was Prince of Orkney and Shetland, Duke of Oldenburg in Denmark, Lord Sinclair, Knight of the Cockle of France, Knight of the Order of St. George of England, though it is noted that he is not so enrolled in the register of St. George knights at Windsor. His son William added to these titles Knight of the Golden Fleece of Spain, Lord Chancellor of Scotland, till, by accumulation of an able line, their titles might “weary a Spaniard,” as the author carps.
Many further details can be gathered about the discoverer from the “Genealogy” by Father Richard Augustine Hay, Prior of St. Pierremont, France, which work includes in it the chartulary or charters of Roslin. Henry’s birth is supposed to have taken place about 1345, and his death certainly was between 1417 and 1428, by two charters recorded in the chartulary, though a nearer dating than this can be fixed gradually hereafter.
V.
His beautiful Douglas was the wife of his old age, which is proved, among other ways, by the fact that the rule of the Orkneys was held by prefects, appointed by the Norwegian crown, till Prince William his son came of age. Thomas Tulloch, Bishop of Orkney, in 1422 was entrusted with the administration of the northern isles by Eric, King of Norway; and the “Book of Cowper” expressly mentions that the second Henry who was count of Orkney died in that year. Another Latin work, by Meursius, says that in 1423 David Manners, a Scotchman, succeeded the bishop in the prefecture. But he ruled so badly that he was ejected from the province, and the government came again into Bishop Tulloch’s hands in 1428. It was not, according to Meursius, till 1434 that, in the month of August, King Eric conferred the county of Orkney, under the name of client, upon William Sinclair of the Scottish nobility, and received his homage. Another writer, Pontan, says that Eric the Eighth of Norway on 10th August, 1434, installed William de Sancto Claro, a noble Scotchman, as count of the Orkneys; the implication being that he had then reached age, such a ceremony happening at the accession of each of those princes, as was usual to the feudal system.
Pontan gives the terms of clientship between the king and this prince. The latter was to supply 100 men, fully armed, at three months’ notice, when the Norwegian service required soldiers, the king to give them all necessaries in the field. If Orkney and Shetland were invaded, William must collect all forces in the island and defend himself. He was not to build castles and fortresses without agreement of the king. The inhabitants, rich and poor, cleric and lay, would be bridled by the usual laws. Pomona island and its castle of Kirkwall, on William’s death, would return to the King of Norway or his successor. This is the usual surrender for the fresh grant to the new heir. There was to be no pledging of the returns obtained from dispensing justice. Little more bond was between them, evidently the amity of feudal subordination all that was meant. Some clauses about not exciting disputes within the domain, and of appealing to the laws of Norway as last resort, with commendation of the clergy to William’s care, completed the gentlest of clientships.
The prince’s witnesses and cautioners were Henry, Columba, and Robert, bishops respectively of Aberdeen, Apran, and Caithness, the Earls of Douglas, Angus, and March, Sir William Corek, Sir Alexander Ramsay, John Sinclair, and Andrew Chrichton, armsbearing gentlemen. In place of the hostages which his great-grandfather, Henry the First, Prince of the Orkneys, gave to Haco, King of Norway, the seals were accepted of Thomas Sinclair, David Mundtov, Olaf Geton, Alexander Proun, Robert Bcrion, and John Haroldson, armsbearers. He promised to send copies of his installation writ to the Archbishop of Nidro, Affleck by name, to Thomas Tulloch, Bishop of Orkney, the governor during his minority, to John, Bishop of Anflo, to Andrew, Bishop of Stavangcr, to Peter, Bishop of Hammer, to Olaf, Bishop of Bergen, to Erland, Erlandi, and the rest of knightly and senatorial rank of the kingdom of Norway. King James I. of Scotland stipulated with his uncle, King Eric of Norway, that the royal Scottish seal should be adhibited to these written conditions by William, Earl of Orkney, the document drawn up at Haffnia in Norway.
Both Father Hay and Torfaeus have Latin accounts of the investiture; the former getting his from Pontanus, book 9, p. 596, and the latter his from Scandinavia, where, says the historian, “the whole document is preserved in the royal archives, and a copy was made to me most clemently.” The substance of the investitures of all the princes of Orkney is almost the same; showing that the politeness of feudalism meant a formality rather than real bonds, an acknowledgment of comradeship more than any attempt of subordination, beyond what was inevitable. The European system of fee, feu, or food, at its flowering period of those centuries, was republican in its generosity of, at all events, equality among peers; a sovereign admittedly only the first among his nobles, as with William the Conqueror and his Normans. King Eric and Prince William of Orkney were therefore all but formally equals.
It was the distinguished son of the discoverer of America who became, as is generally reckoned, the first Sinclair Earl of Caithness; his mother’s complaint (the beautiful Egidia Douglas, of stature above ordinary, holy of life, excellent in her mind, with a soul of candour, to use the ancient phrases about her), that Nithsdale had been unjustly taken from her, satisfied by the grant to her son of the earldom of Caithness, from James the Second in 1455, in exchange for that beautiful valley, of which Dumfries is now the head town. The same monarch also created him Grand Master of the Freemasons of Scotland, hereditarily, see Mrs. Stowe’s “Sunny Memories;”. the building of Roslin Gothic chapel, an immortal testimony to his sympathy with the highest architecture. His descendant, the last Baron of Roslin, the model from whom Sir Walter Scott drew his Douglas of “The Lady of the Lake,” resigned the honour, as having no male descent, in circumstances of pomp and appreciation at Edinburgh in 177B, for which see The Scots Magazine. Prince William, the discoverer’s son, by marriages with a Douglas, and afterwards with a lady of the house of Sutherland, went into the closest affinity with Scottish royalty, beyond even what had been previously. Stoddart mentions that in 1422 the lawmen of Orkney granted attestation in favour of James Craigie, laird of Hope, husband of Margaret, daughter of Henry, Earl of Orkney, by Elizabeth, daughter of Malise, Earl of Orkney, Caithness, and Strathcrne. But she was Henry’s sister. George Crawford, in his “Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Scotland,” published at Edinburgh in 1726, pays the highest tributes, in the biography of Prince William, to his action in this legal office, which he resigned in 1458. His character is suggested by the inscription he had carved with Gothic characters over the door of Roslin Chapel, built by him in 1444, Forte est vinum, fortior est rex, fortiores sunt mulieres, super omnia vincit Veritas—” Wine is strong, the king is stronger, women are stronger, truth conquers over all.” He is written “Lord Chancellor of Scotland” in the confirmation of the earldom of Caithness on 29th April, 1456, by James II., “in compensation of his claim and title to the lordship of Nithsdale, offices, and pensions;” given to Sir William Douglas, son of Lord Galloway, on his contract of marriage with Giles Stuart, daughter to King Robert the Second by Elizabeth More, and sister to the Regent Albany. This is only one of many affinities of the Sinclairs and the Stuarts; the connections, through the Grahames, Douglases, and Sparres, of both lineages, closely involved, with respect to persons and estates.
But the purpose is more connected now with the father, Prince Henry, than this William, his son, Scotland and Norway’s most powerful subject; though it is of present day use to notice him as the first recorded Earl of Caithness of his surname. The fair Egidia Douglas had a predecessor as wife of Henry. There is a confirmation by Egidia, Countess of Orkney, Lady of Nithsdale, and Baroness of Herbertshire, of a charter she gave to Livingston of Callendar, Stirlingshire, of the lauds of Catsclcugh, dated 10th September, 1425; and it has the combined seal of herself and her husband Henry, the original in the Wigton charter-chest. The American interest of the seal displaying the heraldic shield need not be dwelt upon. The discoverer’s arms are on the right, the double tressure indicating his affinity to royalty, the galley of Orkney in the centre, while the engrailed cross is the original Sinclair arms. The princess’s arms are the left half of the shield; the lion of Galloway, in the lower quarter, famous in Douglas blazoning. It was in 1407, 17th September, that Archibald, Earl of Douglas, gave a charter of Herbertshire to Henry, Earl of Orkney, Lord Sinclair, the discoverer, to be held by him and his wife, “my niece;” the Regent Albany confirming it at Menteith on 20th November, 1407, “the second year of our reign.” If this was her portion on occasion of her marriage, it is easy to understand how it was that their son William was not actually ruling as prince of Orkney from 1422 for more than a decade, and how he was not installed till 1434. His birth seems to have been about 1410 to 1413, though it may have been earlier.
On 12th September, 1410, at Roslin, Prince Henry gave a charter to his brother-german, thus described to distinguish that he was not a half-brother, John, of the lands of Sunellis, Hope, and Loganhouse, near Edinburgh, which was ratified under the Great Seal in that city by Regent Albany on 24th September, 1410. Henry, Earl of Orkney, and a Lord William Sinclair signed a charter of Gogar, at Dirleton, 8th June, 1409, which the regent ratified at Falkland Castle, 11th May, 1411. Sir John Forrester of Corstorphine, Edinburgh, to whom one of Henry’s daughters was married, had the confirmation about this time of a loan of 300 nobles, receiving 12 merks yearly from Dysart and coals till it was repaid, the sum being the equivalent to £100 sterling, but of much more real value then. Forrester is called “our dearest cousin” in the pledge. At Edinburgh, 10th July, 1424, Henry, Earl of Orkney, resigned Uchtertyre, Perthshire, to Forrester of Corstorphine, as the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland records; but this date would make his death later than other sources indicate, and it must be a mistake of the printed copies of the register. One of Laing’s specimens in his Scottish Seals “ is the seal of Henry, Earl of Orkney, to a charter in favour of Forrester of Corstorphine, of date 26th November, 1407, and the charter of Uchtertyre must have been also earlier than 1424.
In a procuration to the same brother John dated Edinburgh, 1411, 10th November, Henry is called Earl of Orkney and Lord Sinclair and Lord Nithsdale; so that the last title came through his wife after the charter of the lands of Herbertshire. That he was old in 1411, this deputing or procuratory of his business to his “very dear brother-german,” the skilful John, son-in-law to the King of Denmark, and brother-in-law to Hagen, the King of Norway, may be an indication. An amnesty document between Henry and his relative Malise Sparre, in 1387, on 8th November, signed at Edinburgh, describes him then as Earl of Orkney and Lord of Roslin; so that the Douglas marriage was certainly subsequent to that date.
By the “Book of Cowper” a William died in 1422, the same year in which Prince Henry’s death took place; and the inference is that they were father and son. Henry had a son Lord William mentioned in the Gogar charter above of 1409 by his first marriage, as he had Prince William by his Douglas wife. The first William dying by disease in 1422, opened the succession to his half-brother William, then a boy of perhaps eleven. Nor is this mere inference, which is always dangerous in historical fields. Father Hay says that it is certain that Henry was “sent ambassador to Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1363, where there was a marriage celebrated between Margaret, daughter to Waldemar, King of Denmark, and Hagen, King of Norway.” About the same time he had a confirmation of the lands of Orkney; no doubt, when he came of age, or soon after. His procurators had to receive it, as he was himself too ill to go to Norway for the purpose.
We gather from these dates that the discoverer was born about 1340 and died in 1422, so that he reached longevity of more than eighty years, a family characteristic. But in a genealogy of the Stuarts published in the end of the last century written by Andrew Stuart, M.P., there is a dispensation extracted from the records in the Vatican, Rome, which would make Henry’s death earlier. It was given by Pope Martin V., the year after accession, on the 3rd of the Kalends of April, 1418, to Egidia Douglas, widow of Sir Henry Sinclair, and to Alexander Stuart, who could not marry without it, being in second and third degrees of affinity, the marriage to quiet family rancours. This would make 1417 the probable date of the discoverer’s death, at the latest, if the dispensation was copied correctly. A similar dispensation from Innocent VI., at Avignon, the year after his appointment, was given in 1353 to Thomas Stuart, Earl of Angus, and Margaret Sinclair, “a noble lady,” of the Roslin family so much interknit with the royal Stuarts. This Earl of Angus took Berwick from the English, see Buchanan, page 259, before the Stuarts were kings.
