Oppressions of the Sixteenth Century in the Islands of Orkney and Zetland. Various
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without waiting for the King’s consent, and with such strength and skill, that the witch-haunted mind of the 17th century believed that only the devil himself could have been its engineer and architect. His powers and rights were tacitly continued to his son Earl Henry II., whose little Court of Orkney was the most elegant and refined in Europe, and adorned with the official services of many proud Scottish nobles. To his enlightened guardianship was committed the early education of the most accomplished prince of his time—James I. of Scotland, the Zerbino of Ariosto; and half a century before Columbus commenced his baffling search for a patron among the sovereigns of Europe, the Venetian navigator Zenoni had been commissioned by Earl Henry to retrace the footsteps of the early Scandinavian discoverers of the Western World. On the death of Henry II., the Foudrie of Zetland was conferred upon John Sinclair his brother (1418); and during the nonage of his son, the Government of Orkney was committed (1422), first to the Bishop Thomas Tulloch, then to the Chief of the Scottish Clan Menzies, and again to the Bishop, till (on 10th August 1434) William Sinclair was formally invested with the title, and intrusted with the Government, subject to the same hard limitations as his grandfather. William, the last Jarl of Orkney, was the most liberal patron of Scottish literature and art in his day. He was busied in the endeavour to consolidate his power and increase his estates by purchase and excambion, when the Impignoration opened to him a shorter and safer way to gratify at once his ambition, his affection, and his hatred; and with the same worldly wisdom which led him (1455) to prefer the possession of Caithness to his claims on Nithsdale, he accepted (1471), with the full consent of the King of Denmark, the lands and pension offered by James III. as an ample equivalent for all that remained to him of the ancient Jarldom of Orkney—viz., his title and his lands, inherited or acquired.
The ancient estate of the Jarls lay scattered through every Island and township of Orkney and Zetland, and consisted, 1st, of Lands set or leased to tenants on a three years’ tack, with a Gersom or fine at each renewal, and an annual Landskylld, landmail or rent, in addition to the King’s Skatt, the Bishop’s Teind and other burdens, local and general; 2nd, of the Bordlands or Mensal farms, with their Böl and its enclosures, the occasional quarters of the Jarl in his progresses of pastime or State Service, and on that account exempt from Skatt, even when leased to husbandmen on the usual terms in other respects; and, 3rd, of certain Quoys and other lands added by Odallers to their holdings, but not by odal-ræd, and therefore paying no Skatt, but Landskylld and other burdens of tenant lands. The Earldom also included Conquest or acquired lands, consisting, 1st, of lands added by the later Earls by purchase or excambion; and, 2nd, of lands which they had seized as ultimi hæredes, or confiscated for crime or Skatfall. The tenants or tacksmen of the “auld” Earldom were a sort of Rentallers with a prescriptive claim of renewal by law or custom, on payment of the stated Gersom; but those of the Conquest lands were in the far less favourable condition of removable tenants, with terms and burdens at the landlord’s mercy. A small fee was expected by the Earl’s bailiff, at each renewal or assedation, called for the Mainland Land-setter, and for the smaller islands Eysetter-kaup, and every tenant was bound to fure or ferry the Earl and his family, to bring peats to his Castles of Birsay or Orphir, and perform other prædial services when required. The payments were mostly made in kind, altering in form according to the convenience, residence or non-residence of the donatary, but weighed and measured by fixed and native standards. These LANDS, MALES, GERSOMS and SERVICES, constituted the jus comitatus which Earl William (1471) conveyed to the Crown of Scotland.
From the time of William, by Romish consecration Primus Episcopus Orcadum (1136), the Bishops had a seat in the great Council of Freemen. Whether this were at first their right as actual or presumed Odal-born Freemen, a concession to their sacred office, or a priestly assumption, their presence in the Thing was often salutary, sometimes to the Jarl, sometimes to the Odaller, either as Councillors for the wisdom of the serpent, or as peacemakers for the gentleness of the dove.
