time, have been her father’s sole heiress, although she did not remain so, because we find that he had a son who lived till 1226, called Harald.  Meantime Bishop Adam, after the death in 1213 of Bishop John, his half-blinded and mutilated predecessor, succeeded to the Episcopal See of Caithness,[5] and seems to have reversed Bishop John’s policy of leniency to his flock by exacting from them heavier and heavier tithes, as years went by.

In 1217, King Hakon’s rival, Jarl Skuli, thought Earl John so promising a traitor as to send him letters forged with the Norse king’s seal.[6] In 1218 John was present at Bergen to witness the ordeal successfully undergone by King Hakon’s mother in order to prove that king, then a boy, to be her son by the late King Hakon Sverri’s son, and so rightly entitled to the Norwegian crown.[7]

After Earl John’s return from Norway, the bishop’s exactions of tithes of butter reached such a pitch that the Caithness folk met near his house at Halkirk, and demanded that the earl should protect them against the bishop’s rapacity, and, either at the earl’s suggestion or without any opposition on his part, they attacked the bishop in his house, which was close to Breithivellir (now Brawl) Castle, where John lived.  The Saga gives the following description of this affair:—­[8]

“They then held a Thing on the fell above the homestead where the earl was.  Rafn the Lawman was then with the bishop, and prayed the bishop to spare the men; also he said he was afraid how things might go.  Then a message was sent to Earl John with a prayer that he would reconcile the bishop and the freemen; but the earl would come never near the spot.  Then the freemen ran down from the fell and fared hotly and eagerly.  And when Rafn the Lawman saw that, he bade the bishop devise some plan to save himself.  He and the bishop were drinking in a loft, and when the freemen came to the loft, the monk went out at the door; and was straightway smitten across the face, and fell down dead inside the loft.  And when the bishop was told that, he answered, ’That had not happened sooner than was likely, for he was always making our matters worse.’  Then the bishop bade Rafn tell the freemen that he wished to be reconciled with them.  But when this was told to the freemen, all those among them who were wiser were glad to hear it.  Then the bishop went out and meant to be reconciled.  But when the worse kind of men saw that, those who were most mad, they seized Bishop Adam, and brought him into a little house and set fire to it.  But the house burned so quickly that they who wished to save the bishop could do nothing.  Thus Bishop Adam died, and his body was little burnt when it was found.  Then a fitting grave was bestowed on it,[9] and a worthy burial.  But those who had been the greatest friends of the bishop, then sent men to find the King of Scots.  Alexander was then King of Scots, the son of King William the Saint.  But when the king was ware of these tidings” (he took it) “so ill that men have those miseries in mind which he wrought after the burning of the bishop, in maiming of men and manslaying, and loss of goods and banishment out of the land.”