On Prince Henry’s installation “there was a marriage concluded between the Earl and King Hagen’s sister, who was daughter to Magnus, King of Sweden and Norway.” We know, therefore, the first wife of the discoverer of America; and it is a safe conclusion that through her the Roslins became Dukes of Oldenburg, then belonging to Denmark, the duchy her marriage portion. She is named Florentia in various books; and had, it would seem, an only son, the Lord William who died the same year as his father, but several daughters, who married into the Scotch and Scandinavian nobility.
Pontan gives the terms of clientship between the king and this prince. The latter was to supply 100 men, fully armed, at three months’ notice, when the Norwegian service required soldiers, the king to give them all necessaries in the field. If Orkney and Shetland were invaded, William must collect all forces in the island and defend himself. He was not to build castles and fortresses without agreement of the king. The inhabitants, rich and poor, cleric and lay, would be bridled by the usual laws. Pomona island and its castle of Kirkwall, on William’s death, would return to the King of Norway or his successor. This is the usual surrender for the fresh grant to the new heir. There was to be no pledging of the returns obtained from dispensing justice. Little more bond was between them, evidently the amity of feudal subordination all that was meant. Some clauses about not exciting disputes within the domain, and of appealing to the laws of Norway as last resort, with commendation of the clergy to William’s care, completed the gentlest of clientships.
The prince’s witnesses and cautioners were Henry, Columba, and Robert, bishops respectively of Aberdeen, Apran, and Caithness, the Earls of Douglas, Angus, and March, Sir William Corek, Sir Alexander Ramsay, John Sinclair, and Andrew Chrichton, armsbearing gentlemen. In place of the hostages which his great-grandfather, Henry the First, Prince of the Orkneys, gave to Haco, King of Norway, the seals were accepted of Thomas Sinclair, David Mundtov, Olaf Geton, Alexander Proun, Robert Bcrion, and John Haroldson, armsbearers. He promised to send copies of his installation writ to the Archbishop of Nidro, Affleck by name, to Thomas Tulloch, Bishop of Orkney, the governor during his minority, to John, Bishop of Anflo, to Andrew, Bishop of Stavangcr, to Peter, Bishop of Hammer, to Olaf, Bishop of Bergen, to Erland, Erlandi, and the rest of knightly and senatorial rank of the kingdom of Norway. King James I. of Scotland stipulated with his uncle, King Eric of Norway, that the royal Scottish seal should be adhibited to these written conditions by William, Earl of Orkney, the document drawn up at Haffnia in Norway.
Both Father Hay and Torfaeus have Latin accounts of the investiture; the former getting his from Pontanus, book 9, p. 596, and the latter his from Scandinavia, where, says the historian, “the whole document is preserved in the royal archives, and a copy was made to me most clemently.” The substance of the investitures of all the princes of Orkney is almost the same; showing that the politeness of feudalism meant a formality rather than real bonds, an acknowledgment of comradeship more than any attempt of subordination, beyond what was inevitable. The European system of fee, feu, or food, at its flowering period of those centuries, was republican in its generosity of, at all events, equality among peers; a sovereign admittedly only the first among his nobles, as with William the Conqueror and his Normans. King Eric and Prince William of Orkney were therefore all but formally equals.
It was the distinguished son of the discoverer of America who became, as is generally reckoned, the first Sinclair Earl of Caithness; his mother’s complaint (the beautiful Egidia Douglas, of stature above ordinary, holy of life, excellent in her mind, with a soul of candour, to use the ancient phrases about her), that Nithsdale had been unjustly taken from her, satisfied by the grant to her son of the earldom of Caithness, from James the Second in 1455, in exchange for that beautiful valley, of which Dumfries is now the head town. The same monarch also created him Grand Master of the Freemasons of Scotland, hereditarily, see Mrs. Stowe’s “Sunny Memories;”. the building of Roslin Gothic chapel, an immortal testimony to his sympathy with the highest architecture. His descendant, the last Baron of Roslin, the model from whom Sir Walter Scott drew his Douglas of “The Lady of the Lake,” resigned the honour, as having no male descent, in circumstances of pomp and appreciation at Edinburgh in 177B, for which see The Scots Magazine. Prince William, the discoverer’s son, by marriages with a Douglas, and afterwards with a lady of the house of Sutherland, went into the closest affinity with Scottish royalty, beyond even what had been previously. Stoddart mentions that in 1422 the lawmen of Orkney granted attestation in favour of James Craigie, laird of Hope, husband of Margaret, daughter of Henry, Earl of Orkney, by Elizabeth, daughter of Malise, Earl of Orkney, Caithness, and Strathcrne. But she was Henry’s sister. George Crawford, in his “Lives of the Lord Chancellors of Scotland,” published at Edinburgh in 1726, pays the highest tributes, in the biography of Prince William, to his action in this legal office, which he resigned in 1458. His character is suggested by the inscription he had carved with Gothic characters over the door of Roslin Chapel, built by him in 1444, Forte est vinum, fortior est rex, fortiores sunt mulieres, super omnia vincit Veritas—” Wine is strong, the king is stronger, women are stronger, truth conquers over all.” He is written “Lord Chancellor of Scotland” in the confirmation of the earldom of Caithness on 29th April, 1456, by James II., “in compensation of his claim and title to the lordship of Nithsdale, offices, and pensions;” given to Sir William Douglas, son of Lord Galloway, on his contract of marriage with Giles Stuart, daughter to King Robert the Second by Elizabeth More, and sister to the Regent Albany. This is only one of many affinities of the Sinclairs and the Stuarts; the connections, through the Grahames, Douglases, and Sparres, of both lineages, closely involved, with respect to persons and estates.
But the purpose is more connected now with the father, Prince Henry, than this William, his son, Scotland and Norway’s most powerful subject; though it is of present day use to notice him as the first recorded Earl of Caithness of his surname. The fair Egidia Douglas had a predecessor as wife of Henry. There is a confirmation by Egidia, Countess of Orkney, Lady of Nithsdale, and Baroness of Herbertshire, of a charter she gave to Livingston of Callendar, Stirlingshire, of the lauds of Catsclcugh, dated 10th September, 1425; and it has the combined seal of herself and her husband Henry, the original in the Wigton charter-chest. The American interest of the seal displaying the heraldic shield need not be dwelt upon. The discoverer’s arms are on the right, the double tressure indicating his affinity to royalty, the galley of Orkney in the centre, while the engrailed cross is the original Sinclair arms. The princess’s arms are the left half of the shield; the lion of Galloway, in the lower quarter, famous in Douglas blazoning. It was in 1407, 17th September, that Archibald, Earl of Douglas, gave a charter of Herbertshire to Henry, Earl of Orkney, Lord Sinclair, the discoverer, to be held by him and his wife, “my niece;” the Regent Albany confirming it at Menteith on 20th November, 1407, “the second year of our reign.” If this was her portion on occasion of her marriage, it is easy to understand how it was that their son William was not actually ruling as prince of Orkney from 1422 for more than a decade, and how he was not installed till 1434. His birth seems to have been about 1410 to 1413, though it may have been earlier.
On 12th September, 1410, at Roslin, Prince Henry gave a charter to his brother-german, thus described to distinguish that he was not a half-brother, John, of the lands of Sunellis, Hope, and Loganhouse, near Edinburgh, which was ratified under the Great Seal in that city by Regent Albany on 24th September, 1410. Henry, Earl of Orkney, and a Lord William Sinclair signed a charter of Gogar, at Dirleton, 8th June, 1409, which the regent ratified at Falkland Castle, 11th May, 1411. Sir John Forrester of Corstorphine, Edinburgh, to whom one of Henry’s daughters was married, had the confirmation about this time of a loan of 300 nobles, receiving 12 merks yearly from Dysart and coals till it was repaid, the sum being the equivalent to £100 sterling, but of much more real value then. Forrester is called “our dearest cousin” in the pledge. At Edinburgh, 10th July, 1424, Henry, Earl of Orkney, resigned Uchtertyre, Perthshire, to Forrester of Corstorphine, as the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland records; but this date would make his death later than other sources indicate, and it must be a mistake of the printed copies of the register. One of Laing’s specimens in his Scottish Seals “ is the seal of Henry, Earl of Orkney, to a charter in favour of Forrester of Corstorphine, of date 26th November, 1407, and the charter of Uchtertyre must have been also earlier than 1424.
In a procuration to the same brother John dated Edinburgh, 1411, 10th November, Henry is called Earl of Orkney and Lord Sinclair and Lord Nithsdale; so that the last title came through his wife after the charter of the lands of Herbertshire. That he was old in 1411, this deputing or procuratory of his business to his “very dear brother-german,” the skilful John, son-in-law to the King of Denmark, and brother-in-law to Hagen, the King of Norway, may be an indication. An amnesty document between Henry and his relative Malise Sparre, in 1387, on 8th November, signed at Edinburgh, describes him then as Earl of Orkney and Lord of Roslin; so that the Douglas marriage was certainly subsequent to that date.
By the “Book of Cowper” a William died in 1422, the same year in which Prince Henry’s death took place; and the inference is that they were father and son. Henry had a son Lord William mentioned in the Gogar charter above of 1409 by his first marriage, as he had Prince William by his Douglas wife. The first William dying by disease in 1422, opened the succession to his half-brother William, then a boy of perhaps eleven. Nor is this mere inference, which is always dangerous in historical fields. Father Hay says that it is certain that Henry was “sent ambassador to Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1363, where there was a marriage celebrated between Margaret, daughter to Waldemar, King of Denmark, and Hagen, King of Norway.” About the same time he had a confirmation of the lands of Orkney; no doubt, when he came of age, or soon after. His procurators had to receive it, as he was himself too ill to go to Norway for the purpose.
We gather from these dates that the discoverer was born about 1340 and died in 1422, so that he reached longevity of more than eighty years, a family characteristic. But in a genealogy of the Stuarts published in the end of the last century written by Andrew Stuart, M.P., there is a dispensation extracted from the records in the Vatican, Rome, which would make Henry’s death earlier. It was given by Pope Martin V., the year after accession, on the 3rd of the Kalends of April, 1418, to Egidia Douglas, widow of Sir Henry Sinclair, and to Alexander Stuart, who could not marry without it, being in second and third degrees of affinity, the marriage to quiet family rancours. This would make 1417 the probable date of the discoverer’s death, at the latest, if the dispensation was copied correctly. A similar dispensation from Innocent VI., at Avignon, the year after his appointment, was given in 1353 to Thomas Stuart, Earl of Angus, and Margaret Sinclair, “a noble lady,” of the Roslin family so much interknit with the royal Stuarts. This Earl of Angus took Berwick from the English, see Buchanan, page 259, before the Stuarts were kings.
On Prince Henry’s installation “there was a marriage concluded between the Earl and King Hagen’s sister, who was daughter to Magnus, King of Sweden and Norway.” We know, therefore, the first wife of the discoverer of America; and it is a safe conclusion that through her the Roslins became Dukes of Oldenburg, then belonging to Denmark, the duchy her marriage portion. She is named Florentia in various books; and had, it would seem, an only son, the Lord William who died the same year as his father, but several daughters, who married into the Scotch and Scandinavian nobility.
