hose concerned and seizing their
lands,[12] while in 1223 the Pope excommunicated them and also
interdicted them from their lands.

The Annals of Dunstable, however, paint Earl John in much blacker
colours, and state that he himself caused the bishop, who was escaping
from the fire, to be cast into it again, and the bodies of two others
previously slain, his nephew and the monk, to be thrown upon him, and
that King Alexander forfeited half John's earldom.[13]

The Saga says that the king forfeited Earl John's lands for the murder
of the bishop. Wyntoun, however, states that afterwards, at Christmas
festivities at Forfar,

"Thare borwyd that erle than his land
That lay unto the Kyngis hand
Fra that the byschape of Cateness,
As yhe before herd, peryst wes."[14]

By this "borrowing," however, Earl John recovered only the reduced
earldom above described, that is without the Lordship of Sutherland,
to which William de Moravia, Hugo's son, had succeeded between 1211
and 1214, and without that south-western portion of it, which, as
stated, had been given to Gilbert de Moravia by Hugo in 1211, and
without the Moddan family's lands near Loch Coire and in Strathnaver
and Caithness, and without Harald Ungi's moiety or half share of the
Caithness earldom; and, as already stated, the lands appertaining
to this share were probably occupied by his family as represented by
Gunni and Ragnhild, Eric Stagbrellir's youngest daughter, and by the
members of the Moddan clan, and the retainers of the Erlend line.

In 1223, Earl John was again at Bergen, with Bishop Bjarni of Orkney
and others, to consider the rival claims of King Hakon and Jarl Skuli
to the Norse crown,[15] and in 1224 he went thither again to leave
his only son, Harald, as a hostage for his own loyalty.[16] In 1226,
Harald was drowned at sea, probably on his return voyage, thus leaving
John without any male heir, and save for his nameless hostage daughter
or her children, if any, without any direct lineal heirs for the
jarldom and earldom of Orkney and of Caithness respectively.

In 1228 John sent presents to the Norse king, and received in return a
good long-ship and many other gifts; and in 1230 John is found aiding
Olaf, King of Man, a friend of the Norse king, by giving him a like
vessel, "The Ox," to enable him to complete his voyage back from
Norway to his own kingdom, and in the same year John rendered
assistance to the Norse expedition, which had attac