There is a tradition mentioned by Alexander Pope of Reay,[23] the
translator of the _Orcades_ of Torfaeus, that Snaekoll, being deprived
of his rights in Orkney by King Hakon, returned late in life to
Caithness, where the Norse King could not deprive him of anything, and
lived in that county at Ulbster. If so, why did he return?
The answer brings us to a mysterious lady, who is known to us through
a charter[24] of May 1269 preserved in the _Registrum Episcopatus
Moraviensis_ or Chartulary of the Bishopric of Moray, and who is
called therein _nobilis mulier domina Johanna_, the then deceased wife
of Freskin de Moravia, Lord of Duffus, who had died before her. From
her name of Johanna this lady is stated to have been a daughter of
Earl John, amongst others by so eminent an authority as the late Mr.
William F. Skene in a paper "on the Earldom of Caithness," first read
to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland on the 11th March 1878,
which is reprinted as Appendix V to the Third Volume of his _Celtic
Scotland_ at pages 448 to 453, and the lady is generally known as Lady
Johanna de Strathnavir; and on her descent much subsequent history
depends.
Skene's conclusion is that the half of Caithness which afterwards
belonged to the Angus earls was that half usually possessed by the
line of Erlend Thorfinnson, and that Joanna (or Johanna) was Earl
John's daughter, and, as such, inherited the Paul share of the earldom
and brought it to Freskin de Moravia, when he married her, without the
title.
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