VI.
Queen Margaret of Norway’s son, by Wartislaus, Duke of Pomerania, was proclaimed nearest heir to the crown of Norway in 1388 by Prince Henry, as already said; but Pontan, “a most accurate writer of Danish affairs,” gives numerous details in addition about the letters by the archbishop, bishops, and nobles of that kingdom, backing up Henry’s official declaration, sent everywhere for authenticating Eric’s standing, according to the Norwegian laws.
Pontan also records the circumstances of Henry’s installation in 13/9 over the Orkneys. About the third of the Ides of June, there came to King Hagen of Norway, William Dalziel, Malise Sparre, and Alexander Ard, as commissioners from Henry, Earl of Orkney, with cautionry as client for the islands of that principality, according to feudal custom. A writ which was finished at Malstrand about Prince Henry, had been altered before being signed by the Scotch earls and barons; and King Hagen refused to sanction it at first; but when the commissioners had stayed some time at Tesberge city in Norway, the king after fresh changes ratified the agreement. The commissioners promised 1000 golden nobles, coins worth 6s. 8d. sterling each, as, apparently, an annual gift of complacency on Henry’s part.
The document is in full in Torfaeus’s “Orcades,” and, translated from Latin, will follow after this from him, “In the year 1369, Count Henry Sinclair was by fiduciary right set over the Orkneys. He, sending ambassadors to King Hacon in the Ides of June, demanded the administration of the fee to be confirmed to him, which under fixed conditions he obtained in 1370.” For some unknown reason of rebellion or wars, he was supplanted in 1375 by his relative Alexander Ard, who had also descent from Sparres or Spiers, the Scotch favourite or minion, and the former prince; but in 1379, King Hacon established Henry over the Orkneys, renewed his title of count, gave and received mutual letters of elaborate extent, and accepted the oath of fealty or homage in the usual manner. The translation of Prince Henry’s obligation or agreement is:--
Pontan also records the circumstances of Henry’s installation in 13/9 over the Orkneys. About the third of the Ides of June, there came to King Hagen of Norway, William Dalziel, Malise Sparre, and Alexander Ard, as commissioners from Henry, Earl of Orkney, with cautionry as client for the islands of that principality, according to feudal custom. A writ which was finished at Malstrand about Prince Henry, had been altered before being signed by the Scotch earls and barons; and King Hagen refused to sanction it at first; but when the commissioners had stayed some time at Tesberge city in Norway, the king after fresh changes ratified the agreement. The commissioners promised 1000 golden nobles, coins worth 6s. 8d. sterling each, as, apparently, an annual gift of complacency on Henry’s part.
The document is in full in Torfaeus’s “Orcades,” and, translated from Latin, will follow after this from him, “In the year 1369, Count Henry Sinclair was by fiduciary right set over the Orkneys. He, sending ambassadors to King Hacon in the Ides of June, demanded the administration of the fee to be confirmed to him, which under fixed conditions he obtained in 1370.” For some unknown reason of rebellion or wars, he was supplanted in 1375 by his relative Alexander Ard, who had also descent from Sparres or Spiers, the Scotch favourite or minion, and the former prince; but in 1379, King Hacon established Henry over the Orkneys, renewed his title of count, gave and received mutual letters of elaborate extent, and accepted the oath of fealty or homage in the usual manner. The translation of Prince Henry’s obligation or agreement is:--
“To all who shall see or hear the present letters Henry, Earl of the Orkneys, Lord of Roslin, wishes salvation in the Lord. Because the very serene prince in Christ, my most clement lord, Haquin, by the grace of God the king of the kingdoms of Norway and Sweden, has set us by his favour over the Orcadian lands and islands, and has raised us into the rank of jarl over the beforesaid lands and islands, and since this is required by the dignity, we make well known to all, as well to posterity as to contemporaries, that we have made homage of fidelity to our lord the king himself, at the kiss of his hand and mouth, and have given to him a true and due oath of fidelity, as far as counsels and aids to our same lord the king, his heirs, and successors, and to his kingdom of Norway, must be observed. And so, let it be open to all that we and our friends, whose names are expressed lower, have firmly promised in faith and with our honour to our same lord the king, and to his men and councillors, that we must faithfully fulfil all agreements, conditions, promises, and articles which are contained in the present letters to our beforesaid lord the king, his heirs, and successors, and to his kingdom of Norway.
“In the first place, therefore, we firmly oblige us to serve our lord the king outside of the lands and islands of the Orkneys, with 100 good men or more, equipped in complete arms, for the conveniences and use of our same lord the king, whenever we shall have been sufficiently requisitioned by his messengers or his letters, and forewarned within Orkney three months. But when the men shall have arrived in the presence of our lord the king, from that time he will provide about victuals for us and ours.
“Again, if any may wish to attack or hostilely to invade, in manner whatsoever, the lands and islands of the Orkneys, or the land of Zetland, then we promise and oblige us to defend the lands named, with men whom we may be able to collect in good condition for this solely, from the lands and islands themselves, yea, with all the force of relatives, friends, and servants.
“Also, if it shall be necessary that our lord the king attack any lands or any kingdoms, by right or from any other reason or necessity, then we shall be to him in help and service with all our force.
“Moreover, we promise in good faith that we must not build or construct castles or any fortifications within the lands and islands beforesaid, unless we shall have obtained the favour, good, pleasure, and consent of our same lord the king.
“We also shall be bound to hold and to cherish the said lands and islands of the Orkneys, and all their inhabitants, clergymen and laity, rich and poor, in their rights.
“Further, we promise in good faith that we must not at any time sell or alienate that beforesaid county and that lordship, whether lands or islands, belonging to the earldom, or our right which we obtain now to the earldom, the lands, and islands, by the grace of God and of the king our lord, from our lord the king himself, or his heirs, and successors, or from the kingdom, nor to deliver these or any of these for surety and for pledge to any one, or to expose them otherwise, against the will and good-pleasure of him and his successors.
“In addition, if it happen that our lord the king, his heirs, or successors wish to approach those lands and islands for their defence, or from other reasonable cause, or to direct thither his councillors or men, then we shall be held to be for help to our same lord the king, and his heirs, to his councillors and men, with all our force, and to minister to our lord the king, and his heirs, his men and councillors, those things of which they may be in need for their due expenses, and as necessity then requires, at least to ordain so from the lands and islands.
“Moreover, we promise that we must begin or rouse no war, law suit, or dissension with any strangers or natives, by reason of which war, law suit, or dissension the king my lord, his heirs, or successors, or their kingdom of Norway, or the beforesaid lands and islands, may receive any damage.
“Again, if it happen, but may this be absent, that we notably and unjustly do wrong against any within the beforesaid lands and islands, or inflict some notable injury upon any one, as the loss of life, or mutilation of limbs, or depredation of goods, then we shall answer to the pursuer of a cause of that kind in the presence of our lord the king himself and his councillors, and satisfy for the wrongs according to the laws of the kingdom.
“Also, whensoever our lord the king shall have summoned us, on account of any causes, to his presence, where and when he shall have wished to hold his general assembly, then we are bound to go to him, to give him advice and assistance.
“Further, we promise that we shall not break the truces and security of our same lord the king, nor his peace, which he shall have made or confirmed with foreigners or natives, or with whomsoever others, in any manner whatever, to violate them, nay, defend them all as far as our strength, and hold those as federated to us whom the king of Norway himself, our lord, may wish to treat as his favourers and friends.
“We promise also that we must make no league with the Orcadian bishop, nor enter into or establish any friendship with him, unless from the goodpleasure and consent of our lord the king himself; but we must be for help to him against that bishop, until he shall have done to him what is of right, or shall be bound to do so for that special reason, upon those things in which my lord the king may wish or be able reasonably to accuse that bishop.
“Besides, when God may have willed to call us from life, then that earldom and that lordship, with the lands and islands, and with all the jurisdiction, must return to our lord the king, his heirs and successors freely; and if we shall have children after us, procreated from our body, male, one or more, then he of them who shall claim the above said earldom and lordship must demand, with regard to this, the favour, good,pleasure, and consent of our lord the king himself, his heirs, and successors.
“Further, we promise in good faith that we shall be bound to pay to our abovesaid lord the king, or to his official at Tunisberg, on the next festival of St. Martin the bishop and confessor, a thousand golden pieces, which are called nobles, of English money, in which we acknowledge us to be bound to him by just payment.
“Also, we promise, because we have been now promoted to the earldom and lordship oftensaid by our lord the king himself, that our cousin Malise Sparre must cease from his claim and dismiss altogether his right, if it be discernible that he has any, to those lands and islands; so that my lord the king, his heirs, and successors shall sustain no vexation or trouble from him or from his heirs.
“Again, if we have made any agreement or any understanding with our cousin Alexander Ard, or have wished to enter into any treaty with him, in that case we will do similarly on our part and on the part of the king my lord to whatever was done in precaution about Malise Sparre.
“Further, we, Henry, earl abovesaid, and our friends and relatives withinwritten, namely, Simon Rodde, William Daniels, knights, Malise Sparre, William Chrichton, David Chrichton, Adam Byketon, Thomas Bennine, and Andrew Haldaniston, armsbearers, conjunctly promise in good faith to our oftensaid lord the king, Haquin, and to his first-born lord the king, Olaf, and to his councillors and men within-writton, namely, to the lords Siguard, Haffthorsen, Ogmund Findersen, Eric Ketelsen, Narvo Ingualdison, John Oddosen, Ulpho Johnsen, Ginther de Vedhonsen; John Danisen, Haquin Evidassen, knights of the same lord the king; Haquin Jonssen, Alver Hardlssen, Hantho Ericsen, Erlend Phil-’ lippsen, and Otho Remer, armsbearers; and for this, under preservation of our honour, we bind ourselves and each of us in a body to the aforesaid lords, that we must truly and firmly fulfil all the agreements and conditions and articles which are expressed above to our lord the king, within the above,written feast of St. Martin the bishop and confessor, so far as one particular business was declared by itself above.
“That all these things now promised may have the greater strength for this, and may be fulfilled the sooner, we, the aforesaid Henry, Earl of the Orkneys, place and leave behind us our cousins and friends Lord William Daniels, knight, Malise Sperre, David Chrichton, and the lawful son of the said Simon, by name Lord Alexander, here in the kingdom hostages. Upon their faith they oblige and promise themselves to this, that from our lord the king of Norway, or from that place in which he shall have wished to have them within his kingdom of Norway, they in nowise may go away, publicly or secretly, before all the abovesaid things be totally fulfilled with entire integrity to our lord the king; and particularly and specially, the conditions and articles for whose observation the within-written reverend fathers, bishops, and prelates of the churches of the kingdom of Scotland, and the other nobles within-written of the same kingdom, Lord William, Bishop of St. Andrews; Lord Walter, Bishop of Glasgow; Lord William, Earl of Douglas; Lord George, Earl of March; Lord Patrick Hepburn, Lord Alexander Haliburton, Lord George Abernethy, Lord William Ramsay, knights, must promise in good faith, and upon this remit their open letters to our same king the lord, with their true seals, in the before-noted time, as in our other letters written upon this is declared more fully.
“Also, we promise in good faith that we must assume in no direction to us the lands of our lord the king, or any other rights of his which his progenitors and the king our lord are known to have reserved to themselves; and concerning those lands or jurisdictions not to intromit in any manner whatsoever. They have reserved those laws, indeed, and those pleas within the Orcadian earldom, as is before said, and the lands and pleas of that kind will remain in all cases safe for them; but if, upon this, we shall have his special letters, then we ought to be specially bound thereafter to our same lord the king.
