His daughter may, at this time, have been her father's sole heiress,
although she did not remain so, because we find that he had a son who
lived till 1226, called Harald. Meantime Bishop Adam, after the death
in 1213 of Bishop John, his half-blinded and mutilated predecessor,
succeeded to the Episcopal See of Caithness,[5] and seems to have
reversed Bishop John's policy of leniency to his flock by exacting
from them heavier and heavier tithes, as years went by.
In 1217, King Hakon's rival, Jarl Skuli, thought Earl John so
promising a traitor as to send him letters forged with the Norse
king's seal.[6] In 1218 John was present at Bergen to witness the
ordeal successfully undergone by King Hakon's mother in order to prove
that king, then a boy, to be her son by the late King Hakon Sverri's
son, and so rightly entitled to the Norwegian crown.[7]
After Earl John's return from Norway, the bishop's exactions of tithes
of butter reached such a pitch that the Caithness folk met near his
house at Halkirk, and demanded that the earl should protect them
against the bishop's rapacity, and, either at the earl's suggestion
or without any opposition on his part, they attacked the bishop in his
house, which was close to _Breithivellir_ (now Brawl) Castle,
where John lived.
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