After this, few events of any local or historical importance occurred till the year 1222. At this time Adam, Bishop of Caithness, was barbarously put to death in his own palace at Halkirk, by the people, on account of the rigour with which he exacted his tithes. He excommunicated, it is said, several of them for not paying their allotted portion of tiend—a terrible infliction in those days, when it was believed that no person who died under that curse could escape eternal punishment. The blame of much of this undue severity was imputed to a monk of Newbottle, named Serlo, who lived with him as a companion, and was known to be his confidential friend and adviser. A part of the bishop's revenue consisted of a tax on butter; and it was the established usage in Caithness, that for every score of cows, a span of butter should be paid to that dignitary. Adam at first exacted a span from fifteen cows, then from twelve, and at length demanded a span for every ten cows. This the people considered an intolerable imposition to which they would not submit, and waxed exceedingly wroth against the bishop and the monk. There was an annual fair held on a hill, near the castle of Brawl,

[The castle of Brawl (the ruins of which still exist) was anciently called Brathwell. In Scottish record mention of it is made as far back as the year 1375. Like the castle of Girnigoe, it comprehended two buildings belonging to different eras of architecture. The part of the tower which remains of the older building is 35 feet in height; and the walls, which are 9 feet thick, are pierced with numerous loopholes. There are several recesses in the walls, about the size of small rooms, which were evidently used as such by the inmates, and which would appear to have communicated with passages and staircases similarly placed. The front of the newer castle, which seems not to have been completed, is from 12 to 15 feet high, with a ground floor measuring 100 feet long and 50 broad, and divided into 6 vaults. The ruins are situated on a beautiful spot close by the river of Halkirk; and the old tower, or keep, from its being the occasional residence of the Scandinavian Earls of Orkney and Caithness, was in all probability erected by one of them.]

where John, Earl of Caithness, at this time usually resided. At this fair, the inhabitants of the district, to the number of about 300, collected, and led on by two sons of one Simon Harbister, in Harpsdale, they went in a body to the Earl, complained bitterly of the hardship and injustice of the impost, and demanded redress. The Earl at first refused to interfere in the matter, as being one with which he had no concern; but feeling annoyed at their importunity, and disapproving at the same time of the conduct of the bishop, he hastily ejaculated, "The devil take the bishop and his butter; you may roast him if you please!" The people took this remark in its literal sense, as an order to burn the prelate, and off they set to the palace to put it into execution. The bishop and lagmadr or lawman of the place, whose name was Rafn, were at the time in an upper room of the mansion, discussing the subject of the tithes, and solacing themselves with a glass of ale. The lawman seriously advised Adam to depart from his last demand, and not to exasperate the people, but the latter was obstinate and refused to listen to the salutary advice. In the meantime, the disorderly mob drew near, shouting out, "Roast him alive!" and when the bishop and the sheriff saw that matters were beginning to assume a serious aspect, Serlo the monk was sent out to pacify them; but no sooner did he make his appearance, than he was felled to the ground by the stroke of a heavy bludgeon, and trampled to death by the crowd. The sheriff now came forward and tried to mollify their rage. He assured them that Bishop Adam was disposed to lighten the exaction, and that he was coming out to speak with them on the subject. He beseeched them to listen to reason, and not to commit any further outrage, having already done what was sufficient to bring down upon them the heaviest punishment of the law. But his address had little or no effect on the infuriated rabble; and when the prelate, clad in the robes of his office, and with a small crucifix hanging from his breast, advanced to offer terms, they dragged him forcibly to his own kitchen, heaped on the fire additional fuel, and there burned him to death! The sheriff, who saw that his own life would be in jeopardy if he attempted to interfere, was obliged to remain a passive spectator of the horrid deed.