“Besides, but may it be absent, if all those abovesaid things shall not have been brought to conclusion, and totally fulfilled to the same my lord the king as it has been expressed above, or if we should have attempted anything in the contrary of any of the premises, then the promotion and favour which we have experienced from the king our lord, and of his grace, ought to be of no strength; yea, the promotion and favour of that kind done to us must be broken down altogether, and in their forces be totally empty and inane, so that we and our heirs for the rest shall have no right of speaking for the beforesaid county or for the lands or beforesaid islands, or we of acting about those lands and islands in any way whatsoever, that it may be manifest to all that the promotion and grace of this kind was given by no force of law or justice.
“And so we append our seal, together with the seals of our said friends, to our present letters, in testimony and the firmer evidence of all the premises.
“These things were done at Marstrand, in the yeai of the Lord 1379, the 2nd day of August.”
There is the other obligation given at St. Andrews, Scotland, on 1st September, 1379, by Henricus de Sancto Claro, Comes Orchadiae, Dominus de Rodin in Scotia, to use the Latin, not to mortgage the earldom of Orkney without King Haquin’s consent, practically of the same tenor as one of the clauses in the document above translated. It was signed and sealed by the same persons, with the addition of Sir Walter Haliburton, Sir John Edmonston, Sir Robert Dalyell, Sir John Thumbce. These deeds were not of installation; for Prince Henry had at least sixteen years previously come to age and occupancy. They are of the nature of a fresh feudal confirmation by the sovereign of Norway, on occasion of accession to his crown, or quelled disputing about the right to Orkney and Shetland; the fixing of a tribute of 1000 gold nobles upon Henry suggesting the latter alternative. The following is the text from Torfaeus:--
“Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, Lord of Roslin in Scotland, salvation in the Saviour of all. We make well known to your entirety, by the presents, that we have promised in good faith, and by the tenor of the presents we promise with all fidelity, to our most excellent prince and lord the lord Haquin, the illustrious King of Norway and Sweden, that we will alienate, pledge, or deliver as surety on no account the lands or islands of the county of Orkney, or the crown possessions of the kingdom itself, from our beforesaid lord the king, his successors, or from the kingdom, without the consent of our lord the king abovesaid, his heirs, or successors, and that we shall observe faithfully all the premises.
“The venerable lords and fathers in Christ, Lords William and Walter, Bishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow; William and George, Earls of Douglas and March; William Eamsay, Walter Haliburton, George Abernethy, Patrick Hepburn, John Edmonston, Alexander Haliburton, John Thumbce, Robert Dalzell, barons and knights, also have promised.
“In testimony of all which things our seal was appended, and we have procured to be appended to the presents the seals of the said bishops, counts, barons, and knights.
“Given at St. Andrews on the first day of the month of September, 1379.”
VII.
Through the Sparre and Grahame heiresses, the four earldoms of Caithness, Orkney, Stratherne, and Menteith had gone to the Rosses, the Sinclairs, the Grahames, and the royal Stuarts, creating the most involved rivalries between these close kinsfolk. In 1373, six years before Prince Henry signed his Orkney homage document to King Haquin of Norway, David Stuart, the son of Robert II. by his queen Euphemia Ross, Earl of Stratherne, became Earl of Caithness, with Braal Castle the head messuage. His mother was heiress of the Earls of Ross, who had had Caithness earldom through marrying a Grahame heiress, sister of Prince Henry’s mother. David’s brother, Walter, Earl of Athole, became also Earl of Caithness, whose son Allan was the last of the royal Stuart Earls of Caithness, and slain in battle in 1426 after two years’ possession. The very heart and knot of British history are to be found in these extraordinary relationships. The Caithness Stuarts were the lawful line of Robert II.; but he dispossessed them, by parliamentary resolution, in favour of his reputed bastard children by his concubine, Elizabeth More. Their indignation and that of their relatives, the Grahames, culminated in the murder of James the First of Scotland in 1437, at Perth; Walter Stuart and Sir Robert Grahame executed, with tortures, for their violent form of trying to vindicate justice to the lawful heirs of the throne. By the common law of Britain, all the reigning royal Stuarts, except Robert the Second, who began the dynasty, were and are illegitimate; the ruler of the British empire holding office on this sandy descent foundation, if use and wont or accomplished fact, as history exemplifies largely, be not enough for establishing regal possession. In the time of Prince Henry the controversy between the lawful and unlawful or semi-lawful Stuarts had not reached the acute stage; but all the tragic elements were at work; the Douglas higher rights to the crown, through heiring the Comyns, who claimed fairly to come before the Bruce kings, by whom the Stuarts inherited, still further complicating the problem of the notoriously unfortunate and, it is all but assured, false dynasty which has played so extraordinary a part in Scotch, English, and Irish history. Through the Earl of Ross’s connection with the Sinclairs, by the Grahame and Sparre heiresses, Henry, Earl of Orkney, might be expected to favour Queen Euphemia Ross’s Stuart children and descendants, certainly a lawful line; but canonical and civil law making the concubine’s children legitimate through a subsequent marriage to King Robert II., if it occurred, and the eldest of them, afterwards Robert III., having been declared by parliament to be crown-prince, the important men of the kingdom could not help themselves, least of all Henry, who was hereditary guardian of the heirs to the throne. Though the best material as to spirit and body, young Prince James Stuart must have seemed in Kirkwall Castle a doubtful falcon to train, the son of a “light-of-love” beauty. His tragic death is no wonder at all to those able to see into the seething caldron of rivalries and injustices about the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century in Scotland. For the law consult the Majestatem, II., 51.
But to come to Henry’s own immediate difficulties. It is clear that both Ard and a collateral or illegitimate representative of the Sparres from whom Orkney came to the Sinclairs, had designs upon his principality, his “cousins” of the document translated above. The Ards had wide lands in Inverness-shire and other counties of Scotland, through marriage to one of the heiresses so often, but not too often, mentioned, considering their unusual importance; and in the national records Ards are principal persons. They, however, died out, and only the Sparres, originally of southern Scotland, were troublers of Henry’s position, probably contending that the fee ought to have gone to the males of the Sparre family, though feudalism freely parted estates among females in all parts of Europe. But there may have been a special enactment as to males, or a variation in Norse tenures, from need of leaders in war, as it was in the bastard Celtic feudalism of West Scotland and Ireland. At all events, Torfaeus shows that matters came to violence between Sinclair and a false or true rival from the Sparre or Spier family:--“In the year 1391, the Earl of Orkney slew Malise Sparre, in Zetland, with seven others. A young man, however, with six followers, having found a ship, escaped by flight to Norway.” By the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, Henry, Earl of Orkney, gave to Sir David, his half-brother, for his rights in Orkney and Shetland, through his mother Isabella, all the lands of Newburgh and Auchdale, Aberdeenshire, the charter dated Kirkwall, 23rd April, 1391, the properties to return to Henry if David died childless, Robert III. ratifying it at Rothesay Castle, 10th June, 1392. It is evident that the prince was consolidating his power in the Orkneys against all comers, probably the Sparre disorder going on at the very moment of the grant or exchange. That the slaughter of his ambitious cousin was no hasty or tyrannical proceeding on Prince Henry’s part, is proved by the following:--
But to come to Henry’s own immediate difficulties. It is clear that both Ard and a collateral or illegitimate representative of the Sparres from whom Orkney came to the Sinclairs, had designs upon his principality, his “cousins” of the document translated above. The Ards had wide lands in Inverness-shire and other counties of Scotland, through marriage to one of the heiresses so often, but not too often, mentioned, considering their unusual importance; and in the national records Ards are principal persons. They, however, died out, and only the Sparres, originally of southern Scotland, were troublers of Henry’s position, probably contending that the fee ought to have gone to the males of the Sparre family, though feudalism freely parted estates among females in all parts of Europe. But there may have been a special enactment as to males, or a variation in Norse tenures, from need of leaders in war, as it was in the bastard Celtic feudalism of West Scotland and Ireland. At all events, Torfaeus shows that matters came to violence between Sinclair and a false or true rival from the Sparre or Spier family:--“In the year 1391, the Earl of Orkney slew Malise Sparre, in Zetland, with seven others. A young man, however, with six followers, having found a ship, escaped by flight to Norway.” By the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, Henry, Earl of Orkney, gave to Sir David, his half-brother, for his rights in Orkney and Shetland, through his mother Isabella, all the lands of Newburgh and Auchdale, Aberdeenshire, the charter dated Kirkwall, 23rd April, 1391, the properties to return to Henry if David died childless, Robert III. ratifying it at Rothesay Castle, 10th June, 1392. It is evident that the prince was consolidating his power in the Orkneys against all comers, probably the Sparre disorder going on at the very moment of the grant or exchange. That the slaughter of his ambitious cousin was no hasty or tyrannical proceeding on Prince Henry’s part, is proved by the following:--
“Amends of Malise Sparre made to Henry, Earl of Orkney:—To all to whose knowledge the present letters shall have arrived Malise Sper, Lord of Skuldale, salvation in the Saviour of all. Let your entirety know that I have made, in the presence of a magnificent lord, James, Earl of Douglas, firm friendship with Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney and Baron of Roslin, and have condoned and remitted finally all actions of injuries and offences, by him, his men, or whomsoever in his name, to my men, lands, and possessions whatsoever, and as to his universal goods, acquired by him or his. Further, I firmly promise to restore, pay, and satisfy, with my men whomsoever, concerning all injuries, offences, and things acquired, as to the beforesaid Lord Earl, or whomsoever in his name, up to the present day, with lands and possessions excepted, if there are any to which my men have the right of claiming according to the laws of the country. In testimony of this transaction, my seal was appended to the presents at Edinburgh, 18th November, 1387.”
The treaty did not last long; for four years later the struggle between the cousins ended in Sparre’s death, after a period of open war and bloodshed, and also rebellion; the last, because Prince Henry had investiture by the Norwegian crown in 1379, Malise Sparre himself one of the principal persons at the installation, and waiving all rights.
VIII.
While thus effectually quelling the Sparre insurrection with thirteen war-vessels, Prince Henry met at the Faroe Isles Sir Nicolas Zeno, the Venetian navigating noble, who had suffered shipwreck there. It was in 1390 that Sir Nicolas passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, on the way to the northern seas for discovery, according to the analysis by Major, the American admirer of Prince Zichmni and the celebrated Zenoes. Carlo of them was grand admiral of Venice, the ambassador to England, and died 8th May, 1418; Raniero was doge of Venice, dying in 1268; Caterino went ambassador to Persia in 1472; James was an Italian orator (1417-81), and another of the Zeno lineage was Nicholas, junior, the biographer of Prince Henry’s two brother admirals, he born in 1515, and dying 10th August, 1565, to whom Americans owe the earliest civilised chapter of their history. Bancroft gives only his first page to the Norse discoverers (not mentioning Prince Henry and the Zenoes at all, Columbus getting his whole enthusiasm) in the “History of the United States;” the Scandinavians scantily credited, though Humboldt in his “Cosmos,” Malte-Brun the great geographer, Rafn, and a world of other authorities accepted the early voyages and discoveries. Torfaeus’s “Vinlandia Antiqua,” published at Hafn in 1705, of itself puts the question out of the region of probabilities, Vinland being Boston “and all around it.” The ninth edition of the “Encyclopaedia Britannica” receives the Norse rovers as historic verities. Sir Antonio Zeno arrived at the Orkneys in 1391, and assisted his brother Sir Nicholas, who was admiral of Prince Henry’s fleet, “in taking possession of Zetland islands,” clearly the Sparre attempt put down. So notable because undesigned an agreement of Torfaeus with the “Lives” of the Zeno brothers, attests the veracity of the biographical work, which is now beyond criticism, though from Pinkerton in his “History of Scotland,” 1797, till of late, it had to stand a considerably hostile and, because of prevailing ignorance, misdirected fire of objections.
