y 1215, and would attain twenty-one about May 1236, but
to suppose her son of the name of Magnus to have been the ward for
whom the Earldom of Caithness was being kept till 7th July 1235 from
1232 and that he had become Earl of Caithness on the 7th July 1235
seems impossible. If the blank should be filled up with "de Anegus
et," then Malcolm Earl of Angus must still have been the guardian, and
the ward's father and mother must both have been dead by 7th October
1232. This involves three unproved assumptions, of two unrecorded
deaths and one unrecorded birth.

On the whole, therefore, we believe that there is another and simpler
explanation, and it seems probable that there was in this case no
wardship, or if there was, that there was a great deal more, and that
Malcolm held the earldom of Caithness as _Custos_ or administrator or
trustee for the Crown for four years after Earl John's death till the
succession was settled, and till all Caithness except Sutherland was
parcelled out among three claimants, namely the two heirs, each of one
of two sisters of Harald Ungi, and the hostage daughter of Earl John.

When all this was settled, Magnus, as the son of one of the two
elder sisters of Harald Ungi, and also as the husband of Earl John's
daughter, would be entitled on Earl John's death, _jure maritae_,
in Orkney, to a grant from the Norse king of the Orkney jarldom,
and also, in Caithness, _first, jure maritae_, to a grant from the
Scottish king in or after 3rd July 1236, of the North Caithness
earldom and lands held by Earl John, which Dalrymple in his
Collections (p. lxxiii) states positively, without quoting his
authority, that Magnus had for a payment of L10 per annum, and,
_secondly, jure matris_ (Ingibiorg or Elin) to a grant, also from the
Scottish king, of the earldom of South Caithness, which by the Charter
of Alexander "under the greit Seill," above alluded to, Magnus also
got.

The other moiety of the Caithness earldom lands would be fairly given
to Johanna as heiress of Ragnhild, Harald Ungi's youngest sister, and
we know that Johanna got that other moiety, because we find that her
descendants inherited it, and conveyed it or parts of it by writs
still extant, by the description of "half Caithness."

There are, however, other views. Skene's opinion on the subject of the
succession, in his very able paper (given in Appendix V, vol. iii, pp.
449-50 of his _Celtic Scotland_), is as follows:--

"Earl Harald