160 THE SHETLANDS IN THE 



filchit and forgit, faults being so devisit against many 

 of them that they were compellit by imprisonment and 

 small rewaird to resign their heritable titles to him . . . 

 gif not life and all besides.' 



It is not difficult to understand why, after most 

 entries of the kind, we read, 'Wanting probation the 

 earl is assoilzied,' as at least ten times in a single 

 volume of the Register appear such entries as the 

 following : 



' Sederunt, Cancellarius, Orknay, Thesaurius, collector, 

 etc.' 



' Sederunt, presente Rege, Lennox, cancellarius, Angus, 

 Orkney, Mar, etc.' 



But Lord Orkney trod once too often on the toes of 

 his royal cousin, and in 1613 Lord Carew, 1 writing to 

 give his dear friend, Sir Thomas Roe, ambassador to 

 the Great Mogul, the last gossip of the London season 

 that Sir Moyle Finch is dead, leaving the richest 

 widow in England ; that Lord Berkeley and Lord Fitz- 

 walter have married the two pretty daughters of Sir M. 

 Stanhope; that a ship fitted with provisions for nine 

 months (the forerunner by two hundred years of Sir John 

 Franklin's ill-fated expedition) is just starting to find 

 a North- West Passage ; and that there is much talk at 

 Court of the ' rising fortune at Court of a young gentle- 

 man " of good parts " ' ; a Mr. Villiers, etc., is able to 

 fill a corner in his letter with the news that ' the Erie 

 of Orkeney in Scotland is beheaded and his lands and 

 honnour escheated to the Kinge.' 



1 Letters of Lord Carew. Published by the Camden Society, 