The American expeditions followed the Zetland subjugation; and it is a hopeful statement for the De Sancto Claro Society to investigate, that from the time when Prince Henry first annexed America to his principality (for such is the technicality of the proceeding), that continent never lost white representatives to this day. Norse and Scotch were hardly the kind of people to neglect the possession of lands, not to say kingdoms; and there is no proof that they did not, again and again, plant colonists whose descendants are now in New England and on other parts of the Atlantic shore. White men would have thus been continuous in America from the ninth century till now, a most interesting problem to authenticate. It is true that Prince Henry, according to the Zeno biography, gave up at one time a colony there; but the book does not come to the close of his life; and he and his great-hearted son, Prince William of Orkney, Lord Nithsdale, Baron of Roslin, and the first recorded Earl of Caithness of his surname, were not the men to be baulked of their high objects. A land without limit like America, would appeal to their heroic persistency; and it is almost assured that they repeated again and again their occupation of the continent. Everyone knows of the traditional rumours that Christian bishops were among the Red Indians, some ascribing their advent to Ireland, some to Wales, whose Celtic books are full of a western land beyond the seas in much earlier centuries than those of Prince Henry and Prince William. It is most akin to historical fact that the clerical and laic white men of Indian legend, were colonists and conquerors from Scandinavia and Scotland; the annexing of savage kingdoms to the church of the pope being, especially in the 14th and 15th centuries, a positive madness of the brain. The Spaniards led by Columbus thought more of the conversion of the Indians to Christianity than they did of gold, though of this they are credited to have been supreme lovers. Later, Mexico and Peru had to be saved, and such salvation! The former, it is true, was by priest-sanctioned cannibalism a pandemonium of blood; and Christian fire may have purified that cookery horror off the face of the earth, as moral sanitation. The New England districts have yet a tale to tell, of Europeans, a century earlier than the Spaniards, carrying the religious and material civilisation of Europe and Asia there; and it may be provable that the remnant never died out, though the puritans of the “May Flower” claim to have been the pioneers of Yankeeland or Englishland. Englishmen, at all periods, have had the useful trick of assuming too much in their own favour; and the nonconformists who left old Plymouth of England to found the new Plymouth of America, had enough of this valuable quality of Emerson’s self-reliance about 1620, when they fled from Archbishop Laud’s ecclesiastical tyranny, to forget that there were whites there long before them. Indeed, the marvellously developed social condition of the Red Indians, with their communal long houses, suggests Norwegian and Scottish training grafted on mere savagery. Fiske exhibits the Delawares and the rest of the native tribes, or six nations or more, in lights absolutely novel to those with the preconceived ideas obtained from Fenimore Cooper’s romantic novels. But enough, in so untrodden but not unpromising field. The De Sancto Claro Society has, however, inquiries and successes in this direction also, as nothing has been more striking than recent American advance in knowledge of the primitive races; scientific precision by and bye perhaps to be able to distinguish external influences over their highly-articulated popular life. Celtic and Norse literature is full of shadowings of ancient intercourse from Europe to America; and such dreamings nearly always, in research, prove to be founded on facts of some extent. The want of historians and the accidents of time have blotted out many a chapter of human experience, now beyond our imagination to fathom; but the acuteness of learning recovers wonderful gold-dust from the river of the past, which becomes in due time coin and currency. It is already pretty certain that the Norse and Scotch heroes left a sprinkling of population, who ruled the Red Indians to some extent, and amalgamated with them. The French half-breeds of Canada show how it could have been done; for before the “brave” was taught the use of gunpowder, he was not the cruel intractable creature with whom the modern mind is familiar. Who is not aware of the freedom with which missionaries went from tribe to tribe in the earlier European periods of America? One lay stranger was so beloved by them that he was called universally their “father.” He, Dr. Patrick Sinclair, was only one of many, from others, too, than the English and Scotch, who experienced ease in guiding these so-called savages; the French at all times most insinuating and charming visitors, whom they never tired of welcoming, with whatever excess or want of wisdom.
The American expeditions followed the Zetland subjugation; and it is a hopeful statement for the De Sancto Claro Society to investigate, that from the time when Prince Henry first annexed America to his principality (for such is the technicality of the proceeding), that continent never lost white representatives to this day. Norse and Scotch were hardly the kind of people to neglect the possession of lands, not to say kingdoms; and there is no proof that they did not, again and again, plant colonists whose descendants are now in New England and on other parts of the Atlantic shore. White men would have thus been continuous in America from the ninth century till now, a most interesting problem to authenticate. It is true that Prince Henry, according to the Zeno biography, gave up at one time a colony there; but the book does not come to the close of his life; and he and his great-hearted son, Prince William of Orkney, Lord Nithsdale, Baron of Roslin, and the first recorded Earl of Caithness of his surname, were not the men to be baulked of their high objects. A land without limit like America, would appeal to their heroic persistency; and it is almost assured that they repeated again and again their occupation of the continent. Everyone knows of the traditional rumours that Christian bishops were among the Red Indians, some ascribing their advent to Ireland, some to Wales, whose Celtic books are full of a western land beyond the seas in much earlier centuries than those of Prince Henry and Prince William. It is most akin to historical fact that the clerical and laic white men of Indian legend, were colonists and conquerors from Scandinavia and Scotland; the annexing of savage kingdoms to the church of the pope being, especially in the 14th and 15th centuries, a positive madness of the brain. The Spaniards led by Columbus thought more of the conversion of the Indians to Christianity than they did of gold, though of this they are credited to have been supreme lovers. Later, Mexico and Peru had to be saved, and such salvation! The former, it is true, was by priest-sanctioned cannibalism a pandemonium of blood; and Christian fire may have purified that cookery horror off the face of the earth, as moral sanitation. The New England districts have yet a tale to tell, of Europeans, a century earlier than the Spaniards, carrying the religious and material civilisation of Europe and Asia there; and it may be provable that the remnant never died out, though the puritans of the “May Flower” claim to have been the pioneers of Yankeeland or Englishland. Englishmen, at all periods, have had the useful trick of assuming too much in their own favour; and the nonconformists who left old Plymouth of England to found the new Plymouth of America, had enough of this valuable quality of Emerson’s self-reliance about 1620, when they fled from Archbishop Laud’s ecclesiastical tyranny, to forget that there were whites there long before them. Indeed, the marvellously developed social condition of the Red Indians, with their communal long houses, suggests Norwegian and Scottish training grafted on mere savagery. Fiske exhibits the Delawares and the rest of the native tribes, or six nations or more, in lights absolutely novel to those with the preconceived ideas obtained from Fenimore Cooper’s romantic novels. But enough, in so untrodden but not unpromising field. The De Sancto Claro Society has, however, inquiries and successes in this direction also, as nothing has been more striking than recent American advance in knowledge of the primitive races; scientific precision by and bye perhaps to be able to distinguish external influences over their highly-articulated popular life. Celtic and Norse literature is full of shadowings of ancient intercourse from Europe to America; and such dreamings nearly always, in research, prove to be founded on facts of some extent. The want of historians and the accidents of time have blotted out many a chapter of human experience, now beyond our imagination to fathom; but the acuteness of learning recovers wonderful gold-dust from the river of the past, which becomes in due time coin and currency. It is already pretty certain that the Norse and Scotch heroes left a sprinkling of population, who ruled the Red Indians to some extent, and amalgamated with them. The French half-breeds of Canada show how it could have been done; for before the “brave” was taught the use of gunpowder, he was not the cruel intractable creature with whom the modern mind is familiar. Who is not aware of the freedom with which missionaries went from tribe to tribe in the earlier European periods of America? One lay stranger was so beloved by them that he was called universally their “father.” He, Dr. Patrick Sinclair, was only one of many, from others, too, than the English and Scotch, who experienced ease in guiding these so-called savages; the French at all times most insinuating and charming visitors, whom they never tired of welcoming, with whatever excess or want of wisdom.
IX.
Torfaeus quotes Buchanan, the historian of Scotland, that Prince Henry was entrusted with James, the then eldest son of Robert the Third, to take him for safety and education to France in 1406, Hay saying 1404. Consulting Buchanan, Torfaeus seems to be right, because the king expired of grief three days after hearing of his only remaining son being taken by the English. He died at Rothesay on the Clyde, the tenth of the Kalends of April, 1406; and the news could not have taken months, not to say two years, to arrive. “In the year 1418,” Torfaeus writes, “John Sinclair professed himself, with all Shetland, the client of King Eric Pomeranus;” a most interesting note, because this is Prince Henry’s learned statesman brother, who had married the daughter of Waldemar, King of Denmark. In his old age, evidently Prince Henry grew specially generous, thus giving the lordship of Shetland to his brother. Another brother, Thomas, was the mandatory of Prince Henry to look after the interests of his son Prince William, a minor at his father’s death in 1420; and he took a principal part in ejecting David Manners from Orkney and Shetland, who had secured the prefecture from King Eric, equivalent to a “gift of nonentry,” in terms of Scotch law about landed property. While the heir was under age, the crown could traffic with the rents more or less. But the youth’s uncle proved faithful to his mandate, and Torfaeus tells much of Thomas’s energetic and skilful doings. His servants were beaten and imprisoned by Manners, who took the money of returns belonging to his family by force, and who oppressed everybody, especially the supporters of the mandatory; but he laughs best who laughs last; and the tyrannical intruder was driven away from the Orkneys by popular indignation. Torfaeus details thirty-five crimes with which he was charged as a prefect during his five years of rule. Thomas Sinclair’s seal was the first appended to the installation document of Prince William in 14154, when he paid feudal homage, after the manner of the Scotch to the English kings, to Eric, King of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Eric is so designed in Bishop Tulloch’s appointment to succeed Manners in the prefecture in 1427, of which document Torfaeus gives a copy, Tulloch holding the diocese of the Orkneys. Stoddart says that in 1364 a Thomas Sinclair was ballivus regis Norvagiae, that is, “bailie of the King of Norway,” in Orkney; but if this date is right, there must have been two of the name, with similar offices.
In a Latin index to an edition of “Rerum Scoticarum Historia,” by Ceorge Buchanan (1506-82), published by John Paton, Edinburgh, in 1727, at 5s. 6d., the editor, Robert Fribarn, the following occurs:--Sinclarus, Sinclair, St. Clare, cognomen illustris familiae, quorum Principes olim Orcadum et Cathanesiae Comites; nunc Sinclariae Beguli primi existimantur—” Sinclare, Sinclair, St. Clare, the surname of an illustrious family, of whom the heads were formerly the Princes of Orkney and the Earls of Caithness; but now the Lords of Sinclair are thought the first.” It is always the more valuable to have such references from others than the lineage, like this learned Fribarn; because there is no suspicion of partiality or prejudice. The Scottish parliament passed an act on 26th January, 1488-9, that Sir Henry, the eldest son of Prince William, was chief of that blood, and was to be called Lord Sinclair thereafter. His male descent died out in John, the seventh lord, in 1676; and then the Earls of Caithness became, and still are, the heads of the name. His only daughter Catherine married John Sinclair of Herdmanston, Haddingtonshire, of a very ancient baronial family, but of no known male relationship to the Roslins. The present peer, Lord Sinclair, is of the Herdmanston family, noted for its ability and learning. It will be remarked, therefore, that Fribarn made a mistake in saying that his contemporary Lord Sinclair was the first then of the surname, that honour having passed to the Earl of Caithness fifty-one years before.
