Oppressions of the Sixteenth Century in the Islands of Orkney and Zetland. Various
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redeemed, it should return unaltered to its original owner. Even while creating a new and temporary right for Scotland, it did not extinguish the reversionary claims or present interest of Norway; for we find that power making valid grants of kirk-lands (1490–1500), its officer, the Lawman of Bergen, pronouncing valid decrees affecting Zetland (1485), and the Scottish Parliament expressly recognising the ancient native laws in the islands (1567) a century after the Impignoration. Most Scottish historians, from Ferrerius and Buchanan downwards, assert as a point of national honour the extinction of this Right of Redemption, either by renunciation or prescription; but the first plea is disproved by documentary evidence of two centuries of Danish demands and Scottish evasions; and so late as 1668 (two centuries after the date of the impignoration, and not two centuries from our own) the Plenipotentiaries of Europe assembled at Breda, attested that the Right of Redemption was unprescribed and imprescribable. Whether this Right be still vested in Denmark, or transferred to Sweden with the Norwegian Crown, are questions of the Law of Nations decided for the present by British preponderance of metal—until perhaps some power, recognised by the grace of Palmerston and Treaty of London as the future heir of Denmark, may revive the claim with arms as cogent as his pleas and his inducements.
Every writer of Scottish history has recorded this Impignoration, Wadset or Mortgage, as the basis of Britain’s right to the Orkney and Zetland Islands, and some have narrated the attendant circumstances with more or less honesty of investigation; but few have interrupted the flow of their narrative to trace the political causes or social consequences of that revolution, and still fewer to define the several rights and interests of those affected by it as parties, subjects, governors, or governed.
It is not difficult to perceive Scotland’s objects in seeking, not only to be freed from the constant casus belli of a degrading tribute, disputed payments, and increasing arrears, but to acquire without cost a valuable addition of territory long coveted, and to convert a cause of weakness into a source of strength, by turning dangerous enemies into disarmed and profitable subjects. All these objects were attained. There was thenceforth peace between her and Scandinavia. After a few struggles, the Islanders subsided in angry submission to the fraud and rapacity of their new rulers; and to a nation impoverished like Scotland by wars and misgovernment, Orkney proved in time a rich acquisition, if we may estimate the wealth of the victim by the annual plunder of 3000 head of cattle, 5000 bolls of grain, 6280 stones of butter, and 700 gallons of oil, extorted for centuries in kind or in value from Orkney alone, in addition to its proportion of the ordinary taxation of the kingdom, and exclusive of the burdens of Zetland. But of this booty, little was allowed by the unscrupulous collectors to reach the National Exchequer, and the gain of the Scottish Crown bore no proportion to its guilty greed.
The interest of the Danish Crown in this transaction is not so obvious. It had long been an ordinary resource of its exhausted Treasury to pledge or sell its States or dependencies, but always for a valuable equivalent. But in this case, Christian surrendered a large and undoubted claim, and ceded two valuable provinces for no consideration except the personal contingency of the Queen’s jointure, frustrated by her early death (1486). Perhaps, as Count of Oldenburg, even when exalted to the throne of three kingdoms, he had still a German gratification in embellishing his family tree with another royal marriage. Perhaps, as a Dane, he was not unwilling to tear a gem from the rival, though now united Crown of Norway. If so, he had his reward—promises without fulfilment—alliance, which never ripened into aid or subsidy, were all that he obtained for abandoning these kindred colonies to the will of their ancient enemies, and four centuries of continuous disaster, defection and decline, have shown if Denmark did well or wisely in casting off subjects so bound by blood, habit, and history to love whom she loved, and hate whom she hated.
