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Page 99 - In 7 6543 the consequent necessity for the jealous watch of the Lawrightman upon the weigher's crafty hand. The first is a facsimile of the woodcut which occurs in the original edition of the Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus, of Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Upsala, p. 468, Eonwe, 1555, folio. The other is copied from The General Grievances and Oppression of the Isles of Orkney and Shetland (by James Mackenzie), p.

Page 40 - Government entertained very different views of the nature and duration of its rights and powers ; and from the first, no resource of law or chicane was left untried to fortify and perpetuate its defective and redeemable title. By a series of transactions (from 17th September 1470 to 16th May 1471), the Crown in exchange of certain lands in Fife, and a pension of 40 merks, acquired from Earl William an irredeemable title to the Earldom estate, and jus Comitatus Orchadie — an Act of Parliament annexed...

Page 33 - 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. The king might wed the Odaller's daughter or match his own daughter to the Odalborn without disparagement, for he himself was but the Odal-born of a larger Odal. . . . The King might enforce the military services of the Jarl — the Odaller owed none to any of them.

Page 28 - On reference to the Earldom Rental of 15oo (Peterkin's " Rentals," No. i), the oldest one extant, which enumerates the Earldom lands of 1471, it will be found that udal quoys paid no rent to the Earl, and that only those quoys paid rent to the Earl which belonged to, or had been purchased...

Page 99 - Ounces = 1 Mark of half a pound. 24 Marks = 1 Lispund, Span, Setteen, or Stone. 6 Lispunds = 1 Meil. 24 Meils = 1 Last. Of measurement by capacity, the instruments were the Can or KANNA of Norway, and the Barrel or BARIEL of fifteen Lispunds. 48 Cans of Oil or 15 Lispunds of Butter = 1 Barrel. 12 Barrels, 180 Lispunds, or 576 Cans = 1 Last. Of measurement by extent the only instrument was the CUTTEL or A LIN, a. wooden rod of the length of the Scottish Ell. The Cuttel of Wadmsel became in Zetland...

Page 69 - Robert, and with poetical justice, the victim of his successor. The structure of his fortunes, reared by the Earl — wrong upon wrong, iniquity upon iniquity — out of the ruins of hundreds, in twenty years of cool, cautious, calculating system, was overthrown as speedily by the spendthrift folly of a son worthy of such a father, the heir of all his vices, with superadded contrasts of his own — crafty but headstrong — mean but vain — rapacious but extravagant — luxurious but cruel to ferocity...

Page 14 - JABL, and ODALLERS — freeborn Thingmen ; of the BISHOP, a Thingman by custom or courtesy; and finally, of the UNFREE, Tenants and others, subjects not members of the Thing. The Al-odh-ial or Odh-al holding was the only tenure of land recognized in Scandinavian kingdoms. It was transmitted by Odin's followers to their offspring, as the dearest of those free institutions which distinguished them from servile races, willing to hold their lands as the gift of a master ; and in the end of the ninth...

Page 116 - The President of the Althing, Keeper and Expounder of the Law-book, and Chief Judge of Orkney, anciently paid by the assessment of FORKAUP, and afterwards by the Scottish Government, and ultimately abolished or merged in the office of Sheriff.

Page 54 - Lieutenant-Grovernor, first a Frenchman named Bonot, and afterwards the Scottish Earl of Huntly. The struggle of the Queen, Regent, and Cardinal Beaton, for the power to misrule Scotland, was mimicked on a narrower field by the contests and law-suits between Bonot, Huntly and Sinclair, for the possession of Orkney, and with similar results. Government was in abeyance or abandoned to the local authorities, if the term can be applied where nothing reigned except disorder. Respites and pardons for murder...

Page 3 - RAPUI, might have been the characteristic motto, as that shadowy distinction between the merits of the thief and the receiver has been the plea, of every government under which they have since been ruled or misruled. Regarded as aliens, of no value beyond the revenue or plunder which could be extorted from them, they have been granted, revoked, annexed, re-granted, confiscated and re-annexed, with wearisome monotony of torturing change. Five times have they been formally annexed to the Crown by Act...