Dr. James Wallace in his “Account of the Islands of Orkney,” published at London in 1700, says Henry was usually called the Prince of Orkney, and that he was also made Duke of Oldenburg by Christian I. of Denmark, thus doubly prince. See chapter I. infra.
In John Entick’s “Present State of the British Empire,” which description included the United States as British colonies, the book published in 1774 at London, there is good knowledge thus:—”The Orkneys had formerly their own kings, till subdued by Kenneth McAlpin, King of Scotland, about the year 840; but not resting quiet under the conqueror, Donald Bane, King of Scotland, in the year 100!), took the opportunity to get rid of them, by giving the Orkneys up to the King of Norway for assisting him in his usurpation. Under this authority the Norwegians invaded the Orkneys, reduced them to their obedience, and kept possession for 164 years, when Magnus, King of Norway, sold them to Alexander, King of Scotland, who granted the property of all these islands to his favourite Speire, from whom it descended in the female line to the Sinclairs or St. Clares; one of whom married the daughter of the King of Denmark, and was honoured with the titles of Prince of Orkney, Duke Oldenburg, &c.” Speire, Sper, Sparre, and Sparres, as well as the mistaken or evil spelling of Sware by Sir Robert Gordon in his “Genealogy of the Earls of Sutherland,” mean the same family of the favourite, a southern Scotchman.
In a Latin index to an edition of “Rerum Scoticarum Historia,” by Ceorge Buchanan (1506-82), published by John Paton, Edinburgh, in 1727, at 5s. 6d., the editor, Robert Fribarn, the following occurs:--Sinclarus, Sinclair, St. Clare, cognomen illustris familiae, quorum Principes olim Orcadum et Cathanesiae Comites; nunc Sinclariae Beguli primi existimantur—” Sinclare, Sinclair, St. Clare, the surname of an illustrious family, of whom the heads were formerly the Princes of Orkney and the Earls of Caithness; but now the Lords of Sinclair are thought the first.” It is always the more valuable to have such references from others than the lineage, like this learned Fribarn; because there is no suspicion of partiality or prejudice. The Scottish parliament passed an act on 26th January, 1488-9, that Sir Henry, the eldest son of Prince William, was chief of that blood, and was to be called Lord Sinclair thereafter. His male descent died out in John, the seventh lord, in 1676; and then the Earls of Caithness became, and still are, the heads of the name. His only daughter Catherine married John Sinclair of Herdmanston, Haddingtonshire, of a very ancient baronial family, but of no known male relationship to the Roslins. The present peer, Lord Sinclair, is of the Herdmanston family, noted for its ability and learning. It will be remarked, therefore, that Fribarn made a mistake in saying that his contemporary Lord Sinclair was the first then of the surname, that honour having passed to the Earl of Caithness fifty-one years before.
Dr. James Wallace in his “Account of the Islands of Orkney,” published at London in 1700, says Henry was usually called the Prince of Orkney, and that he was also made Duke of Oldenburg by Christian I. of Denmark, thus doubly prince. See chapter I. infra.
In John Entick’s “Present State of the British Empire,” which description included the United States as British colonies, the book published in 1774 at London, there is good knowledge thus:—”The Orkneys had formerly their own kings, till subdued by Kenneth McAlpin, King of Scotland, about the year 840; but not resting quiet under the conqueror, Donald Bane, King of Scotland, in the year 100!), took the opportunity to get rid of them, by giving the Orkneys up to the King of Norway for assisting him in his usurpation. Under this authority the Norwegians invaded the Orkneys, reduced them to their obedience, and kept possession for 164 years, when Magnus, King of Norway, sold them to Alexander, King of Scotland, who granted the property of all these islands to his favourite Speire, from whom it descended in the female line to the Sinclairs or St. Clares; one of whom married the daughter of the King of Denmark, and was honoured with the titles of Prince of Orkney, Duke Oldenburg, &c.” Speire, Sper, Sparre, and Sparres, as well as the mistaken or evil spelling of Sware by Sir Robert Gordon in his “Genealogy of the Earls of Sutherland,” mean the same family of the favourite, a southern Scotchman.
X.
A Latin diploma, dated 1st June, 1406, at Kirkwall, by Thomas Tulloch, Bishop of Orkney, and by the chapter of the cathedral of Kirkwall, which was addressed to Eric, King of Norway, gives the genealogy of Prince William, son of Prince Henry, the discoverer of America, and the latter has his paragraphs in it. See for this invaluable official document vol. 3 of “The Bannatyne Miscellany,” published 1827. The first translator of it from the Latin was T. Guild in 1554, a Newbottle monk. The famous author of “Satan’s Invisible World Discovered” (not America), George Sinclair, professor of Natural Philosophy, Glasgow University, appointed 1672, afterwards minister of Eastwood, Renfrewshire, has a genealogical preface to one of his books. Alexander Nisbet, the herald, in his “Memorial of the Ancient Family of Sinclair of Roslin,” says that it was Sir Henry of the Bruce and Baliol wars (the successful battle of Edward Baliol at Dupplin taking place in 1332) who “married Florentia, daughter of the King of Denmark, with whom he got a great estate in Norway; and from his mother he had Zetland and Orkney.” Of the discoverer he says that he was “Knight of the Thistle, Knight of the Cockle, and Knight of the Golden Fleece; and married, as second wife, the fair Egidia, the granddaughter of Robert II.” Of his son Prince William he says he was Duke of Oldenburg in Denmark, and “the greatest subject by far of all others of his time,” whose daughter “Helen was married to the Duke of Albany, heir-presumptive, as nearest Stuart, to the throne of Scotland.” In another passage this noted Scotch genealogist says, “Henricus de Sancto Claro, heir of the great family of the Sinelairs of Roslin, who not only overtopped the other families of Sinelairs who were equal to them in antiquity, but most of the noble families in the kingdom, for they were Earls of Orkney and then of Caithness;” and again, in describing the Herdmanstons, he says John “was married with the other ancient but far more powerful family of the Sinelairs of Roslin, who in truth exceeded most other families in the kingdom for grandeur and wealth.” He thinks that Gregory of Longformacus, who appears in 1384, was a brother of Prince Henry, the discoverer of Vinland. Daniel Defoe, the author of “Robinson Crusoe,” in his “Travels and Guide Book,” says, “The Sinclairs lost the Orkneys and Shetlands by the extravagance of William the Waster, as he was called. They got those through marrying their heiress, a Speire. Lord Ravensheuch of Fifeshire was the head of the family.” With a rider as to the real facts about William, these references of the Englishman are good. The marriage to the Speire lady took place in 1331; and her husband paid homage for the territories he had with her to Haco, King of Norway, soon after the happy event.
In his “History of the Mackays,” 1829, Robert Mackay has a detailed account, taken chiefly from Bishop Tulloch’s diploma, printed in 1827. Magnus, Earl of Orkney and Caithness, who signed the letter to the pope in 1320, was the last, he says, of the Danish line descended from Rognvald, Earl of More, Norway, and had only one child, a daughter. She married Julius Spier or Spar, the king’s favourite, Earl of Strathearne, afterwards a palatine county. Their heiress daughter married Malise Grahame, the Earl of Stratherne, through her right. Their eldest son, Malise, married, first, a daughter of the Earl of Menteith, by whom he had a daughter only, Matilda Grahame, the wife of Wayland Ard. He married, secondly, a daughter of Hugh, Earl of Ross, by whom he had four daughters, the eldest of whom married Lord William, the baron of Roslin. By Wayland Ard Matilda had a son, Alexander Ard, who in his mother’s right became Earl of Caithness, and held rights over part of Orkney, but who alienated all to Robert II., the first Stuart King of Scotland, dying without heir. It was his claims to Orkney that the second Prince Henry, at his investiture in 1379, had to take precautionary measures against in writing. Haco, King of Norway, granted the earldom of Orkney to the first Prince Henry, the son of Lord William by the daughter of the Earl of Ross. This Henry married first a daughter of the King of Denmark, without issue; and next Jane Haliburton, daughter of Lord Haliburton, Dirleton Castle, Haddingtonshire, by whom he had Henry, Earl of Orkney. [This is the discoverer, but his father was William]. Henry married the fair Egidia, daughter of the famous Black Douglas by Egidia Stuart, daughter of King Robert the Second [by Elizabeth More the concubine]. Malise Grahame, second of the name, Earl of Stratherne, Orkney, and Caithness, was declared an outlaw and stripped of his titles and possessions by the Scottish king and parliament in 1344, for disposing of the earldom of Caithness to Earl Warenne, an Englishman, “the Scottish king’s enemy,” says Sir George Balfour, the Scotch genealogist and antiquary of the sixteenth century, as also say the state records. Caithness earldom thereafter remained crown property till Robert III. granted it to his half-brother Walter Stuart, Earl of Athole, as most jurists believe, the legitimate royal Stuart and proper king. Mackay gives 1420 as the date of Prince Henry the discoverer’s death. He says the Sinclairs held the Orkneys under the Kings of Denmark; and as they had also lands and titles in Scotland, these kings were jealous of them, and admitted their claims to the Orkneys under severe conditions and burdens. Of this severity the investitures show nothing really, though that interpretation might be taken by those unacquainted with feudalism. His other conclusion is sounder, namely, that the King of Scotland, because they were in homage to Denmark, and because of the exhorbitancy of their power, never would admit their claims to Caithness on the mainland of Scotland while they were the Princes of Orkney, but that they never dropped their rights to both. Such a claim strongly supports the growing impression that the discoverer’s grandfather Prince Henry I. was also Earl of Caithness by courtesy, that is, by being the husband of the Countess of Caithness, a sole heiress, as the great antiquary Hearne has stated. Calder, p. 102, has a Norse theory of Sinclair Earls of Caithness from 1331. But on the claims and alliances of various families in the connection, see Dr Anderson’s excellent discussions in his edition of the “Orkneyinga Saga,” and, still better, see Bishop Tulloch of the fifteenth century himself in the “Bannatyne Miscellany.” By help of the bishop’s unprejudiced historical facts Sir Robert Gordon’s “Short Discourse of the Earl of Sutherland’s Precedence in Parliament before the Earls of Caithness,” pp. 425-444 of his “Genealogy,” written in 1630, can be also made most useful in exactly the contrary of its author’s sinister intentions, so shaky a business is either deliberate lying or selfish enthusiasm. The facts of antiquity against which he fulminates he is the unconscious and outwitted instrument of recording; which facts such writing as the bishop’s thoroughly authenticates. In this vein Gordon’s so-called “fabulous and forged reveries” turn out to be truths, and they can be read by his opposites to good purpose. The Earls of Caithness could trace back from Reginald, Earl of More (or Moray, “a plain”), in Norway, the father of Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, of whose male descent they were and are, coming from Normandy to England, to Scotland thence, and back again to Norseland. Even as a Seton, which Gordon was, he befooled himself; because the Setons were an English branch of the same stock as the house of Caithness; the Sutherland predecessors of the Gordons ancient, but novi homines to the Rollo lineage.