When Alexander II., then King of Scotland, heard of the barbarous murder of the bishop, he came all the way from Jedburgh to Caithness, and inflicted on the perpetrators thereof as barbarous a punishment." [The writer of the old statistical account of Halkirk, says:—"The Bishop of Caithness was assassinated by a set of ruffians from Harpsdale, a place belonging to the chaplainry. These savages were the sons of John of Harpsdale, whom the Earl of Caithness suborned as instruments very fit for the execution of that horrid deed, in revenge of the bishop having assessed his lands in the chaplainry with an addition to the chaplain's living." This account, which the writer says he had from tradition, differs materially from that given in the text from Torfaeus, but I am inclined to think that the Norse chronicler's version of the story is the true one, more especially as it agrees in most particulars with the accounts found in the " Monastic Annals of Tweedale," and other ancient records.] The greater part of them were by the king's orders hanged, and the rest had their feet and hands cut off, and were otherwise mutilated in a manner too shocking for description. Pope Celestine the Fourth issued a bull, still extant, in which he highly commends the king for his praiseworthy conduct on this occasion. All the ancient writers who treat of the North relate this story, and though they differ in a few particulars, they agree in the main fact as to the burning of the bishop. Boethius lays the whole blame of the crime upon the Earl. He says—"Adam, Bishop of Caithness, because he piously maintained the rights and dignities of the church, was thrown into a glowing furnace by the Earl of that county, and burnt to ashes, and thus took his flight to heaven."

This unfortunate prelate was a native of the south of Scotland, and had been for some time Abbot of Melrose. He was consecrated Bishop of Caithness in 1214. The ceremony is thus stated in the chronicle of Melrose:—"Anno mccxiiii. consecratus est Adam, Abbas Melrosenensis in Episcop. de Cathanesiae." The newly-elected bishop seems to have been a man of a proud and unbending disposition; and coming as he did from Melrose, it is not improbable also that he was a bon vivant; for, according to the popular rhyme,—

"The monks of Melrose they made gude kail
On Fridays, when they fasted;
They never wanted beef or ale
As lang's their neighbour's lasted."

It would appear, however, that he was a scholar, and possessed of considerable literary talent. Among other works, he is said to have been the author of a history of Scotland in three books. By the clergy he was regarded as a martyr, who had died in defence of the rights and privileges of the order; and his body not having been altogether consumed by the flames, the remains were afterwards disinterred from the common burying ground in Halkirk, and removed to a more honourable sepulture in the cathedral church of the diocese at Dornoch.

Nothing can more forcibly show the barbarous—or I might rather say savage—condition of the natives of Caithness at the period in question than this murder. The Church of Rome was then in the full zenith of her power. The whole of Christendom yielded to her the most implicit obedience. The priestly office was held in the utmost veneration; and the person of an ecclesiastic was hedged round with a divinity which rendered him sacred in the eyes of the multitude. Such being the almost idolatrous reverence paid to the clergy, it is evident that the people of Caithness, barbarous as they were, must have been very harshly dealt with in the matter of tithes, and wrought up to a desperate pitch of frenzy before they could have committed such a heinous crime as that of putting to death a churchman, and that churchman, too, the highest dignitary in the county. Although there is no sufficient reason to believe that the Earl really instigated the people to burn the bishop, yet he was justly reprehensible for the rash and indiscreet expression which they construed into an order for committing the deed. He absconded for some time; but afterwards took courage, and resolved to justify himself in person before the king. "With this view," says a Scotch chronicler, "he made his application upon the day of the Epiphany, when, conform to custom, the court was all in mirth, and the king, with wine and music, more than usually exhilarated." These circumstances were favourable to the Earl, who attested his innocence with oaths, and was therefore pardoned. Not many years after he was murdered himself in Thurso by a set of ruffians from Orkney. The house in which he resided when in town being attacked, he ran down to a cellar under-ground to conceal himself, but being found out by the assassins, he was dragged from his hiding-place, and cruelly stabbed to death. They then, according to the usual practice, set fire to the house. The two principal actors in this tragedy were Haneff, the collector of the King of Norway's revenue in Orkney, and Svekoll, a descendant of Earl Ronald. The latter had some time before quarrelled with Earl John about some property in Caithness which the Earl refused to give up, and on this account Svekoll, in particular, cherished towards him a violent animosity. The party sallied out from a tavern where they had been carousing to perpetrate the crime.