William Sinclair, the last of the Orkneyar Jarls, had many objects to gain in the transfer of the sovereignty of the Islands. More refined, and less ignorant than the contemporary herd of nobles, who suspected his studies of subjects unearthly and unholy, he could appreciate, even with some pride, the cloudy romance of his ancestral Sagas; but a foreigner by descent, if not by birth, he had few sympathies with the Islanders. His efforts to extend and consolidate his power and estates had offended the King, estranged the Odallers, and embroiled him with the Bishop and the Lawman—his family partialities had awakened bitter feud between him and his eldest son—and as the vassal and high dignitary of two kings, ruling a province of the one, dangerously near the coast of the other, he might easily become an object of suspicion or umbrage to either or both. Indeed, clouds had already arisen between the Scottish Earl and his Norwegian Suzerain, and the substantial splendour of the dignities, titles, lands, and pensions of his Scottish connection, outshone the shadowy jurisdictions and waning revenues of his ancient Jarldom. With such and so many motives, he can hardly be blamed for favouring or even suggesting a change which (when consummated by the subsequent excambion) would release him from a position so irksome and unsafe, enhance his Scottish influence, and aggrandize a favourite son, by disinheriting an unloved heir of his Odal birthright.
William Tulloch, the Bishop of Orkney, was a Norwegian prelate, but a Scottish priest; and if he had any doubts of transferring the spiritual allegiance of his diocese from Drontheim to St. Andrews, they were speedily relieved by his appointment as Confessor to the Queen, and removed by a favourable Tack of the newly acquired demesne of the Scottish Crown. Indeed the change was almost essential to his safety, for his frauds and rapacity had provoked the Earl to seize and imprison him; and he owed his liberty only to the express solicitation of the Kings of Denmark and Scotland—with both of whom he had the address to make a merit of his sufferings as a martyrdom for his devotion to their incompatible interests. The warm commendations of Christian were so ably seconded by the bishop’s services to James, that the Queen’s confessor became successively Lord Privy Seal, Ambassador to England, and Bishop of Moray.
But to the unfortunate subjects of this bargain of kings and princes, the change was an evil unmixed, irremediable, and scarcely alleviated by the hope of its temporary nature. Every interest was threatened, and every feeling wounded, in such betrayal by their natural rulers into the hands of hereditary enemies—exasperated by five centuries of mutual feud and outrage—despised as an inferior race for easy defeats and long subjugation—and hated still more as masters, foreign in blood, language, customs, and laws. When Scotland writhes under her subjection to her “auld enemies of England,” and complains of the jealous removal or destruction of every historical record or monument of independence, Orkney in its turn may smile to trace, in every mortification of its first oppressor, a retributary transcript of its own.
Christian indeed made a form of consulting his Orkney subjects, through their Lawman, before he cast them off, but the Lawman was soon afterwards, if not then, the bought pensioner of Scotland, and his opinion, even if conscientious, could no more express the mind of Orkney than the dictum of the Speaker could bind the judgment of Britain and her Parliament. It is true that there was in the Islands an anti-patriot or Alien faction, consisting of the Earl, the Bishop, and their Scottish dependants, who viewed the change as in every respect favourable to their own interests, but especially as offering in Scotland a nearer and more friendly centre of law and Court of Appeal than that of Bergen. But to the Islanders in general, there was nothing in the Revolution more galling to their pride, or more dangerous to their interests, than the imminent conflict of Feudalism with their dearly cherished Odal laws. As the last command of their native King, they paid their Skatt to Scotland without remonstrance, almost without a murmur; but the coming shadow of the first feudal grant which menaced the freedom of their Odal soil, roused the long-suffering Odallers into rebellion, and the exterminating victory of Summerdale gave Scottish Kings a lesson for another generation.
To illustrate this conflict of legal systems in connection with the documents now printed for the first time, I propose briefly to sketch the TENURE, RIGHTS, and BURDENS OF LAND in Orkney and Zetland prior to the Impignoration, and the alterations and encroachments made by Scottish rulers and Scottish lawyers in the sixteenth century.
In the primitive form of Scandinavian society, without trade, manufacture, or commerce, land was the only wealth, its ownership the sole foundation of power, privilege, or dignity. As no man could win or hold possession without the strong arm to defend it, every landowner was a warrior, every warrior a husbandman. King Sigurd Syr tended his own hay harvest, and Sweyn of Gairsay and Thorkell