The earliest authorities testify as usual to the undainty acquisitiveness of the Clergy, making profit alike of the weakness and the wealth, the crimes and the penitence of all around them. Augmenting and prospering by Gifts—such as those of the Odaller of Airland to the Crosskirk of Stenness, of David of Rendall to St. Ninian, or of Guidbrand of Quendal to the Vicar of Evie, for “a mass ilk Friday;” by Confiscations—as of Baddi’s Lands for bloodshed in the Kirkyard; by perpetuation of all liferent Donations; by pretended Excambion, retaining their own land and seizing the promised equivalent; by withholding their own Skatts and embezzling others, and by the numberless oppressions of lawless strength against weak neighbours, the Bishops advanced in wealth and power. In the quaint language of Bishop Graham, “the old Bishopric of Orkney became a greate thing, and lay sparsim throughout the haill parochines of Orkney and Zetland. Besyde his lands, he hade the teyndis of achtene kirks; his lands grew daily as adulteries and incests increased in the countrey,” till they were “estimat at the third part of the Countreyis of old.” How or when the Bishops were permitted to Tithe the lands and labour of the Islands is uncertain; probably the building of Magnus Kirk, the Primus Episcopus, and this impost were connected and coincident (1136); but its rigorous exaction and arbitrary increase were probably too recent for popular patience, when (in 1222) Bishop Adam was burned to death for doubling the customary payment. Certain Skatts were probably granted among the earliest provisions for religious uses, but the indiscriminate appropriation of those of Church-lands and others probably commenced when the Scottish Bishop, Thomas Tulloch, combined the powers and opportunities of Bishop, Governor and Collector of Royal Revenues, during the non-investiture of Earl William (1422–34). With possessions so extensive, a jurisdiction over their own lands almost unlimited, and an influence dreaded by all in this world, as all-prevailing in that which is to come, the Bishop could cope with the waning power of the Jarl as easily as other Prelates of the Scandinavian Church could defy the Crown. Safe in his Palace of Kirkwall or his stately Castle of Noltland (his Land of Leisure, his Episcopal Buen Retiro or Sans Souci), he was within his own domain as powerful for good or evil as the Crown or its Donatary, but Orkney never tasted the full bitterness of oppression, till the powers of both were united in such hands as those of Bishop Thomas, or his kinsman and successor William Tulloch, who filled the See at the date of the Impignoration, and was rewarded for his supple usefulness by a favourable Tack of the Earldom and Royal revenues. It was fatal to the interests and independence of Orkney, that, at such a crisis of transition, the power to interpret and fix the existing and future rights of parties should have been intrusted to such an arbiter. His ambition as a Courtier, his interest as a Churchman, his partiality as a Scotchman, and his education as a Canonist and feudal lawyer, all united to bias his decision of the questions at stake between the Scottish Crown and its Scandinavian subjects—between Feudal principles and what were to him the barbarous anomalies of Odalism. Able, subtle and plausible, he was equally conversant with every stronghold of Feudal or Canon law, and every weak point in the Odal system. Scotland could not have found a minister more skilful or less scrupulous in turning its new acquisitions to advantage. If he somewhat aggrandized his benefice at the cost of the Crown’s Estate intrusted to him, he largely enriched both at the expense of the Odaller, on whom he accumulated new burdens, teinds, services and escheats, with such ingenuity, that his successors in oppression could hardly “better the instruction” by one original idea of extortion—one impost which could not be traced to some suggestive innovation of Bishop William.
The Odallers and Odal-born were the Commons of Orkney and Zetland—the Roithismen and Roithismen’s sons—the Göfugar and Gædingar, who constituted the numerical strength of the Althing. There is no class in Europe exactly analogous to this—the Odals-madr, Bondi or Peasant-Noble of Orkney and of Norway—but perhaps the Hindustani scholar might trace some curious parallels in the Tenures and treatment of the landowners of Upper India. He was a Peasant, for he tilled his own land, and claimed no distinction among his free neighbours; but he was also Noble, for there was no hereditary order superior to his own—as an Odals-madr with Rœdi, Eign and Sœmd—Master of his Household, his Goods and his Honour.[2] The King might wed the Odaller’s daughter or match his own daughter to the Odal-born without disparagement, for he himself was but the Odal-born of a larger Odal. The Jarl might be deemed less free and therefore less noble, for he owed something to the grace of a human superior. The Bondi in his Odal was sui juris, and in the one-chambered Parliament of the Althing,