Adam, the late bishop, was succeeded in the diocese of Caithness by the celebrated archdeacon, Gilbert Murray, who is said to have been one of the most pious, learned, and accomplished prelates of his time. He was a native of Duffus, in Morayshire, of highly-respectable parentage, and was chiefly educated abroad. When he had finished his studies, he travelled through the greater part of Germany, France, and Italy, in order to enlarge his knowledge of the world, and observe in person the social and religious condition of the people in the different places through which he passed. On his return to his native country, he entered the Church, and by his eminent talents, learning, and qualifications for the ministerial office, soon rose to be Archdeacon of Moray. He particularly distinguished himself as a strenuous supporter of the rights and liberties of the Scottish Church; and when yet a young man, was sent by William, King of Scotland, to attend a convocation of the clergy at Northampton, [osmo Innes, a learned and able writer on antiquities, discredits altogether this account of Sir Robert and others, touching Murray's presence at the convocation, and it must be admitted that his remark carries much force with it. "The story," says he, "of his having distinguished himself at the council of Northampton in 1176, and thereby winning a rapid promotion to his bishopric, when the election to the see of Caithness happened forty-seven years after that council, needs no refutation. He had better titles to respect. He had a large share in civilising his rude province," etc. ] in order to prevent any measure being adopted there which might be prejudicial to her interests. "At this convocation," says Sir Robert Gordon, "the Pope's legate was present, and went about to persuade the Scots to receive the Archbishop of York for their metropolitan; which motion this Gilbert, then Archdeacon of Moray, did altogether cross, and hinder as a novation and encroachment upon the Scottish liberties, and did argue so eagerly and eloquently to the contrary, and with so great admiration, that the legate was obliged to leave his pursuit and break up the convocation, whereat the English clergy were much grieved."

Murray was also in high favour with Alexander II., who made him treasurer for the North of Scotland, and committed to his safe keeping the Bulls which were issued by sundry popes concerning the rights and liberties of the Scottish Church. He was, unquestionably, an able and patriotic prelate; and, when circumstances demanded it, he could lay aside the crosier and take up the sword—a thing quite common with churchmen of spirit in those days. On one remarkable occasion he is said to have greatly distinguished himself in this military capacity. A large band of Danish pirates had landed at the Little Ferry; and as they were on their way to plunder Dornoch, they were attacked by a body of Highlanders under William, Earl of Sutherland, assisted by the bishop and and his brother, Richard Murray, at a place called Embo, not far from the town. After a severe conflict the Danes were completely routed, and their leader was slain. A number of them were cut down by the Sutherland men as they chased them to the ferry; while the few that escaped the sword immediately took to their galleys and left the coast. At the commencement of the action, Bishop Murray's armour-bearer, it is said, took to his heels and fled, carrying his master's shield along with him; and being deprived of this important safeguard, the worthy prelate was obliged to fight without it.

In the time of Bishop Gilbert Murray, Sutherland and Caithness formed one diocese. His residence, when in Caithness, was the castle of Burnside, near Thurso, a part of the ruins of which still remains. It stood, like most of the other castles of the period, close by the sea, on the margin of the crescent-shaped bank overlooking Scrabster Roads, and on the land side was protected by a drawbridge. A terrace formed in the bank, and extending to about half a mile from the castle, was called the Bishop's Walk. Here Murray died in the year 1245, and his remains were carried all the way to Dornoch, and interred in the cathedral there which himself had founded. He was an excellent prelate, and did much to instruct and civilise the inhabitants. He translated, it is said, for the benefit of the people composing his see, the Psalms and the Gospels into the Gaelic language, from which it may be inferred that in his time the Gaelic was the common dialect of both Sutherland and Caithness. Indeed it is now generally allowed by antiquarians that it was the common language of all Scotland, with the exception of the Lothians, down till the reign of Malcolm Canmore, in the eleventh century.

1263.—After a lapse of some eighteen years from the death of Murray, the only matter of any public interest connected with the county, refers to the celebrated expedition of Haco, King of Norway, to Largs. On his way thither, Haco called at Orkney, where he remained for about three weeks, providing his fleet with additional stores, and other necessaries for his expedition. During the time he was there, he despatched agents to Caithness for the purpose of exacting tribute from the natives. These officials were instructed to acquaint the people that if they refused to pay the tax, the King of Norway would punish them by laying waste the country with fire and sword, and rather than incur the threatened infliction, they paid the impost. In the army of Alexander III., Abercromby, in his "Martial Achievements," says there was a body of Caithness men. The natives of the county never became thoroughly reconciled to the Norwegian yoke; and it is probable that the body of men in question went to assist the Scottish king on this occasion chiefly out of revenge for the impost which had been levied on them by Haco, and the despotic manner in which they were in general used by their Scandinavian governors.