ties, with their witnesses, accordingly crossed the North
Sea in 1232, and Hakon heard the case, and punished the partisans
of Snaekoll, some with death and others with imprisonment. Snaekoll
himself, who, as the heir of Jarl Ragnvald, was too valuable a pawn to
be sacrificed, was retained, and lived long in Norway with Earl Skuli,
and afterwards with King Hakon.[21] It is noteworthy that a _gaedinga_
ship (no Jewish Ship,[22] as Torfaeus states, but a ship of the
_gaedingar_ or _lendirmen_ of the Earl of Orkney) was, on the return
voyage, lost at sea; and, bearing in mind the large number of Orkney
notables who had been slain at the battle of Floruvagr in Norway in
1194, men of means and standing must have been scarce in Orkney for
long after this time.

There is a tradition mentioned by Alexander Pope of Reay,[23] the
translator of the _Orcades_ of Torfaeus, that Snaekoll, being deprived
of his rights in Orkney by King Hakon, returned late in life to
Caithness, where the Norse King could not deprive him of anything, and
lived in that county at Ulbster. If so, why did he return?

The answer brings us to a mysterious lady, who is known to us through
a charter[24] of May 1269 preserved in the _Registrum Episcopatus
Moraviensis_ or Chartulary of the Bishopric of Moray, and who is
called therein _nobilis mulier domina Johanna_, the then deceased wife
of Freskin de Moravia, Lord of Duffus, who had died before her. From
her name of Johanna this lady is stated to have been a daughter of
Earl John, amongst others by so eminent an authority as the late Mr.
William F. Skene in a paper "on the Earldom of Caithness," first read
to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland on the 11th March 1878,
which is reprinted as Appendix V to the Third Volume of his _Celtic
Scotland_ at pages 448 to 453, and the lady is generally known as Lady
Johanna de Strathnavir; and on her descent much subsequent history
depends.

Skene's conclusion is that the half of Caithness which afterwards
belonged to the Angus earls was that half usually possessed by the
line of Erlend Thorfinnson, and that Joanna (or Johanna) was Earl
John's daughter, and, as such, inherited the Paul share of the earldom
and brought it to Freskin de Moravia, when he married her, without the
title.

We doubt the accuracy of this conclusion, for reasons which, however,
rest not on direct evidence, but, like those given in Mr. Skene's
paper, on mere probabilities; and we hold that