In his “History of the Mackays,” 1829, Robert Mackay has a detailed account, taken chiefly from Bishop Tulloch’s diploma, printed in 1827. Magnus, Earl of Orkney and Caithness, who signed the letter to the pope in 1320, was the last, he says, of the Danish line descended from Rognvald, Earl of More, Norway, and had only one child, a daughter. She married Julius Spier or Spar, the king’s favourite, Earl of Strathearne, afterwards a palatine county. Their heiress daughter married Malise Grahame, the Earl of Stratherne, through her right. Their eldest son, Malise, married, first, a daughter of the Earl of Menteith, by whom he had a daughter only, Matilda Grahame, the wife of Wayland Ard. He married, secondly, a daughter of Hugh, Earl of Ross, by whom he had four daughters, the eldest of whom married Lord William, the baron of Roslin. By Wayland Ard Matilda had a son, Alexander Ard, who in his mother’s right became Earl of Caithness, and held rights over part of Orkney, but who alienated all to Robert II., the first Stuart King of Scotland, dying without heir. It was his claims to Orkney that the second Prince Henry, at his investiture in 1379, had to take precautionary measures against in writing. Haco, King of Norway, granted the earldom of Orkney to the first Prince Henry, the son of Lord William by the daughter of the Earl of Ross. This Henry married first a daughter of the King of Denmark, without issue; and next Jane Haliburton, daughter of Lord Haliburton, Dirleton Castle, Haddingtonshire, by whom he had Henry, Earl of Orkney. [This is the discoverer, but his father was William]. Henry married the fair Egidia, daughter of the famous Black Douglas by Egidia Stuart, daughter of King Robert the Second [by Elizabeth More the concubine]. Malise Grahame, second of the name, Earl of Stratherne, Orkney, and Caithness, was declared an outlaw and stripped of his titles and possessions by the Scottish king and parliament in 1344, for disposing of the earldom of Caithness to Earl Warenne, an Englishman, “the Scottish king’s enemy,” says Sir George Balfour, the Scotch genealogist and antiquary of the sixteenth century, as also say the state records. Caithness earldom thereafter remained crown property till Robert III. granted it to his half-brother Walter Stuart, Earl of Athole, as most jurists believe, the legitimate royal Stuart and proper king. Mackay gives 1420 as the date of Prince Henry the discoverer’s death. He says the Sinclairs held the Orkneys under the Kings of Denmark; and as they had also lands and titles in Scotland, these kings were jealous of them, and admitted their claims to the Orkneys under severe conditions and burdens. Of this severity the investitures show nothing really, though that interpretation might be taken by those unacquainted with feudalism. His other conclusion is sounder, namely, that the King of Scotland, because they were in homage to Denmark, and because of the exhorbitancy of their power, never would admit their claims to Caithness on the mainland of Scotland while they were the Princes of Orkney, but that they never dropped their rights to both. Such a claim strongly supports the growing impression that the discoverer’s grandfather Prince Henry I. was also Earl of Caithness by courtesy, that is, by being the husband of the Countess of Caithness, a sole heiress, as the great antiquary Hearne has stated. Calder, p. 102, has a Norse theory of Sinclair Earls of Caithness from 1331. But on the claims and alliances of various families in the connection, see Dr Anderson’s excellent discussions in his edition of the “Orkneyinga Saga,” and, still better, see Bishop Tulloch of the fifteenth century himself in the “Bannatyne Miscellany.” By help of the bishop’s unprejudiced historical facts Sir Robert Gordon’s “Short Discourse of the Earl of Sutherland’s Precedence in Parliament before the Earls of Caithness,” pp. 425-444 of his “Genealogy,” written in 1630, can be also made most useful in exactly the contrary of its author’s sinister intentions, so shaky a business is either deliberate lying or selfish enthusiasm. The facts of antiquity against which he fulminates he is the unconscious and outwitted instrument of recording; which facts such writing as the bishop’s thoroughly authenticates. In this vein Gordon’s so-called “fabulous and forged reveries” turn out to be truths, and they can be read by his opposites to good purpose. The Earls of Caithness could trace back from Reginald, Earl of More (or Moray, “a plain”), in Norway, the father of Rollo, first Duke of Normandy, of whose male descent they were and are, coming from Normandy to England, to Scotland thence, and back again to Norseland. Even as a Seton, which Gordon was, he befooled himself; because the Setons were an English branch of the same stock as the house of Caithness; the Sutherland predecessors of the Gordons ancient, but novi homines to the Rollo lineage.
XI.
In Pinkerton’s “History of Scotland,” published at London in 1797, there is knowledge about Prince Henry the navigator and discoverer. He gives, from Torfaeus, the conditions of the investiture with the earldom of Orkney. The great-grandfather of Henry, Sir William, of Bannockburn fame, obtained the Orkneys, he wrongly thinks by marrying a daughter of the Earl of Stratherne, whose first name he makes Malise, though it was Julius, the Sparre favourite of the king. Prince Henry’s death date he, also, gives as 1420. The next to him was William, “the celebrated Chancellor, who in 1470 surrendered the Orkneys to the Scottish crown. To this great man, who held the earldom when the cessation of it by Norway to Scotland was made, it may appear that Scotland was not a little indebted for this advantage.” He says that the Kings of Denmark, who annexed Norway to their kingdom in 1387 (all Scandinavia, Sweden included, often under one king), were the superiors during most of the discoverer’s time; and he gives the knowledge, already stated, that from 1422 to 1434 the Norse government appointed rulers over the Orkneys during the minority of Prince William, the Chancellor, 1434 his year of investiture by Eric, King of Denmark. It was Eric who ceded the Orkneys to James III. of Scotland, as marriage dowry with his daughter, Margaret. Pinkerton admits his obligations to Torfaeus for his facts, but he has used them to purpose. The light thrown on the discoverer’s life by one passage of his obtains him credit for prescience, considering the time he wrote, at the end of last century, when there was no very strong interest connected with the question. Fiske has referred to him, but here is his meditation:—“In 1390 happened the strange voyage of Nicolo Zeno to Shetland; [the book describing it] published at Venice, 1558, in octavo. The learned dissent much with regard to the veracity of the volume. If real, the author’s Frisland is the Faroe Islands, and his Zichmni is Sinclair. His book is one of the most puzzling in the whole circle of literature.” The puzzle, thanks to Major, to Fiske, and to other Americans, has vanished, leaving a residuum of unmistakably important and permanent historical fact, a corner foundation stone of America’s story, past and future. Among other narration, he says Bowar relates that Roslin Chapel was building when he wrote in 1444, and that Crawford officially dated the founding of it as 1441, Spottiswoode also agreeing; the service to be by a provost, six prebendaries, and two singing-boys.
Thomas Hearne [1678-1735], in his “Antiquities of Great Britain,” says that Henry “succeeded to the honours and estates of his father, and, by marriage with the daughter and sole heiress of the Earl of Caithness, added the title of Prince of the Orkneys and of the lauds of those islands, held at that time under the crown of Denmark, to his other dignities and possessions.” This was the first Prince Henry, who, if Hearne is correct, was thus Earl of Caithness in right of his wife about 1322. Of the second, the discoverer of America, he says that he “succeeded to this principality, together with the barony of Roslin, and built the great dungeon or citadel at Roslin Castle, with many grand apartments. It is said the dignity of this prince was supported by an uncommonly great and splendid retinue, and that he was particularly munificent to the church. He gave lands to the abbey of Holyroodhouse sufficient for the maintenance of 7000 sheep, with a number of rich, embroidered cups, for the more honourable celebration of divine worship, and founded several churches besides within his barony. William, his son, after the death of this prince, lived in still greater splendour at Roslin.” Hearne goes on with details about his generous pay to the builders he employed from all countries numerously, and mentions the date of the great fire which occurred at Roslin Castle, namely, 1447. But the narrative of the English antiquarian must not be followed beyond the discoverer, who, it may be added, gave gifts to Newbottle Abbey as well as to Holyrood Abbey.
The Harleian MS. 4238, has an account of the family of Sinclair, Earl of Orkney. In the Zeno book, Prince Henry is spoken of as also great in Scotland by title, as well as in the Scandinavian empire. He built a fort at Bressay Sound, where Cromwell afterwards erected one which is still existing, near where the chief town of Shetland is situated, Lerwick, then non-existent. Beatson’s “Political Index” to the date of 1379 puts Sir Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, and adds, “It seems uncertain whether this earldom reverted to the crown in 1471 by a surrender of the patent or a forfeiture. This 1379 creation was by Haco, King of Norway, but confirmed the same year by Robert II., King of Scotland.” It has already been said that the marriage of James III. to Margaret of Denmark was the cause of annexation; and there is a quantity of documents in the state records of Scotland explaining the process of divesting William, who received Caithness earldom, Ravensheuch, and many other estates in Fifeshire and elsewhere as exchange for his principality.
When Alexander Ard, the son of Matilda Grahame, resigned Caithness and Strathearne earldoms and parts of Orkney to the crown, David Stuart, 2nd son of Robert II., had Caithness; and the third son Alexander by Elizabeth More the concubine, called “The Wolf of Badenoch” from his fierce character, was by charter of 1372 made king’s lieutenant over all the north of Scotland to the Pentland Firth. Euphemia Ross, heiress of the earldom of Ross, brought the earldom of Scrathearnc to Robert II., when she became Queen of Scotland as his wife; and it is through this Ross connection that the affairs of the Sinclairs intermingled so much with those of the royal Stuarts; the Ross rights to Caithness, &c, running to both families, as they did also to the Macdonald Lords of the Isles, with in this last case fatal results like the sanguinary battle of Harlaw, Aberdeenshire, in 1411.
Thomas Hearne [1678-1735], in his “Antiquities of Great Britain,” says that Henry “succeeded to the honours and estates of his father, and, by marriage with the daughter and sole heiress of the Earl of Caithness, added the title of Prince of the Orkneys and of the lauds of those islands, held at that time under the crown of Denmark, to his other dignities and possessions.” This was the first Prince Henry, who, if Hearne is correct, was thus Earl of Caithness in right of his wife about 1322. Of the second, the discoverer of America, he says that he “succeeded to this principality, together with the barony of Roslin, and built the great dungeon or citadel at Roslin Castle, with many grand apartments. It is said the dignity of this prince was supported by an uncommonly great and splendid retinue, and that he was particularly munificent to the church. He gave lands to the abbey of Holyroodhouse sufficient for the maintenance of 7000 sheep, with a number of rich, embroidered cups, for the more honourable celebration of divine worship, and founded several churches besides within his barony. William, his son, after the death of this prince, lived in still greater splendour at Roslin.” Hearne goes on with details about his generous pay to the builders he employed from all countries numerously, and mentions the date of the great fire which occurred at Roslin Castle, namely, 1447. But the narrative of the English antiquarian must not be followed beyond the discoverer, who, it may be added, gave gifts to Newbottle Abbey as well as to Holyrood Abbey.
The Harleian MS. 4238, has an account of the family of Sinclair, Earl of Orkney. In the Zeno book, Prince Henry is spoken of as also great in Scotland by title, as well as in the Scandinavian empire. He built a fort at Bressay Sound, where Cromwell afterwards erected one which is still existing, near where the chief town of Shetland is situated, Lerwick, then non-existent. Beatson’s “Political Index” to the date of 1379 puts Sir Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, and adds, “It seems uncertain whether this earldom reverted to the crown in 1471 by a surrender of the patent or a forfeiture. This 1379 creation was by Haco, King of Norway, but confirmed the same year by Robert II., King of Scotland.” It has already been said that the marriage of James III. to Margaret of Denmark was the cause of annexation; and there is a quantity of documents in the state records of Scotland explaining the process of divesting William, who received Caithness earldom, Ravensheuch, and many other estates in Fifeshire and elsewhere as exchange for his principality.
