assigns whomsoever, all Creich and much of Dornoch parish up to the boundaries of Ross, and the date of this grant was probably about 1211.  The Mackays were beginning to occupy the western parts of Strathnavern, their title being probably their swords, and they held their lands “manu forti,” their country being a refuge for their Morayshire kinsmen, the MacHeths, who were in constant rebellion.  The eastern portion of Strathnavern, and particularly the neighbourhood of Loch Coire and Loch Naver, and all the Strathnaver valley were probably insecurely held by members of the Erlend and Moddan family after Harald Ungi’s death at the battle of Clairdon in 1198; and Gunni, probably a grandson of Sweyn Asleifarson, who had married Ragnhild, Harald Ungi’s youngest sister, after the death in the same battle of Lifolf Baldpate, her first husband, became chief of the Moddan Clan there and in Caithness.  After 1200 Ragnhild had by Gunni a son called Snaekoll Gunni’s son, who thus became, on his father’s death, the chief representative in Scotland, both of the Moddan family and of the line of Jarls Erlend Thorfinnson, St. Magnus, and St. Ragnvald, and of Eric Stagbrellir and of Earl and Jarl Harald Ungi; and Snaekoll afterwards laid claim to their possessions in Orkney, as the sole male representative of this line.  Gunni and Ragnhild must have held the Strathnaver lands, and the Moddan family lands in Caithness, formerly Earl Ottar’s estates, till their deaths, and Snaekoll was their sole known male heir.  The Harald Ungi share of the Caithness earldom lands, which The Flatey Book and Torfaeus state that Jarl Ragnvald had held, does not appear to have been granted to David, or to any successor to the Caithness earldom of his line, or to any other person at this time.  Indeed, the line of Paul were the last persons to whom such a grant would be made.

It was, therefore, to a very much reduced territory and earldom that David succeeded in 1206, as Earl of Caithness.  We hear almost nothing of him, save that for the latter part of the eight years of his rule,[1] more or less inefficient probably through ill health, he shared the earldom and what had been left to him of its lands with his younger brother John.  David died without issue in 1214[2] probably soon after Hugo Freskyn, and David was succeeded by his brother John in the jarldom of Orkney and in the reduced earldom of Caithness as sole jarl and earl.

Immediately after David’s death, King William the Lion, who had, in 1211, suppressed a rebellion in Moray of the Thanes of Ross under Guthred son of Donald Ban MacWilliam whom a few years later he captured and beheaded,[3] came to Moray again; and, about the 1st of August 1214, King William demanded, and received[4] Earl John’s daughter, whose name is not known, as a hostage for her father’s loyalty, and a guarantee of the peace then made, under which John was probably recognised as earl and as entitled to his reduced territory.  His daughter may, at this