Indeed, the line of Paul were the last
persons to whom such a grant would be made.
It was, therefore, to a very much reduced territory and earldom that
David succeeded in 1206, as Earl of Caithness. We hear almost nothing
of him, save that for the latter part of the eight years of his
rule,[1] more or less inefficient probably through ill health, he
shared the earldom and what had been left to him of its lands with
his younger brother John. David died without issue in 1214[2] probably
soon after Hugo Freskyn, and David was succeeded by his brother John
in the jarldom of Orkney and in the reduced earldom of Caithness as
sole jarl and earl.
Immediately after David's death, King William the Lion, who had, in
1211, suppressed a rebellion in Moray of the Thanes of Ross under
Guthred son of Donald Ban MacWilliam whom a few years later he
captured and beheaded,[3] came to Moray again; and, about the 1st
of August 1214, King William demanded, and received[4] Earl John's
daughter, whose name is not known, as a hostage for her father's
loyalty, and a guarantee of the peace then made, under which John was
probably recognised as earl and as entitled to his reduced territory.
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