When Alexander Ard, the son of Matilda Grahame, resigned Caithness and Strathearne earldoms and parts of Orkney to the crown, David Stuart, 2nd son of Robert II., had Caithness; and the third son Alexander by Elizabeth More the concubine, called “The Wolf of Badenoch” from his fierce character, was by charter of 1372 made king’s lieutenant over all the north of Scotland to the Pentland Firth. Euphemia Ross, heiress of the earldom of Ross, brought the earldom of Scrathearnc to Robert II., when she became Queen of Scotland as his wife; and it is through this Ross connection that the affairs of the Sinclairs intermingled so much with those of the royal Stuarts; the Ross rights to Caithness, &c, running to both families, as they did also to the Macdonald Lords of the Isles, with in this last case fatal results like the sanguinary battle of Harlaw, Aberdeenshire, in 1411.
XII.
“The Rolls of Scotland,” carried to the Tower of London, and kept afterwards in the chapter-house of Westminster Abbey, but placed now in the Record Office, Fetter Lane, London, have many notices of the discoverer. King Richard II. of England gave a safe-conduct or passport to Henry, Earl of Orkney and Lord of Roslin, from 10th March, 1391-2, to Michaelmas, with permission to be accompanied by 24 persons, the necessary horses, &c., with proviso that no one fleeing the English laws should be of the company. The king signed it at Leeds Castle, Kent. January 30th, 1405-6, Henry IV. signed a safe-conduct for 13 Scottish magnates, among whom was Henry, Earl of Orkney, 50 persons allowed as their company. The magnates were to be hostages for the Earl of Douglas, who was to go to Scotland. He had been taken prisoner by the English King in aiding Perey’s rebellion, and was ultimately freed by ransom. John Stuart, son of the Regent of Scotland (the Duke of Albany), and Sir William Sinclair, the latter the son of Prince Henry by Florentia of Denmark, were two of those hostages. On 15th March, 1406, the same king, from Westminster, gave a safe-conduct to Henry, Earl of Orkney, and to Walter, Lord Haliburton, to come into England with 40 persons, to stay till the feast of St. John the Baptist. Of date Westminster, 8th April, 1407, Henry IV. signed passport to Patrick Thomson and Henry Shipman, the masters of a ship from Scotland, and to Alexander Johnson and Robert Black, of Scotland, with 12 persons accompanying them to London by ship with goods and merchandise coming with Henry, Earl of Orkney. On the supplication of Henry, Earl of Orkney, Alexander Ledale, and Robert Williamson, armorials-bearing gentlemen and followers of that earl, had a safe-conduct with 8 persons by sea and land within England, dated by private seal at Westminster, 4th January, 1407-8, from Henry the Usurper or IV., the permission to last till Pentecost. Of date 14th April, 1416, Henry V., at Westminster, London, gave his protection in England till loth August to Henry, Earl of Orkney, with 20 persons, coming from and returning to Scotland.
When Henry V. was going to France in 1421, he gave permission to James I. of Scotland, England’s prisoner then 15 years, to visit his country of date Westminster, 31st May, for three months, with hostages 20 in number in his room, 5 of them earls; William, Earl of Orkney, one of these. This favour was at the instigation of the Earl of Douglas. The special point to notice in reference to the biography of the discoverer here, is that he died before 31st May, 1421, instead of in 1422, as Fordun says; for his son William, by this record of state, was then described as Earl of Orkney. King James was not finally freed to go to his kingdom until 1423, after 17 years of detention from his capture by Henry IV. in 1406. It is not known, however, that he thus visited his country at intervals on the hostage principle; and Henry’s frequent visits to England, must have been in his capacity of hereditary tutor to the Princes of Scotland.
Henry’s brother John had a safe-conduct from Henry V. to come to England with 12 persons of any rank, to treat about the King of Scotland’s return and his own going to France in 1421. On 15th May, 1412, from Westminster, Henry V. had given him a passport for himself and two others, the party to be 20 persons while in England. Again and again Sir John appears as one of Scotland’s wise men, brother of the discoverer of America, both of them well known in European courts as accomplished chiefs of their time. From Windsor Richard II. gave a safe-conduct to Sir John, this brother, as ambassador, and to three others, with 60 horses, on 24th July, 1392, “to discuss negotiations with our Scotch enemies.” Henry IV. from Pontefract, Yorkshire, on 30th June, 1404, gave Sir John a passport for a quarter of a year; and again, from Leicester, 2nd August, 1404, till Easter. From Tutbury one is granted to him and two others, 13th September, 1404, till paschal feast, with twelve persons. Richard II. from Westminster, 23rd October, 139”>, gave him passport for a year, with 13 followers on horseback. He, Lord Dundas, Robert Trofort, and 12 servants, with the Earl of Douglas, had passport from Henry IV. dated Westminster, 28th September, 1406, which must have been for getting James I. of Scotland out of Henry IV. the King of England’s hands, after his inhospitable, perfidious capture a few months before, together with his guardian, the Admiral of Scotland, Prince Henry of Orkney. Sir John and others, with 12 persons, had a safe-conduct on 16th July, 1413, when Henry V. had just come to the throne (hope long given up of the clemency of his father, the Lancastrian Henry IV.), to negotiate “for the delivery of the King of Scotland.” They were on their way to France. At Westminster Henry V. on 19th August, 1413, gave permission to Sir John to carry through England to Scotland a quantity of armaturas, that is, coats of mail and fighting accoutrements. These brothers were as familiar in Southern as they were in Northern Europe, France being a happy hunting-ground for the Scotch in particular. Sir John with William Cockburn had another passport of date 20th July, 1413, to last till the following Easter, with 12 followers. On 9th June, 1421, at Dover, Henry the Fifth gave him 30 lancers, and a safe-conduct, going to Rouen in Normandy with himself and King James I. of Scotland. Sir John’s brother Prince Henry was then dead, as has been seen; and the “Rolls of Scotland” are entirely silent about Sir John also after this entry. He seems to have exerted himself greatly for the cultivated poet-king, though without effect up to the 1421 date.
Capper, in his “Topographical Dictionary,” published at London in 1808, says the chapel of Roslin Castle “was founded in 1446 by the Prince of Orkney and Duke of Oldenburg.” This was William, the first Earl of Caithness, by the ordinary reckoning. Of the castle it is said that it was “the favourite of the great family.” The “Edinburgh Gazetteer” of 1822 gives the dimensions of the chapel as 69 feet long, 34 broad, and 40 high; its marvellous internal beauty quite taking away the realisation of its smallness, by admiration for its harmony.
When Henry V. was going to France in 1421, he gave permission to James I. of Scotland, England’s prisoner then 15 years, to visit his country of date Westminster, 31st May, for three months, with hostages 20 in number in his room, 5 of them earls; William, Earl of Orkney, one of these. This favour was at the instigation of the Earl of Douglas. The special point to notice in reference to the biography of the discoverer here, is that he died before 31st May, 1421, instead of in 1422, as Fordun says; for his son William, by this record of state, was then described as Earl of Orkney. King James was not finally freed to go to his kingdom until 1423, after 17 years of detention from his capture by Henry IV. in 1406. It is not known, however, that he thus visited his country at intervals on the hostage principle; and Henry’s frequent visits to England, must have been in his capacity of hereditary tutor to the Princes of Scotland.
Henry’s brother John had a safe-conduct from Henry V. to come to England with 12 persons of any rank, to treat about the King of Scotland’s return and his own going to France in 1421. On 15th May, 1412, from Westminster, Henry V. had given him a passport for himself and two others, the party to be 20 persons while in England. Again and again Sir John appears as one of Scotland’s wise men, brother of the discoverer of America, both of them well known in European courts as accomplished chiefs of their time. From Windsor Richard II. gave a safe-conduct to Sir John, this brother, as ambassador, and to three others, with 60 horses, on 24th July, 1392, “to discuss negotiations with our Scotch enemies.” Henry IV. from Pontefract, Yorkshire, on 30th June, 1404, gave Sir John a passport for a quarter of a year; and again, from Leicester, 2nd August, 1404, till Easter. From Tutbury one is granted to him and two others, 13th September, 1404, till paschal feast, with twelve persons. Richard II. from Westminster, 23rd October, 139”>, gave him passport for a year, with 13 followers on horseback. He, Lord Dundas, Robert Trofort, and 12 servants, with the Earl of Douglas, had passport from Henry IV. dated Westminster, 28th September, 1406, which must have been for getting James I. of Scotland out of Henry IV. the King of England’s hands, after his inhospitable, perfidious capture a few months before, together with his guardian, the Admiral of Scotland, Prince Henry of Orkney. Sir John and others, with 12 persons, had a safe-conduct on 16th July, 1413, when Henry V. had just come to the throne (hope long given up of the clemency of his father, the Lancastrian Henry IV.), to negotiate “for the delivery of the King of Scotland.” They were on their way to France. At Westminster Henry V. on 19th August, 1413, gave permission to Sir John to carry through England to Scotland a quantity of armaturas, that is, coats of mail and fighting accoutrements. These brothers were as familiar in Southern as they were in Northern Europe, France being a happy hunting-ground for the Scotch in particular. Sir John with William Cockburn had another passport of date 20th July, 1413, to last till the following Easter, with 12 followers. On 9th June, 1421, at Dover, Henry the Fifth gave him 30 lancers, and a safe-conduct, going to Rouen in Normandy with himself and King James I. of Scotland. Sir John’s brother Prince Henry was then dead, as has been seen; and the “Rolls of Scotland” are entirely silent about Sir John also after this entry. He seems to have exerted himself greatly for the cultivated poet-king, though without effect up to the 1421 date.
Capper, in his “Topographical Dictionary,” published at London in 1808, says the chapel of Roslin Castle “was founded in 1446 by the Prince of Orkney and Duke of Oldenburg.” This was William, the first Earl of Caithness, by the ordinary reckoning. Of the castle it is said that it was “the favourite of the great family.” The “Edinburgh Gazetteer” of 1822 gives the dimensions of the chapel as 69 feet long, 34 broad, and 40 high; its marvellous internal beauty quite taking away the realisation of its smallness, by admiration for its harmony.
XIII.
In conclusion, it may be asked what modern or Caithnessian value has these gatherings of antiquarianism. The brief account in the first chapter might have been enough. But to some of the brightest minds of America the burning question has of late been whether the Latin or Saxon race is to have the supremacy of their country; the intense activity of Roman Catholicism contrasted with the apathy of Protestantism giving philosophers and statesmen pause as to the near results, notwithstanding the power of science and reason. The glorification of Columbus in the discovery centenary of 1892 was an aid towards the threatened Spanish or Latin domination; and Scandinavian energy has been in movement, especially at the Chicago Exhibition of 1893, to counteract the southern tide, by ascribing the discovery of America to Norsemen of the Teuton stock, including, as principal factors, the English and the Dutch. Caithnessmen, especially of Canada and the United States, have the strongest personal interest in such a gigantic Armageddon contest of blood and belief, if it is to be early fact. That the ancestor of many of them, and one in affinity with more, such as Mowats, Bremners (e.g., the naval officer mentioned in the preface, now of the Centurion, flagship, China, who was kinship to Hon. Robert Sinclair, Wick), Cormacks, Millers, Sutherlands, Bruces, Keiths, and others, is the principal figure to oppose to the renowned Italian Christopher, makes Prince Henry Sinclair II. of as much present as past relation, not only to district, but to the widest of the world’s movements; parochialism not the note of the northern vikings, roving now for property, knowledge, and rule as of yore.
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Source: Thomas Sinclair, Caithness Events: A Discussion of Captain Kennedy's Historical Narrative, and an Account of the Broynach Earls, to which is Added a Supplement of Emendations of 1899, 2nd ed. (Wick: W. Rae, 1899), 138-179.
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